Disney is preparing to transform the Rivers of America at Magic Kingdom into a new area inspired by Pixar‘s Cars and a land dedicated to the Disney Villains. The final opportunity to experience the attractions at the Rivers of America, including the Liberty Square Riverboat and Tom Sawyer Island, was on July 6, 2025. We shared a few updates of the site last week, both on social media and in a photo report published on July 9, 2025. However, since then, several new developments have taken place.
Additional Construction Walls
On July 7, 2025, the day after the Rivers of America’s final operational day, construction walls were initially confined to the entrance and exits of the Liberty Square Riverboat dock and Tom Sawyer Island dock in Frontierland. A few days later, on July 9, this perimeter was slightly extended around these areas. Since then, more construction walls have been erected around the Rivers of America.
In the two photos below, a wall now runs the entire length of the left side of the Liberty Square Riverboat dock up to the boardwalk in Frontierland.
This image showcases the rear side of the walls along the Liberty Square Riverboat dock. According to the artist renderings shared by Disney for the Cars area, it appears that this dock will remain in place.
Additional walls have also been set up inside the riverboat dock. In our previous photo report, they were only situated around two sides of the dock. Now, they obstruct the view into the dock from every angle.
New construction walls were added along the queue for the Haunted Mansion. There are still some sections of the queue where the walls have not yet been installed.
Walls now extend the full length of the walkway from Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to the boardwalk in front of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. In our earlier photo report, the walls were confined to the Tom Sawyer Island dock area, leaving this section of the boardwalk unobstructed.
The remainder of the Frontierland boardwalk is currently free of construction walls. However, views of the Rivers of America will eventually be fully obstructed here too.
These photos of the Rivers of America were captured from the boardwalk. We observed several changes in the area, which we will explore in greater detail shortly.
Items Removed and Tags Updated on Tom Sawyer Island
On Tom Sawyer Island, a significant number of props have been removed. These items were marked with color-coded tags, presumably to assist crews in identifying their intended fate, whether for preservation or demolition. Some items may be archived, repurposed, or offered for sale. Furthermore, some of these tags have been updated since our previous photo report.
Props have been taken from the dock at Tom Sawyer Island, including netting, crates, barrels, buckets, and more. The lanterns are now marked with green tags, and the poles they’re attached to have red tags. In our last update, only one of the poles had a tag, which was initially marked with yellow; the rest did not have any tags. The lanterns, however, originally featured blue tags.
Signage, pans, and other props have been removed from the entrance to the women’s restroom at the dock.
The “Tom (hearts) Becky” painted fence is no longer there. The portion painted with “Huck” has also been removed. The rest of the fence remains intact, for now.
A section of the fence along the river by Aunt Polly’s has been dismantled.
The porch lights at Aunt Polly’s are now marked with yellow tags, replacing the red labels they had before.
If you’d like to see which props have been taken from Tom Sawyer Island, you can look at our previous photo report and compare it with the images in this update to see what used to be there and what is now absent.
Water Level Lowered
We observed that the water level in the Rivers of America had dropped in the last week. Let’s compare some images taken on July 16, 2025 with those taken on July 9, 2025.
In the photo below from July 16, 2025, you can observe that the foliage at arrow 1 is above the waterline. At arrow 2, a pillar supporting the boardwalk is clearly visible. The color variation on the other pillars also indicates where the waterline used to be relative to its current level.
Now, compare that with the photo below taken on July 9, 2025. In this image, the foliage at arrow 1 is just touching the waterline, and the pillar at arrow 2 is only slightly visible.
In the photo below taken on July 16, 2025, you can see the log in the water indicated by the arrow very clearly. Nearly the entire height of the log is visible from top to bottom.
But in the photo below captured on July 9, 2025, only about a quarter of the log’s height can be seen.
We’ll keep our eyes out for any additional updates. However, once construction walls are installed along the entire boardwalk, our ground coverage will be limited.
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