The Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros soft-opened to guests at EPCOT one day before its scheduled reopening, but halted operations due to technical issues.
Gran Fiesta Tour
The refurbished Gran Fiesta Tour boat ride in the Mexico pavilion soft-opened on Friday, March 14. The ride initially closed for refurbishment on January 6, 2025, and is scheduled to officially reopen on Saturday, March 15.
The ride queue was fully packed during the soft opening. Operations have now ceased for the remainder of the day due to technical issues.
According to a Cast Member at the attraction, there is a major issue that needs to be resolved before the official opening tomorrow. Due to this, management has stopped testing the ride to allow maintenance the opportunity to fix the issue.
We observed what appeared to be a problem with the loading and unloading of boats. The boats full of guests seemed to continuously travel to the load area rather than unloading riders at the proper spot.
We were able to take a ride before operations ceased for the day and noticed noticed a few of the animatronics were not working properly. The girl dancer was not dancing at all and one of the boys, whose head typically turns his back towards guests, was stationary.
We also observed that the Marimba players have returned. The two boys had been missing prior to the refurbishment.
The pair can be seen playing the Marimba near the scene where Donald Duck loses his bathing suit. You can see where they were missing at 4:19 in our ride-through POV:
If you’d like to see our experience on the ride today during the failed soft opening, watch our video below:
For the latest Disney Parks news and info, follow WDW News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.