Disney World Prepares to Close Frontierland Shortcut

Magic Kingdom will soon have more construction walls. The culmination of a months-in-the-making project, the Frontierland boardwalk has been removed from Walt Disney World maps as the remainder of the shortcut will soon close. Here’s the latest piece of the puzzle on this work adjacent to the Piston Peak and Villains Land sites.

This saga started when Walt Disney World filed construction permits in mid-February for three separate food & beverage and merchandise locations along the Frontierland thoroughfare: Big Al’s (merchandise), as well as Westward Ho and Churro Wagon Cart (both snack stands). Those permits are assigned to Buena Vista Construction Company as the contractor, which is Walt Disney World’s in-house team.

The permits corroborated rumors that these kiosks were slated for demolition. Further reinforcing those rumblings of the kiosk demolition, the three venues were removed from the My Disney Experience digital map way back in March. Shortly thereafter, construction walls started inching out into Frontierland. It seemed that the days were limited for these longstanding Magic Kingdom staples, and that they’d soon be extinct.

That didn’t happen. Spring Break came and went, and Shoulder Season arrived. The kiosks were still kicking, despite the absence from digital maps. Then back at the very end of April, quiet calendar changes were made signaling that these venues would finally close. And in fact, Big Al’s did close on May 11th, and Westward Ho followed suit a few weeks ago, on June 22nd.

Ironically enough, Walt Disney World has now signaled another closure ahead of it actually happening with the removal of the Frontierland shortcut from the digital map:

The only part of the shortcut that remains on the map is the Big Thunder bypass. The rest has been replaced by even more trees, adding to the lush forest that exists only in the digital realm. In real life, this looks like a massive crater, and is quite jarring from the Big Thunder queue.

Also in real life, a portion of the Frontierland shortcut already closed last month. It has been our expectation that the rest would follow suit shortly after the closure of the aforementioned kiosks, and we’ve frankly been surprised that it’s taken so long.

Of course, removal from the digital map doesn’t mean that closure of the Frontierland boardwalk is imminent. There was a big gap between the removal of the kiosks from the map and their actual closure. But my expectation is that it’ll happen faster this go-round, especially with the kiosks out of the picture. That had multiple moving parts, whereas the closure of the shortcut is straightforward.

If you’re wondering why the Frontierland shortcut is closing, it’s due to construction creeping closer to guest areas.

Aerial photos (below) via friend-of-the-site @bioreconstruct reveal progress on the vertical concrete retaining wall that’ll separate the new Piston Peak National Park landscape from the existing Frontierland. This has grown quite tall over by Big Thunder Mountain, and there’s a crane positioned along the promenade.

As work progresses on this further, construction of the retaining wall is going to get very close to the promenade. Probably a bit too close to guest areas for the comfort of Disney Legal. There’s also the big unknown of whether Walt Disney World is going to replace and rebuild the waterfront boardwalk as part of the project.

The good news is that we know this walkway, or a version of it, will exist again in the future. The Fun Map of Piston Peak that Walt Disney World previously released confirms that there’s a rushing river that runs between Frontierland and Piston Peak National Park, along with a waterfront promenade.

It wouldn’t be the least bit surprising for Disney to tear out this waterway out of necessity during construction, and rebuild a new walkway in its place, or even slightly closer to the Frontierland thoroughfare to free up a bit more space for the stream (which was seemingly added to the project later).

I wouldn’t rule that out, as Walt Disney World seems to enjoy rebuilding substantially similar structures, but my best guess is that the primary driver of the likely walkway closure is simply that construction will soon get too close to a guest area. Consequently, Disney needs to close this walkway temporarily out of liability or whatever concerns until construction progresses past a certain point.

This also explains the closure of Big Al’s, Westward Ho and Churro Wagon Cart. As we’ve explained previously, these are all pieces to the same puzzle. When Operations loses the Frontierland shortcut, they’ll need a new walkway as an offset.

The existing boardwalk is more than a peaceful promenade or fun Frontierland shortcut; it’s important for crowdflow. That’s precisely why Walt Disney World left it open after everything else closed last July. It wasn’t as a “courtesy” to intrepid bloggers so we could document the circle of life as Ibis ate long lost MagicBands; that was just a happy accident.

The real reason was because the Frontierland shortcut is needed as a bypass corridor for Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away, Festival of Fantasy, and other parades. Meaning that if it closes to accommodate construction, the Parade Audience Control (PAC) team needs an alternative route to wave through guests behind parade viewing.

This is doubly true now that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad has reopened and there are two E-Ticket attractions on the “wrong” side of the parade route. (As an aside, eliminating this dead end is one of the crowdflow goals of this expansion, and why there will be a large walkway separating Piston Peak and Villains Land that connects Haunted Mansion to BTMRR.)

With both Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and BTMRR back there, PAC needs to offer a guest flow corridor along that side of Frontierland, which also connects all the way to Haunted Mansion and Fantasyland. Requiring guests to cross to Adventureland during parade breaks would make the path much longer and more convoluted, and Walt Disney World clearly doesn’t want to go that route.

Removing the kiosks will free up space behind parade viewing, which can then be used as a temporary bypass. That, in turn, enables Walt Disney World to take the Frontierland shortcut offline to accommodate construction. Given this, the fact that Westward Ho still hasn’t been removed might be the one impediment to closing the Frontierland shortcut ASAP.

This wouldn’t be the first time in the last year that we’ve seen a project of (loosely) this nature in Magic Kingdom, either! One of the big fan controversies last spring was the changes Walt Disney World made to the Emporium, which made it feel emptier, among other things. That was also for a makeshift Starlight bypass.

Ultimately, this news is a bit bittersweet. This boardwalk is one of my favorite places in all of Magic Kingdom. At the same time, Walt Disney World preserved it as long as possible–long after the rest of the project started–and we had plenty of time to say our goodbyes.

Not only that, but with scrim and walls up on both sides, it’s not like the shortcut is anything peaceful or even pleasant at this point, anyway. It’s strictly utilitarian; a means of bypassing crowds when parades are running. It’s not even good for construction photos since the scrims are so high! I won’t miss the boardwalk as it presently exists, and look forward to the next iteration debuting.

One of my original hangups with this whole Cars project was losing the waterfront and this walkway. The big reassurance offered by the Fun Map and last year’s Piston Peak reveal was that Walt Disney World was preserving the peaceful promenade and the ambiance it added while walking past the main drag of Frontierland.

Bigger picture and longer term, my worry is about the size of the stream, or the Creek of Piston Peak. Fun Maps have exaggerated features, and there wasn’t much of a visible water feature in the original art. So either it’s concealed in that art, something changed, or the Fun Map isn’t true to life. My fear is that the rushing river shown in that art is actually a tiny trickle.

My hope here is for whatever outcome produces the widest waterway along a peaceful promenade. I’m not particularly concerned with how that’s accomplished or what changes are made to accommodate construction in the next couple of years. Here’s hoping that more is revealed at the 2026 D23 Expo, at which point we will hopefully have more than just a Fun Map of Piston Peak!

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Your Thoughts

Thoughts on the closing of the Frontierland shortcut? What about losing Big Al’s, Westward Ho and Churro Wagon Cart? Will you be disappointed if/when the peaceful promenade closes? Or is it already not-so-peaceful with the crane and construction looming nearby? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!