Walt Disney Imagineering Shares New Video as First Steel Rises for Encanto Ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom

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Tropical Americas Construction - Aerial Views - December, 2025

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Posted: Friday December 5, 2025 1:45pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Walt Disney Imagineering has shared a new behind-the-scenes video from the Tropical Americas construction site, giving us first look at steel rising for the Encanto ride show building. The update marks a major step forward for the project as the attraction begins to move beyond foundation work.

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In the footage, WDI highlights the crew installing the first vertical steel column on the site. Until now, the Encanto ride footprint has consisted mostly of concrete foundation walls, excavated areas, and staged materials. With steel now going up, the outline of the building will quickly become more recognizable in the coming weeks.

The Encanto attraction is part of the larger Tropical Americas project at Disney's Animal Kingdom, which will also include a new Indiana Jones attarciton replacing Dinosaur.

Here is a look at the construction site from earlier this week captured by @bioreconstruct

Tropical Americas Construction - Aerial Views - December, 2025

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BrianLo3 hours ago

I love when people argue against themselves.

HauntedPirate5 hours ago

It has the world’s most exclusive hidden Mickey (I think?). It always wins. 😁

Centauri Space Station7 hours ago

The entire facade and queue, which include water features and a scuttle AA (usually). The rides are the same.

HMF9 hours ago

The only thing making it better than the DCA version is the queue.

lazyboy97o12 hours ago

It did not. It was always a clone of the Disney’s California Adventure ride with a more elaborate queue.

James Alucobond12 hours ago

That's not how Lightning Lane even works. You do absolutely need exciting E-ticket headliners to tie to the Individual Lightning Lanes, but the system is designed to only support a couple of those per park. Standard Lightning Lane is actually made stronger as a product if there are a lot of decent C-level attractions because the perceived value of the purchase increases when you can still make desirable selections later into the day.

Stupido13 hours ago

I think the pivot from meet and greet spaces to SDMT ate up a healthy chunk of Little Mermaid's budget

Brer Panther13 hours ago

I'm sure somebody's gonna say "but the Encanto ride is gonna be a B/C/D-ticket!"... though, to be honest, I'm kind of expecting it to be more like Journey of the Little Mermaid than Pinocchio's Daring Journey. Y'know, a dark ride that's trying to be an E-Ticket. But we'll have to wait and see... One of these, but themed to Ursula? But this is Iger's Disney World, where EVERYTHING must have a huge wait in order to sell LLs or whatever! Otherwise it's underutilized or whatever! That's why MuppetVision, Tom Sawyer Island, the Riverboat, and Dinosaur had to close!

JD8013 hours ago

I was referencing a 2nd Dumbo. I always forget Barnstormer was there before hand.

HauntedPirate14 hours ago

But did you pull that opinion from YouTube comments and Yelp reviews? If not, well, that poster won't even listen to such obviously-inferior points of view. Someone needs to remind the idiots in charge that B/C/D-tickets are actually needed when building out their IP-driven "mini-lands", not just E-ticket rides, a dozen merch shops, and half-***ed dining venues.

UNCgolf14 hours ago

I think Little Mermaid was originally intended as an E ticket -- maybe a D, but they certainly spent enough money for it to be an E. Dumbo and Barnstormer weren't built as part of New Fantasyland; they already existed (I think they did add the second Dumbo, though). Navi is exactly what I wish they'd build more of. I think that's a beautiful, relaxing attraction. It's great for what it is; people just get annoyed because it has D/E ticket wait times and it's not that.

mitchk15 hours ago

They have made a lot of progress. This was about three years ago and that’s when we still thought it was gonna be a Moana ride.

EagleScout61016 hours ago

10 days left...

Purduevian18 hours ago

The only issue I see with that... is the land is all about the Villains/interacting with the Villains... I would be odd to run away from Jafar's spells... then exit the ride and get a drink at the The Cave of Refreshments. I think Frankenstein is the only "monster" you can find around Darkmore... but he is a hero in the ride. Also sorry very wrong thread for all of this.