New Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Construction Permit Extended to Late Summer Suggests Delayed Reopening

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is one of Walt Disney World’s biggest ride (re)openings in 2026, and there’s a new sign suggesting that the project has been derailed or delayed. Here’s the latest, along with our commentary and a predicted reopening timeframe.

As basic background, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad closed for a lengthy refurbishment project on January 6th of last year, meaning it’s already been down for over a full year. At the time, they only indicated that wildest ride in the wilderness is planned to reopen in 2026 with a little bit of “new magic.”

In December, Disney finally revealed the opening season for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad as part of Walt Disney World’s 2026 Calendar of Events. In that, Disney indicated that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad reopens in Spring 2026, with “a crevasse-deep to mountain-top refurbishment” in addition to the aforementioned new magic.

For the first ~6 months of the project, construction crews raced around the mountain and the pace of the project was really impressive. Track replacement occurred at lightning (thunder?) speed, displaying a sense of urgency that we hadn’t seen in a while. That resulted in overly-optimistic expectations that the ride would reopen ahead of schedule.

Big Thunder trains have been cycling since November, but as we cautioned at the time when fans started getting excited about the prospects of a “possible” early Christmas return, that did not signal that the reopening was imminent. And in fact, it’s been slow-going since.

The latest development is that Walt Disney World has filed a new construction permit for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This Notice of Commencement was filed by Facility Asset Management (FAM), listing DPR Construction as the contractor, and the vague “general construction” as the scope of the work.

What’s noteworthy about this Notice of Commencement is the expiration date: August 31, 2026. Normally, permits leave the expiration field blank and default to a 1-year expiration. The default is never noteworthy, but shorter or longer ones often are, as they’re extended or reduced purposefully.

Amusingly, a new permit with an expiration of March 4, 2027 would’ve attracted less attention and been less meaningful than this permit with an (earlier) expiration of August 31, 2026. Altered expiration dates often offer clues about timelines, whereas the defaults are almost always meaningless.

Admittedly, this one is a tad more tricky.

Unless the project has been derailed in a major way, it’s unlikely that the reopening of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad has been delayed until the tail end of Summer 2026. And if such a delay has occurred, we would hope that Walt Disney World would offer an update to guests planning trips in the coming months, signaling that the Spring 2026 reopening is off the table.

One possibility is that Disney knows the project is going to continue past the previous permits with expirations of March 13, 2026 and April 15, 2026 that were filed way back in January and April of last year, respectively, but without clarity as to when the work will be done.

It’s possible that they’ve thus elected to kick the can down the road, and are giving themselves a sufficient buffer so that yet another permit doesn’t need to be filed. Maybe they know BTMRR will definitely be done before August, but aren’t completely sure when between mid-April and June is realistic, for instance.

Another is that FAM has backstage facilities work to complete after the ride reopens. It’s notable that this is a FAM permit, as opposed to Walt Disney Imagineering; both have filed Notice of Commencements on the BTMRR project. This one originating from FAM could further reinforce the notion that project ‘clean-up’ work is going to continue even after WDI is done.

Another complicating factor is the nebulous nature of seasons.

Typically, “Disney Spring” (not to be confused with Disney Springs) would mean March, April and maybe the first half of May. Anything before that is winter, whereas Memorial Day through Labor Day is typically summer.

After that is fall, which is usually followed by the holiday season in November and December. That can also be “late ___” (not to be confused with “later in,” which is just any day after today). Disney has sometimes played fast and loose with “winter,” but otherwise, those are typically the Disney Seasons.

It’s also usually the case that major openings are anchored not to the end of a Disney Season, but to the beginning or heart of it. I’m sure there are examples, but I can’t recall the last time a “Spring ___” opening ended up being a date in mid-May. Or that “Summer ____” was in late August. To the extent that type of thing has happened, it’s been due to delays and a race against the clock.

In other words, we’d typically expect a Spring 2026 to be pretty much right now through mid-April.

In the real world, there are a couple of different definitions for spring. There’s the Astronomical Spring, which ends on June 20, 2026, the day before the summer solstice. Then there’s the Meteorological Spring, which ends on May 31, 2026, following the standard three-month block of March, April, and May.

All of this means that if Walt Disney World were to delay the reopening of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad without admitting that they were delaying it, they’d have until June 20, 2026 to do so while still technically satisfying their obligation.

Unless they really wanted to play fast and loose with things, claim they were actually talking about Astronomical Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and announce a reopening date for BTMRR of December 20, 2026. That’d be fun.

Of course, we might give some side eye to any reopening date for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad that happens on or after May 26, 2026. That’s the date of Cool Kids’ Summer; it’s kind of hard to claim that it’s summer on the one hand and spring on the other. Not that we’d put it past them!

All of this is to say that if Big Thunder Mountain Railroad reopens after around Easter, that’ll likely mean it was internally delayed. Even if there’s no official announcement, and mid-April (or later) is still technically spring by the Aztec ritual calendar or whatever.

At this point, all signs are pointing to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad reopening after Easter, which is one month from today, on April 5, 2026. Last we saw, there was still scaffolding up around the mountain itself, and test & adjust of the roller coaster itself still appeared ongoing. To the best of my knowledge, there haven’t even been reports of human riders yet. Hard to imagine reopening is less than 30 days away given all of that, plus this new permit.

On a positive note, new pavement has been spotted in recent days on the Frontierland side of Big Thunder, but it’s unknown what the exit area looks like without updated aerial photos. As of late February, that was still totally torn up (see aerials via @bioreconstruct); Piston Peak and Big Thunder were basically one big, uninterrupted project site.

As we wrote at the time, it feels almost as if the BTMRR project team is in something of a holding pattern until Piston Peak progresses to a certain point. It seems like there’s been less happening around Big Thunder, and Disney hasn’t shared much in the way of updates.

I could be reading too much into this. Last summer, I was concerned about Test Track and wrote an eerily similar post to this. Only 10 days later, Walt Disney World announced a reopening date. Things came together fast in the home stretch of that project.

Pavement and landscaping often happens quickly, transforming what looks like a construction site that’s far away from opening into a finished, guest-ready product fairly fast. Even so, it does not look like Big Thunder is less than a month away from opening.

Ultimately, it’s looking more and more like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is going to miss an Easter reopening. If the new permit and progress are any indication, it could miss it by multiple months.

I’d stop short of speculating about a mid-summer reopening (meaning late June to mid-July, not whatever the Farmer’s Almanac says) for the reasons discussed above. But it does seem possible that the ride will miss its Spring 2026 reopening, if going by the Disney Seasons calendar.

It might even struggle to make the more expansive definitions of Spring 2026 offered by the non-Disney calendars. Failing all else, here’s hoping the reopening of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad still makes the start of Cool Kids’ Summer on May 26, 2026!

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Your Thoughts

When do you expect Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to reopen? What do you think about the lengthy ride refurbishment/reimagining? Hope there’s more “new magic” beyond what’s already been teased? 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!