Walt Disney World has major new attractions in various stages of development and construction at all four of its theme parks. Among the biggest projects is the highly anticipated Villains Land at Magic Kingdom with a Maleficent roller coaster. Disney has a lot of exciting attractions on the way, but when are they all opening? We now have more details after a recent set of major announcements from Disney.
Below, you’ll find a year-by-year timeline of when Disney World’s future rides, shows, attractions, restaurants, and hotels will open, or in some cases, reopen after lengthy closures. We’ve linked to our coverage of each project so you can do a deep dive on the topics you’re most interested in. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including Disney theme park rides being adapted into new movies and TV shows and a spotlight on one of our favorite Disney World restaurants. This is a follow-up to our previous look at when new rides would open.
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When Will Disney World’s New Rides Open?
There are more new projects underway at Disney theme parks globally than at any other time in the company’s history.
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At Walt Disney World in Florida, major attractions have been announced for all four parks: Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The projects reflect two key priorities for Disney World’s Imagineers and executives: a balance of large-scale expansions with exciting new rides and reinvestments in classic attractions that have endured for generations. Disney World’s Facilities Asset Management (FAM) team also continues its ongoing work to enhance and refresh the property’s 20+ hotels.
At the other parks around the world new ride projects include a new Coco ride, an Avengers Campus expansion, a Tomorrowland reimagining, and major infrastructure updates at Disneyland Resort in California; a new version of Space Mountain and a Wreck-It Ralph ride at Tokyo Disneyland; Disney’s first Lion King ride at Disneyland Paris; an Avengers drop tower ride at Hong Kong Disneyland; and a Spider-Man roller coaster at Shanghai Disneyland. That’s not to mention the massive expansion of Disney Cruise Line’s fleet to 13 ships by late 2030.
Here’s a year-by-year look at everything coming to Disney World in Florida, plus the new attractions that already opened this year.
2026 at Disney World
Disney World has already opened quite a few attractions in 2026, but there’s more to come.
Earlier this year, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets replaced the former Aerosmith version of the ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Disney Jr. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live! debuted as a new stage show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Bluey’s Wild World introduced new live entertainment and animals at Conversation Station at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
On September 14, 2026, The Magic of Disney Animation will open at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This pavilion-style indoor facility will host multiple attractions:
- screenings of Once Upon a Studio, Disney’s 2023 short film featuring over 500 characters
- Olaf Draws!, a drawing class hosted by an Olaf Audio-Animatronics figure and prerecorded Disney animators
- Drawn to Wonderland, a playground inspired by famed artist Mary Blair’s work on Alice in Wonderland
- Off the Page!, a new meet-and-greet space for Daisy, Donald, Goofy, Chip, Dale, Stitch, Mulan, and Rapunzel
- art galleries
In fall 2026, Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort will complete a multi-month refurbishment that began in March 2026 and includes interior transformations of the Treehouse Villas accommodations and updates to the resort’s arrival area.
In October 2026, Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Golf Course will reopen from an extensive refurbishment that started in May 2026 and includes renovated greens, green-side bunker updates, chipping area updates, irrigation system upgrades, new bunker drainage systems, and teeing grounds enhancements.
On November 7, 2026, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Kidani Village will be finished with its sweeping refurbishment that began in August 2026. The work pertains to the hotel’s lobby, gift shop, observation deck, laundry room, and arcade.
In late 2026, Hurly-Burly will open at Disney’s BoardWalk as a family-friendly trivia venue during the day and an adults-only bar with live music at night. This new hang-out spot replaces the beloved Jellyrolls, which closed its Disney World location in 2025.
In late 2026, multi-month exterior refurbishments will be complete at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, and Disney’s Yacht Club Resort.
2027 at Disney World
In January 2027, all guest rooms at Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort and those in Jambo House at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge will be finished with their phased refurbishment projects that began in May 2026. Throughout 2027, Disney will refurbish rooms at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort in phases.
In early 2027, Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa will complete its arrival area refurbishment, and thereby finish a sweeping 7-year refurbishment of its entire property, including guest rooms, lobby, and restaurants.
In late spring 2027, Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress will reopen at Magic Kingdom following a nearly 1-year closure. The classic attraction shuttered its doors in July 2026, and Imagineers are currently changing every scene of the ride to more recent decades and installing an Audio-Animatronics figure of Walt Disney.
Sometime in 2027, Monstropolis Phase 1 will open at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This new area themed to Monsters, Inc. will have a staggered opening to us humans. Phase 1 will include:
- Welcome to Monstropolis, an indoor show
- Harryhausen’s, a table service restaurant
- Archie’s Scare Pig Pizza, a quick service restaurant
- Scareporium, a gift shop
Disney has not announced an exact opening date for Monstropolis Phase 1, but has confirmed it will open in 2027. Based on current construction progress and year-over-year trends in Disney openings, Mickey Visit predicts Monstropolis Phase 1 will debut in summer 2027, as Disney World management loves to open new attractions at the beginning of each summer season. Again, though, just “2027” is the only timeframe confirmed.
In summer 2027, Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge will open as the newest Disney World hotel. Accommodations will include suites and lake houses, with views of Magic Kingdom fireworks. The resort will have one of Disney World’s biggest hotel pool areas.
In August 2027, Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside will complete its phased refurbishment of all guest rooms, a project that’s been ongoing since May 2025. The rooms are now themed to The Princess and the Frog, with flourishes inspired by Princess Tiana.
In late 2027, multi-year refurbishments will be complete at Disney’s Contemporary Resort and Disney’s Beach Club Resort. At the Contemporary, work has been ongoing since 2024 and has included guest rooms, pools, and exteriors. Work on the Beach Club has mostly pertained to the resort’s exterior.
A new land called Tropical Americas is coming to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The area will include new rides based on Encanto and Indiana Jones, which we describe below. Disney previously announced that Tropical Americas would open in 2027.
However, Disney did not mention 2027 when mapping out the Tropical Americas plans during 2026’s D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, during which Imagineers and executives were very clear about other attractions’ timelines. With D23 being the company’s biggest showcase of future attractions, Disney is careful with its language at this event.
This leads us to believe the omission of linking 2027 to Tropical Americas was intentional, meaning the project’s opening may have been pushed back to 2028, or Disney is still strategizing the best move here. This is a recurring topic we’ll see play out in other expansion discussions later, too: With so much being built on such a large scale, how will Disney space out the grand openings of these big additions?
With Monstropolis opening in phases, it’s possible that Tropical Americas could take this approach too. If that’s the case, based on the land’s current progress, it would be likely that Indiana Jones and the carousel would open before Encanto. However, a phased opening of Tropical Americas has not been announced.
With all of this in mind, we’re tentatively keeping Tropical Americas in the 2027 section of this article based on Disney’s previous comments, but this may have changed, or Disney may still be undecided about the matter.
Antonio’s Fiesta de Encanto is the name of the family-friendly Encanto ride opening at Disney’s Animal Kingdom as part of Tropical Americas. Guests will ride in vehicles assembled from various pieces of the Madrigals’ furniture and travel through Casita to celebrate the day that Antonio receives his gift of talking to animals.
Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent will also open at Disney’s Animal Kingdom as part of Tropical Americas. This reimagined attraction will repurpose the ride system of the former DINOSAUR ride to tell a new story. Guests will journey with Indy into a Mayan temple, but things go awry when a portal opens to the underworld, unleashing a beast known as the Tsukán.
El Carrusel de los Animalitos will open at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in the new Tropical Americas land. Instead of horses, this imaginative take on a traditional merry-go-round will feature 22 steeds shaped like Disney animal characters. See the full list.
Fixing a decades-long problem, the yeti Audio-Animatronics figure on Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain at Disney’s Animal Kingdom will move again sometime in the future. The huge beast appears in the finale of the roller coaster, but has been broken since shortly after the ride opened in 2006. The yeti currently stands motionless, with a strobe light flashing to give the appearance of movement as riders zoom past it.
Disney announced it’s fixing the yeti, but hasn’t shared when the update will occur or how long it will take. In the past, Imagineers said the yeti couldn’t be fixed without completely restructuring the entire mountain. We don’t know Disney’s solution for tackling the problem now, but they certainly wouldn’t rebuild the whole mountain. The scale of the project, though, remains a mystery nonetheless. Is this an overnight fix or a months-long refurbishment effort? We just don’t know yet.
If fixing the yeti requires Disney to close Expedition Everest temporarily, we expect Disney wouldn’t want to do that until after Tropical Americas is open, for park capacity reasons. This would place the yeti’s changeover in late 2027 at the earliest, or into 2028. It’s a different story if the fix doesn’t necessitate a ride closure, in which case this truly could happen anytime.
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2028 at Disney World
As we venture into 2028, we reach projects that Disney has not publicly committed to any opening timeframe. However, based on what’s opening in 2027 and how far along other construction projects currently are, we can do our best to predict when everything else will debut.
Monstropolis Phase 2 is likely to open in 2028. Phase 2 includes the land’s headliner attraction, an indoor suspended roller coaster themed as a chase through the Monsters, Inc. factory’s door vault.
In its language when announcing that Phase 1 will open in 2027, Disney implied that Phase 2 won’t open that same year. Given the current progress of the coaster’s construction and the minimal exterior work that the show building will require, 2029 would be much too far away at this pace, putting Phase 2 squarely in 2028, and if we had to guess, summer specifically.
Disney has announced that two EPCOT attractions will be majorly transformed. The beloved Dreamfinder character will return to Journey Into Imagination With Figment in a reimagined version of that family-friendly dark ride. Meanwhile, inside EPCOT’s large geodesic sphere, Spaceship Earth will introduce a new narrative theme focusing on human connection, replacing the current script’s thread of communication.
Disney has not revealed timelines for the EPCOT rides’ reimaginings, but it’s possible that one or both of them could get underway in 2027, placing their reopening(s) in 2028. This would help Disney continue an output of “new” offerings while some of the other major new lands are still underway.
2029 at Disney World
Piston Peak National Park is opening at Magic Kingdom as a new area of Frontierland themed to Pixar’s Cars and aiming to pay tribute to the rugged beauty of U.S. national parks. The area will include a thrill ride called Cars Ridge Run Rally, meant to resemble off-roading, and a family-friendly spinning ride named Miss Fritter’s Daredevil Spin-Along, starring the demolition derby school bus from Cars 3.
Construction on Piston Peak has gone pretty fast so far. In just one year’s time, Disney has upended the Rivers of America, destroyed all traces of Tom Sawyer Island, and gone vertical on the beginnings of the retainer wall that will shape the landscaping of Piston Peak’s foundations.
If that pace continues, and work keeps moving fast, Disney potentially could open Piston Peak in 2028, but we don’t see any reason to do that when Monstropolis Phase 2 will already be a huge draw. Pair that strategy mindset with the fact that Piston Peak will require a lot of exterior rockwork, trees, and water to be built into its landscaping, rather than simply constructing a plain building, and 2029 seems like a safe bet for Piston Peak’s grand opening.
2030
The farthest out of Disney World’s ongoing construction projects is Villains Land, coming to Magic Kingdom with a Maleficent roller coaster and a dark ride starring the Evil Queen, Cruella De Vil, Ursula, Jafar, Scar, and Doctor Facilier.
In 2024, when Disney first announced Tropical Americas, Monstropolis, Piston Peak National Park, and Villains Land, they shared that all of the projects would open by 2029. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, especially with Monstropolis opening in phases and Tropical Americas potentially pushed beyond 2027.
Disney has cleared the land where Villains Land will one day reside, and work onsite is continually active, but the project has not gone vertical yet. The sheer volume of major attractions that are opening before Villains Land places its opening as the last item in a long list of projects that are coming first. This is a good problem to have!
With 2027/2028 bringing Monstropolis and Tropical Americas, and Piston Peak potentially following in 2029, and Villains Land’s current progress behind Piston Peak, 2030 seems to be the earliest that Villains Land could be ready. But when the land will be physically ready and when Disney chooses to open it are two different conversations.
Again, this is a good problem: With Disney building so many new rides, how much time do they want to space between each grand opening? Does Disney care more about increasing park capacity as soon as possible, in which case they’d want to open Villains Land in 2030? Or would they want to have a buffer period after three major expansion projects before they debut what’s arguably the most anticipated project of them all?
At D23 2026, Disney compared the scale of Villains Land to that of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It took Disney just under four years to build Galaxy’s Edge.
With work having begun on Villains Land in 2025, a 2030 opening seems more than realistic in terms of a construction schedule. Its opening, then, could depend more on when Disney prefers to roll it out in relation to everything else that’s under construction. Families could easily prefer putting off a Disney World vacation until all of these attractions are finished. In that case, does it help or hurt Villains Land to open it sooner vs. later?
These are the conversations that may be happening behind closed doors as Disney carefully considers the rollout of this unprecedented era of expansion. It’s a great time to be a guest and enjoy all of it.
We will be watching all this construction of the new Walt Disney World rides closely to give you an ongoing updated look at the new rides coming.
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