Walt Disney World has announced the permanent closing dates for the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island, and the Liberty Square Riverboat. This comes as Imagineering begins construction of the Cars and Villains Lands that will replace this area of Magic Kingdom. This has dates & details, when to expect construction walls, and our commentary.
By way of recap, in mid-April Disney filed permits for an Imagineering field office compound near the future site of the Cars land in Magic Kingdom. That’s the latest official update, with that trailer park serving a similar purpose to the one for Tropical Americas that’s located behind Kali River Rapids. As we’ve mentioned, Imagineering now has its largest-ever presence in Florida, with several temporary office locations popping up around Walt Disney World.
The big permit for Cars and Villains Lands was issued by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) in mid-February 2025, giving Imagineering until February 17, 2030 to redevelop the area and modify utilities, drainage, stormwater management, and more. The underlying SFWMD permit is massive in scale and scope, encompassing over 300 acres around Magic Kingdom and beyond the park. Within the last month, we’ve already seen substantive work related to this permit get started, with land being cleared backstage for the laydown yards that will support the construction and serve as staging sites.
The project site itself is about 14-plus acres, and will begin with the removal of the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island, while also necessitating the closure of the Liberty Square Riverboat. In place of these areas, Walt Disney World announced two all-new Cars attractions in a reimagined area of Frontierland at Magic Kingdom and Villains Land expansion at Magic Kingdom, essentially behind the Cars miniland, and between/behind Big Thunder and Haunted Mansion. Imagineering has shared new details about the former, including a ‘Fun Map’ that offers a bit more insight into how the land will be redeveloped and its water features.
We now know that this closure will occur sooner than previously expected, with Walt Disney World officially announcing that the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island, and Liberty Square Riverboat will all close on July 7, 2025. The last day to experience any of these attractions and locations at Magic Kingdom will be July 6, 2025.
Finally, any potential future plans for the Liberty Square Riverboat have not yet been revealed, but teams at Imagineering and Walt Disney World are working together to evaluate and determine what’s possible. In a perfect world, it would’ve been permanently docked in front of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, but since that’s not happening, here’s hoping for Port Orleans or Disney Springs. I’m not holding my breath at this point, though.
Walt Disney World has further revealed that construction walls will not go up overnight on July 7, 2025 in Frontierland obstructing the project site. Rather, walls will go up gradually over the course of a couple of weeks, so expect to see them by late July–just in time for the debut of Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away!
Speaking of which, we have been advised that construction walls will not impact viewing areas for the new Starlight Night Parade in Magic Kingdom, nor will they impact crowd flow or bypasses in Frontierland for those who do not want to ‘Dream the Night Away.’
This means that the waterfront promenade in Frontierland will remain open for the foreseeable future and construction walls will go up on the other side of the boardwalk. This is at least a small victory for those of us who appreciate this Frontierland ‘shortcut’ or were/are fearing the worst with crowdflow for Starlight.
Honestly, it’s slightly unclear where the construction walls will go at this point or how it’s possible to conceal the project site. It seems like they’ll essentially be affixed to the outer wall of the walkway above, covering up the netting and blocking the view above. That’s just a guess, though.
When the Rivers of America has been drained in the past for refurbishment and repairs to the riverbed, there haven’t been walls. Obviously, this is much different in duration, scale and scope, but it still feels kinda like tilting at windmills to conceal the construction site from view.
Even if there are walls at ground level, it’ll still be possible to see work from Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, once the latter reopens. Same goes for the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and other elevated areas of the park I’m probably forgetting.
Then there’s the project perimeter itself, as it’ll be challenging to install construction walls in some locations that meaningfully obstruct views of the carnage. I mean construction. Whether it’s from the queue of Haunted Mansion, areas adjacent to the riverboat dock or over by Big Thunder, it seems like the walls will be ‘porous.’
One way or another, motivated and intrepid fans are going to find a way to see the demolition, destruction and, eventually, the construction. Perhaps it’s the thought that counts, and Walt Disney World is only concerned with this from a ‘good show’ perspective and obscuring work from regular guests who happen to be passing by.
I’m somewhat surprised Walt Disney World is closing the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island and the Liberty Square Riverboat with only a little over one month’s notice for guests to say their final goodbyes. This is less lead time than DINOSAUR or even MuppetVision 3D.
This is doubly true since the closure date is a couple of weeks before Disney Starlight Night Parade debuts. Plenty of diehard Walt Disney World fans probably booked trips for opening night following that announcement, just assuming they’d be fine to see the Rivers of America one last time then. Turns out that they were wrong.
Previously, Walt Disney World shared this about the closure: “Ahead of work revving into high gear next year, guests will have plenty of time to experience the charm and nostalgia of Frontierland as it is today.” However, that was last August immediately after the D23 Expo. Disney could reasonably argue that ~11 months is “plenty of time.”
In terms of what’s next, it sounds like substantive work will start this summer–hence the closures on July 7, 2025. That will begin with drainage, demolition, and lots of dirt moving. There are low-lying areas to the northwest of the Rivers of America, requiring additional work to establish the aforementioned gravel laydown yards.
While we’ve seen work within the last month already starting backstage, that’s all what’s publicly visible from Floridian Way, the section of road to the northwest of Magic Kingdom. It’s difficult to discern how far along progress is in this area closer to on-stage areas and the guest-facing side of the Rivers of America. Regardless, this work seems like a necessary prerequisite to demolishing and filling in the Rivers of America.
There will be three gravel laydown yards in total around the northwestern perimeter of Magic Kingdom. Two will be located beyond the berm, meaning outside of Magic Kingdom guest areas, with the third laydown yard that should be visible from within Magic Kingdom along the northwestern banks of the Rivers of America. Or rather, it would be if the Rivers of America were open–work moving forward on this laydown yard could explain why the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island and Liberty Square Riverboat are all closing on July 7, 2025.
These gravel laydown yards will be used for construction equipment, heavy machinery, materials staging, earth-moving, etc. Disney also needs somewhere for the displaced stormwater capacity lost from infilling the Rivers of America. This involves creating a new retention pond for water management that’s roughly three-quarters of a mile to the northwest of Magic Kingdom. It’s likely that the ground removed when digging the new pond will be used for filling the Rivers of America. Circle of life and all that.
Once filled in, the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island will form the foundation of the Cars land (now known as Piston Peak National Park) in Frontierland and a portion of Villains Land. The laydown yards will then themselves eventually be used for future development, including a portion of Villains Land. The water management permits are the first step ahead of beginning substantive construction due to waterways being rerouted and displaced.
As discussed in our latest edition of Walt Disney World’s 5-Year Construction Plan, the site prepwork alone for the Cars miniland and Villains Land will be a herculean undertaking that will take many months–if not more than a year. Fans will bemoan the lengthy timeline, but Piston Peak National Park debuting in 2029 actually seems fairly aggressive given the scale and scope of work. I’d be surprised if we see anything go vertical until late 2026 at the earliest.
For the last ~6 months, we’ve been trying to predict the construction and closure dates for Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America, and settled on “any time after Easter” as the early end of the spectrum, with post-summer as the more reasonable middle-ground in order to get through Summer 2025.
Our thinking was that Disney Starlight Parade would be hugely popular upon debut and will need ample viewing space during its opening summer along the promenade in Frontierland. Construction walls up on one side of the walkway would reduce viewing capacity. On the plus side, Walt Disney World has taken this into consideration and will neither impact viewing areas nor the waterfront boardwalk that offers a much-needed bypass for guests who do not want to watch the night parade.
The downside, of course, is that having walls on the other side of the walkway gives Walt Disney World the luxury of closing Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America without regard for crowd flow or attendance during the opening weeks of Starlight. So instead of the closure occuring post-Labor Day, it’s happening post-Independence Day.
As we also previously mentioned, it was possible that Walt Disney World could have installed a cofferdam to preserve access to Tom Sawyer Island and the view of the Rivers of America until sometime in 2026.
This closure occurring in July 2025 along with construction walls going up in the weeks after all but confirms that the view will not be preserved for any meaningful period of time. We’d expect the Rivers of America to be drained almost immediately.
Although Walt Disney World has done this with cofferdams before, there’s nothing to say that this was even an option that was on the table. It’s entirely possible that work in the northwest area of Magic Kingdom has started a domino effect, and the Rivers of America needs to be drained soon. Even if we won’t be able to see visible demolition or land moving from within the park, it’s possible that what’s happening backstage is necessitating these closures.
It’s also possible that we will be able to see visible work within the boundaries of Magic Kingdom in short order, and the plan is to do as much as simultaneously as possible. While we’ve been against the replacement of the Rivers of America from the start, now that it’s happening, we want this project to be fast-tracked. Minimize the amount of time there’s construction blight in Magic Kingdom, avoiding a repeat of the Giant EPCOT Dirt Pit fiasco.
At the very least, Walt Disney World will want to get moving on the back half of the Rivers of America while Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is closed for refurbishment until 2026. It’s widely expected that the walkway that will connect Big Thunder Mountain and Haunted Mansion, running behind Piston Peak National Park, will begin work during the current closure of the roller coaster.
We absolutely do not expect that path to open when BTMRR returns–it’s probably still years away since opening such a path would impede access to the project site from backstage–but we’d expect construction crews to lay the groundwork for that during the current closure of Big Thunder.
I’ll wrap this all up by once again reiterating that removing the Rivers of America is a mistake. While I’m very much reassured by the new concept art and what the Imagineering project team has shared about Piston Peak National Park, my view is still that it’s making lemonade out of lemons. It sounding like the best case scenario given the circumstances is still not the best case scenario, period.
This is despite the reality that very few guests go to Tom Sawyer Island or ride the Liberty Square Riverboat. It’s undeniable that the two rides in Piston Peak National Park will race laps around their predecessors in terms of guest utilization and demand. Attractions that previously drew no crowds and were walk-ons will be replaced by what’s sure to be one of the longest lines in Magic Kingdom.
But old school attractions are not the irreplaceable value being lost here. It’s not about the admittedly low hourly capacity being lost–it’s the serenity, charming, and distinct sense of atmosphere. That is truly what Piston Peak National Park needs to bring to the table in order to be a success–not just a crowd-pleasing thrill ride. Cars Rally Race being popular is pretty much a sure thing; the surrounding land being an atmospheric asset to Magic Kingdom is the big outstanding issue that’s in doubt.
This is something we covered previously at length in the commentary to our original post about Cars Land Replacing Rivers of America. If you’re struggling to understand why fans are upset about this, consider reading one of those. I’m not going to fixate or belabor the point here since it’s already been made repeatedly, but this waterway is part of the heart of Magic Kingdom and not just for the guests who actively utilize these attractions.
I still think it’s a mistake that Disney isn’t retaining the waterfront while redeveloping the back half of Tom Sawyer Island and the area that’s actually beyond Big Thunder. But with the green light to proceed with the project and it being clear that Disney intends to do so as planned, I’m nevertheless hoping for the best with Piston Peak National Park. It’s going to be a tough needle to thread, but it sounds like maybe Imagineering can create a Cars area inspired by U.S. National Parks with mountains, water, and more that fit in Frontierland. I like what I’ve seen thus far, especially the number of water features and the preservation of the waterfront promenade. Here’s hoping they’re up to the task and can pull it off.
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Your Thoughts
Thoughts on Walt Disney World officially announcing that the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island, and Liberty Square Riverboat will all close on July 7, 2025? Disappointed that the Piston Peak National Park is replacing Rivers of America? Given that this is going to happen regardless at this point, do you hope it’s full steam ahead so we don’t have to endure a repeat of the Giant EPCOT Dirt Pit fiasco? Excited or underwhelmed by the plan? 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!