On a recent visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, we spotted the first signs of theming installed for the Encanto-themed attraction coming to the Tropical Americas-themed land. Up until this point, Disney has mostly been focused on creating very large warehouse-style buildings to house the attraction and queue for the first-ever Encanto-themed ride. Now, the Garden House main entrance is starting to take shape as crews install the steel framing for the attraction’s entrance. Here’s a closer look!
Garden House Main Entrance Takes Shape for Encanto Attraction
Before we take a look at the current construction, we should start by establishing what, exactly, we’re looking at. The Garden House will be the main entrance to the Encanto attraction, and it’s located to the left side of the main Casita facade. This conceit is exactly like the Haunted Mansion, where guests enter a ground-level doorway to the left of the elevated show facade.
In the concept art below, we can sort of make out the Garden House entry to the left of the Casita. We’ll get a better look at it in a minute when we examine the scale model that is currently on display at the Walt Disney Imagineering exhibit at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Taking a closer look at the scale model, we get a better view of the Garden House structure to the left of the Casita facade. From my understanding, this will be a covered switchback area, serving as a transition from the lush landscape around the Casita into the various rooms within the house.
Ok, now that we have a better idea of what we’re looking at, let’s head out to Disney’s Animal Kingdom to get a look at the latest construction progress!
In this first set of photos, we have to look past layers of construction. This angle is from the main entrance into the land. In the foreground, we can see a brick wall and some steel rising to create the carousel attraction. We took a detailed look at the construction of that ride in an earlier article.
Today, we’ll look past that construction to find the Garden House structure taking shape. Steel framing can be seen at the northern end of the queue building, which is exactly where we’d expect to find the Garden House.
Shifting our vantage point a bit, we can get a clearer look at the construction of the Garden House.
Changing our view again, we can get a glimpse of a structure being constructed for the exit to the attraction. While the entrance to the ride will be to the left of the Casita, the exit of the ride will be to the right of the Casita, as viewed from in front of the attraction. For those familiar with the old DinoLand USA buildings, the exit for the Encanto ride will be near the old Hester & Chester’s Dinosaur Treasures gift shop. The gift shop will be repurposed to be a meet and greet space, which could be the perfect way to meet some of the characters that you just saw in the attraction (separate wait required, of course).
For everything you need to know about the Tropical Americas retheme project for DinoLand USA, check out our article below!
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!