Piston Peak's 19 Foot Model Headlines Four Walt Disney World Lands at Imagineering's D23 Pavilion
Walt Disney Imagineering built its largest D23 pavilion yet, and Walt Disney World takes up a big share of it. Imagineering: Horizons puts a 19 by 19 foot Piston Peak National Park model with the first look at the land's second attraction, Encanto Audio-Animatronics figures from Tropical Americas, Monstropolis critter maquettes and the first physical pieces of the Villains land on display, alongside a new Carousel of Progress gallery.
Walt Disney Imagineering built its largest D23 pavilion yet this year, and a sizable share of the floor belongs to Walt Disney World. Imagineering: Horizons puts a 19 by 19 foot Piston Peak National Park model, Encanto Audio-Animatronics figures from Tropical Americas, painted critter maquettes from Monstropolis and the first physical pieces of the Villains land in one room. A Carousel of Progress display rounds it out with two new costumes and an attraction poster drawn in the style of the 1975 original.
Key Details
- Pavilion: Imagineering: Horizons, at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, which Disney calls the largest pavilion in Imagineering history
- Walt Disney World on display: Carousel of Progress, Tropical Americas, Piston Peak National Park, Monstropolis and the Villains land
- Piston Peak model: 19 by 19 feet, including a first look at the land's second attraction
- Center Stage: more than 30 Imagineer presentations across the weekend
- Staffing: more than 150 Imagineers over the course of the event
- Continues: the Horizons Showcase Imagineering staged in 2024
How the pavilion is laid out
Guests walk in through the Promenade of Progress, a corridor lined with concept art from projects currently under construction across Disney Experiences. The centerpiece is Center Stage, which hosts more than 30 Imagineer presentations over the course of the weekend. Its design copies the 1967 Tomorrowland Terrace stage, which Imagineering has renamed the Tom Morrow-land Terrace Stage for the occasion, and Tom Morrow 2.0, host of Imagineer That! on the Walt Disney Imagineering YouTube channel, turns up there during the event.
Past the promenade, the floor is broken into project bays holding models, maquettes, concept art and interactive displays. Every resort in the portfolio is represented, which is why the pavilion runs so large, but the Walt Disney World bays carry the most new material for Florida guests.
Carousel of Progress gets its own gallery
The Magic Kingdom classic is represented by a display split between Act I and Act IV, the show's 1900s opening and its present-day closing scene. Two new costumes are on show, one from the 1960s scene and one from the future scene, along with two maquettes built at the same scale as those seen on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Disney. Imagineering also produced a new attraction poster inspired by the original, with the Tomorrowland banner and the "from the good old days to the possible future" tagline intact.
The attraction has been running in Tomorrowland since 1975, after debuting at the 1964 New York World's Fair and spending several years at Disneyland. It is the rare Magic Kingdom show that gets more attention the longer it stays open, and a display of this size at a fan event is a reasonable signal that Imagineering is not treating it as a museum piece.
Tropical Americas brings the Encanto figures out
The Animal Kingdom land replacing DinoLand U.S.A. has the most finished-looking display of the Florida group. Guests get a look inside the Encanto attraction, including Audio-Animatronics figures that appear in one of its scenes, and a model of the temple facade for the Indiana Jones attraction going in alongside it. Four sculpts show off the character friends riding the carousel planned for the land.
A 19 foot Piston Peak model, and the second attraction
The Piston Peak National Park model is the largest single object in the Walt Disney World section at 19 by 19 feet, and it carries the reveal fans have been waiting on: a first look at the land's second attraction. The Cars themed area is under construction at Magic Kingdom in the expansion ground beyond Big Thunder Mountain, and until now the public view of it has been concept art and construction walls. A land marquee display featuring a Goat Cart is set up nearby as a photo op.
Monstropolis puts its monster-fied critters on plinths
The Monsters, Inc. land coming to Disney's Hollywood Studios is shown through a mood board of sketches and design renderings that lays out the design inspiration behind the neighborhoods of Monstropolis. The more quotable pieces are the painted maquettes: a monster-fied pigeon, squirrel and rabbit, each given the extra eyes and horns treatment.
The Villains land shows its first physical pieces
The Villains land announced for Magic Kingdom has the smallest footprint in the pavilion, but it is the first time any of it has existed as an object rather than a rendering. Two themed tree sculpts stand in for the atmosphere and visual language Imagineering is developing for the area. That is a thin reveal on paper and a meaningful one in practice, since the land has had almost nothing shown publicly since it was announced.
What else is on the pavilion floor
The rest of the space covers projects at Disney's other resorts. A model of the Avengers Pavilion exterior represents the new Hong Kong Disneyland attraction, and Shanghai street artists painted a custom Spider-Man mural on one wall with a time-lapse of its creation playing nearby. Disney California Adventure is represented by the Avengers Campus expansion model and a Stark Flight Lab ride vehicle maquette, plus a queue rendering and a Hector sculpt for the Coco attraction, where guests can write a Disneyland memory on a card that gets turned into soil for the planters at the attraction queue. Also on display: rockwork and ride vehicle models for the Avatar destination, progress on Tokyo Disneyland's Wreck-It Ralph attraction, which expands the Sugar Rush world with 12 original confectionary characters created with Walt Disney Animation Studios, Tokyo's new Space Mountain design model and plaza icon, and a black light study model of the Lion King attraction under construction at Disney Adventure World in Paris. Two Star Wars displays, a food speeder marquee and an Anzellan Creature Workshop scene, sit on the floor without an attached project announcement.
What this means for Walt Disney World guests
Four Walt Disney World lands are being built at once, and until this weekend none of them had been shown as physical models the public could walk around. Piston Peak and the Villains land are rising beyond Big Thunder Mountain at Magic Kingdom, Tropical Americas is replacing DinoLand U.S.A. at Animal Kingdom, and Monstropolis is planned for Disney's Hollywood Studios, so the layouts on these tables are the clearest read yet on how the finished areas will fit together. Anyone not in the room can follow the reveals through Walt Disney Imagineering's own channels, where the presentations from Center Stage tend to surface after the event.
