Four Disney World Changes to Plan Around This Month

Hollywood Studios gains an attraction on 14 September. Magic Kingdom loses one on 28 September. In between, the app that ran the queue games shuts down for good. Four changes land inside a few weeks of each other, and each one shifts where guests will be standing.

Here is what has actually been announced, and what each change means for a touring day.

1. The Magic of Disney Animation opens 14 September

Disney has confirmed that The Magic of Disney Animation opens at Disney's Hollywood Studios on 14 September 2026, in the official Walt Disney World press release. The experience takes over the former Star Wars: Launch Bay space, inside the area now reimagined as The Walt Disney Studios — previously Animation Courtyard (Disney Parks Blog, WDWMAGIC).

The building draws on the Roy E. Disney Animation Building in Burbank, and includes an Audio-Animatronics Olaf drawing class, character meet-and-greets and a dedicated theatre for the Emmy-winning short Once Upon a Studio (Disney Parks Blog).

Why it matters for your day. Hollywood Studios has the least slack of any Disney park. Its park-wide average climbs from 18.4 minutes at 8am to 37.1 at 12pm — the worst hour running 102% above the best — and it holds exactly one attraction that averages under ten minutes: Star Tours – The Adventures Continue, at 5.7. Everything else starts at 13.8 and goes up.

A walk-through-style attraction dropping into the middle of that park is a genuine midday relief valve, and it lands on the Animation Courtyard side rather than in Toy Story Land or Sunset Boulevard, where the queues already are. Whether it stays low-wait once the opening crowds pass is a separate question, and one nobody can answer yet.

We will not have meaningful wait numbers for it for a while. Treat any figure quoted for a brand-new attraction in its first weeks with suspicion, including ours.

2. The Play Disney Parks app retires 16 September

Disney is pulling the Play Disney Parks app on 16 September 2026, after which guests can no longer log in and the app is removed from app stores (WDWMAGIC, AllEars).

That takes the queue mini-games with it, along with the Star Wars: Datapad and the ACE Guide to Pandora. Batuu Bounty Hunters survives, because it runs on MagicBand+ and the physical screens in Galaxy's Edge rather than on the app (WDWMAGIC). Disney has not announced a replacement or given a reason.

Why it matters for your day. This changes nothing about how long you wait and everything about what a wait feels like with children in it. The queues where the games mattered most are the long ones — and there are plenty. Slinky Dog Dash averages 60.3 minutes, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance 40.4, Avatar Flight of Passage 41.1, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train 39.6. If your plan quietly assumed a phone game would cover a 40-minute stretch, bring something else.

3. The Walt Disney World Railroad closes 28 September

The railroad at Magic Kingdom closes for refurbishment on 28 September and is expected back on 30 October (Disney Tourist Blog, WDWINFO). Disney has described it as routine and has not detailed the work.

The train was already running short. Frontierland Station is closed for construction on Piston Peak National Park, so the railroad has been shuttling between Main Street, U.S.A. and Fantasyland rather than looping the park (Disney Tourist Blog).

Why it matters for your day. Both remaining stations average 15.9 minutes, and the ride is one of the flattest things in Magic Kingdom — its best hour is 8pm at 14.9 minutes and its worst is 2pm at 16.5. That is a spread of 1.6 minutes across an entire operating day. Almost nothing else in the park behaves that way; Jungle Cruise swings from 7.2 to 34.8, and Tiana's Bayou Adventure from 6.2 to 37.4.

So the railroad's value was never the ride. It was a dependable, always-the-same option between Main Street and Fantasyland at an hour when everything else was spiking. For a month, that option is gone, and the walk between those two ends of the park is on foot at whatever pace your group manages.

The replacements at similar cost are the quiet Adventureland attractions: Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room averages 9.4 minutes and The Magic Carpets of Aladdin 7.1. Neither takes you anywhere, but both buy the same kind of sit-down break.

4. Carousel of Progress stays closed into 2027

Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress closed on 6 July 2026 and is not coming back this year. Disney expects a reopening in late spring 2027, after a refurbishment that replaces the show scenes, moves the timeline forward and adds an Audio-Animatronics figure of Walt Disney himself (Disney Tourist Blog, WDWMAGIC).

Why it matters for your day. It is the second sit-down, low-demand attraction Magic Kingdom is without, alongside the railroad from 28 September. Tomorrowland still has the calm options — the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover averages 7.3 minutes, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor 9.7 and Astro Orbiter 10.8 — but the land's headliners are unchanged and unforgiving. TRON Lightcycle / Run averages 52.3 minutes, the longest wait in the park, and Space Mountain 25.0.

Plan Tomorrowland with less rest built into it than you might have last year. The Tomorrowland guide has the full ride-by-ride order.

What this adds up to

Hollywood Studios gains a midday option in the park that most needs one. Magic Kingdom loses two of its calmest, and the loss falls in the same month. If you are visiting both parks on this trip, the practical adjustment is small but real: give Magic Kingdom a longer built-in break somewhere else in the afternoon, and treat Hollywood Studios' new opening as a crowd magnet for now rather than a shortcut.

For the wider picture on this year's openings and closures, see Disney World 2026: new rides, closures and everything coming this year. For touring the two parks affected, see the Hollywood Studios touring plan and the Magic Kingdom touring plan.

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