Big Thunder Nears the Finish Line and Passholders Get a Summer Oasis

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Updates Near Completion

The wildest ride in the wilderness is getting closer to reclaiming that title. WDW News Today reports that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad updates are nearing completion at Magic Kingdom, with the ride queue now undergoing final touches. For a park in the middle of its most aggressive transformation in decades, this is the project that matters most to the largest number of guests right now. Big Thunder is one of Magic Kingdom's foundational attractions, and every week it stays behind construction walls is a week the park's Frontierland corridor feels incomplete.

The timing matters. With the Liberty Belle Riverboat relocated to a backstage service marina and Rivers of America drained to make way for the forthcoming Cars Land expansion, Frontierland has been operating at reduced capacity for months. A finished Big Thunder gives Magic Kingdom back one of its signature draws and restores a critical piece of the guest flow puzzle in that section of the park. WDW News Today's recap also highlighted a new Disney patent showing how AI could soon improve ride safety and load times, a development worth watching as the resort continues modernizing its operations infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Liberty Belle itself remains intact. Inside the Magic noted that fresh aerial images from bioreconstruct confirm the riverboat is still afloat in a backstage service marina north of Disney's Contemporary Resort, where it has sat since August 2025. Online speculation that Disney had already dismantled the vessel appears to have been premature. The Walt Disney Company has not commented on the boat's future, but its physical condition suggests no final decision has been made. For fans attached to the Liberty Belle's legacy, that silence is at least better than a farewell.

The Parks

Walt Disney World is handing Annual Passholders a genuine perk this summer, and it involves air conditioning, free snacks, and Moroccan mint tea. BlogMickey reports that Restaurant Marrakesh in EPCOT's Morocco Pavilion will reopen as an exclusive Passholder Lounge from May 1 to July 31, 2026, available daily from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM. The lounge, part of the V.I.PASSHOLDER Summer Days activation, will offer complimentary snacks, water, and tea, along with a free Passholder button and a new Disney PhotoPass Service Animated Magic Shot. In the middle of a Florida summer, a cool, quiet retreat reserved just for Passholders is the kind of loyalty gesture that actually registers.

Bluey continues its takeover of both coasts. Disney Parks Blog announced a wave of new Bluey merchandise heading to Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World, including a booster pin set, Create-Your-Own headbands, and character plush wearing their own detachable Mickey Mouse Ear headbands. Disneyland will be first to stock the collection later this spring, with Walt Disney World following ahead of the debut of "Bluey's Wild World" at Conservation Station in Disney's Animal Kingdom, which Disney Parks Blog confirms opens May 26. The merch features park-specific logos and designs showing Bluey and Bingo alongside fireworks, balloons, and Mickey ice cream bars. Sweatshirts, hats, hip packs, backpacks, and bubble wands round out the lineup.

Saturday's weather at Walt Disney World delivered a masterclass in how a single thunderstorm can reshape an entire evening across four parks. Lightning Brain's daily park report captured the chaos in detail. The storm swept through around 5:05 PM, forcing six outdoor attractions to clear their queues simultaneously. At Magic Kingdom, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Tiana's Bayou Adventure, both Walt Disney World Railroad stations, Jungle Cruise, and Space Mountain all went down within a 15-minute window starting at 5:15 PM. Space Mountain stayed offline for 115 minutes. The result was a 5:00 PM peak hour with a 25-minute median wait, not from late-arriving crowds but from the same crowd compressed into half the operating attractions.

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Hollywood Studios led the day at 7/10 (Heavy) crowd level with a 43-minute median wait. Magic Kingdom registered 6/10 (Average) despite a softer 17-minute median, a quirk of its low baseline. EPCOT settled at 5/10 (Average) with a 19-minute median, and Animal Kingdom came in at 4/10 (Moderate), the easiest park to tour all day at a 28-minute median, until Expedition Everest went down at 3:50 PM for 135 minutes and the rain took out Kali River Rapids, Gorilla Falls, and Maharajah Jungle Trek for the better part of an hour.

For those planning around the numbers rather than the weather, Disney Food Blog's weekly wait time report offers some encouraging data. Wait times across Walt Disney World fell this past week, with only two attractions topping 70 minutes: Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at 75 and Test Track at 71. At Magic Kingdom, TRON Lightcycle / Run averaged 65 minutes, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train dropped to 49, and Tiana's Bayou Adventure sat at a manageable 33. Over at Disney's Animal Kingdom, Avatar Flight of Passage averaged 49 minutes and Zootopia: Better Zoogether clocked just 13. The Flower and Garden Festival is in full swing at EPCOT, but you wouldn't know it from the queues. These are some of the more comfortable touring conditions guests have seen in recent memory.

Over at Disneyland, MickeyBlog spotlighted new merchandise arrivals in Downtown Disney, including a Rainbow Disney Vacation Club collection at the Fantasia Shop in the Disneyland Hotel. The collection features Minnie Ears at $36.99 and a matching crossbody bag at $39.99, both in a repeating rainbow DVC pattern with silver DVC Mickey decorations. The D-Lander Shop, meanwhile, has picked up the Checkered Mickey Her Universe Collection, including a cream jacket with a gray-and-white Mickey design at $79.99 and a matching cardigan. MickeyBlog notes the Checkered Mickey line has already appeared on the East Coast.

The Screen

The Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special has proven that nostalgia, when executed with genuine affection, still moves the needle. The Walt Disney Company reports that the special notched 6.3 million views in just three days after its March 24 premiere on Disney+ and Hulu. Even more striking, the entire Hannah Montana catalog saw a near 1,000% increase in views that same week. Disney Legend Miley Cyrus, who returned to perform "This Is the Life" and "The Climb" at the taping at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood, credited a piece of advice from Dolly Parton for making it happen: "Start promoting something before it's real, because then as people get excited, it'll be easier to make it happen." Cyrus said she pitched the idea to Disney after building public enthusiasm for a special that didn't yet exist. The original series, which premiered on Disney Channel in 2006, spawned 14 platinum and 18 gold albums worldwide and has amassed more than half a billion hours streamed globally on Disney+ to date.

Disney's streaming nostalgia strategy continues to pay dividends on another front. D23 announced that Wizards Beyond Waverly Place will return for a third and final season this summer on Disney+, Disney Channel, and Disney Channel On Demand. The news comes with a significant creative escalation: executive producer Selena Gomez will make her directorial debut with the premiere episode and will reprise her role as Alex Russo in multiple episodes. Jennifer Stone returns as Harper, and Gregg Sulkin is back as fan-favorite Mason Greyback. D23 describes the concluding run as a four-part event in which Billie, played by Janice LeAnn Brown, must reunite with her long-lost father to rescue her mother and defeat the evil plaguing the Russo family. The series also stars David Henrie, Alkaio Thiele, Max Matenko, Taylor Cora, and Mimi Gianopulos.

On the Pixar side, The DisInsider reports, citing Deadline, that Ellen DeGeneres will reportedly voice Dory again in a new Pixar short film. According to reports, the short is still in development and would mark DeGeneres's most high-profile return since The Ellen DeGeneres Show wrapped in 2022.

The Vault

Mickey Mouse has been a fashion icon for the better part of a century. Now Disney is making that status official with a multi-year designer initiative in partnership with Vogue, announced ahead of Mickey's 100th anniversary. Disney Experiences reports that Vogue contributing editor Mark Holgate has identified a roster of designers known for boundary-pushing aesthetics and cultural impact to reinterpret Mickey through their distinct creative lenses. Each will have access to Disney's archives, exploring vintage silhouettes, graphics, and storytelling as inspiration.

Ami Paris founder and creative director Alexandre Mattiussi will be the first to launch, with his collection arriving in early 2027. "Working with Disney on the road to Mickey's 100th anniversary feels both surreal and deeply personal," Mattiussi said. Lisa Baldzicki, President of Disney Consumer Products, framed the initiative as an effort to honor "Mickey Mouse's legacy as a cultural symbol while inviting new interpretations that reflect how he continues to inspire creativity and style around the world."

In a quieter corner of the Disney universe, real science is happening on a private island. DCL Blog highlighted a story from the Disney Conservation Fund's 30th anniversary series about ornithology research at Disney Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point in the Bahamas. Disney's Animals, Science, and Environment team at Disney Cruise Line is using 3D-printed models of the Great Lizard-Cuckoo to advance biodiversity research. It is a small story in scale but a meaningful one in spirit. Walt Disney famously loved animals and nature filmmaking. The idea that a cruise line destination is doubling as a field research station, using technology Walt could never have imagined, feels like exactly the kind of legacy project that earns its place in The Vault.

Sources

WDW News Today · Lightning Brain · Disney Food Blog · BlogMickey · Disney Parks Blog · MickeyBlog · Inside the Magic · The Walt Disney Company · D23 · The DisInsider · Disney Experiences · DCL Blog