Massive Magic Kingdom Land Clearing ‘Beyond Big Thunder’ for Villains & Cars Construction

Walt Disney World is gearing up to begin construction on the Piston Peak ‘Cars’ area this month, with backstage land clearing already underway. The latest aerial photos reveal a massive expanse that’ll be used for site prep, field offices, and, eventually, future expansion that is truly ‘Beyond Big Thunder.’

This comes against the backdrop of the in-park areas that Piston Peak National Park will replace permanently closing in less than a week. Walt Disney World  announced 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.

Along with that, “shuttle mode” operations of the Walt Disney World Railroad will begin on July 7, 2025. That’s also when the Frontierland Station will close on a temporary basis for Cars and Villains Land construction. There’s been some confusion about why Frontierland Station needs to close during this project, but the aerial images should make that clear.

While we’ve seen work over the last couple of months already starting backstage, that’s only what’s publicly visible from Floridian Way, the section of road to the northwest of Magic Kingdom. It’s been difficult to discern just how far along progress is in this area closer to on-stage areas and the guest-facing side of the Rivers of America.

All of this site prep work is a necessary prerequisite to demolishing and filling in the Rivers of America, so we’ve been curious to know just how much progress has been made. Frankly, we’ve wondered whether the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island needed to close this soon–as it seemed like the backstage work would take a lot longer and could potentially allow the guest-facing areas to remain open longer. Well, now we have some answers.

These come courtesy of eye in the sky photos from friend-of-the-site bioreconstruct, the go-to source for aerial theme park photography (a highly recommended follow who graciously provided the helicopter shots here)…

Let’s start with a high-level establishing shot.

If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, it’s Magic Kingdom (far right) and the area to the northwest of the park. The Magic Kingdom side of the image shows Frontierland and the Rivers of America, making the rest of the photo the area that’s (truly!) ‘Beyond Big Thunder.’

There’s a lot of land cleared in the photos. The areas nearer the parks will be laydown yards supporting the construction of Cars and Villains Lands (more on those in a bit). The far left is a new retention pond that’s being created for displaced stormwater capacity lost due to the infill of the Rivers of America. As a bonus, the middle shows the new routing of Floridian Way–that’s a major multi-year project we haven’t really covered because roads don’t seem to get the people going (in a hyped up sense–they do get people going in a literal sense).

If some of this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve covered it extensively as part of the permitting process for this project over the course of the last ~11 months. All of this is precisely what the State of Florida was concerned with as they made Imagineering file, clarify, modify, etc. the project plans. It wasn’t over the substance of the additions–they weren’t hot and bothered by eye cars in Frontierland, it was all about water management.

As a refresher, the permit for all of this was issued by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) in Winter 2025, giving Imagineering until February 17, 2030 to redevelop the area. The underlying SFWMD permit is massive in scale and scope, encompassing over 300 acres around Magic Kingdom and beyond.

That’s despite the actual project site only being about 14 acres. What we see in these aerial photos is the impact to the other ~286 other acres that will not be home to Lightning McQueen, Mater and their pals.

Taking a closer and more overhead aerial view, we can see one full gravel laydown yard and a portion of another that will be adjacent to the project site. These are in low-lying areas to the northwest of the Rivers of America, necessitating additional work to establish usable gravel laydown yards in the first place.

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 within Magic Kingdom along the northwestern banks of what’s currently the Rivers of America. These gravel laydown yards will be used for construction equipment, heavy machinery, materials staging, earth-moving, etc.

Here’s another look at the laydown yards from the SFWMD permitting for the sake of comparison:

These types of staging areas are common for large-scale construction projects at Walt Disney World. It might be surprising that the gravel laydown yards are like triple the size of the actual expansion area, but that’s not uncommon–especially since this isn’t a single uninterrupted staging location.

There have been similar laydown yards for all sorts of major expansion projects, from New Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom to Pandora – World of Avatar at Animal Kingdom. The one for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land was similarly massive, dwarfing the size of the expansion itself.

What’s really interesting about these staging areas is that they will result in land that was previously “marginally suitable” for construction to become “suitable” for building. Meaning that the staging areas themselves could be construction sites in the future. This is actually something touched upon by the 2045 Comprehensive Plan that was just approved by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. While the headline is the attention-grabbing Approval of a Fifth Gate at Walt Disney World, the real story is more likely to be hotel development–but more on this in a bit.

Back to the aerial photos, we have a view that’s essentially behind Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.

As you might recall, Walt Disney Imagineering filed construction permits to install trailers with an address corresponding to a backstage area behind Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in Magic Kingdom. Imagineering field offices and parking will consume a big portion of this particular laydown yard.

 

This is very similar permits for a trailer park and staging area behind Kali River Rapids in support of the Tropical Americas project last spring. They also repurposed the former Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser behind Disney’s Hollywood Studios into field offices for the Monstropolis expansion there.

Beyond the laydown yards that’ll support actual construction, there’s the water management element. As we’ve discussed previously, this is a necessary prerequisite for beginning substantive construction–when waterways are going to be rerouted or water is displaced in Florida, the first phase of a project is addressing that lost stormwater capacity.

Rivers of America connects to a canal that runs out to Seven Seas Lagoon and Bay Lake. You can see this in the above photo–or when you walk from Magic Kingdom to the Grand Floridian (it’s the bridge leading to backstage storage of the Electrical Water Pageant). Runoff would flow into the Rivers of America, then those lakes.

Basically, Disney 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.

We’ve actually seen something similar with the TTC over the years. If you’ve ever wondered why there’s a perpetual pile of dirt there, it’s because that’s been moved there after digging retention ponds–it’s then used for the Floridian Way projects. I don’t know why it’s in the middle of TTC, but they’ve determined that’s a good staging site for whatever reason.

One thing these aerial photos really underscore is the blessing of size at Walt Disney World. As someone once said, the Florida Project contains “enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.” Wise words.

You might look at these images and shake your head that Disney is opting to replace the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island when they could instead simply build beyond the berm–making the land truly ‘Beyond Big Thunder’ as originally promised, instead of the laydown yards in that space. You might wonder why Walt Disney World opted for this approach. All fair questions and concerns.

The best explanation is efficiency. One thing Imagineering has stressed when explaining its upcoming slate of projects is that they wanted to stretch budgets as far as possible. (Generally speaking, this is a good thing; Imagineering has a deserved reputation for spending like a drunken sailor.)

Given land suitability (or lack thereof), it’s likely that costs would’ve exploded if they build the new lands in the current laydown yards and the laydown yards beyond those. It’s also entirely plausible that they did further surveying and realized that wasn’t even an option.

Another possibility is that Walt Disney World didn’t want to make Magic Kingdom too large. I haven’t heard this mentioned by anyone, but I view this as an under-discussed possibility. One thing we mentioned repeatedly with the past generation of hotel projects is how guests do not like sprawling resorts.

“Too much walking” is the single-biggest complaint about many hotels, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this also extends to the parks. I don’t doubt for a second that Imagineering pitched a version of these plans that retained the Rivers of America and significantly expanded Magic Kingdom into territory ‘Beyond Big Thunder,’ but management pushed for a more consolidated footprint “due to guest feedback” about foot pain or whatever.

To be abundantly clear, this is not to excuse or explain away the final plans. From the outset, we fully expected Tom Sawyer Island to become Tom Sawyer Peninsula–that’s one compromise solution. Another would be building Cars Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in the parking lot, adjacent to Monstropolis–that’s another alternative.

While I appreciate efficiency and Imagineering being more cost-conscious for once, I can’t help but shake the thought that it feels like Walt Disney World is designing its “expansion” plans as if they’re in space-constrained Anaheim. Meanwhile, the projects for Disneyland are actual expansions. It’s like the Freaky Friday reboot nobody asked for.

(Sorry, but I hate the fan suggestion of Cars replacing Tomorrowland Speedway; I would honestly rather have this than that. Tomorrowland Speedway should form the eventual foundation of a hybrid Fantasyland/Tomorrowland expansion a la the Beauty and the Beast and Baymax area at Tokyo Disneyland.)

The above aerial photo shows both of the existing clearings for future laydown yards, along with what will become the third laydown yard once that land is cleared. The final laydown yard will be nestled between the backstage roads, canal, and railroad tracks. It’s the one that would be visible from the Rivers of America, if the area were staying open beyond July 7.

As should be clear from the aerial photos and site plans, the railroad tracks will be between the gravel laydown yards and the construction site on Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America. This is why we expected that the Walt Disney World Railroad would need to be taken out of service to facilitate work and vehicular traffic back and forth across the tracks from the staging area to the site.

Instead, we’re getting shuttle mode. There have been some skepticism and complaints about this from Walt Disney World fans, but it’s absolutely the best-case scenario. Let us not forget that the Walt Disney World Railroad closed for the construction of TRON Lightcycle Run in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom. It went down on December 3, 2018 and did not reopen until December 22, 2022 after being closed for 1,481 days.

At least at the start, that project was less impactful to the WDW Railroad than this one–there was a lot of work that could’ve seemingly been accomplished while the trains continued to run. Taking the Walt Disney World Railroad down under the pretext of construction offered the company operational cost-savings. It also resulted in minimal pushback from fans since it was visibly obvious that building the roller coaster interfered with the railroad. At minimum, they could’ve done shuttle mode then. Let’s take the win that they chose to do so this time, instead of closing the WDW Railroad completely for another 5 years.

It’s probably worth pointing out that we’re not out of the woods yet with a complete Walt Disney World Railroad closure. Just during phase one of the project while the Rivers of America is filled in, Tom Sawyer Island is demolished, and Piston Peak Cars land is built.

Longer term, the construction of Villains Land will almost certainly necessitate a closure. Not only is there the same issue with staging to site access, but the Villains Land will actually be built directly alongside the Walt Disney World Railroad. While it’s possible this new land manages to stay inside the berm, we wouldn’t bank on it.

That could also mean that a track re-routing is necessary to accommodate Villains Land. More optimistically, there could be another station added at the far back of Magic Kingdom, about halfway between the existing Frontierland and Storybook Circus stations. Getting super speculative, having an in-park hotel with a railroad station would be savvy.

This could simply mean this area is an expansion pad for the Villains Land. Should it be well received, Walt Disney World might greenlight another attraction to be built in this space. That would certainly make sense, especially with Villains Land being more of an open concept land instead of another single intellectual property expansion.

From my perspective, the in-park hotel overlooking the Villains Land is probably more likely. To be clear, this is purely speculative–I’ve heard zero credible rumors about a hotel being part of the ‘Beyond Big Thunder’ project. I just know how Walt Disney World management salivates at the prospect of more high-dollar hotel inventory, and this would certainly check that box–and in a highly desirable location that comports with the newly-released CFTOD plan.

An in-park hotel strikes me as a way to ‘sell’ the project internally, as the room capacity would be incredibly valuable and help recoup the costs of the expansion. In fact, there’s already pretty much a blueprint for this: Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea, which is also at the back of that park and has a hotel overlooking the new land. Even though such a Magic Kingdom hotel wouldn’t be on the monorail line, it could probably dethrone Grand Floridian as the flagship Walt Disney World resort. On the upside, if there’s a hotel project attached to Villains Land, it won’t become one of the infamous phase 2 projects that’s confined only to coffee table books.

Ultimately, it’s good to see these ‘Beyond Big Thunder’ projects kicking into high gear–and to know that Walt Disney World did not just opt to close the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island this summer to save on operating expenses. From the above aerial photos, it’s very clear that serious work has already happened, and the next step is starting on-stage demolition and infill.

While we can certainly debate whether Cars should be replacing the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island in the first place, it’s good to see them moving in an expeditious manner regardless. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it would be worse to start all of this only for delays and budget cuts to turn this into the Magic Kingdom Dirt Pit for the next 5 years. We already endured that at EPCOT for one aggressively mediocre (to put it charitably) outcome; we cannot have the same at Magic Kingdom.

These Cars and Villains land projects need to be home runs. They cannot be anything less than incredible. It would be tragic for Disney to sit on its hands for a few years, only to have the best part of the project–Villains Land–fall through due to the delays. The second phase of Disney projects is infamous for never happening, and that’s usually because work doesn’t start until the first phase is open. I’m glad that is not happening here.

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