The Sword in the Stone at Hong Kong Disneyland has been surrounded by construction walls to be removed and replaced by a new Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statue. A few days ago, Hong Kong Disneyland Ambassador Tony Dick confirmed the Sword in the Stone would be removed.
Disney Magical Kingdom Blog shared photos of the construction walls around the Sword in the Stone’s previous location in Fantasyland.
The Sword in the Stone was located between Cinderella Carousel and the Castle of Magical Dreams. It has been a fixture of Hong Kong Disneyland since it opened in September 2005. A ceremony featuring Merlin from “The Sword in the Stone” was periodically performed as the wizard sought the rightful King of England.
The Sword in the Stone will be replaced with the new Dream Makers statue, and concept art on the construction walls shows the back of the statue as it faces the carousel.
While other Disney Parks usually have their Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statues in front of their castle, this statue will be behind the castle.
Dream Makers honors the moment when Walt, sitting on a bench and watching his daughters on a merry-go-round, dreamed up the idea for Disneyland, hence why it’s next to Cinderella Carousel.
The statue will be unveiled in October.
Walt Disney Statues at Disney Parks
Several Disney Parks feature statues of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. The most famous is the Partners statue created by Blaine Gibson. The original was unveiled in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland on Mickey’s birthday, November 18, 1993. A plaque below it reads, “I think most of all what I want Disneyland to be is a happy place…where parents and children can have fun…together.”
Versions of Partners were eventually installed at Magic Kingdom (1995), Tokyo Disneyland (1998), Walt Disney Studios (2001), and Walt Disney Studios Park, Paris (2002).
Gibson said of the statue, “I chose to depict Walt as he was in 1954. I think that was when [he] was in his prime. It was tough trying to match the media image of Walt Disney, the one the public knows, to the real Walt, the one we knew. I think Walt is admiring the park and saying to Mickey, ‘Look what we’ve accomplished together,’ because truly they were very much a team through it all. ‘Look at all the happy people who have come to visit us today.’”
Gibson also sculpted Sharing the Magic, a statue of Roy O. Disney and Minnie Mouse, which was installed at Magic Kingdom in 1999.
The Storytellers statue, designed by Rick Terry and Ray Spencer, was installed in Disney California Adventure in 2012. Storytellers depicts a younger Walt as he would have looked when arriving in Los Angeles in 1923, and an earlier design of Mickey. Versions were added to Tokyo DisneySea (2013) and Shanghai Disneyland (2016).
The finished Walt the Dreamer statue was unveiled at D23 Expo 2022. It will be installed at the new Dreamers Point in EPCOT. Unlike the other statues, Mickey doesn’t join Walt as part of the Dreamer statue.
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