The Walls Reach Big Al's: Frontierland Fans Are Watching Piston Peak Take Over More of Magic Kingdom

By entgrove · July 30, 2026

Construction walls for Piston Peak National Park have closed in on the western edge of Frontierland, leaving guests a narrow temporary walkway past Big Al's and the Westward Ho stand. With Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island already gone and the Frontierland railroad station closed, fans are counting what is left of the land.

Frontierland is disappearing in sections. Construction walls for Piston Peak National Park have pushed into the land's western edge, squeezing guests through a narrow temporary walkway near the Big Al's merchandise stand and the Westward Ho snack window, and permit filings suggest even that path may not last long. For fans who grew up with the land, the walls have turned an abstract expansion announcement into a countdown.

What is behind the walls right now

The most visible change is how little room is left to walk. Construction barriers cover large sections around Big Al's and the nearby Westward Ho area, and guests moving between Liberty Square and the back of Frontierland are funneled through a single narrow temporary path. Based on filed permits and how Disney has staged similar projects, that pathway could close before long.

If it does, several pieces of the land go out of sight at once. Big Al's, the open-air merchandise stand named for the droopy-eyed Country Bear, is one of the structures guests associate with Frontierland's early years. Snack kiosks and merchandise locations in the area have been removed as the rework proceeds.

Guests have also raised concern about the small back walkway near Country Bear Musical Jamboree, the sit-down show that reopened in 2024 with a new song list. That path has been a quiet way around the crowd for years, and it sits directly in the construction footprint.

The railroad, the shortcut, and the ways around the crowd

The Walt Disney World Railroad still runs, but not the way it used to. The Frontierland station is closed, so the train operates as a shuttle between Main Street, U.S.A. and Fantasyland rather than a full loop with a Frontierland stop. Anyone who used the train to skip the walk from the front of the park to Splash Mountain's old corner no longer has that option.

The Frontierland boardwalk shortcut is gone too. It was never an attraction, just a quieter bypass along the water that regulars used on busy afternoons, and its loss is one of the changes guests bring up most.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the land's remaining headliner, is down for refurbishment and expected to return in 2026. Work of that kind runs through Walt Disney World's Central Shops, where more than 400 cast members repair and rebuild hundreds of attraction vehicles a year.

What has already gone

The largest losses happened in July 2025, when Rivers of America, the Liberty Square Riverboat and Tom Sawyer Island all closed for good. The waterway had been a centerpiece of that side of the park since opening day, and Tom Sawyer Island was one of the few places in Magic Kingdom where children could run loose without a queue.

Between those closures and the current walls, the practical experience of Frontierland has narrowed to a corridor. Walls, detours and shifting pathways define the land right now more than the Old West theming does.

What Piston Peak National Park is replacing it with

Piston Peak National Park draws on the Rocky Mountains and on Pixar's Cars franchise, and Disney has framed it as a continuation of the American storytelling that Liberty Square and Frontierland have carried since 1971 rather than a break from it.

In its own announcement of the project, Disney wrote:

"At the heart of all these stories are heroic characters with a belief in themselves that helped forge a path to their dreams. To continue this journey in great American storytelling, Piston Peak National Park will be part of the largest expansion in the history of Magic Kingdom."

Disney has also said the new land will "continue the sweeping storytelling tradition that has crossed Liberty Square and Frontierland since opening day." The company has not put a firm opening date on it.

Frontierland's place in Magic Kingdom history

Frontierland was Walt Disney's tribute to the pioneer era, introduced in California in 1955 with riverboats, wilderness trails and frontier towns. Magic Kingdom's version opened with the park in 1971 and built that idea out further, with the river, the island and the mountain range anchoring an entire side of the map.

That is the source of the friction. The land being rebuilt is not a dated attraction with a short queue. It is a fifty-plus-year-old chunk of the park that told, as Walt Disney put it, the story of our country's past.

Why fans are buzzing

Two things are true at once, and that is why the story keeps moving. Piston Peak is a real expansion with real capacity attached to it, and Magic Kingdom has needed capacity on that side of the park for years. It is also being built on top of something people have walked through since they were children, and the walls are going up faster than most guests expected.

For anyone planning a trip before the project finishes, the practical advice is simple. Budget extra time to cross that side of the park, do not count on the Walt Disney World Railroad for anything past Fantasyland, and if there is a corner of Frontierland that matters to you, walk it while the path is still open.