Construction is full steam ahead on Tropical Americas in Animal Kingdom, as Imagineering races to complete the first major new land at Walt Disney World as part of the current project cycle. Here’s an aerial update on the Encanto attraction, which is making speedy vertical progress, and the critter carousel in Pueblo Esperanza, the hub in heart of the rainforest that might open ahead of schedule.
In case you missed it, Walt Disney World started phased construction on Tropical Americas at the beginning of this year when Chester & Hester’s Dino-Rama closed and started demolition. Fast-forward to the fall, and the Boneyard along with a couple of snack stands closed. All of the progress we’re covering today is in these areas, which were walled-off almost immediately after their closures.
What remains of Dinoland is a maze of construction walls, but that’ll change in a little over one month. Walt Disney World announced that DINOSAUR and Restaurantosaurus will close as of February 2, 2026. It’s safe to expect this area of the park to be completely walled-off and inaccessible to guests starting February 3, 2026. That’s when work will start on the Indiana Jones area of the expansion, as well as connecting all of Tropical Americas together into one cohesive land.
To that point, Dinoland USA is being replaced by three areas of Tropical Americas. First is Pueblo Esperanza, the hub in heart of the rainforest that’s name translates to “Village of Hope.” This will be home to a large quick-service restaurant, critter carousel, and hopefully an animal enclosure (fingers crossed).
After leaving the Pueblo Esperanza, guests can venture deeper into the rainforest to find not one but two signature attractions! To the right from Pueblo Esperanza is a new Indiana Jones Adventure attraction, which will replace DINOSAUR. This will be a new twist on the ride with a storyline unique to Animal Kingdom, making this the third non-cloned version of the attraction.
To the left is the Encanto magical Madrigal Casita dark ride, which is a family-friendly dark ride. It’s expected to be an Encanto-ized version of Mystic Manor, except not trackless.
The premise of the Encanto dark ride is that Antonio has just received the ability to communicate with animals, and his room has transformed into a rainforest. It’s time to go explore the casita alongside him, and you never know what member of the family you might bump into.
Let’s turn to the latest construction development, which is that the Tropical Americas at Animal Kingdom project is moving fast as of December 23, 2025. As always, all aerial photos are courtesy of theme park eye in the sky bioreconstruct:
Above is basically a high-level aerial establishing shot.
DINOSAUR is in the lower left corner of the above photo. The exterior of that green show building is unlikely to change at all. The front will get a new facade, but there’s no reason to believe anything else about the structure will be altered. This is more or less how the other versions of the Indiana Jones Adventure show building look.
Immediately to the right of DINOSAUR–the massive construction zone–is the backstage area where the Encanto show building is being built. Above that is the former home to Chester & Hester’s Dino-Rama, which will soon become the ‘Village of Hope.’ It’s currently identifiable as dirt. At the top right is the Theater in the Wild, home to Finding Nemo: The Musical.
For a bit more context, the above photo shows Restaurantosaurus at the bottom right, DINOSAUR above that, and Theater in the Wild on the left. The seating area for Rivers of Light or KiteTails (remember those?!) is lower left.
These photos also show the sets of construction walls that cut through two different project sites. In front of Restaurantosaurus is what used to be the Boneyard; the much larger side is Encanto expansion. Work started ~9 months earlier on Encanto, so it should be no surprise that it’s further along.
For the last two-plus months, there’s been a tower crane on site and construction of the Encanto casita. The show building for the attraction starting going vertical in late October, and was visible to guests from on the ground in Animal Kingdom earlier this month.
This process began with concrete walls poured and support columns constructed near the back of the construction site and show building. Foundations were poured, footers installed, and utilities buried. All of that started several months ago, paving the way for the structural steel frame to go vertical. The first piece of that was placed in early December.
At this point, it appears that roughly one-third of the building’s structural steel frame has now gone up. Maybe a little less than that.
In case it’s unclear, the show building is being built from back to front, with the side farthest from the guest-facing side of the park going up first.
Another thing to note is the tiered show building, which gets progressively taller the further it goes backstage (see the below model).
The concept art, model, and permits all suggest that the indoor queue begins to the left of the casita. Like Haunted Mansion, guests probably will not walk through the front doors; it’ll be the illusion of entering the casita. I would expect the lowest section of show building to be queue space.
Scaling up one level is likely the load area, opening scene(s), closing scene(s), and unload. Again, something similar to Haunted Mansion would make sense. The Little Mermaid dark ride might be a better, newer example.
The highest section of show building is likely to be the marquee or climactic scene(s). My gut is that Walt Disney World has already revealed one of these with the only interior concept art that’s been released, featuring the family gathered around Antonio in his room-turned-rainforest with a bunch of animals.
From the view above, you should be able to get an idea of the show building’s final footprint based on the retaining walls still under construction. This plus more concrete foundation and footer work still to be completed indicates that steel installation will continue in phases as those necessary prerequisites are completed.
It’s unclear just how long that will take. The steel structure is going up fast, but a lot of the concrete work that still needs to be done on the front half of the structure was finished on the back half around October. This suggests we could be looking at a few more months before the full frame of the show building is finished.
One area of intrigue has been this concrete pit.
It stands to reason that there’s a grandiose room or two in the Encanto attraction; a showstopping scene that has deeper infrastructure needs. This could be for that, but it doesn’t quite line up with where we’d expect to see the highest section of the show building. Our best guess is that this has a more mundane explanation.
Turning our attention to the other side of the walls, where the critter carousel is replacing the Boneyard, demolition is fully finished. Construction of the new attraction is underway, with foundations being built for the upcoming critter carousel.
In addition to the critter carousel, this is essentially where the fountain and entrance to Tropical Americas will be built. The new playground is not being built here. It’ll be between the souvenir shop and Indiana Jones Adventure; the permits suggest it’ll be smaller and simpler than the Boneyard.
We continue to wonder whether the plan is to fast-track the critter carousel and have that open ahead of Encanto and Indiana Jones Adventure. It’s obviously much less complex and could be built quicker.
Animal Kingdom is so light on attractions, and Walt Disney World is clearly sensitive about closing too much at once, that this might make sense. Having the critter carousel, large hacienda, and maybe even the gift shop open by Christmas 2026 or first half of 2027 might be the target simply for increasing/restoring park capacity.
This is purely speculative, and normally we’d bet against a phased opening. But there’s likely a reason why Walt Disney World moved forward the Boneyard’s closure by several months. And likewise, why they’re moving so quickly on construction for the carousel area. It’s not going to take the ~2 years that Encanto will likely require from this point.
From this point forward, work on Tropical Americas should continue to go fast. We’re at the point in the project where weekly updates would continue to show major and measurable progress.
By contrast, the first ~9 months of the project seemed to move at a glacial pace. At least, from a guest-facing perspective. Tropical Americas was simply a demolition zone and then a dirt pit for what felt like a long time–especially for an expansion that still is (allegedly) opening in 2027.
Fans will undoubtedly talk about construction being accelerated, but this is simply the normal pace of projects. Things appear slow-going in the demolition and foundation stages, and then vertical work appears to move at lightning speed. There will be claims of a new fiscal year being the difference-maker, but that’s not it at all. This is just how work normally progresses.
There are frequently complaints about the slow pace of the project or even purposeful delays. We remember hearing that first about New Fantasyland, and pretty much every project since. (In fairness, some of the post-2019 projects were purposefully delayed or slowed.)
It’s fun to think that maybe there’s a newfound sense of urgency, more resources are being allocated to the project, or Walt Disney World wants to open Tropical Americas ahead of schedule. In reality, this was probably always the plan and the expected pace. Just because we didn’t see visible progress before doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
Not drying to be a debbie downer with this. To the contrary, we’ve been pleased with the pace of Tropical Americas work all along–at least, on the Encanto and Village of Hope side. For over a year, we’ve been saying that the show building going vertical by Christmas 2025 and then being enclosed by Spring 2026 would be reassuring.
More recently, we’ve heard and seen the same scenario play out in Avengers Campus at DCA. But Disney construction happens slow…and then suddenly. The Avengers Campus went vertical in a hurry, and so too will this.
This also explains why DINOSAUR isn’t closing until February 2, 2026. Even at that time, it’ll still be ahead of the Encanto dark ride by virtue of its show building and ride system already being “done.” There’s no way Encanto is making that much progress in ~2 months.
Here’s a video of the Tropical Americas construction site via bioreconstruct that shows a more dynamic view:
Aerial video of Encanto construction in Animal Kingdom. About 1/3 of the structural steel is up for the show building. Concrete forms added where a carousel is planned. pic.twitter.com/HVc9xn2xo1
— bioreconstruct (@bioreconstruct) December 23, 2025
Here are more aerial construction photos of Tropical Americas as of December 23, 2025:
Ultimately, we’re pleased to see the progress on Tropical Americas. Our next update should be in about one month, consisting of only on-the-ground photos showcasing the speed at which the Encanto show building is going vertical. My goal is to take a ton of on-the-ground photos in late January before the entire area becomes inaccessible on February 3, 2026.
It’s a bullish sign that Tropical Americas is being accelerated as opposed to delayed. And we should see tremendous progress from within Animal Kingdom between now and March 2026, after which point we’ll be entirely reliant on aerial photos since Dinoland will go extinct and the area will be fully walled-off. That’s really when the explosive progress will start to happen.
Walt Disney World needs to make explosive progress on Tropical Americas if the land is going to meet its 2027 target date. While Walt Disney World has declined to offer a season for the new land (just sometime in 2027), our strong suspicion is that, even with the most aggressive timeline, the two marquee attractions won’t be done before October 2027.
A lot can happen in two full years, but our expectation is that Tropical Americas is a holiday season opening. Maybe it’ll be a repeat of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, with a portion of the land (critter carousel, restaurants and retail) opening in the off-season and the marque attractions debuting in early December 2027. This was precisely the scenario we covered in our recent post, Should You Skip Walt Disney World in 2026 & Wait for 2027?
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Optimistic that the steel structure of the Encanto show building is now vertical and about one-third finished? Think there’s any chance the critter carousel opens earlier? Other thoughts on recent progress or anything else? Think our timeline speculation is right or wrong? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
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