Wake up the Old Man. It's time to talk about a year without the wildest ride in the wilderness, at Walt Disney World.
In case you missed the news, Walt Disney World announced today that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at the Magic Kingdom will close for an extended refurbishment starting January 6, 2025. The roller coaster is set to return in 2026.
This appears to be a major retracking of Thunder, which opened in 1980. Disney also is promising that the ride will return with some "extra magic," which could be some the effects seen in final tunnel of the Disneyland version.
Disney confirmed this summer that it will be removing Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America in Magic Kingdom's Frontierland. There's no date yet for that, but smart money is on that starting well before Thunder returns, meaning that the bulk of the real estate in Frontierland will be disappearing behind construction walls next year, leaving only the new Country Bear Musical Jamboree show and Tiana's Bayou Adventure as attractions in the land. (The Shootin' Gallery closed earlier this year.)
Elsewhere in the park, Disney is promising a new nighttime parade next summer, Disney Starlight. Around the resort, the reimagined Test Track also should return sometime next summer, which is when the new The Little Mermaid show at Disney's Hollywood Studios also now is set to debut, along with a new Villains show in the Sunset Showcase.
Of course, next year is also the year that rival Universal Orlando up the road opens its new Epic Universe theme park. How will that shake up the Orlando theme park market, given Disney's emerging plans for the year? Stay tuned for that answer.
If you would like to get in one more trip on Thunder before the refurb, please contact our partner for a free, no-obligation vacation quote.
And if you want assistance with planning an Epic Universe vacation, our partner can help you with that, as well.
To keep up to date with more theme park news, please sign up for Theme Park Insider's weekly newsletter.
So you could say Universal stole their thunder?
You must be registered and logged in to submit a comment.
It will be interesting to see how much this and other renovation projects (particularly Tropical Americas at DAK) will impact WDW crowds in 2025. After not really introducing anything major for 2024, WDW will go all of 2025 without a major addition while simultaneously removing high profile attractions from the lineup for the entire year (in addition to installing vast lengths of construction walls). With Epic Universe opening down the street, will guests shift their 2025 plans away from WDW or perhaps dial back and shift their number of days at WDW to Universal?
I'm also curious to know if this is a premeditated decision by Disney to get out of Universal's way, or in some way deliberately conceding market share (and visibility) to allow WDW to revamp itself for a major push in 2026 and beyond. It's been no secret that Epic was targeting a 2025 opening, so if Disney wanted to go head on with their biggest competitor, they certainly had enough lead time following the Pandemic to take on Universal in 2025 with a full slate of new offerings to rival Epic Universe. However, it seems that Disney is instead allowing Epic (and perhaps the greater Orlando tourist market) some breathing room and establish a foothold - or perhaps piggybacking on the excitement for the new park when the initial demand dies down in 2026. It will certainly be an interesting development to watch and to see whether Disney's choice to leave WDW relatively untouched (and in fact less desirable due to construction) while its fiercest rival opens their biggest expansion in 25 years.
While this presents those interesting philosophical questions, I think the biggest impact here is the massive construction zone that will be popping up around the Rivers of America. Whether Disney is smart enough to start the Cars retheming alongside the BTTMRR year-long retracking, or if they wait until 2026 to start that work, it's going to be massively inconvenient for guests (perhaps even more impactful than the EPCOT work because of the popularity of MK). Disney should do whatever they can to reduce that inconvenience as they should have learned from the EPCOT revamp.