A brand new tower crane has gone up over the Piston Peak National Park construction site in Frontierland, and it is tall enough to photobomb Cinderella Castle from almost every angle in the park. Guests walking near Big Thunder Mountain Railroad this week caught it swinging its jib right past the castle spires, and honestly, at this point it might need its own hat and pin set.
Piston Peak is the Cars-themed land replacing Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island, and the Liberty Square Riverboat, and the project has never been shy about its cranes. But this one stands out. It clears the treeline, it clears Big Thunder’s rock work, and depending on where you’re standing, it lines up almost perfectly with the Magic Kingdom skyline shot everyone tries to get from the Ticket and Transportation Center ferry dock. Spaceship Earth spent decades as EPCOT’s silhouette. Cinderella Castle has owned the Magic Kingdom postcard since 1971. For now, this crane is the tallest thing on the property, and it is not being subtle about it.
The Imagineering team behind Piston Peak includes Chris Beatty, Michael Hundgen, and Wyatt Winter, whose Disney career actually started as a cast member at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which makes it a little poetic that the crane towers directly over his old stomping grounds. Somewhere in that construction office there is probably a very tall progress chart.
Our take: cranes are not glamorous, and nobody is putting one on a keychain. But a crane this size, staying up this long, right in the middle of the park’s most photographed sightline, is a pretty honest signal of how big this project actually is. Frontierland has not seen a transformation on this scale in decades, and if the price of that is sharing a few photos with a construction crane for a year or two, that is a trade most Disney fans will happily make. Just don’t be surprised if it ends up in more park photos this year than the castle does.
Piston Peak construction is expected to continue reshaping this corner of Frontierland for a while yet, so expect this crane, or one just like it, to keep showing up in the background of Big Thunder Mountain photos for some time. Check out our full Piston Peak construction tracker for every update so far, and read our first look at The Magic of Disney Animation while you’re at it.
