Earlier today, we made our way back to Magic Kingdom to ride the newly reopened Big Thunder Mountain Railroad! Instead of capturing the attraction and the improvements Disney World made to the ride, we had a slightly different goal. This time, we’re back to take a look at the newly revealed vantage points of the Piston Peak National Park and Villains Land construction sites from the queue and ride. Here’s a look!
Villains Land & Piston Peak Construction from Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad queue and attraction are, by far, the best spots to capture the ongoing construction taking place to transform the northwest corner of Magic Kingdom. From the queue, we have great looks at the Piston Peak National Park construction site. From the ride, we get quick glimpses of the Villains Land construction site. We’ll be riding Big Thunder a lot over the next few years to try and get a sneak peek at the work, so I’m particularly grateful that the new roller coaster track is incredibly smooth.
We’ll start our photo update from the queue, where we can get some wonderful views of Piston Peak National Park. The construction site sits between Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and the Haunted Mansion attractions. It’s here that Disney will be building two all-new Cars-themed attractions. One will be an off-road rally race through the mountains, and the other will be a family-friendly attraction.
I’ll be honest, this seemed to be a startling view for most guests. Walt Disney World typically does a great job of hiding construction from guests, but there are some projects where it is extremely impractical to try to hide it completely. Piston Peak National Park and Villains Land will be very difficult to hide away.
While we were taking photos, most of the guests we overheard had no idea what was being built. That is quite the departure from our rope drop experience for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad’s reopening, where the majority of guests not only were talking about the new vantage point, but were also taking a ton of photos.
That divide really underlines the Walt Disney World experience, to me. Only the most hardcore of Disney fans were rope-dropping Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, so of course, they knew about the Cars and Villains expansions coming to Magic Kingdom. Just a few days removed from Big Thunder’s reopening, and we have more casual fans and tourists who have no idea what’s coming for Walt Disney World.
Back on track, here’s the view from the front of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, facing southeast toward the Piston Peak National Park construction site. Right now, crews are singularly focused on creating a large, concrete retaining wall for the stream that will run from in front of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, past the main Frontierland walkway, and just slightly past the former Liberty Square Riverboat landing, seen below Cinderella Castle on the left side of the image below.
Here are some more looks around the Piston Peak National Park construction site. While we visited, crews were busy getting rebar into the Meva modular formwork system that they’ve been using to create sections of wall.
To the north, Villains Land will take over a massive corner of Magic Kingdom. The new land will contain two large-scale attractions, shopping, and dining.
As a quick aside, I’m more convinced than ever that the massive wall that is being built to “block views” from Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is like 90% for safety than blocking views. The views from the queue are expansive and revealing. There really isn’t much that can be seen of Piston Peak National Park from the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride that isn’t on full display from the queue.
Now, the construction walls on the north side of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad may be like 75% for safety and 25% for blocking views. That said, there are some pretty revealing views into Villains Land from both the queue and ride that would need the walls to be build some 20 feet taller if they were going to truly block views.
With that said, here’s a look toward Villains Land.
While the work in Piston Peak National Park is focused on creating the retaining wall we saw earlier, the work in Villains Land remains focused on land shaping and some early infrastructure work. Here’s a look at Villains Land from the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad queue before we jump on a runaway mine car and try to snap some photos while being whipped around on The Wildest Ride in the Wilderness.
It’s hard to see in this photo, but there is already some infrastructure in the ground to support Villains Land. This is an exciting milestone.
Ok, it’s time to hop aboard our runaway train and try to snap some photos of the construction. Full disclosure: it wasn’t easy. Even less easy was trying to convince myself that it would be a good idea to wait another hour to try again. I didn’t.
Perhaps when wait times normalize a bit for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in the coming weeks or months, I’ll do a couple of ride-throughs, but for today, it was just one ride and a bunch of out-of-focus photos or photos of the sky. Here are the photos worth posting.
A glimpse of the Walt Disney Imagineering construction trailers, where dozens (hundreds?) of Imagineers will work tirelessly to bring Piston Peak National Park and Villains Land to life.
Turning the final corner, we can see the progress of theming the large wall that will block views of the work from the final stretch of the attraction.
Here’s a wider view of the steel support columns from our ride on reopening day.
For everything we know about the upcoming Villains Land at Magic Kingdom, check out our dedicated Villains Land page below!
For everything we know about the Cars-themed expansion to Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland, check out our dedicated project page 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!