Tom Sawyer Island Demolition Accelerates as Magic Kingdom Gears Up for Cars Construction

Walt Disney World is gearing up for construction on the Piston Peak ‘Cars’ land, with backstage clearing continuing and even more demolition now occurring on Tom Sawyer Island. The latest aerial photos reveal just how much is already gone, what appears to be next on the chopping block, and progress on the laydown yards.

Let’s start by bringing you up to speed with what’s changed between our last update in early September and today. The biggest difference is that the Scaffolding Rising in the Riverbed of America is now fully finished and covered by scrim. This effectively blocks regular guest views of the demolition. Emphasis on regular guest views because there are still elevated perches for intrepid reporters to get glimpses above the walls.

The other development is that the Rivers of America is now fully drained, as crews have won their ‘battle’ against Mother Nature with the assistance of industrial water pumps. Of course, storm season is still here for another couple of months, so rainy days can result in some puddling, but the basin is drained, and construction equipment has been on site in the riverbed for a while now.

Some fans found it interesting that Walt Disney World chose to drain the Rivers of America during storm season and “fight” Mother Nature as opposed to waiting a few months from now. The most likely explanation is that this work is being dictated by project timelines. Disney has a deadline for Piston Peak in order to ensure its annual expansion cadence, and simply could not start any later. And unlike 2020-2024, they’re now serious about expansion and have a greater sense of urgency.

It’s also worth noting that a couple of other past Rivers of America drainings and refurbishments also started in August or September. So it’s not as if Imagineering was clueless about storm season when determining the timeline for this project–this expansion is being driven by a Florida-based team, so they’re familiar with rain. For whatever reason, Disney has historically favored this time of year for work on the Rivers of America.

With views from ground-level now mostly blocked, we take to the skies above Magic Kingdom for a glimpse over the construction walls. These overhead photos & video come courtesy of eye in the sky photos from friend-of-the-site bioreconstruct, the go-to source for aerial theme park photography (a highly recommended follow who graciously provided the helicopter shots here)…

Let’s start with a high-level establishing shot.

If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, that’s Magic Kingdom in the middle with the Grand Floridian and Contemporary flanking it at the top. The lower right shows the area to the northwest of the park, which is where a couple of the large laydown yards are located. There’s a lot of land cleared in the photos–tremendous progress has been made in the last few months, most of which is not visible from inside Magic Kingdom.

As a bonus, the far right shows the new routing of Floridian Way–that’s a major multi-year project we haven’t really covered because roads don’t seem to get the people going (in a hyped up sense–they do get people going in a literal sense).

If some of this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve covered it extensively as part of the permitting process for this project over the course of the last ~11 months. All of this is precisely what the State of Florida was concerned with as they made Imagineering file, clarify, modify, etc. the project plans. It wasn’t over the substance of the additions–they weren’t hot and bothered by eye cars in Frontierland, it was all about water management.

As a refresher, the permit for all of this was issued by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) in Winter 2025, giving Imagineering until February 17, 2030 to redevelop the area. The underlying SFWMD permit is massive in scale and scope, encompassing over 300 acres around Magic Kingdom and beyond.

That’s despite the actual project site only being about 14 acres. What we see in these aerial photos is the impact to the other ~286 other acres that will not be home to Lightning McQueen, Mater and their pals.

Taking a closer and more overhead aerial view, we can see one full gravel laydown yard and portions of another that will be adjacent to the project site. These are in low-lying areas to the northwest of the Rivers of America, necessitating additional work to establish usable gravel laydown yards in the first place.

There will be three gravel laydown yards in total around the northwestern perimeter of Magic Kingdom. Two will be located beyond the berm, meaning outside of Magic Kingdom guest areas, with the third laydown yard within Magic Kingdom along the northwestern banks of what’s currently the Rivers of America (far left, heading just out of frame). These gravel laydown yards will be used for construction equipment, heavy machinery, materials staging, earth-moving, etc.

Here’s how this looked back in late June:

As you can see, major progress has been made since Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island closed. The final staging area and project site has had most of its trees removed, and is catching up to the others.

As you might recall, Walt Disney Imagineering filed construction permits to install trailers with an address corresponding to a backstage area behind Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in Magic Kingdom. Imagineering field offices and parking will consume a big portion of this particular laydown yard. This is now taking shape, as you can see in comparing the two photos (the two-section L shaped building in the previous photos from mid-October).

This is very similar permits for a trailer park and staging area behind Kali River Rapids in support of the Tropical Americas project last spring. They also repurposed the former Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser behind Disney’s Hollywood Studios into field offices for the Monstropolis expansion there.

Here’s a closer look at the former Rivers of America, which is in the process of being demolished.

The left half of this will become the Piston Peak ‘Cars’ land, while the area that’s beyond Big Thunder will become Villains Land. That’s the portion of this project that is true park expansion.

Zooming in a bit, here’s the portion of the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island within the normal field of view inside Magic Kingdom.

This also shows the scaffolding and scrims that are up along the Rivers of America waterfront promenade. These are in the drained riverbed, so the “shortcut” walkway to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and Big Thunder remains open for now. There are other areas of proper construction walls along the rest of the waterfront.

One thing you might notice has been demolished is Superstition Bridge (lower left). Here’s the before:

This lengthy bridge previously connected the southern section of Tom Sawyer Island with another island to the north that housed Fort Langhorn. This was one of my favorite spots on Tom Sawyer Island thanks to views like this one.

It’s unclear when this was demolished, as construction walls line this area and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is still closed for refurbishment. It wasn’t until these latest aerial photos that we had confirmation of its removal.

Speaking of Fort Langhorn, it’s also gone. See the yellow arrow in the center of the above photo.

Superstition Bridge was to the right of that and the backstage clearing for the Villains Land project site is in the far lower left. Based on what Walt Disney World has released thus far, Fort Langhorn stood more or less at the entrance to Villains Land.

This is also right around where a new walkway will connect Big Thunder to Haunted Mansion.

We expect that to be a high-priority over the next few months while Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is still closed for its year-plus refurbishment. The walkway definitely will not be completed during that time–it wouldn’t make sense to do so, as it’d block access to the Cars construction site. We do expect prep-work to begin on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad side since it’ll be easier to accomplish that while the roller coaster is closed.

Here’s a closer look at the demolished Fort Langhorn:

Now that Walt Disney World is clearly at the demolition stage of Tom Sawyer Island, we’d expect other landmarks to be gone in the coming days and weeks. As noted above, there’s clearly a sense of urgency with this project. Expect the two mills, Harper’s Mill and Potter’s Mill, to be long gone before Christmas.

To this point, it appears that heavy equipment is station to take out Aunt Polly’s Restaurant next:

These photos were shot by bioreconstruct over the weekend, so it’s entirely possible that even more will be rubble if you’re in Magic Kingdom in the coming days for fall break. And all of these icons are visible from Haunted Mansion, elevated walkways in Liberty Square, and the top of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.

Ultimately, it’s good to see these ‘Beyond Big Thunder’ projects kicking into high gear ahead of the holidays. This further underscores that Walt Disney World did not just choose to close the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island this summer to save on operating expenses. From the above aerial photos, it’s very clear that serious work has already happened, with more on-stage demolition and infill to come.

I still don’t love this idea (see Why the Rivers of America is Worth Saving), but it’s going to happen and there’s nothing we fans can do to change the course of this Piston Peak project except at the margins. Accordingly, I would love nothing more than for the former Rivers of America to be unrecognizable by January 2026, and cranes appearing on site to commence vertical construction. Get this done quickly to minimize the guest impact and have Piston Peak open ASAP.

It’s sad to see Tom Sawyer Island reduced to rubble. But that’s inevitable at this point, and guests aren’t enjoying it anyway. It would be far worse to start all of this slowly, only for budget cuts and delays to turn this into the Magic Kingdom Dirt Pit for the next 5 years. We already endured that at EPCOT for one aggressively mediocre (to put it charitably) outcome; we cannot have the same at Magic Kingdom.

These Cars and Villains land projects need to be home runs. They cannot be anything less than incredible. It would be tragic for Disney to sit on its hands for a few years, only to have the best part of the project–Villains Land–fall through due to the delays. The second phase of Disney projects is infamous for never happening, and that’s usually because work doesn’t start until the first phase is open. I’m glad that is not happening here.

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Your Thoughts

Thoughts on Disney demolishing Tom Sawyer Island and moving forward on the massive laydown yards behind Magic Kingdom? Excited or disappointed that the Piston Peak National Park is replacing Rivers of America? Given that this is going to happen regardless at this point, do you hope it’s full steam ahead so we don’t have to endure a repeat of the Giant EPCOT Dirt Pit fiasco? 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!