New aerial photos from bioreconstruct show continued progress along the Haunted Mansion side of the Piston Peak National Park construction site at Magic Kingdom.

Aerial Photos Show Piston Peak Construction Progress

The new Cars-inspired Frontierland expansion is replacing the former Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island.

Notably, it appears that the demolition process is now complete on the Mike Fink keel boats dock, the loading area of the former opening day attraction at Liberty Square.

As we first reported earlier this month, demolition efforts began on the area just outside of the Haunted Mansion entrance, and these photos show a better vantage point of the removal of the dock.

The Mike Fink Keel Boats were an opening day Liberty Square attraction based on Disney’s 1954-1955 Davy Crockett series. During its operation, guests could enjoy a tour of the Rivers of America from a small keelboat, offering a more rustic alternative to the larger Liberty Belle. The boats closed permanently in 2001.

For several years, the upper part of Keel Boat Landing was used as an extended queue for The Haunted Mansion. Construction walls went up around the landing early during Rivers of America demolition.

Imagineering filed a permit in January for “General Construction” at the site of Keel Boat Landing. It contracts MLC Theming, whose specializations include scenic painting, aging of structures, fabricating facades, and carving rock work. 

Haunted Mansion

Refurbishment continues on the Haunted Mansion at the bottom of the photo above. A look behind the guest-facing scrim shows the scaffolding and roofing work, which has been stripped down to the underlayment.

Leveling is beginning to take place on the large dirt mound directly north of the Haunted Mansion, left in the image above.

Piston Peak

This area has been the subject of much of the activity we’ve spotted around the Piston Peak area, as Disney prepares a new walkway connection between the Haunted Mansion and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and a river that will seperate Piston Peak from Frontierland and Liberty Square.

One of the clearest changes visible is the continued development of the large white concrete retaining wall near the former riverbank area that also works its way over to Big Thunder Mountain.

The walls form a stepped or angled shape within the construction zone, with equipment and materials staged nearby. The reopening of Big Thunder Mountain this month has given us another ground-level view of the area in focus here, showing concrete work underway with the retaining walls continuing to grow around the site.

Aerial photos courtesy of bioreconstruct convey the full scale of the project more clearly than from inside the park. The sheer size of the construction zone dwarfs much of the surrounding Frontierland and Liberty Square areas, even as open sections of dirt, heavy equipment, stacked materials, and partially formed concrete sections begin to fill out the graded land.

Piston Peak

The Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island closed permanently last summer to be demolished and transformed into both Piston Peak National Park, as part of Frontierland, and Villains Land.

On the other side of the boardwalk, Westward Ho and Big Al’s will close permanently soon, and construction walls will shift forward.

Villains Land

Villains Land is the next, highly anticipated, and much-rumored Magic Kingdom expansion that Disney announced for a new area of land beyond Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Disney has said the area will center on its classic animated villains and will include two major attractions, dining locations, and new park shops. Later creative updates described the project’s design language as drawing from Art Nouveau influences and what Imagineers called “conjured architecture,” with former Disney animator Andreas Deja consulting on the look and feel.

The sizable park expansions coming to Magic Kingdom are purported to be the “largest ever” based on various comments since the expansions were first teased in 2022 and 2023. The first official details around the new land themes emerged from the 2024 D23 event, confirming the major additions would be themed to Pixar’s Cars and to classic animated Disney Villains.

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