Walt Disney World is starting to undergo some major refurbishments that will change the landscape of its parks, hopefully for the better, for many years to come. A lot of this has been talked about for the last couple of years, most notably at the recent D23 event where some of the biggest projects were officially confirmed, including a Villains Land at Magic Kingdom and Tropical Americas replacing Dinoland at Animal Kingdom.
One of the bigger surprises announced there was a new Cars themed mini-land in Frontierland at Magic Kingdom. The good vibes turned a little sour after it came out a little while later that this would be replacing the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island. I won't rehash all of that post here, but suffice it to say that my reaction (and that of many others) was negative, as we will be losing a place of calm tranquility in the midst of the world's busiest theme park.
With that as our jumping off point, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at Frontierland as it stands today, with an eye to the future. There have been some other changes happening recently that could make Frontierland a veritable ghost town (with tumbleweeds and all) in the near future. Once completed and operating fully, I expect this land to be one of the busiest sections of the park. But as we know from past history, the timeframe for Disney to get things done often stretches on and on, and it might be a while before we are at anything resembling "completed."
The biggest recent change to Frontierland has been the beginning of renovation on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. As of January 6, 2025, Big Thunder is closed for a lengthy refurbishment, which includes replacing the track itself, among other things. When Disneyland's version underwent a major renovation a number of years back, it reopened with new visual effects, so I'd say it's likely that this version follows a similar path.
The announced work on Big Thunder will take at least a year, as Disney has said that the attraction will be closed until some time in 2026. That obviously doesn't mean that it will be exactly one year, but the "2026" date has been thrown around so if you're visiting at all this year, you're out of luck on getting to ride Big Thunder. Interestingly, the Disneyland version closed on January 7, 2013 (almost the same exact date as the WDW closure this year) and reopened March 17, 2014, a closure of a little over fourteen months. Consider that a guideline for how this one will go.
The other big ride in Frontierland is Tiana's Bayou Adventure, the recently opened attraction that replaced Splash Mountain. There are a couple of interesting nuggets here that will impact Frontierland as a whole as well. First is the fact that Tiana's is still using a virtual queue (VQ) more than six months after its June opening. At the time, Disney put out a press release stating that Tiana's would only use the VQ in it's initial days, which suggested a short-lived VQ to just get through the initial crowd rush (which is not uncommon - even the Journey of Water Featuring Moana at Epcot had a VQ in its first day or two and that's a walkthrough attraction).
However, the fact that the VQ is still in existence means that something has gone wrong from Disney's original plan. And we pretty much know the reason - the ride has been unreliable, resulting in a large amount of downtime. There had been reports that this had been getting better, but recently things had taken a downturn again. Until the ride can operate effectively all day, Disney won't drop the VQ, since they needs to be sure that they can accommodate all of the Lightning Lane purchases daily.
Just today, another wrinkle was added to this as Tiana's has quietly had its closing time pushed earlier for the foreseeable future (at least for the next couple of weeks, which is as far out as the calendars go). Most weekdays, it will close at 6:00, even as the park is open until 9:00 or later. On weekends, Tiana's maintains the same schedule as the rest of the park.
Two factors can be at play here. One is the weather. This is the "cold" season in Florida (I say as I write this from a place where we haven't been above freezing in at least a week or two) and as a water ride, Tiana's has less demand, especially as the sun goes down. Splash Mountain used to undergo an annual refurbishment around this time. Surely this is at least some of the reason why these early closures are happening.
But given the fact that the ride is "new" and that it's not actually being taken down for a week or two entirely, the other thing to consider here is that Disney is going to use those hours to work on (hopefully) fixing the issues that are causing the ride to have downtime. That way when demand increases again for Spring Break, the attraction should be running well again. We can hope. For what it's worth, the Disneyland version of this attraction has dropped its VQ and seems to be more reliable on the whole. Some of that may have to do with the logistics of the ride itself (the Disneyland version has more physical space) and some might have been lessons learned from the earlier WDW opening. I'd like to think Disney can take those lessons and apply them here but we shall see.
Then there's the change from Rivers of America to Cars Land, which will have to begin at some point this year. There has been some back and forth between Disney and various government agencies in terms of permits and such (you can read more about that here if you're interested) but it appears that this will at least begin during this calendar year. In a way it makes sense to work on this during Big Thunder's downtime, as any construction will impact the crowd flow in this area.
However, add up all of these things and it's pretty clear that Frontierland is going to be a shell of itself for a while. With Tiana's unreliability, Big Thunder being down and construction beginning for Cars Land, what reason would guests have to spend a lot of time here (besides perhaps looping Country Bear Musical Jamboree)?
And really, one of the most interesting effects here comes at rope drop. Magic Kingdom was the one park where you could do the "double rope drop" - hit Fantasyland and/or Tomorrowland during Early Entry, then bounce over to Adventureland or Frontierland at traditional rope drop. That can still be done at Adventureland (though you're really only talking about Jungle Cruise as a destination at that time of day) but Frontierland is no longer an option - without the two tentpole attractions (Big Thunder being down, and Tiana's not having a standby line), there isn't even anything to rope drop.
This will lead to an interesting crowd dynamic shift at this park. How exactly that plays out remains to be seen, but I suspect that Fantasyland and Tomorrowland will see disproportionate numbers of guests for the first few hours of the day. I would tell you to go against the crowd here, but besides Jungle Cruise, there's not that much else to do on the left side of the park that would require crowd strategy. Your best bet would probably be to hit Early Entry, stay on the right side of the park and using your Lightning Lane selections starting in the late morning for Tiana's or Jungle Cruise, then Pirates of the Caribbean and then Haunted Mansion. More to come as we keep track of how this plays out throughout 2025.
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