There are some new walls up at the entrance to Epcot this morning, as the final Leave a Legacy monoliths prepare for their removal. Once the demolition is complete, Disney will have a clean slate, of sorts, on which to construct a new arrival experience for Epcot as seen in the concept art below. The new entrance will feature more green spaces and walkways instead of the concrete jungle that guests have been use to for decades. The revamped area will also feature a new decorative piece on top of the entrance fountain that will pay homage to the original plans for the park. Disney has said that work on the new area will be completed next year.

Back to today, we see that the walls are up around the monoliths and central garden, while still leaving some area for guests to access the stroller and wheelchair/ECV rental area. Of course, there is plenty of walking space to the right of the walls, where the west side monoliths were removed in mid-June.

We’ll start from the highway in the sky, getting a view over the walls thanks to the Disney monorail system. From here, you can really get a good view of how vast the construction area is for this part of the project.

It looks like crews ran out of time overnight, leaving two rows of monoliths outside of the construction area. We anticipate that these final two rows will be behind walls starting tomorrow morning.

Now for some more traditional, on-the-ground reporting. As you could see from the monorail, a large amount of space has been taken up by walls this morning. Here’s a look at the first impression guests currently get of Epcot as they approach the tap points.

Inside the park, there is plenty of room to the west of the construction to use as a walkway.

Here are a few more photos of the view from the ground.

The west side removal took four weeks and a day between when the walls went up and when they came back down. That said, we’re told the construction schedule will be very different this time around.

According to managers that we spoke with, we can expect these walls to stay up for months, not weeks. Disney’s plan is to not only demolish the monoliths, but to go ahead and build the new look for the Epcot entrance while the walls are up. That means that this will be your view come the start of the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival. While we don’t have a more concrete timeline than “months”, Disney has stated that the whole project will be done “beginning in 2020”.

Also newsworthy this morning is that rope drop has moved from in front of Spaceship Earth to up the pathway that leads to the left of Spaceship Earth and into Future World. As a result, Gateway Gifts and the line for Spaceship Earth are now open before the park. That said, just because you can get in line for Spaceship Earth it doesn’t mean that you’ll be riding before park open. The attraction still opens with the park, but you’re welcome to wait in line. Also worth noting is that the Jammitors are still the opening act for the park at the new rope drop waiting point.

For continuing coverage of the Leave a Legacy monolith demolition and more from around the Disney Parks, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com!