A Tower Crane Now Stands Over Piston Peak, and Part of Cars Ridge Run Rally Will Sit Underground
The tower crane at the Piston Peak National Park construction site in Magic Kingdom now stands at full height, on the base and foundation poured back in July, and aerial video taken September 20 says what it is for: building Cars Ridge Run Rally, part of which will sit below ground level. The same pass shows Villains Land trenched for infrastructure. Disney has still announced no opening date.
A tower crane now stands over the Piston Peak National Park construction site at Magic Kingdom, and the aerial video that revealed it came with the answer to what it is there for: building Cars Ridge Run Rally, part of which will sit below ground level. The same pass over the park shows the ground where the Rivers of America used to be as one continuous dirt field, with fresh excavations opened across the Villains Land half of the site.
What the crane is for
The crane's base and its concrete foundation went in back in July. Assembly started in early September, with a mobile crane lifting the blue tower sections into place one at a time, and the tower now stands at full height near the middle of the site. Tower cranes stay put: once one is up it works for years rather than months, lifting steel and bulky prefabricated sections to the top of whatever is going up beneath it.
The job it was brought in for is now on the record. Posting aerial video of the site on September 20, 2026, the aerial photographer bioreconstruct wrote that a tower crane "was recently added to build Cars Ridge Run Rally" and that "some of the attraction will be underground," and that Villains Land is carrying "many excavations" for infrastructure. The underground portion is the first public detail about how the ride sits in the ground, and it fits the site: the whole basin is below the level of the walkway, so a ride built into it starts life below grade rather than on it.
Key Details
- Project: Piston Peak National Park, a Cars themed expansion of Frontierland at Magic Kingdom
- Now: tower crane assembled and standing, on a base and concrete foundation that went in during July
- Its job: building Cars Ridge Run Rally, part of which will sit below ground level
- Attractions: Cars Ridge Run Rally and Miss Fritter's Daredevil Spin-Along
- Replaces: the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island, both permanently closed
- Opening date: not announced
The wall along the promenade is the outline of the water
The most legible thing on the site from ground level is a poured concrete retaining wall running along the Frontierland and Liberty Square promenade, across from the entrance to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. It is there because the basin that held the Rivers of America sits below the level of the walkway, so the new land needs a hard edge against the old one.
That wall is also a preview. Disney's own description of the land puts rugged mountains with dramatic peaks along a calming waterway across from Grizzly Hall, which is the stretch the wall follows, so its line is roughly where the creek running through Piston Peak National Park will go, with the mountain and the show building it conceals rising on the Liberty Square side.
What has to happen next is unglamorous. Grading and infill, pipework and utilities, then formed and poured foundations, and only after that does steel start rising above the construction walls. The crane going up is the equipment arriving ahead of that work, not the work itself.
What Disney has said Piston Peak will be
Two attractions anchor the land. Cars Ridge Run Rally is the headliner, a race that climbs Piston Peak to a snow covered summit, drops into a camelback descent, crosses a geyser field and finishes by circling the Old Tankfull geyser while Lightning McQueen and Mater call the action on Racing Sports Network. Its vehicle was designed, in Disney's phrasing, not to simulate an off-road car but to be one. Michael Hundgen, vice president creative for Walt Disney World, told the D23 audience that guests will "feel every bump, drop, and rock because this vehicle's tires and suspension are truly driving over and reacting to them."
Miss Fritter's Daredevil Spin-Along is the family scaled companion, built around a school bus sized animatronic of the Diva of Demolition from Cars 3 hosting her own demolition derby. Around both rides Disney has described a visitor lodge, a Ranger HQ and trails, drawn in the National Park Service building style the company calls Parkitecture, with trees screening the rally from the rest of Frontierland and Liberty Square. A 225 square foot model of the whole thing went on display at D23.
The land replaces the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island. Both closed permanently in July 2025, along with the Liberty Square Riverboat, ending a piece of Magic Kingdom that had been in place since the park opened in 1971. That is the trade at the heart of this project, and it is why a crane assembly draws the attention it does: the thing being built is going up on ground a lot of guests are still mourning.
Villains Land is being trenched
The far larger half of the site is no longer sitting untouched. The September 20 video shows many separate excavations opened across the Villains Land footprint for infrastructure, which is the stage that comes well before anything vertical.
Disney confirmed the name at D23 and described two major attractions, a Maleficent coaster and a dark ride hosted by the Magic Mirror, plus dining and shopping, all growing out of a wishing well corrupted by a wish evil enough to break the stone open and spread poisoned magic through the forest. The company compared the size and scale of Villains Land to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, and said Piston Peak National Park will be part of the largest expansion in the history of Magic Kingdom. Neither project has a construction timeline or an opening date attached.
What changed on the ground in Frontierland
Anyone who has walked this side of the park in the last year has watched it narrow. Construction walls run the length of the promenade and the waterfront boardwalk sits inside that boundary; scaffolding came off the boardwalk itself in the first week of September, and Disney has not said whether it gets refurbished and handed back or torn out and rebuilt on a new line to give the creek more room. Several small Frontierland fixtures have gone in the meantime: Disney's own Magic Kingdom dining and shopping listings no longer carry Westward Ho or Big Al's, and both venue pages now redirect to the area lists.
The Walt Disney World Railroad has been running a shortened shuttle between the Main Street, U.S.A. and Fantasyland stations rather than its full circuit of the park, and Disney's attraction page says the train closes entirely on September 28 for routine refurbishment and is expected to reopen in November 2026. The same page adds the line worth holding onto: Disney expects the train to return to normal operations when the expansion of Magic Kingdom is complete. The shuttle is not a refurbishment side effect, it is the shape of the railroad until this project is finished.
The Buzz
Construction watchers have tracked this site since the Rivers of America drained, and a tower crane is the milestone the community has been waiting on. The aerial video answered the two things fans have argued about all year: whether the project is actually moving, and what the crane is for. Getting a specific attraction name attached to it, plus the detail that part of Cars Ridge Run Rally will be underground, gave both camps something concrete to work with.
Foundations come next, and the board still shows no opening date
Settled today: the tower crane is up, its base and foundation went in during July, it was added to build Cars Ridge Run Rally, part of that ride will sit below ground level, and Villains Land is being trenched for infrastructure. Not settled: Disney has announced no opening date for Piston Peak National Park, no phasing between its two attractions, nothing at all about when Villains Land starts building upward, and no timeline for when the walls along the western edge of Frontierland come down.
For a trip this autumn, plan Frontierland around a smaller footprint and a train on a shortened route that stops running entirely from September 28. The crane is good news for the years ahead. It changes nothing about the walk from Liberty Square to Big Thunder this year.