On a recent visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, we decided to stop by the Tropical Americas construction site, which has been a hive of activity since DinoLand USA closed back in February. In this update, we’re going to take a look at a few different points of interest, including the vertical construction of the woodcarver carousel, a second crane to assist with the work, the entrance to the Encanto attraction, and more. Let’s dive right in.
Second Crane Arrives at Tropical Americas Site
We’ll start with the arrival of a second crane at the Tropical Americas site. While the tower crane has been in place since September 2025, a smaller crane was being used when we visited. It looked like it was being used to transport materials from a flatbed truck to the area of construction for the woodcarver carousel.
Woodcarver Carousel Vertical Construction Visible
Speaking of the woodcarver carousel, the first section of the building that will envelop the ride has gone vertical. We can just see the concrete blocks over the construction wall, but aerial photos from friend of the site Bioreconstruct give us a clearer view of the progress.
Nearby, work on the foundation of a new themed building has also begun.
Restaurantosaurus Airstream Marked for Demolition
In worse news, it looks like the Restaurantosaurus airstream will be demolished and not preserved. Former Imagineer and Disney Legend Joe Rohde shared some backstory about the airstream, recalling that it belonged to the mom of one of the team members. Like many things in DinoLand USA, its inclusion in the land was due to the low cost of acquiring it.
Here’s the quote from Rohde. As an aside, Rohde will be releasing his first-ever book, detailing his career. I’m sure that there will be many insights into his time with Disney and the immensely interesting projects he worked on during his 40-year career with Disney. The book, titled Floating Mountains, is now available for pre-order.
Almost to the end of our Dino-tidbits. The airstream trailer.
It belonged to the mom of one of the team members… so, once again, a design element only shows up in the design because it showed up as an opportunity. No, one of the reasons we did. This is cause we thought it would be a cheap and interesting addition, since the airstream already existed, is already insulated and structural, and all we have to do is open a hole in the side to get into it. Of course we did have to remodel the entire interior so people could eat in it, and do a little bit of engineering to reinforce the opening we created in the side of it. These kinds of things sound cheap and cheerful when they start, but as anyone who has remodeled an old house knows, the Diabloceratops is in the details. (For anyone interested that last image is Diabloceratops.)
Here are a few photos of the airstream before DinoLand USA closed.
And here’s a look at the airstream during our recent visit. Its fate is unmistakable, with “DEMO” spray-painted on the exterior.
Encanto Entrance Takes Shape
Our next topic of interest is the Encanto structure. As we previously reported, the building for the ride was structurally complete back in mid-February. From there, Imagineers began working on the queue portion of the structure. Now, the queue building is nearly complete. We’ll start with some aerial photos from Bioreconstruct to show progress from a few days ago, followed by our photos from our recent visit to Animal Kingdom.
To better understand what we’re looking at here, I expect that the Casita structure will go in the area marked in red below.
As we can see in the scale model, Casita will fit into the open area pictured above. There will likely be some forced-perspective mountains added to the roof of the existing building. In the photo below, we can see that the standby queue will enter through a covered area. We believe it will be a garden house of sorts, leading us into the interior of the Casita, similar to how we enter Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion through a side door.
In fact, I think that our on-the-ground photos below basically show the end of the queue “building”, pictured in light green in the scale model photo above. As seen in the photos below, the edge of the structure has been established, and there are mounts that will allow Disney to add some lush rockwork to, as seen in the scale model.
A quick look at other parts of the construction site reveals some extensive tree clearing where we believe a new playground will go.
For everything you need to know about the Tropical Americas retheme project for DinoLand USA, check out our article below!
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