This weekend I had the honor of flying around Walt Disney World with friend of the site bioreconstruct. Bioreconstruct is known for his aerial photography of the Central Florida theme parks, providing theme park fans with a peek into the construction of the latest attractions and a unique vantage point of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Our 45-minute flight took us over all four Walt Disney World theme parks and Universal Epic Universe. In this article, we’re going to take a look at construction underway to support the Tropical Americas retheme of DinoLand USA.

We’ll start with a stunning overview of Disney’s Animal Kingdom from about 1,700′ in the air as we descend to circle the lush theme park. From this view, we can see the expansive parking lot, the Tree of Life like a beacon in the middle of the photo, the less-than-sexy side of Expedition Everest to the right, and other massive show buildings like the one that houses Flight of Passage and Navi River Journey to the west, and a green building that houses the soon-to-change DINOSAUR attraction hidden from the parking lot by a tiny forest of trees. This might be one of my favorite photos from the entire flight.

Before we complete our descent to circle Animal Kingdom at around 1,200′ feet, I want to draw your attention to the photo above one more time. The construction that we will focus on in this article is located north of Expedition Everest, in a laydown yard that has been used for a number of Animal Kingdom expansions and projects including for Pandora – The World of Avatar.

Here’s a look at the area in question as we get closer to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. We were roughly over the parking lot when we snapped this photo of the work off in the distance. As you’ll note, this work is not connected to any part of the Animal Kingdom theme park, so what is it for?

We have to go back to a March 2024 article to learn more about what this construction is for. At the time, the Tropical Americas project wasn’t officially official, so we had to use a bit of speculation in the language for our article, but it was widely believed that this work was directly connected to the plans for a DinoLand USA reimagining.

The permit (pictured below) called for the development of a new trailer complex to allow for Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) to have an on-site presence at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Currently, WDI is largely staged at EPCOT, but they will definitely want to be closer to Animal Kingdom once the Tropical Americas project kicks off.

As we approach and circle the construction site, we can see that the project outline has been established by silt fencing that aligns with the project boundaries established in the permit.

Here are a few more photos of the site as we get closer and start to circle. It looks like some footers are being dug out, perhaps for the WDI trailers that will eventually be installed. I’m not sure how long of a process this will be, but I’m assuming it’ll take at least a month or two, which calls into question the previously announced “Fall 2024” start date for construction on DinoLand USA proper. Will Disney want to have the WDI offices up and operational before they begin work on the Tropical Americas project?

Fall technically runs through Saturday, December 21, 2024, so it’s possible that we see a shovel in the ground before then, but there doesn’t appear to be any work in DinoLand USA yet. We’ll take a brief look at the current state of things there after this group of photos.

We’ll have a closer examination of DinoLand USA in another article soon, but for now, here’s a look at the soon-to-be-extinct land. There is no notable construction – not a single tree out of place or shovel in the ground yet. Of course, the WDI trailer complex is probably not required to be up and running before work begins on DinoLand USA, but Walt Disney World has recently announced that they don’t plan on closing anything until early January 2025. With nothing closed, can construction really begin?

We know that DINOSAUR and other parts of DinoLand USA will not close during the first phase of closures in early 2025, so we’ll turn our attention to the Dino-Rama section of the land and the associated backstage areas. In the photo below, we can see that the current on-stage Dino-Rama area will only represent a portion of the land needed for the all-new Encanto attraction. Disney will need to remove a number of backstage buildings to allow for construction, and it doesn’t look like that process has begun.

To be clear, I would not consider the construction of the WDI trailer complex a half-mile north of Dino-Rama to satisfy the “Fall 2024” construction timeframe for the Tropical Americas project. I’m going to need to see a shovel in the ground in DinoLand USA or the adjacent backstage areas to declare that work has begun on the reimagining project.

Additionally, we don’t think that it’s likely that any large-scale construction will happen in this area before the Walt Disney World Marathon on January 12, 2025. The marathon route will use the roads seen in the image above as runners go through DinoLand USA, out the backstage gate, and past the marina, as they turn north. This section of the race will be between mile markers 17 and 18 along the 26.2-mile course. As a matter of fact, the route will take runners past the WDI trailer complex as well before they exit the Animal Kingdom area.

All of that said, we’re hopeful that some of the backstage buildings and trees can be removed in the coming months, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on the work as it progresses!

As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!