May was a pretty good Disney month for me! I got to attend the D23 “On the Road” event celebrating A Goofy Movie near my hometown, and then the following weekend it was down to Florida for a quick trip. My companion this time was my dad! Although it was only 3 nights, we had a lot of fun, particularly at Epcot’s Flower and Garden Festival and H2O Glow Nights at Typhoon Lagoon. A few other things we experienced that I’m hoping to have blog posts about soon: a stay at the Swan Reserve, visiting the Muppets Courtyard one last time, dinner at La Hacienda de San Angel, and trying new drinks at Oga’s Cantina. Oh, and my dad tried out the Fantasia mini golf – he promised he’d write a guest post about it!
Disney news
- Perhaps the biggest news from the past month is the announcement of a brand new Disney theme park coming to Abu Dhabi.
- The Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island will officially close on July 7th, so construction for the new Cars-themed area can begin.
- We got some new details about the Pirates of the Caribbean themed lounge coming to Magic Kingdom later this year, including a name: The Beak and Barrel.
- The new nighttime parade, Disney Starlight, will makes its debut in Magic Kingdom on July 20th.
- Dates for this year’s Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party have been announced – the event will occur select nights from August 15th-October 31st.
- Disney Springs’ “Flavors of Florida” returns June 27th – August 10th.
- As part of Disney World’s “Cool Kid Summer,” we’re seeing some fun kid-oriented events at the parks, including Goofy taking over Epcot at Goofycore Hall.
- In California, the fun of Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary celebration is beginning! There are some special things happening, including a number of specialty food and drink items.
- The live action Lilo and Stitch movie premiered over Memorial Day weekend and has been a huge box office success. It’s on track to make over $900 million.
Disney rumors
Epcot // When will Test Track 3.0 open? Disney’s website originally said “late summer 2025,” but now the wording has been changed to just “2025.” That change seems to indicate that they may not make the summer deadline, and we’ll see it in fall instead.
Lightning Lanes // It seems that Disney has increased the number of people in the standby line they allow through compared to the Lightning Lanes. Some are now speculating that this makes the purchase of Lightning Lanes less of a good deal than it was (since the standby lines are shorter).
Magic Kingdom // How much of Villains Land will we actually see? With the project still several years away and the country’s economy in worse shape than when the announcement was made, there are some rumors that we may not see Villains Land in the way it was described – or at all for a longer period of time.
Other Disney blogs
Will you be around for Starlight Parade? Heather at WDW Prep School shares some tips on the best possible spots to watch the parade.
Over at Disney Tourist Blog, Tom shares details about the Character Caravan, which stops by the Disney resorts several times a week for surprise character meets!
Indya at The Small Adventurer has a post on 6 bags to make you feel like you’re in a Disney movie – these would be perfect for disneybounding!
This vintage 1996 Disney World planning video shared by George at ImagiNERDing reminds me of my first trip, back when the castle has a big pink cake!
Still can’t believe I didn’t know Disneybounding was a thing until AFTER I shared that post 😅😂 but makes me feel so much better about how I shop now! Hah! Thank you for including my post 😊
Absolutely!! I bet you could do some great Disney bounding inspired posts in the future!
“The Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island will officially close on July 7th, so construction for the new Cars-themed area can begin.” How do you feel about this, Becky?
I don’t think Tom Sawyer Island got much attention (probably due to the fact that it was difficult to get to), so I’m not that bummed about it, but I’m not particularly excited for Cars either.