Tropical Americas construction at Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World keeps moving fast. Our new photos show a large stone arch under scaffolding, roofs going on the village buildings and the first carved wood details on the carousel. Walt Disney Imagineering is building Tropical Americas where DinoLand U.S.A. used to be. The new land is set to open in 2027.
A big gray stone arch now stands behind the construction walls, wrapped in scaffolding. Carved stones are already showing at its base. The rest of the arch is covered in orange paint lines, which look like guides for the carvers. The village buildings now have roof underlayment and bright yellow trim. Steel frames with arches show where new storefronts will go. More steel is going up in front of the mountain rockwork, which is still wrapped in mesh. Nearby, a group of weathered stone pillars sits around a tree inside orange safety fencing. And the green construction walls are covered in yellow butterflies, a nod to Encanto.
Joan Hartwig leads the creative team for Tropical Americas. She has worked at Imagineering since 1990 and was art director for Avatar Flight of Passage. She has said Imagineers “always want to tell Disney stories from a place of curiosity and humility.” Her team took research trips to Honduras and Colombia. Joe Rohde, the Disney Legend who led the design of Animal Kingdom, is retired but still helps out. Chris Beatty oversees every new Disney World project for Imagineering. He and Michael Hundgen showed off the Indiana Jones ride at D23 2026.
The carousel’s wood roof is up, and the first carvings are on its columns. Put our photo next to Disney’s concept art and the carved scrolls and rosettes match. In the story, a woodcarver in Pueblo Esperanza turned an old horse stable into a carousel. At D23, Rohde called the carousel animals “a love letter to the last 100 years of Disney animated stories.”
Tropical Americas will have an Encanto ride inside the Casita, El Carrusel de los Animalitos and Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent. Disney says the land opens in 2027 but has not shared an exact date. This is almost turning into a weekly update, and that is a good sign. Every week, more of Tropical Americas shows above the walls. The carousel columns are our favorite detail so far, because they already look like the concept art. Catch up on the carousel roof going up and the Encanto Casita, and find more Animal Kingdom news.
The Tropical Americas Carousel Is Starting to Look Just Like the Concept Art
