NEWS: Tropical Americas Land Confirmed; Indiana Jones and Encanto Ride Coming to Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Last fall Disney announced ideas about a Tropical Americas retheme for DinoLand, USA. During the  Horizons: Disney Experiences Showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, Disney confirmed the changes are coming and construction will begin this fall. Learn more below.

Disney Cast Member Michael Hundgen shares the details below:

A new adventure awaits at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park with the addition of a new space themed around Tropical Americas. Welcome to Pueblo Esperanza.

As Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D’Amaro explained during Horizons: Disney Experiences Showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, work on this new 11-acre section of the park is set to begin later this year. Just like Harambe, the land feels lived in, with a long, rich history — plus there’s a large hacienda which will be one of the largest quick-service restaurants at Walt Disney World Resort.

The space will be lush and sprawling, featuring a large fountain in the center where the villagers like to gather and tell stories. Additionally, a woodcarver has created a giant working carousel featuring his favorite animals from Disney stories. It’s a new take on a classic attraction that young families are going to love.

That’s not all that will be located here – the new land will include not one but two signature attractions!

Indiana Jones

A new Indy experience is set to arrive in Disney’s Animal Kingdom and will be different from any other Indiana Jones experience around the world.

In this new venture, the man with the hat has recently discovered a perfectly preserved Maya temple, and that can only mean one thing: it’s time to explore it. He’s heard rumors about a mythical creature deep within the temple — and he’s got to see it for himself. So, he brings us along on the adventure… but will there be snakes? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Encanto

If you’re a fan of drawers, floors, and doors, let’s go! The first-ever “Encanto”-themed ride-through attraction is coming to Animal Kingdom, featuring the beloved Madrigal family from the Walt Disney Animation Studios film. Inside the Casita, Antonio has just received his special gift — the ability to communicate with animals — and his room has transformed into a rainforest. It’s time to go explore alongside him, and you never know what member of the family you might bump into…

Construction on the land is set to begin this fall and will open in 2027 — but don’t worry, you’ll still have plenty of time to experience Dinosaur again (and get that dino).

And, elsewhere in Animal Kingdom, there are more exciting updates coming, too! The newest show coming to the Tree of Life Theater features Judy Hopps, Nick Wilde, and all their friends from Disney Animation’s Zootopia. The show, “Zootopia: Better Zoogether!” will take guests on an adventure through different biomes seen in the film and opens next winter.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Legacy of Animal Kingdom 26 Years Later

Disney’s Animal Kingdom celebrated its 26th Anniversary on April 22, 2024. The different type of theme park continues to thrive today, and its legacy continues. Learn more below.

Here are all the details from Disney Cast Member Sarah Riles:

On Earth Day in 1998, Walt Disney World Resort invited guests to discover a one-of-a-kind theme park where they could be inspired by the magic of the natural world. The opening of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park 26 years ago introduced a whole new way to appreciate, enjoy and interact with animals while also delivering incredible new stories that celebrated our relationship to the environment. The fourth Walt Disney World theme park was also Disney’s largest, spreading out over 500 acres.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom combined Walt Disney’s love of animals—both real and imaginary—with exciting attractions, spectacular stage shows, and entertaining characters. From the Tree of Life—which features 337 sculpted animals in its trunk—to the floating mountains, bioluminescence, and top-rated attractions in Pandora – The World of Avatar, we continue to creatively celebrate and inspire guests in ways only Disney’s Animal Kingdom can.

True, there were—and are—breathtaking animal encounters, from an African safari adventure to a meandering, mystical trail that leads guests on an exciting search for tigers, to thrilling theatrical productions – and so much more. But this park is also the way for Disney to inspire people with the spectacular breadth and beauty of nature and animals through the power of world-class entertainment and storytelling.

At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, guests encounter wild adventures like taking flight on the back of a banshee with Avatar Flight of Passage, rocketing on a high-speed train adventure through Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain, and diving into stellar musical stage shows including “Finding Nemo: The Big Blue…and Beyond!” and the larger-than-life “Festival of the Lion King.”

Over the last 26 years, the park has continually evolved and expanded with new attractions, entertainment, and even entirely new lands such as Asia and Pandora – The World of Avatar. We’ve made it a priority to continue investing in new and exciting opportunities for our guests, giving them more reasons to not only return to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the Central Florida region, but also reaffirm the state of Florida as an unforgettable tourist destination.

We also cherish that our guests come back to admire, interact with and be inspired by our thousands of beloved animals. In fact, about 45 of them have been here since before opening day! Many of the most remarkable accomplishments from Disney’s Animal Kingdom happen behind the scenes, where our Disney’s Animals, Science and Environment team cares for nearly 2,000 animals representing over 200 different species.

Throughout the 26 years of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney has made significant contributions to the preservation and wellbeing of animals not only at the theme park, but also around the community, state and globe. Through funding from The Walt Disney Company and supplemented by the generous contributions of guests, the Disney Conservation Fund has invested more than $125 million in conservation efforts that have supported more than 1,000 species and protected 315 million acres globally since 1995. And here in Florida, Disney recently announced a $500,000 donation to five conservation organizations to help make a happier, healthier planet possible for all: Conservation Florida, Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Trout Lake Nature Center and Wekiva Wilderness Trust.

With each organization receiving $100,000, these grants made a number of projects possible – from expanding land protection initiatives, to ensuring healthy tree canopy coverage in underserved communities, finding solutions to clean drinking water for those in need, and funding educational opportunities for youth around the state.

Our team of passionate veterinarians, nutritionists, animal keepers, educators and scientists not only delivers the absolute highest care to the animals that call Disney’s Animal Kingdom home, but they take that knowledge out into the world, spanning the globe with a mission to enhance the world’s understanding of protecting, conserving and enhancing natural resources and wildlife for future generations.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom has an incredible impact in places like Africa, South America and Asia, helping communities protect habitats and species in some of the most remote corners of the world from the tiniest cotton-top tamarins to the mightiest of elephants. And locally, we’ve worked with partners around the state to help protect nesting habitats for sea turtles, rescue and release dozens of manatees and restore and repopulate corals to help restore Florida’s Coral Reef.

As an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), Disney’s Animal Kingdom has also collaborated with other AZA members to help increase populations of endangered and extinct species, such as the Guam rail and Guam kingfisher birds. Following AZA Species Survival Plans, the park has welcomed a variety of animals from endangered species into the world, including Sumatran tigers, western lowland gorillas, African elephants, cotton-top tamarins and okapi to name just a few. In fact, Disney’s Animal Nutrition Center has served as a model test kitchen for a number of other AZA-accredited facilities who have adopted many of the nutritional diets developed specifically for the animals here at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Today we celebrate not only 26 wild years of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, but the legacy the park leaves on the world around us. That legacy is more than a theme park with incredible animals; it’s more than remarkable shows and experiences that leave us with a sense of wonder. Disney’s Animal Kingdom forever impacted everything we understood about the environment, animals and the world around us, and that legacy of celebrating and supporting the natural world will live on to impact generations and generations to follow.