Walt Disney World has made quiet calendar changes to two Magic Kingdom shows starting next week, reducing or pausing showtimes of productions held on the forecourt stage. This aligns with a previous announcement about repainting Cinderella Castle, at least sort of. Here’s the latest, including why we’re wondering whether the project is delayed.
As basic background, Walt Disney World announced last month that the Cinderella Castle makeover would start in early 2026. This project will involve repainting the Magic Kingdom icon in a more classic color scheme, restoring its pre-50th Anniversary appearance. The updated Cinderella Castle will feature grays, creams, blues, and touches of gold aiming to enhance the castle’s architecture.
With the previous update one month ago, Disney indicated that guests would notice work around Cinderella Castle beginning in early January 2026. A specific start date was not shared, but our expectation was on or after January 5, 2026. That’s when the holiday rush starts subsiding, before fully relenting on January 12, 2026.
Whenever it does finally get started, the project will begin with the draining of the moat around Cinderella Castle to prepare for painting. After a successful completion of the moat draining, work will continue with high-reach cranes and lifts placed in the moat. This construction equipment will be used to reach Cinderella Castle and work on the project.
Cranes and lifts will be elevated during the morning hours. However, by noon each day, the equipment will be lowered and out of sight from the Cinderella Castle Central Plaza and Main Street USA. The view will be picture-perfect for afternoon and evening photos.
At least from a guest-facing perspective, none of this has started yet. If you visit Magic Kingdom today, you’d be unlikely to notice anything happening. It’s possible that crews are laying the groundwork, but there are no visible signs of that. Moreover, Walt Disney World wouldn’t have announced the early January timeline for invisible work with zero guest impact. We’ll circle back to that, though. For now, let’s turn to (potential?) impacts in the coming week…
Let the Magic Begin Welcome Show…Ending?
Walt Disney World previously announced that there would be temporary adjustments to entertainment beginning January 28, 2026. This includes a modified “Let the Magic Begin” welcome show. The other daytime show, “Mickey’s Magical Friendship Faire,” will continue to be available with minor adjustments.
True to their word, there are schedule changes for both daytime stage shows starting on January 28, 2026. However, they’re not quite what we expected based on the “modified” language.
Starting January 28th, there are no performances of “Let the Magic Begin” as far out as the calendar extends (late March 2026). We’re always skeptical of this official calendar, as it’s often an inaccurate source. There are a couple of reasons for questioning the lack of welcome show performances in this case.
The first is that none of the visible groundwork, which is a necessary prerequisite to painting Cinderella Castle on January 28th, has begun. It’s difficult to imagine this project at a point where performances need to end entirely less than a week from today.
Second, “modified” and “suspended” mean very different things. The implication was that we’d see light changes. My expectation was no pyro (which has reportedly already been removed), not no welcome show, period. Or an audio-only welcome, maybe with characters out and about on the ground.
One possibility here is that Walt Disney World already set in motion entertainment changes last month, and it’s too late to reverse those even though the project isn’t at the point of painting just yet. We’ve reached out to Walt Disney World for clarification and will update this if/when we receive clarification.
Mickey’s Magical Friendship Faire Showtimes Shift
The other schedule change starting on January 28, 2026 concerns Mickey’s Magical Friendship Faire, which is the daytime show featuring Mickey & Friends, as well as characters from The Princess and the Frog, Rapunzel and Flynn from Tangled, and Olaf, Anna and Elsa from Frozen. It’s cute and fun.
One of the reasons I’m inclined to believe the “Let the Magic Begin” welcome show schedule change is accurate is because a simultaneous calendar update was made to Mickey’s Magical Friendship Faire; this has an amount of specificity that had to have been purposeful. From that, we can probably infer that the pause on the welcome show during repainting was probably intentional, too.
The good news is that Mickey’s Magical Friendship Faire will continue, albeit with one performance removed and showtimes shifted to later in the day. Here’s the before/after schedule:
Through January 27, 2026:
- 10:05 am, 11:05 am, 12:40 pm, 1:55 pm, 4:00 pm
From January 28, 2026 to (at least) February 19, 2026:
- 1:00 pm, 2:05 pm, 4:00 pm, 5:15 pm
Even though it’s one fewer showtime, I like this change. My wish has always been that this show would start later in the day and be performed once the sun is lower in the sky. But that’s another topic for another day.
Again, my expectation was that minor adjustments meant no pyro or small tweaks like that, but a schedule shift also makes sense. This means that no stage shows will be performed while the cranes are elevated, which also further reinforces the lack of a welcome show.
It’ll be interesting to see whether there’s an offset to these changes–such as more free roaming characters out for Early Entry or at rope drop to “make up” for the lack of a welcome show. As someone who has, admittedly, only seen the welcome show fewer than a half-dozen times in its present format (a low number given that I’ve done Early Entry dozens and dozens of times), I’m not too worked up about these changes.
Cinderella Castle Painting Project Delayed?
As noted above, it was our expectation that Walt Disney World would begin the project pretty much as soon as the Christmas crowds subsided. The announcement releasing dates and details about the impact was shared on a weekend amidst the holiday season (Sunday, December 21st), suggesting a sense of urgency in sharing details.
One month later, and nothing visible has happened. Again, it’s entirely possible that crews are quietly carrying out invisible work and it’s proceeding as intended. But if so, it would be odd to announce that guests will notice work around Cinderella Castle in early January 2026. It’s now mid-to-late January, and the moat still hasn’t been drained.
Even if moat draining were to start tomorrow, I’m still skeptical that it could be finished and having equipment could be moved in quickly enough for painting to begin in earnest on January 28, 2026. That would be a very aggressive timeline; more so than the last time Cinderella Castle was repainted.
This is precisely why we anticipated the moat draining to start around January 5th or maybe January 12th. Working backwards from January 28, 2026 for painting, that’s pretty much the window to target for moat draining. This suggests to me the project is at least a couple of weeks behind schedule.
To be clear, I would still anticipate the moat draining to start at some point in the coming days or weeks. That’s what “delayed” in this case means, as opposed to being rescheduled several months into the future or cancelled entirely (although I still think the less impactful move is starting immediately after Easter). If that were the case, I assume those entertainment calendar updates would not have been made right now.
Walt Disney World states that the new color scheme will debut “later in 2026”. An exact end date has not yet been announced, nor has even a season or anything. So no delays there given how open-ended that was from the start!
Cinderella Castle Repainting Past Precedent
For those who missed it or don’t remember it, Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World received a royal makeover back in 2020. That project was first announced on February 17, and began within days.
The moat was partially drained, multiple cranes appeared in the basin, and work commenced. The time from drain to crane was a couple of weeks, if the DTB Archive’s photos are accurate. Heavy machinery to enable the royal makeover was already on site for the Dream Lights removal (remember those?!), and coffer dams had already been installed in the moat around Cinderella Castle.
During that project, performances of Mickey’s Royal Friendship Faire were similarly shifted later in the day starting March 9, 2020–exactly 3 weeks after the project was announced. That further reinforces the above timeline for draining prior to painting, and why visible work should’ve started around January 5-12th based on past precedent.
This is also what makes us skeptical that there will need to be any entertainment changes starting next week. It seems highly implausible that we’re going to see cranes rising and repainting Cinderella Castle by January 28, 2026. We don’t expect to see visible work on the castle itself until early to mid-February at this point.
Turning back to the last repainting project, there was also a delay with that in March 2020…but to the closure of the parks and all construction around Walt Disney World being paused for several weeks. Once repainting resumed, the closure actually enabled a fast-tracking of work. Painting occurred through the day while Magic Kingdom was closed, instead of just mornings.
By the time the parks reopened in July, the majority of the royal makeover of Cinderella Castle was completed. It was totally finished by the end of the month. All told, the last repainting of Cinderella Castle took about 4-5 months from start to finish.
Once we get to mid-March, it’s really dicey to use that project as precedent given the COVID closures. But the early stages should still prove instructive, and that’s what we’re mostly concerned with here as we try to figure out why the entertainment is ending or changing, despite moat draining not yet starting.
This also makes predicting an end date for the Cinderella Castle project very difficult.
If we’re going by the last repainting ~5 years ago, my guess would’ve been that the work would be finished by sometime in late Spring 2026. Perhaps even before the Easter rush if Walt Disney World dedicated the resources to the project. Before the summer season, regardless.
However, Walt Disney World has indicated that Cinderella Castle is “expected” to debut with refreshed colors “later in 2026.” This is curious language that caught my eye.
“Later in…” is usually used by Walt Disney World when the project is of an unknown duration and there isn’t a completion date or even season, but also not expected to be finished soon. It’s also sometimes used synonymously with “Late.” If a project is forecast to finish earlier in the year, the more common “expected by [insert season or date].” For example, Soarin’ Across America will debut by Memorial Day.
That’s what makes this interesting. I could be overanalyzing Walt Disney World’s verbiage here, but they are usually careful with wording for this very reason. It seems like they would’ve used “by Summer 2026” if there was reasonable certainty the project would only last a few months. That would’ve provided planners with more certainty, especially ahead of the summer season when Walt Disney World already has trouble with bookings.
This makes me wonder whether there’s more to this than just repainting Cinderella Castle. My personal hope is still that there’s a second phase of this project that will involve installing the Dream Lights for Christmas 2026. So perhaps I’m projecting my desire for a lack of projections onto this news, and parsing the announcement too much. But that’s what we do here! Stay tuned for more on this project as it gets underway.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of Walt Disney World restoring the Cinderella Castle classic color scheme? Think this project has been delayed? Expect the entertainment to end or change as listed on the calendar? Surprised that it won’t be done until “later in 2026” or are we reading too much into that? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? 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!