Disney Parks’ next big thing: The past
By Natasha Chen, CNN
Anaheim, California (CNN) — Hunched over small tables, thousands of fans who recently gathered at the D23 convention, the latest in Disney’s biennial expos, wrote down their most cherished memories of Disneyland on index cards. Disney plans to bury those cards at the root of trees planted at the new “Coco” attraction currently under construction.
Disney was not-so-subtly tapping into this kind of nostalgia as it unveiled a series of new projects on Saturday night, to a crowd of 12,000 people attending the expo’s headliner event at the Honda Center in Anaheim. They had waited two years for the newest round of Disney announcements about the future of its parks and cruises.
And while some bemoaned the lack of concrete project timelines, the moments that evoked huge cheers and applause were details true Disney nerds care about: retheming classic attractions, fixing a long-broken Audio-Animatronic figure, and redesigning a land at the heart of Walt Disney’s first theme park.
A great big beautiful Tomorrowland
Disneyland will be getting a transformed Tomorrowland, with multiple new attractions, “more open spaces and new places for Disneyland guests to dream about the future,” Disney Experiences Chairman Thomas Mazloum told the crowd Saturday night.
Frida Quiroz, a fan who had dropped her own notecard of a Disneyland memory into the “Coco” vault, said a common complaint is “how boring and out of date Tomorrowland is. It’s supposed to be the ‘world of tomorrow,’ and it feels stuck in the past.”
She said the project is long overdue, but she’s concerned about the lack of concept plans or timelines. “They just told people what they want to hear with zero commitment,” Quiroz said, adding that it could be years before fans hear about the details.
Sarah White, a fan who traveled to the D23 convention from San Diego, was more optimistic. Thinking of a former attraction in that space, she said, “Some of my fondest Disneyland memories include spending hours in Innoventions with my brother and my dad. So if they can bring back some of the wonder and curiosity about science and invention to Tomorrowland, I think that has a lot of potential to imbue the area with Walt’s spirit.”
Reviving the classics
The announcements this year “feel like a lot of things returning to old form or expanding on things we’ve known about for years,” said Shealynn Graves, a fan from Northern California.
Still, Graves said she is particularly excited about the redesign of Magic Kingdom’s Carousel of Progress, one of Walt Disney’s 1964 World’s Fair presentations.
Disney announced that Jamie Lee Curtis and Bryan Cranston will voice the Audio-Animatronic characters for that show.
Graves is also looking forward to the makeover of “Spaceship Earth,” the ride inside the iconic sphere at the center of EPCOT at Walt Disney World, which has not been updated in 20 years.
The slow-moving ride takes guests on a journey through the history of human communication. Now, the company says, it will refocus the story on the evolution of “human connection” and bring it into the internet age and beyond.
Also in EPCOT, there will be a “new journey” for Figment, a fan-favorite character that exists only at that theme park. The current ride featuring this purple dragon has not been redesigned in more than 20 years, and this change promises to bring back the character Dreamfinder from the original 1983 ride.
Fans also got news of another “fix” nearly 20 years in the making: the broken Audio-Animatronic Yeti inside the Everest attraction at Animal Kingdom in Disney World will finally be repaired and restored.
Villains, monsters, cars and Avengers
The highly anticipated Villains Land at Magic Kingdom in Disney World still has no publicly stated opening date.
But Disney revealed that the land will be on a scale similar to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Guests will enter via a dark forest to find a broken wishing well. The two rides there will be a “Maleficent”-themed roller coaster, and a journey below the Evil Queen’s palace where the Magic Mirror conjures other villains.
The new “Cars”-themed area in Magic Kingdom will be called Piston Peak, featuring two rides: the family-friendly Miss Fritter’s Daredevil Spin-Along, and the thrill ride, Cars Ridge Run Rally, whereride vehicles will race up a mountain, then come down through snow and a geyser field. There is no opening date announced yet for Piston Peak, either.
At Disney’s Hollywood Studios, also in Florida, the new Monstropolis area featuring stories from “Monsters Inc.” will open early in 2027 with a theater show, two restaurants and a shop. A previously announced roller coaster will open later.
In Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the new “Encanto” ride will be called Antonio’s Fiesta de Encanto, featuring all the actors who voiced the original roles in the movie. Described as a “quintessential Disney ride,” the ride vehicles will take people through Antonio’s gift day when he discovers he can speak to animals.
Near the “Encanto” ride, the new Indiana Jones ride will be called Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent. No opening date was announced for either ride.
In California, the expanded Avengers Campus will open in 2028, doubling the size of the current Marvel-themed area. The company also revealed that actors Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr. and Brie Larson will be reprising their roles in the two new rides being built there.
There was no update during the presentation on the progress of a new “Avatar”-themed area in Disney California Adventure. But an exhibit on the expo floor showed details of a 30-person boat attraction.
A Disney spokesperson said that the Avengers Campus expansion will open first, followed by the “Coco” ride. Then the company will work on the Tomorrowland redesign at Disneyland before returning to California Adventure to work on the “Avatar”-themed land.
The new “Coco” boat ride will feature a plot that takes place one year after the original film’s story ends. Like the “Encanto” ride in Florida, this attraction will also be family-friendly with no height requirement.
Knowing your audience
The “Coco” ride is what Elsie Kennedy is particularly looking forward to.
Kennedy, whose family is from Mexico, said the story “reminds me of my little Grandma. And I watch it with my family, and we always remember her.”
The film, about a boy in Mexico who goes to the Land of the Dead in search of his musical idol, resonates with the culture of many Southern Californians in Disneyland’s backyard.
It seems that in these new projects, Disney is thinking about who the loyal fans are and the wishes they’ve made about improving the original “magic.”
“Fixing a broken figure in a roller coaster or improving lackluster lands are changes all guests benefit from, whether it’s your first ride or 500th,” said Carlye Wisel, theme park journalist and host of the Very Amusing podcast.
What Disney has recently succeeded at, Wisel said, is giving fans more of what they love while also widening the appeal to even first-time park goers.
“Riding that line is incredibly difficult, and Walt Disney Imagineering has seemingly been doing so with ease. If they can do that in perpetuity, they’ll be unstoppable,” Wisel said.
In that spirit of servicing fans, Disneyland in California is reprising some favorites: the Magic Happens parade, the original World of Color show and the Remember Dreams Come True fireworks show which first debuted during the park’s 50th anniversary.
“Tapping into nostalgic entertainment feels like a tried-and-true strategy we’ve seen them use,” said White. “But it works.”
White said she fell back in love with Disney parks almost a decade ago, when the company brought back a classic nighttime parade that she had previously only seen via home video when her family recorded it on a trip when she was three years old. She returned to the park as an adult to see it with her own eyes — and kept coming back for more.
Disney Experiences’ Mazloum told CNN, “Whether we’re reimagining a beloved classic or building something brand new, the goal is the same: Get the experience right, and guests don’t just come back, they bring the next generation with them.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
