Animal Kingdom's DinoLand has closed for good, with a new Encanto land coming

DinoLand USA, the dinosaur area that opened with Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida in 1998, has closed for good. In its place Disney is building Tropical Americas, an 11-acre land with the first ride-through Encanto attraction at any Disney park and an Indiana Jones adventure, aiming for 2027. The change matters to families with young children right now, because the closure has already taken away the park’s only toddler spinner and its big playground, with the replacements a couple of years off.

The closure ran in stages across more than a year

The land didn’t shut in one go. Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama, the carnival section, went first in January 2025, taking TriceraTop Spin (a low triceratops spinner aimed at young children) and the midway games with it. The Boneyard, the large sand-dig-and-climb playground, closed in September 2025. The DINOSAUR ride and Restaurantosaurus, the quick-service restaurant, ran their last day on 1 February 2026, which closed the land completely. That was 28 years after DinoLand opened with the park on Earth Day 1998.

DinoLand was the land Animal Kingdom could afford

Animal Kingdom was planned around three kinds of animal. Two of its areas, Africa and Asia, show real living animals, and the dinosaur land covered the extinct ones. The third area was meant for mythical creatures, a land of dragons and unicorns called Beastly Kingdom. When money ran short before the 1998 opening, with the new park’s running costs coming in far higher than expected, Disney chose between building Beastly Kingdom and DinoLand, and picked DinoLand because it cost less. Beastly Kingdom was never built. The only traces left are the unicorn section of the car park and a dragon-headed ticket booth still in use at the entrance. That budget decision is a large part of why DinoLand always sat a little apart from the richly themed Africa and Asia around it.

DINOSAUR, Dino-Rama and a coaster that came and went

The headline ride opened with the park as Countdown to Extinction, a jolting dark ride that sent guests in “Time Rover” vehicles back to the Cretaceous among animatronic dinosaurs. It was renamed DINOSAUR in 2000 to tie in with Disney’s animated film of the same name, and softened for a family audience at the same time, with the height minimum dropped from 46 inches to 40 inches (about 102cm). Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama, a deliberately down-market fictional roadside carnival, was added in 2001, bringing TriceraTop Spin and the games. Primeval Whirl, a small time-travel coaster and the park’s first, followed in 2002. It closed in 2020 and never reopened, an early sign that this corner of the park was winding down.

DinoLand always sat apart from the rest of the park

Fans and critics have long rated DinoLand as Animal Kingdom’s weakest, least immersive land, a carnival bolted onto an otherwise richly themed nature park. One retrospective summed up the common view bluntly, that it just seemed cheap by Disney standards, probably because it was. There’s a fairer reading too, aired in several pieces written as the land was closing. DinoLand had a properly worked-out backstory, Chester and Hester’s roadside attraction, that most guests never noticed, and it was Imagineering making the most of a reduced budget rather than not trying. Both are true. Its reputation as the odd land out is real and long-standing, but it isn’t a simple story of neglect, more a 1998 budget call that Disney is only now able to undo.

The change fits a wider shift toward film characters at Animal Kingdom

DinoLand’s closure isn’t happening on its own. It’s Tough to Be a Bug, the 3D theatre show inside the Tree of Life and another opening-day attraction, closed in March 2025 and was replaced that November by a Zootopia show. Pandora, the Avatar land, arrived back in 2017. Across those changes Animal Kingdom has moved steadily from its original mix of real-world regions and an extinct-animal land toward the big film-franchise storytelling that already defines the other Florida parks, while leaving its live-animal areas in Africa and Asia alone. Disney hasn’t described this as a single strategy, but the pattern is clear enough across a decade.

Tropical Americas will be an 11-acre village land

The replacement, Tropical Americas, was announced at Disney’s D23 fan event in August 2024. Guests will enter through a fictional village called Pueblo Esperanza, “Village of Hope,” inspired by the cultures and ancient civilisations of Central and South America, in the same invented-place tradition as Animal Kingdom’s African and Asian areas. It will have two rides. The Indiana Jones adventure sits inside a Maya temple and reuses the old DINOSAUR ride system, the same Time Rover vehicles and show building, with a new temple front built around them. The Encanto ride is the first ride-through Encanto attraction at any Disney park, set inside Casita, the Madrigal family’s house from the film, with guests travelling through the rooms in vehicles styled as pieces of furniture. The land will also have a hacienda-style restaurant built into the old Restaurantosaurus building, a large working carousel and a new playground to replace the Boneyard. Disney is aiming for 2027 and has never narrowed that to a season. As it stands the whole site is behind construction walls.

What young children lose while the land is rebuilt

The most immediate effect is that a whole land has gone from the map with nothing open in its place, and it will stay that way through the rest of 2026 and most or all of 2027. Two of those losses matter most to families with young children. TriceraTop Spin, closed since January 2025, was the park’s only spinner built for the youngest riders, low and slow with no real height barrier, and there’s no direct replacement for it anywhere in the park now. The Boneyard, closed since September 2025, was one of the only proper playgrounds inside any Walt Disney World park, with sand to dig in and structures to climb, somewhere preschoolers could run around instead of queueing. A new playground is confirmed for Tropical Americas, but it won’t open until the land does, so there’s a real multi-year gap.

DINOSAUR itself was a loud, jolting ride with a 40-inch minimum, so plenty of families with babies and toddlers skipped it anyway. Its loss matters more for slightly older children, roughly six and up, for whom it was often a first proper thrill ride. Donald’s Dino-Bash, the character meet with Donald and Chip ‘n’ Dale in dinosaur costumes, has gone too, with no replacement announced for this part of the park. Restaurantosaurus, a big air-conditioned quick-service spot, is part of the same gap, though its replacement reuses much of the same building, so this one is about the closure period rather than a permanent loss of somewhere to eat.

What Animal Kingdom still has for little ones

None of what makes Animal Kingdom work for young children sat in the closed area, so the core of a family day is untouched. Kilimanjaro Safaris is still the park’s centrepiece, an 18 to 20-minute open-truck ride across more than 100 acres of savannah with real giraffes, elephants, rhinos and lions. There’s no height requirement. It tends to close earlier than other rides, because the animals are brought in before dusk, so it’s worth doing earlier in the day. The walking trails, Gorilla Falls chief among them, are shaded, self-paced and easy with a pushchair, and make a good low-key break in the middle of the day. Over in Pandora, the Na’vi River Journey is a slow boat ride through a glowing rainforest with no height limit, one of the calmest rides at Walt Disney World.

The shows hold up well for young children too. Festival of the Lion King in Harambe and Finding Nemo: The Big Blue… and Beyond! on Discovery Island are both around half an hour of music and puppetry with no height limit, and the new Zootopia show inside the Tree of Life uses 3D glasses and in-theatre effects, so it’s worth a thought for a very sensitive toddler. Wilderness Explorers, a free badge trail with activity stations around the park, gives children something hands-on to do at their own pace.

Avatar Flight of Passage, Pandora’s headline attraction, has a 44-inch minimum, about 112cm, roughly age six and up, and it’s an intense 3D flight simulator with sudden drops and banking that has made some riders motion-sick. Children under seven must ride with someone aged 14 or over. It shouldn’t be assumed to suit young children just because Pandora is a popular part of the park.

The Encanto ride and a new playground are the family draws to come

Encanto is one of the most popular recent Disney films with young children, and this will be the first ride-through version anywhere, not a copy of something already running at another park. For a family whose children know the songs, that will be a real draw once it opens, the way Frozen Ever After became a must-do at Epcot. Disney hasn’t confirmed the ride’s height requirement or how intense it will be, so it’s worth holding off on assuming it’s a toddler ride until that’s known.

The confirmed playground and carousel matter for the same age group in a plainer way. When Disney announced the Boneyard’s closure it committed to a replacement playground rather than dropping the play space, which is the reassuring part for parents. The land is being rebuilt around two big franchise rides, but somewhere for young children to run around and a carousel to ride are still in the plan.

What fans make of it

Reaction to losing DinoLand has been mixed. There’s real sadness at the closure of an opening-day land, DINOSAUR most of all. One widely shared comment came from someone who had loved the ride with a late brother and felt its loss as another piece of him gone. Dedicated fans marked the final day on 1 February 2026 in costume, some dressed as staff of the ride’s fictional Dino Institute for a farewell photo.

Once the Indiana Jones and Encanto plans were public, much of the coverage described fans as ready and excited for what’s next, mostly because both are popular in their own right. Not everyone is sold. A recurring and fair point in the coverage is whether Indiana Jones and Encanto fit Animal Kingdom’s animals-and-nature identity as naturally as dinosaurs, an extinct-animal idea, did. Among parents specifically, the confirmed new playground has been met with relief, read as a sign that young-child play space hasn’t been dropped from the plan. The idea itself isn’t a rushed one, either. Joe Rohde, the Imagineer who led the park’s original design, has said he pitched a Central and South American land for around 15 years before it was approved.

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