Walt Disney World doesn’t have any brand-new rides opening in 2026, but there are several big reimaginings & reopenings, highlighted by Big Thunder Mountain Railroad returning from its year-plus closure. Fans have been anxiously awaiting its opening date, and we’re going to speculate on that here based on recent aerial photos & progress.
As basic background, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad closed for a lengthy refurbishment project on January 6th of last year, meaning it’s already been down for over a full year. At the time, they only indicated that wildest ride in the wilderness is planned to reopen in 2026 with a little bit of “new magic.”
In December, Disney finally revealed the opening season for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad as part of Walt Disney World’s 2026 Calendar of Events. In that, Disney indicated that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad reopens in Spring 2026, with “a crevasse-deep to mountain-top refurbishment” in addition to the aforementioned new magic.
For the first ~6 months of the project, construction crews raced around the mountain and the pace of the project was really impressive. Track replacement occurred at lightning (thunder?) speed, displaying a sense of urgency that we hadn’t seen in a while. That resulted in overly-optimistic expectations that the ride would reopen ahead of schedule.
Things have appeared slower since. Big Thunder trains have been cycling since November, but as we cautioned at the time when fans started getting excited about the prospects of a “possible” early Christmas return, that did not signal that the reopening was imminent. To the contrary, we warned that we’ve been down this road before. There’s always excitement when ride testing starts, and it always leads to unrealistic expectations about a premature opening.
For reference, TRON Lightcycle Run started push-pull testing with a ride envelope vehicle approximately 13 months before that attraction opened. This should go much faster than TRON, but our point is that this stage is tedious and time-consuming, and for good reason. It’s essential to ensure safety standards are met and the attraction obtains operational clearance.
Another example is Test Track, which started its ride testing over 4 months before the ride reopened from its refurbishment. That’s also not a perfect example, since Test Track did not have its track replaced. Show scenes were the bulk of the work, so it’s not a great benchmark in terms of vehicle cycling.
Big Thunder is not a routine refurbishment or even “only” a reimagining to the show scenes. Disney essentially rebuilt the roller coaster on top of its thematic foundation, and it’ll need to go through the paces of a new roller coaster as a result.
Not only that, but there’s also the adjacent Piston Peak Cars Land construction. Although a completely separate project, the boundaries of that site and BTMRR have been blurred. This is evident from the aerial photos below, as there really isn’t any demarcation between Piston Peak and Big Thunder at this point.
A large walkway between Haunted Mansion and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad will form the northern boundary Piston Peak, providing a path between those two existing attractions and a connection to Villains Land. The latest aerials also seem to suggest the vague contours of this path.
The walkway definitely will not be completed (or even started) before Big Thunder reopens, thankfully. It wouldn’t make sense to do so, as that would cut off access to the Cars construction site.
In addition to that pathway, Walt Disney World has also indicated that the landscapes of Piston Peak and Big Thunder will be blended together. See the Piston Peak National Park Fun Map above, which shows a number of geysers and prismatic springs around Big Thunder. All of this will need to seamlessly integrate the two areas.
With all of that in mind, it’s the latest aerial construction photos via friend-of-the-site @bioreconstruct that prompted me to finally write this post. While we’ve discussed some of the above and below in other updates on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, I was nevertheless surprised by the current state of BTMRR as of mid-February 2026. Here’s a look:
As you can see from the photos, the walkway around Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is still torn out. There’s really no attraction exit to speak of. Obviously, this path needs to exist before the ride can reopen, and then construction walls need to be installed along the edge of it.
That part of the project is probably simpler than it might appear. Our expectation is that the construction walls for Piston Peak will press pretty close to BTMRR, with only a narrow exit corridor funneling guests back to Frontierland. You can kind of see where this wall go in some of the above images.
More concerning is just how much scaffolding is still up all around the mountain itself, and how work beyond test & adjust of the roller coaster itself still appears ongoing. It seems like the pace of work has slowed down, and the sense of urgency is gone.
It’s almost as if the BTMRR project team is in something of a holding pattern until Piston Peak progresses. I don’t know whether that’s the case, just to be clear. It just seems like there’s been less happening around Big Thunder. Disney also hasn’t shared much in the way of updates.
I could be reading too much into this. Last summer, I was concerned about Test Track and wrote an eerily similar post to this. Only 10 days later, Walt Disney World announced a reopening date. Things came together fast in the home stretch of that project, and it wasn’t the first time.
Pavement and landscaping often happens quickly, transforming what looks like a construction site that’s far away from opening into a finished, guest-ready product fairly fast. Even so, it does not look like Big Thunder is less than a month away from opening.
For months, we’ve been pointed to mid-March as the likely target timeframe for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This was thanks to multiple major construction permits with project expiration dates listed as March 13, 2026.
Having a drop-dead date of March 13, 2026 makes perfect sense; that’s a Friday that normally aligns with the start of Osceola and Orange County student recesses. Obviously, this is a lengthy construction project and one that’s subject to change. That’s the start of the heart of the Spring Break season, and the month that follows will be among the busiest stretches of 2026. Having Big Thunder Mountain Railroad open by March 13, 2026 is a likely goal for WDW.
Or rather, maybe it was? If we’re assuming a Test Track timeline here, Big Thunder is already behind. That reopening date was announced June 16th for a July 22nd return, and a similar cadence would mean that BTMRR would reopen in late March 2026 if its return were announced this coming week.
There’s nothing dictating that degree of a buffer, though. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is being treated as a refurbishment as opposed to a reimagining, meaning that it might not get the preview period of Test Track 3.0, despite its lengthy closure.
Instead, it could be more like the recent Frozen Ever After project, which had its reopening scheduled only a week in advance. That one wasn’t even announced; it was just added to the calendar. And then it ended up quietly soft opening a day early.
Frozen Ever After was also a much shorter closure, but it seems like at least a somewhat similar story of racing against the clock to get a project done before a busy period (mid-winter break vs. spring break).
All of this is a long-winded way of saying “we don’t know” when Big Thunder Mountain Railroad will reopen.
Obviously, that is not news. However, we’re sharing this update because we’ve been pretty steadfast about that March 13, 2026 target date for over a year (that’s how long it has appeared on permits!). We did caution that a target date was just that, and delays often occur (exactly that has happened with more than one BTMRR refurbishment at Disneyland).
Based on those new aerial construction photos, I’m now skeptical of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad reopening by March 13, 2026. This is basically your heads up of that, so you can adjust your expectations accordingly.
As for a more realistic reopening date for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the answer is still sometime during spring break. Easter is on April 5, 2026, which means the week before will be especially busy. But so too will all 3 weeks prior to that.
Having Big Thunder Mountain Railroad open during that stretch will still be the target if at all possible, and I could see Walt Disney World forgoing the fanfare of a drawn out preview period and soft opening (a la Test Track) if it means having Big Thunder back online before Easter. If not, and the reopening slips into mid-April or even May 2026, that might increase the odds of a lengthier lead-up.
At some point, it might make sense to hold the reopening of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad until the start of Cool Kids’ Summer on May 26, 2026 and make that more of a blockbuster ‘event.’ Technically, spring ends on June 21, 2026, so Walt Disney World has plenty of time before actually “missing” the BTMRR deadline! We’ll keep you posted.
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Your Thoughts
When do you expect Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to reopen? What do you think about the lengthy ride refurbishment/reimagining? Hope there’s more “new magic” beyond what’s already been teased? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
