Disney has fans revving up their engines for a large crater at the Magic Kingdom! Following the announcement of Rivers of America’s replacement at the Walt Disney World last August, Disney today officially confirmed the precise date its area attractions will close at Walt Disney World.
In a new post from the Disney Parks Blog, Disney outlines their latest plans to replace the Rivers of America with a Cars-themed “Piston Peak” area, which Disney says “builds on the Story of Frontierland” by replacing the only attraction Walt personally designed with a Pixar-acquired movie property introducing cars with eyes to late 1800’s Frontierland.
The creative justification for this largely ops-driven change involves redefining Frontierland as amalgamation of American states and regions, when it is also themed to a specific time in America. A time when cars did not exist, especially not ones with eyes.
Of course, with Disney demolishing the Rivers of America, that means Tom Sawyer Island and, the opening-day attraction, the Liberty Square Riverboat will permanently close.
Here’s what Disney has to say:
As work revs into high gear this summer, the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island and the Liberty Square Riverboat will close beginning July 7. Imagineers are also hard at work beyond Big Thunder Mountain Railroad bringing to life the first-ever land inspired by the Disney Villains with two major attractions, dining and shopping all on an incredibly twisted grand scale.
That’s right, the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island, and the Liberty Square Riverboat will officially close on July 7th, with July 6th being the last opportunity for Magic Kingdom park guests to enjoy these attractions.
As a consequence of Disney’s destruction of the Rivers of America, the Walt Disney World Railroad will now also cease to fully circle the park indefinitely. The attraction, thankfully, isn’t fully going away, but instead will be operating in “shuttle mode” between Main Street and Storybook Circus. There is no approximate end date to the construction available at this time. We anticipate sometime in the early 2030’s the Walt Disney World Railroad’s full route will return.
NEW: The Walt Disney World Railroad will temporarily adjust its service starting July 7.
The train’s full-circle route around Magic Kingdom will pause after July 6, and it will operate in shuttle mode between Main Street and Fantasyland during this time. The original route will… pic.twitter.com/DSv8kPy6EE
— Mickey Central (@Mickey_Central) June 3, 2025
The Rivers of America’s demolition is the latest in a recent trend of Disney destroying intergenerational attractions and nostalgia for the sake of adding new attendance-getters without doing the necessary infrastructure work to expand the park envelope and develop a completely new area. An odd phenomenon are Disney fans who defend new things replacing old as “it had to happen.” Disney doesn’t have to replace anything. They have endless room to expand with the right capital and will.
You know what Universal won’t do? Build a park dedicated to living American history, incorporating functioning 19th century-design steam engines and locomotives. You know what Universal could probably do better than Disney? Build a cartoon Cars ride and place it in the middle of somewhere it shouldn’t be going. Disney is demolishing their competitive advantage: nostalgia, Walt, and Magic Kingdom’s living history, whilst Disney’s most ardent sycophants bash Epic Universe for being “a bunch of recent IP’s.” Look at what we are getting here. Pot, meet kettle.
We wish the Imagineers the best of luck in salvaging this challenging mission we believe was most optioned for by Jeff Vahle, President of Walt Disney World. Josh D’Amaro, Chairman of Disney Experiences, as well as CEO Bob Iger also rubber-stamped demolishing the Rivers of America.
Note that we broke the news of this Cars-themed attraction many months before D23 last year. At that time, the rumored plan involved retaining the River and placing Radiator Springs Racers Beyond Big Thunder Mountain. This was a far better option we believe Walt Disney Imagineering proposed, that posed a marginally higher cost, leading its rejection by Walt Disney World’s bean counters.
The highly-critical slant of this report is a reflection of how poor of a decision we believe this to be for the Magic Kingdom. This is a decision that goes directly against the core theme of the park and Walt Disney’s conception of it. The Rivers of America was an aspect of the Magic Kingdom Walt Disney personally had a hand in creating before he died and several Disney Legends have attested it was his favorite area of Disneyland.
There is a reason every single Magic Kingdom clone over the past 50 years has kept the river-circling-an-island concept. It is core Disney Parks living history IP Walt took from Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village when he was conceiving of his park in the late 1940’s.
Before Walt’s theme park plan included a castle or a single movie IP-based attraction, it comprised of a railroad and a steamboat. A steamboat Walt went into personal debt to see come to fruition. Today, we got the definite closure date for the steamboat and the indefinite obstruction of the Walt Disney World Railroad. Think about that.
Not only does Disney’s latest crop of executives appear not care about Walt’s lofty aims, they seem to think they know better how to shape the Parks than Walt or the Imagineers do. This exercise in tremendous hubris is not panning out well. They are dismantling core Parks IP for the sake of Cars-themed slop. There is no good reason why the Magic Kingdom could not have gained Radiator Springs Racers and Villains, while retaining an albeit-shortened Rivers of America. The constant addition-via-subtraction at a hardly-developed resort more than 43-square-miles in size is not necessary. It is a sign of cheap corner cutting, lack of ambition, and loss of talent.
This demolition of Magic Kingdom’s living history is doing a tremendous disservice to the asset that is Walt Disney World. We believe strongly Walt would disagree with the substance of this particular change.
Hello Brandon! David here, I been a Disneyland fan and collector for over fifty years. I have been following you on YouTube since you were a young man. I agree with you completely. What they are going to do makes no sense. To have no sense of history for the Disney parks is unbelievable. I never thought I would see this happen. The park will survive, but it will never be the same. 😞
Hello Brandon! David here, I been a Disneyland fan and collector for over fifty years. I have been following you on YouTube since you were a young man. I agree with you completely. What they are going to do makes no sense. To have no sense of history for the Disney parks is unbelievable. I never thought I would see this happen. The park will survive, but it will never be the same. 😞
Spot on Brayden, Agree completely. One thing to add is outside of Guardians at epcot. Recent history has me doubting if Disney can build a brand new land and nail it . Remy and Tron copies from other parks Both ok but underwhelming. Then the Billions spent on redoing the front of epcot and what we got ,versus what was promised where 2 different things. Tiana’s ride massive miss. Can they deliver another Pandora homerun or are we getting more middle of the road. All Disney does currently is addition by subtraction as you stated. Muppets courtyard another example of the current leaderships inability to destroy things that are timeless. Can it be they hate Americana / traditional Disney style and story telling, starting to believe that’s the case.
Addition by subtraction indeed. It’s very sad to me to see this massive misstep, but it’s also, sadly, not surprising. There is no reason they could not add these areas to MK instead of gutting all the charm. ☹️