COCO
Disney's California Adventure
Attraction Concept
Coco In The Disney Parks
Imagineers have clearly been trying to find ways to get Coco into the parks pretty much since its first reviews dropped back in 2017. It's possibly underappreciated that Coco is the sixth highest (non-sequel) grossing Disney/Pixar animated movie, only behind tent pole franchises like Frozen, Zootopia, The Lion King, Finding Nemo, and Inside Out. The first four of those movies in particular have seen significant investments in the parks around the world, with multiple attractions, shows, and meet and greets, and in some cases entire lands themed to that particular property.
We've seen bits of Coco in the parks, with a new sequence added to Mickey's Philharmagic, the Plaza de la Familia show in California Adventure that runs to coincide with the annual día de los muertos celebration, and of course appearances in various parades, but this will be the first stand-alone attraction we have seen. Given Coco's popularity (including in key international markets), the stunning visuals from the movie, and a thematic design that would allow it to appropriately fit in many theme parks lands around the world, it is a bit surprising it will end up being a decade until we see an attraction from the time the movie debuted.
A re-theme of the Gran Fiesta Tour in EPCOT's Mexico pavilion has long been rumoured and almost assumed to be getting a Coco treatment at some point, and the fact we are getting a boat ride here will likely re-ignite those discussions. However, without digressing too much here, the size and existing popularity of existing Mexico pavilion is always going to be a major challenge there. The Mexico pavilion includes not just the Gran Fiesta tour boat ride but also a very popular sit-down restaurant (San Angel Inn) and bar (La Cava del Tequila) along with a faux-market and other retail space. The Gran Fiesta tour is a fun little ride but doesn't attract the kind of crowds that needs a major queue space, which would be required if Coco did to Mexico what Frozen did to Norway. The ambience of the pavilion - particularly for the San Angel Inn - is one of romance, and even if Disney were willing to give up retail space for a queue, it would potentially upset the whole balance of what is already one of the most popular pavilions. As always, there are creative ways this problem could be fixed - the queue could potentially snake out the back of the pavilion into what is now back stage areas close to Test Track, but suffice to say that I wouldn't necessarily assume that we can copy-paste this Disneyland attraction into EPCOT just yet.
Attraction Design and Story
Before we can even think about copying the attraction to other parks, we should probably scope out what exactly the attraction is. As I first write this, we don't know much beyond that the two pieces of concept art that came with the original announcement. Based on the movie upon which it is based, the ride vehicles pictured in the concept art, and the space in which the ride will go (see more later on), we can probably assume:
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This is likely to be a classic Pirates / Small World style boat ride rather than a next-generation Battle for the Sunken Treasure style attraction which many are expecting for the new Avatar land.
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The movie's music and gorgeous visuals will be the main star of the show and so we'll likely want a slower ride so that musicals cues can align with boats as they travel through different scenes.
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Imagineers will employ their bag-of-tricks from attractions like the haunted mansion to lean into the somewhat "spooky" elements of the narrative, with dancing skeletons, ghostly figures etc.
The iconography, story, and cultural significance of día de los muertos is extremely high, and offers an incredibly rich design toolkit to draw from. The stylized calaveras (skulls), the papel picardo banners, the marigolds, and the alebrijes (brightly coloured, mythical creatures) are all iconic visuals and simply riding through a Mexican town during this celebration would make a good attraction, even without the additional narrative of the Coco characters.
California Adventure is no longer aiming to give guests a "Californian" experience and Disney isn't perhaps as interested in providing an educational element to its parks as it once arguably was, but this attraction can nevertheless serve as both a wonderful recognition of an essential part of the California culture (in 2021, 29% of California's identified as having historic ties to Mexico), as well as an introduction into a beautiful celebration which deals with a difficult subject (which is possibly why the movie resonated with so many).
Location
Once the pieces began to fall into place that the new Avatar land would take over the northeast corner of the park, and that Coco was clearly being fast tracked ("Plans are drawn. Dirt is moving"), it became fairly clear that this new boat ride was going to slot somewhere around the Incredicoaster. This was of course confirmed by the June 2025 announcement which locked in those two announcements. Specifically for Coco we learned that it:
"will be built near Paradise Gardens Park and Pixar Pier, in areas that are predominantly backstage today. Construction on this attraction is set to begin backstage this fall" (Disney Parks Blog)"
There are several moving pieces to consider when it comes to scoping out this area:
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This backstage area includes the space in which the parade floats are housed, as well as the access route to get them into the parks.
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The backstage access road for operations and emergency vehicles runs through this area and will need to be preserved or moved.
Let's map these issues out:
Parade Float Warehouse
Park Access Gate
Parade Float Access Route
Backstage Access Road
Potential Space for Development
When we first heard the news about this new Coco attraction, there was temptation to bring this whole area into scope, which would have included demolishing the three backstage buildlings (highlighted in blue below) to create a fairly substantial Coco "land". Other than cost, the biggest issue with such a move was always going to be the parade building and route into the park. Parades are an integral part of a Disney day for many guests and cutting off having the possibility of future parades just didn't seem likely. With the new Avengers campus expansion, and proposed Avatar land, there simply aren't many expansion plots in and around DCA that could house a building to store parade floats and give access to the park.
The need to have a backstage access road will also eat into this area, though maximizing the existing space can help there. Leaving access to Disneyland Drive for future Disneyland Forward expansion plans is harder to predict given that could be years away, but pushing the Coco building slightly deeper into this space and maintaining a courtyard at the north end of the plot perhaps allows that to work. Let's look at the what those changes do to our predicted available space:
Parade Float Access Route
Parade Float Warehouse
Park Access Gate
Simba Parking Lot / Future Disneyland Forward expansion
Potential Coco attraction plot
Relocated access roads
If the yellow area is indeed what we are working with, then the potential scope for the Coco attraction really comes into focus. That entire plot of land is around 4,600 sqm (50,000 sqft), with some existing show building sizes below for reference:
Here's a few show building (approximate) sizes for other water based attractions:
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Pirates of the Caribbean (Shanghai Disneyland): 12,500 sqm (130,000 sqft)
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Anna and Elsa's Frozen Journey: 8,600 sqm (93,000 sqft)
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Pirates of the Caribbean (Magic Kingdom): 8,500 sqm (91,000 sqft)
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Pirates of the Caribbean (Disneyland) - includes Blue Bayou: 7,000 sqm (75,000 sqft)
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it's a small world (Disneyland): 5,500 sqm (59,000 sqft)
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Frozen Ever After (Hong Kong Disneyland): 4,300 sqm (46,000 sqft)
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Na'vi River Journey: 3,700 sqm (40,000 sqft)
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Rapunzel's Lantern Festival (Tokyo DisneySea): 3,500 sqm (38,000 sqft)
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Frozen Ever After (EPCOT): 3,000 sqm (32,000 sqft)
We can see that we're not going to get a 15-minute Pirates epic attraction here, but those smaller attractions fit with what we have seen Disney build recently around the world. The ride time on these attractions isn't great, with Na'vi River Journey coming in around 5:30 minutes, and Rapunzel and Frozen both around 4:30, but that's just about enough time to run through four or five of the big scenes from the movie.
If we drop a 3,500 sqm show building into the space that has currently been cleared, then we can see that it just about works, while leaving space at the north end of the building to maintain that potential walkway to the expansion area across Disneyland Drive.
Given the richness of the Coco story though, it would be a shame if guests are simply given this standalone boat ride without any other story elements that we'd expect in a themed "land". One element I would have really like to see in a new Coco land is for them to really lean into the nighttime appeal, as we have with Radiator Springs on the other side of the park, or with the Pandora at the Animal Kingdom. This wouldn't just be about being fun at night with entertainment and available drinks, but potentially designing the entire mini-land to seamlessly transform into a dia de los muertos celebration at the flick of switch thanks to the lighting package and well placed skulls which come to life under neon or black light. However, other than perhaps a really nice themed entry plaza - perhaps like we have in the France and Norway pavilions leadings into Remy's Ratatouille Adventure and Frozen Ever After - it is doubtful there is going to be room to do much else.
All that said, if Disney can manufacture a backstage space into a new, solid, relatively high capacity attraction by simply juggling under-utilized space, all while preserving the parade building and route, ticking all the operational backstage requirements, and still keeping their options open for expansion across Disneyland Drive, then this still feels like a significant win to me. Management in the past have argued that the Imagineers do some of their best work when constraints are in place, and while that has arguably been an excuse in the past to cut budgets, here we are more talking about geographic constraints, and pulling off a successful attraction here would be a major win for this park.
Timeline and Progress
When this project was first announced at D23 2024, details were scarce, beyond the fact that the attraction would be located at Disney California Adventure, with work to begin "in 2026". Less than a year later, we understood that the project has been fast tracked, with groundwork now scheduled for late 2025. Details on why this particular project has been brought forward have not been forthcoming but one can suggest a couple of options. First, it's possible that of all the projects currently underway at the US parks, this one is relatively small and can move to completion more quickly. That means more capacity, more guests, more revenue. Alternatively, if Disneyland Forward really is going to go ahead in the coming years, then it's possible that this attraction is one of the early pieces that needs to fall into place and so Disney need this project locked in place before some of those other planning applications and budgeting processes can be begun. My own two cents is that it's probably more of the former, with Josh D'Amaro wanting some early wins in his tenure, and this being an attraction can should be relatively simple to push forward.
One point that doesn't align at all with this idea of accelerating the Coco timeline is the 2029 release data for the Coco sequel. One slightly interesting note there is that while the original social media post said Coco 2 was "coming to theatres in 2029", the post was quickly changed to merely confirm that the movie is "in the works". Out of context one would typically means that a movie is delayed, but is it possible they are bringing the movie release forward and want the DCA attraction in place before that date? Unlikely, but something to keep an eye on.
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
Announcement of Coco attraction
(D23 2024 Disney Parks Blog)
Construction Updates
2026
Apr
Mickey Visit gives us this nice graphic showing the quick progress being made with the site prep. The April 2026 nicely shows the edges of what we can now see as being the frame of this new Coco area. Notably, there is no construction to any of the three backstage buildings.
2026
Jan
WDW News Today gave us our first taste of construction, with fences going around Disneyland Drive as that backstage border gets pushed out to create as much rooms as possible for this attraction.
