Disney’s Tropical Americas: Inside Secrets of the New Encanto Ride and Hidden Details at Animal Kingdom

Tropical Americas is the replacement for Dinoland U.S.A. in Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park. Disney recently filed permits with the South Florida Water Management to cover the start of construction for Tropical Americas. These new permits contain a ton of information about what’s going into the land, including things Disney has not yet announced. This post covers the secrets hidden inside these new permits, and everything else going into Tropical Americas.

How do we know this? The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) is the government agency responsible for managing the use of Florida’s water resources between Orlando and the Florida Keys. That area includes Walt Disney World.

Disney has to file permits and studies with the SFWMD before Disney begins construction projects. These permits and studies cover things like the potential impacts on water resources to the surrounding area, including rain runoff and drainage from new attractions Disney wants to build.

How To Find Disney World’s Permits with the South Florida Water Management District

These permits and studies are available to the public at the South Florida Water Management District Website. You’ll need to register – it’s free – before searching for permits. Here’s the search page:

 

 A couple of useful tips for searching:

• Project Ro is Disney’s internal name for at least one part of the Tropical Americas construction
• These are Environmental Resource Plans, abbreviated as ERP in the Permit Type drop-down, but you can just say “All” too.
• The Company Name on these filings is “Walt Disney Parks And Resorts Us, Inc”, but you can just say “Disney” here and it’ll work.
• The Application Number for these plans is 241028-47000 filed on October 28, 2024

Fun Fact #1: Project Pico is Disney’s internal name for the Encanto ride.

Tropical Americas Concept Art

Disney released the concept art below for Tropical Americas at the D23 fan event in August 2024. They also gave the area the name Pueblo Esperanza, which translates roughly to “Hope Town”.

 

The entrance to Tropical Americas is in the lower middle of the concept art. That’s the exact same location as the current entrance to Dinoland, U.S.A. A new water fountain is shown just past the entrance. That fountain is roughly at the far edge of Dinoland’s former crocodile exhibit, which was removed as part of this project. This is shown in the map below.

Fun story: The crocodile in this exhibit was named Marley, and was removed in October 2024 to prepare for construction. Right after that, I asked a Cast Member at Maharaja Jungle Trek where Marley had been relocated. The Cast Member said, “Oh, we don’t know where he’s at.” 

Realizing that sounded like a casual approach to keeping tabs on a living dinosaur, the Cast Member quickly added “I mean, we know he’s gone to another sanctuary. We just don’t know which one.” And that definitely didn’t sound like it was made up on the spot. At all.

Going clockwise from the entrance:

• The animal-themed carousel is the circular tent in roughly the 7 o’clock position
• The Encanto ride is the multi-story house in the 10 o’clock position
• The set of red-tiled buildings roughly at noon is where Chester & Hester’s retail and restrooms are
• The new Indiana Jones ride is at the 1 o’clock position.
• Restaurantosaurus is the building in the 3 o’clock position

Disney Construction Permits Show The Existing Dinoland U.S.A. Map

Here’s the map Disney filed in its SFWMD plans for the existing Dinoland U.S.A. This is the “before” part of the before & after documentation. I’ve added labels to make it easier to identify where everything is:

Disney’s Permits Showing the New Tropical Americas Map

And here’s the new map Disney filed with the District, showing the location of all the new things coming to Tropical Americas. 

In the next section, I’ll label the things we already know about and provide those details. And then we’ll start adding information to this map based on some straightforward educated guesses.

What We Already Know About Animal Kingdom’s New Tropical Americas Land

Tropical Americas Main Entrance Here’s the existing concept art for the entrance to Tropical Americas:

Disney will certainly keep the existing Dinoland entrance and walkways in place for Tropical Americas. The concept art also shows a long building just past the entrance on the right, and there’s a similar new blue building in Disney’s construction plan. But what are those buildings for?

Pueblo Esperanza Fountain It’s hard to see in this piece of art, but the Pueblo Esperanza fountain is just beyond the entrance. The fountain looks like it’s surrounded by flowering trees. And we see something similar in the plans and permits for Tropical Americas. So that also makes sense.

Animal-themed Carousel Disney has shared two pieces of concept art for the Animal-themed carousel. The first one shows the ride itself:

And the second shows what one of the carousel’s animal-themed seats is going to look like:

Carousels are almost always round, and there’s a circular building to the left just past the entrance. That’s likely this carousel. Let’s add that to the map.

Cast Breakroom Anyone who’s ever remodeled a home knows the first rule of remodeling:

The First Rule of Remodeling: DON’T MOVE THE BATHROOMS

Plumbing is expensive to change. If the existing restrooms are doing their job, Disney doesn’t need to spend money to move bathrooms that end up just serving the same purpose. That makes it likely that the existing bathrooms around all of Dinoland U.S.A. will remain in the exact same locations in Tropical Americas. 

The Cast Breakroom also has bathrooms, and that means the Cast Breakroom will probably stay exactly where it is. 

As a quick recap, here’s all of that shown on the new Tropical Americas map:

Now let’s talk about the secrets buried in plain sight on this map.

Hidden Secrets In Disney’s Tropical Americas Map

We’re going to make some really safe assumptions in this section. Let me know in the comments if you don’t agree.

ASSUMPTION #1 is that Disney’s probably using a 20- to 30-year depreciation schedule for the things it’s building in Tropical Americas. So whatever gets built has to last for two or three decades. And that’s a timeline between 2055 and 2060.

ASSUMPTION #2 is that Orlando’s heat and rain mean that guests standing in line for the Carousel – and all the rides in Tropical Americas – will have to be either indoors or under a covered roof. Why?

The U.S. Global Change Resource Program, an agency funded by the U.S. Congress, studies future climate scenarios for their impact on Americans and the American economy. The USGCRP’s projections for 2050 show that Central Florida can expect between two and three months of temperatures above 95ºF:

Remember also that temperatures are recorded in the shade, so that two to three months of 95ºF will be much hotter if you’re outside. How hot? We measured pavement temperatures of 124ºF in Animal Kingdom this year. Now imagine what that’s going to be like in the year 2055.

The Carousel’s Queue Location

With those two assumptions it’s obvious that the Carousel queue needs to be covered or indoors.

Remember that there are rectangular buildings on either side of Encanto’s Carousel. So one of them is the queue. But which one?

The Carousel is on your left when you enter Tropical Americas. That means the queue for the Carousel is to the left of the ride, not on the main path just past the entrance. Why? 

Imagineers use land entrances as “transitional experiences.” These help establish the land’s theme, place, and time as you enter it from somewhere else. And Imagineers don’t want long lines to be the first thing you see when you enter that land. They want you to focus on the story, not the lines.

Since the left side of the carousel is the queue, the long rectangular buildings on the right and left side of the entrance path are either for theming, retail, or DVC sales.

I’d bet money that the square building on the right side just past the entrance is a DVC kiosk, too. Take a look at any Google Maps image of the parks – Sunset Boulevard at Hollywood Studios is a great example – and small square buildings on guest walkways are likely to be DVC kiosks.

Here’s a close-up view of the Tropical Americas map with labels on everything we know so far. I’ve rotated the map to make it easier to understand where you’re at:

Where Are The Bathrooms In Tropical Americas?

I said earlier in this post that the first rule of remodeling is “Don’t Move the Bathrooms.” So let’s label on the map all of the existing Dinoland bathrooms that also appear in the Tropical Americas map:

The upper left part of the map is filling in nicely. Let’s add some detail to another big chunk.

The Old Boneyard and New Mayan Playground

Dinoland’s got The Boneyard as a large covered play area for kids. The Boneyard gets removed for the Encanco Carousel in the Tropical Americas plans. But there’s a large area in the middle of Tropical Americas that I think is going to be the new land’s playground. 

Why a playground? After all, this is Disney’s Animal Kingdom, so this area could be used for animal exhibits. I’d love nothing more than to see a group of capybara roaming around this new land. 

Fun fact #2 Did you know that prehistoric capybara were native to Florida between 129,000 and 11,700 years ago? Me neither. So adding capybara would be a glorious tie-in between Dinoland and Tropical Americas. But I don’t think it’s going to happen, because Disney’s recent investment history at Animal Kingdom involves mostly attractions not animals. 

Adding a new play area has two big benefits for Tropical Americas:

• It adds back attraction capacity that is lost with closing The Boneyard
• It provides another place to cool off if it has water

I could be wrong here – there’s definitely enough land for an animal habitat. And there’s easy access to backstage areas that can be used to move the animals back to their barns at night. But I don’t think management wants to lose ride capacity, and I don’t think management wants to add animals to the park. So this is likely a play area.

Why do I think it’s a Mayan playground and not themed to Encanto or Pueblo Esperanza? For one thing, the playground is directly in front of the new Indiana Jones ride, which has a Mayan temple in front. So this playground will serve as the transition area from Pueblo Esperanza section of Tropical Americas to the Indiana Jones section.

Fun Fact #3 The American Foreign Academic Group (AFAR) is holding a conference titled Maya At The Mouse in late February, 2025 in Walt Disney World. One of the featured guests is Joe Rohde, the person most responsible for the design of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. So yeah, Mayan-themed playground.

I think this play area will have a water feature, just based on what Disney’s done recently with the Journey of Water: Inspired by Moana attraction over at EPCOT. That’s essentially a misting station that also serves EPCOT’s educational mission AND fits management’s mandate to put popular Disney movie characters in the parks. You know what other movie would fit here?

Disney, if you’re listening: EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE. 

Yes, I know Emperor’s New Groove is Incan, not Mayan. Did you know that Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is canonically a World Showcase pavilion? Don’t let logic get in the way of a good time.

New Indiana Jones Ride at Animal Kingdom 

Cretaceous Trail The existing location of Cretaceous Trail, on the other side of the walkway to the Indiana Jones ride, is likely to be an outdoor queue for Indy. Note the new, curved section that extends out to this area: it’s almost certainly covered or indoor space for the standby line. The Lightning Lane line is almost certainly going to remain where it is now at the ride’s main entrance.

Okay, so here’s where we’re at with the map:

The New Encanto Dark Ride Building

Now I want to focus on the Encanto building. The concept art and the South Florida Water Management District plan give us a ton of clues about how this ride is going to be laid out. Here’s a large, rotated version of the area so we can make easier sense of it:

The Encanto Ride Entrance, Standby and Lightning Lane Lines

We know from the concept art that Encanto’s entrance faces the Carousel. That would put the entrance somewhere at the tip of the triangular end of the ride building above. That makes even more sense when you see the winding walkways next to those. Winding walkways are a feature of entrance lines, not exit lines.

Also note that there are two paths at the entrance. The one going to the right, directly into the building, is almost certainly the Lightning Lane line. The path going to the left is probably the standby line. Here’s the map with those things labeled:

Since we know those are the entrances, the ride’s main exit is one of the two exit paths shown at the bottom of the blue rectangle. I think it’s the second one. Why? 

Imagineers want to make use of every square foot of the ride building. That means putting the “ride unload” station, where you get off the ride, as close as possible to the “ride load” station, where you get on the ride. Doing that results in less wasted space where no guests are on the ride. 

Less wasted space means more ride scenes! And that’s what guests pay to see.

Also, Imagineers don’t want to make guests walk a long distance from the ride unload area to the exit. It wastes space and doesn’t improve what the guests see. So it makes sense for Imagineers to put the ride unload area near the main exit. 

And that means the ride loading area is a very short distance after the ride unloading area. It results in less wasted space and more room for theming. My guess is the ride load/unload area looks like this:

Encanto Standby And Lightning Lane Lines The position of those load and unload areas means the entire triangle-shaped blue area to the left of the load area is for an indoor queue.

That looks like it’s an enormous area for a line. How big is it and how many people can that line hold? 

Prepare for some geometry! We can put the Tropical Americas map on top of Google Maps and use Google Maps’ “Measure Distance” tool to get the length of each side of the triangle:

The area of that right triangle is roughly 0.5 x 130’ x 170’, or 11,050 square feet in size.

A lot of that area has to be set aside for various things:

• Indoor scenes to help entertain guests while they’re in line
• Emergency exit routes
• Walls, railings, and other infrastructure
• Ride operator stations
• Other cast areas
• Some unusable space

Let’s assume that somewhere between 40% and 60% of that area will be used for those. That leaves 4,420 to 6,630 square feet to hold guests in line. How many guests fit in that much space?

We don’t have to guess because Disney has already told us.

Fun Fact #4 The Florida Legislature granted Disney permission to create its own building codes for Walt Disney World when it passed the Reedy Creek Improvement Act back in 1967. And that power was retained when the Reedy Creek Improvement District changed to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District in 2022.

Walt Disney World’s building codes are collectively known as the EPCOT Building Codes even though they cover all of Walt Disney World. They were last updated in 2018.

Fun Fact #5 You can buy a PDF version of the EPCOT Building Codes online from the International Code Council. I’ve never slapped down a credit card so fast in my life. And at $40 it makes an excellent holiday gift for the theme park fan in your life. Get yourself a copy while you’re at it.

Anyway, Table 8.1 of the EPCOT Building Codes says that when building a queue you should assume 4.5 square feet per guest:

So if each guest gets 4.5 square feet, then we can fit between 982 and 1,473 guests in that line. How long a line is that? Again, we don’t have to guess.

The Falcon Creative Group, whose services include theme park ride design, suggests allocating 1.5 feet of line per guest. That would mean a line length of 1,473 to 2,210 feet long. Here’s the math so far, with those low- and high-end estimates:

Let’s say 1,500 to 2,200 to use round numbers. And let’s just take the middle of that, which is a line 1,850 feet long.

Some of that line is dedicated to Lightning Lane, but it’s probably a small percentage of the overall queue length. Think about how short the Lightning Lane line is at Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway relative to the standby line. Those are probably decent guides.

We generally assume the wait in a Lightning Lane line is 15 to 20% of the wait of the standby line. Let’s say the Lightning Lane line is 20% of the total available line length. That means:

• The Encanto ride’s Lightning Lane line is around 350 feet long inside the building
• The Encanto ride’s standby line is 1,500 feet long inside the building

A standby line exists outside the attraction too. That probably adds another 250 feet or so to the standby line. Let’s call it 1,750 feet of standby line. A mile is 5,280 feet long, and 1/3rd of a mile is 1,760 feet. That means:

The Encanto ride’s standby line is about one-third of a mile long. 

Let’s add that to the map:

Encanto’s Maintenance Area, “Goodbye” Scene, and Encanto’s Big Show Scene

Every big ride that Disney designs has to have a maintenance area where work on vehicles, animatronics, and other ride mechanisms can happen, plus storage. Those maintenance areas are easier to use when they connect to a backstage area, so forklifts, supply vehicles, and big pieces of equipment can be brought through big doors.

The orientation of the Encanto building, combined with what we’ve already guessed at, tells us the maintenance area is either at the top or the right of the building above. My guess is the maintenance area is to the right of the building. Why?

There’s more backstage space to the right of the building, which makes maintenance easier. Also, the ride load area is on the left side of the main building, so if the maintenance area was at the top of the building, the ride track would need more curves, which increases the cost. 

Putting the maintenance area on the right side of the building fixes those problems.

Encanto’s “Goodbye” Scene Most Disney dark rides have a “goodbye” scene right before the attraction’s unload area. This “goodbye” scene serves two purposes: it’s a transition from the ride’s big finale to the exit, and it allows a place for ride vehicles to be staged if there’s a slowdown in the unload area. 

This scene in Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway is a great example of a “goodbye” scene, and it also reinforces the catchy song “Nothing Can Stop Us Now”:

Encanto’s Big Finale Scene Since we know where the “goodbye” scene goes, it’s reasonable to guess that the location of Encanto’s big finale show scene is right before that. Here’s that on our map:

We don’t know whether the ride vehicle enters the big finale scene from the top or from the left. And that’s hard to figure out without more hints.

Here’s the map to this point:

Character Greeting Locations in Tropical Americas

The map still has three unidentified medium or large new buildings. All of them are in blue and all of them are in the middle of the land. Let’s try to figure out what they are, because they’re either retail stores or character greetings. And since Dinoland has both retail stores and character greetings, it’s likely Disney’s going to put those in Tropical Americas too.

Dinoland’s existing character greetings are known as Donald’s Dino-Bash. These small, outdoor locations were carved out of corners, nooks, and other spare areas around Dinoland. They’re not great when it’s too hot, too cold, or when it’s raining. It’s likely that Disney will want to change these into something more permanent for Tropical Americas.

My guess is that the largest unnamed blue building on the map is some kind of combined character greeting and store, sort of like Anna and Elsa’s Royal Sommerhus at EPCOT’s Norway pavilion, with retail space. Let’s add that to the map, and then we’re done:

The medium-size blue building in front of the Encanto Ride might be a facade or other show building. It also might be a gift shop, since it’s so close to the ride’s exit.

The few remaining unlabeled blue buildings around the land are small, so they’re not attractions. They might be retail, food, and Guest Experience kiosks.

Tropical Americas Summary

Thanks for reading this whole thing. We started this off by looking at the concept art Disney’s already released for the Tropical Americas land at Animal Kingdom. Then we found the “before” and “after” plans Disney filed with the South Florida Water Management District for Dinoland and Tropical Americas. 

Along with those we used other public records, some geometry, and the layouts of Disney’s recent dark rides, to guess at what’s inside every building in Tropical Americas. Here’s a summary:

• Disney’s internal name for Tropical Americas might be Project Ro
• Disney’s internal name for the big Encanto ride is Project Pico  
• Dinoland’s restrooms will probably remain in the same places in Tropical Americas
• The Tropical Americas Entrance is the same as Dinoland USA’s
• The Tropical Americas Carousel is to the left as you enter from Discovery Island
• The Carousel’s queue is to the left of the ride from that perspective
• The Indiana Jones ride is likely getting some cover for its standby queue
• The Boneyard is being replaced by a Mayan-themed playground, possibly with water features (but capybaras would be nice)
• The big Encanto ride will have separate Lightning Lane and standby entrances 
• The triangle-shaped part of the big Encanto ride is probably for the standby line
• Encanto’s standby line is probably 1/3rd of a mile long inside and outside
• Encanto’s ride vehicles likely go clockwise inside the show building
• The end of the ride probably goes “Big Finale”, “goodbye scene”, and “unload area”
• There might be a character greeting/retail area between the Encanto ride and the playground

Let me know in the comments below if I’ve missed anything or if you think these buildings will end up as something else.