‘New Magic’ in Germany Train Garden Brings Back Dreamfinder to EPCOT Early.

Imagineering and Walt Disney World’s Engineering Services Artist Prep team are adding ‘New Magic’ to the Germany Train Garden at EPCOT. Disney shared a series of fun new photos on social media, showcasing the enhancements and Easter Eggs being added to the fan-favorite World Showcase display, including a certain character who will soon be reuniting with Figment in a reimagined Journey Into Imagination on the other side of the park.

The Germany Train Garden is a longtime staple of World Showcase, having made its debut at the 1995 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival. The display was actually intended to be only temporary for that event, but it was so popular attraction that it became a permanent fixture of the Germany pavilion and has changed a lot over the years.

The village in the Germany Train Garden is modeled after a small Bavarian town with town square, homes, shops, and more. It’s set in the countryside, and features a variety of landscaping that includes trees, water, rockwork, and even its own tiny gardens, making for garden-ception. It’s also a lived-in village, with townspeople that are seemingly staged to appear as if they’re real people going about their daily affairs.

Like the EPCOT World Showcase pavilion itself, the Germany Train Village depicts a range of authentic architectural styles in the different buildings. The strongest influences would seem to be the Bavaria region and, specifically, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Guests can explore the village via the park’s ‘Romantic Road’ path, which is named after the route between the Würzburg and Füssen regions in Germany.

Beyond the ‘garden’ part of the display, this wouldn’t be a draw without the trains. There are three that run their own routes through the village, around the landscape, through tunnels out into the countryside before returning to the villages. The railroad uses model trains from the German company, Lehmann Gross Bahn (German for “Lehmann’s Big Train”). LGB introduced G-scale, the standard for garden railways. That scale, per the internet, is 1:22.5.

The Germany Train Garden is ever-changing. Disney decorates the village for the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival and other events with little banners and other Easter eggs unique to the festivals. At Christmas, the streets and buildings are decorated with trees, wreaths and other decor.

Even the inhabitants move around the village, although it’s never been completely clear to us whether this is a purposeful design decision or more haphazard. Squirrels, wind, and rain knock down villagers. Is the maintenance team simply standing them back up at random…or are they envisioning new scenarios for the townspeople? Either way, it’s fun to revisit the Germany Train Garden to see what’s “new” in town.

Now, we’re seeing the biggest changes to the display in years. Walt Disney Imagineering and the Engineering Services Artist Prep team at Walt Disney World have made a major refresh of the Germany Train Garden. We don’t often like to invoke Walt Disney himself to advocate for or against changes, but it’s safe to say that “tinkering with trains” is something that Walt would’ve been firmly in favor of. Let’s take a look at the images WDI has released:

While portions of the old village have been refurbished, our sense is that the display is now more custom, and unique to Walt Disney World.

For instance, the town square has been at least partially replaced by a clock tower and archways based on the entrance to Biergarten Restaurant. The courtyard and fountain now somewhat mirror the adjacent Germany pavilion.

The Germany Train Garden is also the latest “attraction” to get the ole intellectual property injection!

There are new characters and structures from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, including the huntsman and the old hag approaching the Dwarfs’ cottage.

Over on another side of the village, crews are getting to work on the next big EPCOT expansion. Did Thomas Mazloum miss the memo and forget to re-announce the long-awaited Rhine River Cruise at D23?!?

Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but it seems the collective fandom forgets more about the Rhine River Cruise with each passing year. This attraction is not just fan lore or internet urban legend. The attraction was officially announced, was detailed in promotional materials for the opening of EPCOT Center.

The Rhine River Cruise would’ve floated down the Rhine, Tauber, Ruhr, and Isar Rivers on a leisurely boat ride, affording a “visual impression in miniature of the cultural heritage of Germany’s past and highlights of its present.” Locations were to include scenes from the Black Forest, Oktoberfest, Heidelberg, the Ruhr Valley, and elsewhere. Our perception has always been that the Rhine River Cruise would be akin to Storybook Land Canal Boats at Disneyland, except featuring real-world Germany instead of European-inspired animated film locales.

The Rhine River Cruise is also fascinating because work had begun on it before it was cancelled. While we don’t know the full extent of the progress, we do know that the attraction’s entrance (now covered over) was set, and at least part of the show building behind it was constructed. (Per Imagineering Disney, the show building was not constructed in its entirety and it would seem the attraction was cancelled right around 1982.)

Back to the topic at hand, I love that even the construction walls in the Germany Train Garden contain “Please Pardon Our Pixie Dust” signs.

This is a nice touch, and the construction itself works well as a self-aware reference to the many projects around Walt Disney World. Also fun to have a bird’s eye view of the site to track its progress. Makes me feel like a gigantic bioreconstruct!

There’s even a gothic-esque building that reminded me of Phantom Manor at first glance.

Wait a second. Computer…enhance!

It’s Dreamfinder! Less than a week after Neil Patrick Harris and Thomas Mazloum announced that Dreamfinder would be restored to his former glory in Journey Into Imagination, the character has already returned to the Germany Train Garden!!!

Given how light on details this was at D23, I certainly hope this is not what Walt Disney World actually intended with the announcement that “we’re bringing back Dreamfinder!” That would be quite the cruel joke, even if technically accurate to the announcement. (For more, see Dreamfinder & Figment Reunited in Ride Reimagining of Journey Into Imagination at EPCOT!)

Just to be clear, this is not it. Having our own concerns about the verbiage of the announcement, we confirmed with Disney that this is, in fact, an actual reimagining of Journey Into Imagination that’ll bring back Dreamfinder and Figment. It’s likely that the team on the Germany Train Garden has been working on this for months, and had no clue the Dreamfinder announcement was even coming. It’s purely coincidental that we’ll go from zero Dreamfinders in EPCOT to one in World Showcase and one in Future World.

It appears that there are lots of little landscape refreshes to the Germany Train Garden, too.

It seems like the Imagineering and Walt Disney World’s Engineering Services Artist Prep teams working on this had a lot of fun with it, and put a good amount of effort into the restoration and update.

Normally, we wouldn’t draw too much attention to something like an update to the Germany Train Garden, even one like this with ‘New Magic.’ After all, it’s a relatively little thing, and it’s often better to let guests quietly discover these on their own and be pleasantly surprised. Hyping up these small-scale experiences can lead to disappointment.

In this case, though, it seems like Imagineering and Walt Disney World had resources–time and money–to give the Germany Train Garden its first significant update in a while, complete with custom structures and figures. Obviously, this is nothing on par with the announcements at D23, but it’s in the same spirit as much of the fan-forward news.

Investment in the Germany Train Garden isn’t going to sell any vacation packages, but it’s good, fun, and the right thing to do. It takes a ‘temporary’ display that became permanent by popular demand decades ago, and gives it an even greater sense of permanence, along with Disney touches.

We’ve already started to see more projects of this nature over the last year-plus, and it bodes well for the future of Walt Disney World. It’s a little thing in isolation, sure, but the little things add up and are what make a big difference in aggregate.

These little things are why so many of us fell in love with Walt Disney World in the first place, and it is fantastic to see a renewed focus on this type of thing after years of neglecting them. So while we don’t want to overhype the Germany Train Garden as some E-Ticket must-do (because it isn’t), we do want to call attention to this update with ‘New Magic’, give kudos to the teams on it, and make a little request: more like this, Walt Disney World! 

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YOUR THOUGHTS

Are you a fan of the Germany Train Garden at EPCOT? Pleased to see Imagineering and Walt Disney World’s Engineering Services Artist Prep team spend time and money to update it with New Magic? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!