Guests looking to use the walkway leading from Disney’s Contemporary Resort to the Magic Kingdom will notice that a new sidewalk has just opened for guests to use. Construction on the new walkway began back in early November as part of an extension of the current arrival experience enhancements taking place at the entrance to the park, and may be a temporary solution while the new permanent security checkpoint is being built. Let’s take a walk down the path and check out the current state of things.
The pathway still begins over by the crosswalk to the Contemporary.
Now, instead of walking over on the Walk Around The World brick pathway, you take this plain concrete sidewalk over. The new walkway is lined with concrete barriers and some flexible, reflective white and yellow barriers at the top.
The former walkway is no longer visible from this first section, as it’s fenced in by green scrim. Brick removal on the former pathway should be starting up soon and taking place in phases.
The fencing doesn’t reach all the way down, though. This area leading to the security checkpoint just has barricades.
As you can tell from the paint on the ground, the new walkway eats into the street a bit as sections are repurposed for pedestrians to cross. Once past security, though, you loop back into the newly-cemented walkway.
Do be mindful that there is a section without any barriers or barricades, and just a yellow safety line on the path instead.
The path winds all the way up and under the monorail lines as you near the Magic Kingdom.
Work is still ongoing by this turnaround, and things look very unfinished between the mess of barricades, cones, and dirt.
On the final stretch over to the Magic Kingdom, you’re led back onto the former Walk Around the World pathway.
Then finally you spill out onto the entrance area for the Magic Kingdom, which is also vastly under construction for various arrival enhancement projects.
Likewise, if you’re heading from the Magic Kingdom to Disney’s Contemporary Resort, you take this same path. Just keep in mind that it is bound to keep changing as more barriers are added and construction marches on. It is still unknown whether this will simply be a temporary walkway while the Walk Around The World bricks are being removed, or whether this is the established new walkway.
For a full walkthrough of the new pathway, check out the video below:
We’ll be checking in on the progress of this project and more as the entrance to the Magic Kingdom is transformed for decades of future guest use.
would still be nice to see a more convenient way to walk from the bus stops on the opposite side of the lot (like Art of Animations stop) to walk over to Contemporary. Not realizing that we couldn’t, we just walked across the lot instead of all the way around. The gaurs were not very happy. I know I can just walk to the park enterence and take the monorail, but that too seemed out of the way.