Inside D23’s Imagineering Pavilion: What We’re Learning About the Future of Walt Disney World
- Bren Long
- 9 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated August 14, 2026: We're following the Imagineering reveals coming out of D23 and looking specifically at what they may tell us about future Walt Disney World park layouts and vacation planning.
It’s D23 time! If you are newer to the Disney travel space, you may be thinking, what in the world is that? D23 is Disney's official fan club, and its biennial Ultimate Disney Fan Event is traditionally where some of the company's biggest future plans are shared.
For Parks fans, much of the attention will turn to the Disney Experiences Showcase on Saturday, August 15, 2026, at 7 p.m. PT, streaming live on Disney+. We’ll be writing rin eal time on every announcement and having a glorious time analyzing it all.
Disney's Imagineering: Horizons Pavilion
But before Saturday night's big Disney Experiences presentation even begins, the enormous Imagineering: Horizons pavilion is giving us something arguably more useful than another round of concept art: a chance to see several upcoming Walt Disney World projects beginning to take physical shape.
Disney's Imagineering: Horizons Pavilion at D23 contains models, costumes, attraction pieces, concept art and other work from projects around the world, and Disney says more than 150 Imagineers are participating. Concept art is wonderful for showing atmosphere. A physical model starts answering different questions.
Where does the attraction sit? How large is that mountain really? Where do people move? What separates one area from another? Is there water? Shade? Open space? How dense does the land feel? How will it affect park flow?
Those details may not be as flashy as a brand-new attraction announcement, but they matter enormously once we start actually touring these parks. Where Disney places entrances, how pathways connect, and whether a new land pulls guests through an area or creates a bottleneck can change the way an entire park feels.
So let’s dive into what’s being seen live on the expo floor and what these fun new glimpses can tell us about Disney touring in the next few years.
Piston Peak Is Finally Starting to Make Sense in Frontierland
The Cars-themed Piston Peak National Park expansion of Frontierland at Magic Kingdom was first announced two years ago at D23 Expo. Work on this area is well underway at Magic Kingdom, where construction walls abound. Tom Sawyer Island has closed, and the Rivers of America is being transformed to make way for the new area.
Disney Reveals a Massive Piston Peak Model
Disney has brought a 19-foot-by-19-foot model of the Cars-themed Piston Peak National Park expansion to D23. It provides a much clearer look at the layout of the land than the concept art. We’re getting a new, closer look at the mountainous national park inspired landscape, waterways, trails, and bridges previously shown in the area's concept art. Guests can see the large off-road Cars rally attraction, including a tiny peek at its ride vehicles, along with the previously announced family-friendly second attraction.
That’s all fun, and we love that. But here’s what really gets us excited: for the first time, we can see how the area actually fits into Frontierland. This isn’t just Cars dropped into Frontierland, which is what many guests were afraid of. The ability to see the way it folds into Frontierland and the relationship to already established attractions such as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure also helps us to visualize much more clearly what this part of the Magic Kingdom will become.
Currently, Magic Kingdom has an enormous amount of guest movement funneled through relatively predictable corridors. A substantial new attraction area in this part of the park will change how guests circulate through Frontierland and where crowds build, and this model gives us a much better idea on what that might look like. If you want to see how everything currently fits together, our Magic Kingdom Map & Park Layout Guide walks through the park land by land.
Tropical Americas Is Looking Less Like a Retheme and More Like a Full Land
Disney’s Imagineering: Horizons pavilion also has given us more details and hints for the new Tropical Americas section in Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Encanto
One of the displays we find most exciting depicts scenes from the new Encanto attraction, including what appears to be Antonio’s birthday in the Casita’s kitchen, along with mockups of the ride vehicles and Audio-Animatronic animals that will appear in one of the attraction’s scenes.
Tropical Americas Carousel
The pavilion also displays four character sculpts representing some of the friends guests will encounter on the Tropical Americas carousel.
Indiana Jones
Moving into a vastly different area of this land, the pavilion is displaying a model of the façade of the temple for the new Indiana Jones attraction.
Put these pieces together and Tropical Americas is beginning to look much less like a collection of replacement attractions and much more like a fully developed land. The variety of attraction types and intensities should help draw different kinds of guests into the land.
A land with this much depth and variety will could significantly change touring at Animal Kingdom, and the park's exhisting flow. Having two blockbuster attractions alongside a smaller family attraction should also give guests more ways to spread out rather than funneling everyone toward the same two headliners. We’re looking forward to learning even more details about the way the different attractions and paths will be working into the existing flow at this park. Our Animal Kingdom Map & Park Layout Guide shows how the park works today, which makes this transformation particularly interesting to watch.
Monstropolis Is Showing Us How Immersive Disney Wants This Land to Feel
Imagineering is displaying a mood board showing the inspiration behind different neighborhoods within Monstropolis, including sketches and design renderings.
That's interesting because it tells us Disney isn't just designing a Monsters, Inc. attraction with themed buildings around it. They're thinking about Monstropolis as an actual city with distinct neighborhoods and even its own peculiar wildlife
Are a monster pigeon, squirrel and rabbit going to change how we tour Hollywood Studios? Obviously not. What will matter is whether all of that world-building gives guests reasons to linger and explore beyond the coaster itself, and how Monstropolis ultimately connects with the rest of Hollywood Studios, a park dominated by immersive lands and large headline attractions.
We’ve already done a much deeper dive into Monstropolis and H.U.M.A.N. Day at Hollywood Studios, including what Disney has revealed about the story behind the new land.
Villains Land Still Isn't Telling Us Much — And That's Okay
And then there's Villains Land. We have trees. To be sure, they are beautifully atmospheric trees and give us a glimpse of Imagineering's visual direction for the land. But that's about all Disney is giving us so far.
We already knew Villains Land was coming. We have only been given just enough details to get us excited, very little concrete information about the scope of the land itself. Villains Land may be the most fun to imagine, but it's also the Disney World project we still know the least about. We’re really hoping that they let us into more of the plans, scope, and timeline on Saturday.
We’re tracking all of Disney’s confirmed details for Villains Land, Piston Peak, Tropical Americas and the other major projects in our What’s Changing at Walt Disney World guide.
Carousel of Progress Is Giving Details, Not a New Announcement
Few current projects inspire quite as much Disney fan debate as the Carousel of Progress update. But the overhaul itself isn't new D23 news. We already know the big pieces: a Walt Disney Audio-Animatronic will appear, the decades are changing, and the attraction is expected to reopen in 2027.
What Imagineering at D23 gives us is something more tactile: costumes, scale models and design details that let us start seeing how Imagineering is translating that announced concept into an actual attraction. We’ve done a full deep dive into Carousel of Progress history and everything changing in the attraction, so we won't rehash all of that here.
Carousel's eventual reopening restores an attraction that provides something increasingly valuable at Magic Kingdom: a long, seated, indoor, air-conditioned experience with high hourly capacity.
That’s a Wrap...For Now
Concept art helps us dream about what's coming. These models are helping us begin to understand how those projects may actually work inside the parks. And that matters more than it might seem at first glance.
And yes, this is absolutely the kind of thing we love to geek out over. You don't need to study Disney park traffic patterns before your vacation, but we will happily do it for you.
Because as these projects get closer to opening, understanding how the pieces fit together will help us give you better advice about where to go first, when to visit an area, where crowds may build, and how to put together a park day with a little less zigzagging and a lot more fun.
Want to keep digging? We’re tracking the confirmed timelines, construction, closures and upcoming attractions in our What’s Changing at Walt Disney World guide, and we’ll keep updating it as Disney fills in the details.
Pixie Dust Hugs,
Bren, Lyn and Kim 🧚♀️
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