PHOTOS - Construction walls up around Disney Outfitters at Disney's Animal Kingdom as expansion gets underway

Jun 16, 2014 in "Discovery Trading Company"

Posted: Monday June 16, 2014 12:19pm EDT by WDWMAGIC Staff

Construction walls are now up around the Disney Outfitters store at Disney's Animal Kingdom as construction work begins.

The parks main merchandise location will be expanding out towards the former tip board area and the Isle of Java coffee kiosk, providing more retail space ahead of the upcoming closure of Creature Comforts. It is expected that Creature Comforts will become home to the park's Starbucks location.

Also part of the expansion will be a new home for the Cotton Top Tamarins.

Click the gallery for more photos.

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Chef KronkSep 15, 2015

Does anyone know when this should be complete? Last I heard it was late 2015, but no specific dates or months.

BoltSep 15, 2015

At the rate it's going up and not prefabricated I would think its for the show, but only a guess.

dreamscometrueSep 15, 2015

Is that small tower built to house sound and light equipment for a 'Tree of Life' show?

wdwmagicSep 15, 2015

PHOTOS - Latest look at the progress on the expansion of Disney Outfitters at Disney's Animal Kingdom

jensenrickJun 17, 2014

Thank God and good riddance to it!

FutureCEOJun 17, 2014

the store looks like it's going to be huge...not Mouse Gear huge but still

wdwmagicJun 16, 2014

PHOTOS - Construction walls up around Disney Outfitters at Disney's Animal Kingdom as expansion gets underway

FerretAfrosJun 16, 2014

I wouldn't exactly call the fountain house a "big part" of the new entrance. They needed a building to conceal the pump equipment for the fountain, and decided to add attraction wait times on one wall so that the building didn't appear so completely useless to guests I would assume that the lines are because of the poor signage choices. The text is quite small, so you have to get pretty close to read it. Additionally, they decided to list every single attraction in the park on the board, so it takes a few moments to find what you're looking for. Compared with DL's wait board, where they have about 10 items listed with text that can be read from 50' away, the DCA wait board is a huge misstep Additionally, the way that DCA is laid out, there's a lot of traffic passing through there as guests move from one area to the next. If I'm in Harambe and want to go to another attraction in DAK, I would just walk directly to it, bypassing the tip board. It's nice to see on the way in, to get a general idea of the crowd levels that day, but it's really not convenient for anything else due to the park's layout and size

MarkTwainJun 16, 2014

Interesting that a building made to house the tip board (the fountain house) was a big part of DCA's new entrance, Buena Vista Street, and it's very heavily used over there. Often there's a small line just to see the tip board, and to speak to the mini-guest relations booth they have set up there. Kind of bizarre how differently these resorts are run.

danlb_2000Jun 15, 2014

If Wikimapia is accurate then the Parade Storage then it really shouldn't be impacted by the Avatar construction.

MinnieM123Jun 15, 2014

When entering the parks, I think the tip boards are helpful for a quick overview of wait times, for the major attractions. However, since many people have mentioned they already own smart phones (I don't have one), it appears as though Disney may remove the boards in the near future. I know I'm in the minority here, but I wish they would still keep them.

disney4life2008Jun 15, 2014

This completely glossed over me - I had no idea the tip board was closed. Yet, they say use MDE or website? I have a windows phone design an app for us. I cant use the app on my phone nor can I use it on my android tablet. And when I try to use MDE on my windows phone the text is garbled and unreadable. While I never used the tip board - they need to put some MM+ billions into designing an all for windows users!

WDWLover#1Jun 08, 2014

The storage facilities are where they're gonna build. They were located behind CMM.

ToTBellHopJun 07, 2014

Now you do. No one in my family has a smart phone (though we have two tablets with access to the MDE app).