Construction on Tropical Americas in Animal Kingdom continues to move fast, and Walt Disney World will be able to kick the project into higher gear in only 2 weeks once Dinoland USA goes extinct and the entire land closes to guests. Here’s an aerial update on the critter carousel and Encanto attraction, which just reached another milestone.
For the next two weeks, Dinoland remains a maze of construction walls as guests are able to access the remaining areas of the land that are open. That’ll change as of February 2, 2026, when DINOSAUR, Restaurantosaurus and everything else that remains of Dinoland USA will close. 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.
Dino-Rama, which already closed over a year ago (and is home to the active construction sites we’ll cover here), and Dinoland USA are 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 (Restaurantosaurus, reimagined), critter carousel (roughly the former Boneyard play area), and other placemaking (plus hopefully an animal enclosure).
After leaving the Pueblo Esperanza, guests can venture deeper into the rainforest to find 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, following those at Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea (both of which are two of the best attractions in the world).
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 January 2026, with only two weeks left in the countdown to DINOSAUR’s extinction. 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. You can see construction walls cutting through above that, which roughly demarcate the critter carousel construction zone and future ‘Village of Hope.’ Those walls will be gone in a couple of weeks once this entire area closes to guests. 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 top right and former Dino-Rama gift shops on the top left. All of those structures will remain standing, and just be rethemed. The seating area for Rivers of Light or KiteTails (remember those?!) is lower right.
As noted above, there are also the sets of construction walls that cut through two different project sites and provide a guest corridor for now. These don’t neatly correspond to the Encanto and Pueblo Esperanza areas; we expect the latter to extend onto the left side of the walls a bit.
The model shows a few marketplace kiosks (the obligatory DVC sales center?), a bunch of trees, and meandering pathways (animal enclosure?) before arriving at the entrance to Encanto.
For the last few 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 around the start of the holiday season.
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.
At this point, it appears that roughly half of the building’s structural steel frame has now gone up. 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.
What’s really interesting is that construction crews are now working inside the show building on what’s already been erected. From a zoomed-in perspective, you can see the makings of distinct floors, rooms, and even what appears to be a catwalk. We’re expecting the climactic scene to be a multi-level set piece, so having aerial access to that makes sense.
Another thing to note is the tiered show building, which will get progressively taller the further it goes backstage (see the below model). This should become evident in the construction over the next month or so.
We’re still unsure of the purpose for the big concrete pit on the front right (better angle another photo up), but we don’t believe it’s related to a show-scene. The explanation for this seems destined to be something boring and back-of-house related, which will inevitably lead to disappointment among fans who have been excitedly speculating.
The concept art and Tropical Americas model, as well as 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.
As you can see from this view, there is a lot of space outside of the retaining walls and concrete foundation that’ll form the perimeter of the show building. You can also see the entrance to the attraction starting to take shape on the left, along the treeline.
It’s unclear just how long that will take before the full frame of the show building is finished and work is done to enclose it. We expect this to be done by spring, though.
Let’s turn our attention to the other side of the walls, where the critter carousel is replacing the Boneyard. 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’re still wondering whether the critter carousel might be able to open ahead of Encanto and Indiana Jones Adventure. Normally, Walt Disney World would want to open Tropical Americas all at once to make for a splashy event and marketable expansion.
However, Animal Kingdom is really light on attractions, and Walt Disney World is clearly sensitive about closing too much at once. 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.
Then again, they might be okay with Animal Kingdom having a really rough 2026. If everything opens around or after October 2027 (as will probably be the case), that puts Tropical Americas right at the start of a new fiscal year. There’s also the possibility that Disney is salivating at the prospect of “easier comps” for this park to lap in 2028 and beyond.
Regardless, 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. Even though minimal visible progress has been made, it doesn’t need to take another 18 months to build that and reimagine Restaurantosaurus. Guess we shall see!
From this point forward, work on Tropical Americas should continue to go fast. This is a nice change of pace, as the first 9 months made it look like crews were simply moving dirt around from one side of the site to the other.
In actuality, of course that’s not what was being done–we just couldn’t see all of the groundwork being laid for vertical construction. And the pace hasn’t actually changed, it’s just that we’re now at the point where all of the work being done is visible to guests on the ground (at least, for the next 2 weeks) and photographers in helicopters.
Speaking of which, here’s a video of the Tropical Americas construction site via bioreconstruct that shows a more dynamic view:
Aerial video of construction of the Encanto ride in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. pic.twitter.com/WtfO5ddb0f
— bioreconstruct (@bioreconstruct) January 17, 2026
We’re at the point in the project where weekly updates would continue to show major and measurable progress. It’ll be really cool to see the erection of the Encanto casita, which might even be visible from Expedition Everest.
With Tropical Americas already at this point and Monstropolis soon reaching it, this should be a fun year to track Walt Disney World construction. (Piston Peak is going to be visually slow-going until hit its own visible ‘boom’ in late 2026 or early 2027; Villains Land is even further away.)
Not to “spoil” my wish list or announcement predictions, but I’m already looking forward to this summer’s D23 Expo, when more should be revealed about these projects. I would also expect a bigger suite of news for Animal Kingdom, with the aim of trying to transform this into a full day park (again). That didn’t quite go as planned with Pandora, but take two should succeed.
As for the recent milestone, Cast Members had the opportunity to sign a steel beam that will be installed in the future Encanto attraction in Tropical Americas, leaving a lasting mark on the new land. This is a longstanding Cast Member tradition, and the frontline workers were joined by Walt Disney World President Jeff Vahle. Here’s a look at photos from the exclusive event released by Disney:
My only piece of commentary here concerns Vahle signing with “Opening Team!” I would hope to have a new Walt Disney World President long before late 2027, and assume that the upcoming leadership changes at the top involving D’Amaro and Iger will trickle down and result in a shake-up for the respective resorts.
Vahle has already been in his role for a long time by WDW President standards, and we’d expect that run to end in the next year or so. We’d be surprised if he’s considered a candidate to succeed D’Amaro.
Ultimately, we’re pleased to see the progress on Tropical Americas, and there should be a lot more over the next few months. We’re going to lose our on-the-ground vantage in only a couple of weeks, but having full access to the combined construction site should be an accelerant for the project, especially on the critter carousel side. 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 years, but it’s likely that Tropical Americas is a holiday season opening. That’s a long wait, but the good news is that Tropical Americas and Monstropolis probably aren’t a year apart, and there’s been major progress on everything over the last few months. It should be an exciting few years once we get past the short-term lull!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Excited about Encanto and Tropical Americas, or wish this were still Dinoland? 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!