A Crane Was Still Lifting a Beam Into the Tropical Americas Entrance Arch on Monday Morning, and New Steel Went Up at the Encanto Casita Site

Blog Mickey visited Disney's Animal Kingdom on Monday morning and found a crane and a telehandler working on the land's entrance archway, with one steel beam still suspended from a cable as crews maneuvered it into place.

The guest view from the Discovery Island bridge. The green wall with the Tropical Americas sign still blocks the path, but the galvanized steel behind it now rises above the wall. Photo: Blog Mickey

The entrance frame is going up in real time

Blog Mickey describes galvanized steel rising above the construction wall, visible from the Discovery Island bridge that leads toward the new land, and calls it an A-frame structure marking the main entrance corridor into Pueblo Esperanza. Behind it sit block walls and a wood-framed gable structure, with a second crane working further back.

WDW News Today published photos of the same structure a day earlier and described it a little differently, as tall rectangular uprights joined by a wide beam across the top, with diagonal bracing that frames an angular opening in the middle. Either way it is still bare steel. Blog Mickey says the frame should eventually support the themed facade that greets guests walking in from the former DinoLand U.S.A. main entrance, which is the outlet's expectation rather than anything Disney has stated.

A beam hanging from the crane hook, with its tag line still trailing, as crews positioned it. Photo: Blog Mickey

New columns at the Casita site, with a caveat

The second milestone comes with a bigger asterisk. Steel columns now stand on top of a poured concrete wall near the large green building that will house the Encanto attraction.

Blog Mickey first reported vertical construction at the Casita site back in May, but at the time could not say whether that early steel and those concrete forms belonged to Casa Madrigal itself or to a retaining wall for the hill the house will sit on. The outlet now concludes it was very likely the retaining wall, and that these new columns mounted on top of or over it are the Casita structure. That is an informed read of a photograph, not a confirmation, and Blog Mickey hedges it: their own words are that it "looks like" the Casita is now vertical, and that it is "still very early in this construction phase."

One thing worth keeping straight: the Casita is not the ride building. Casa Madrigal is a facade, with the Encanto show building standing behind it. Studying June aerials of the site, WDWMagic said the arrangement appears similar in approach to Magic Kingdom's Haunted Mansion, where the mansion front and a landscaped berm keep the show building out of sight. That large green building in the photos is the show building, and its roof was already in place by late June, when aerial photos showed foam blocks staged across it.

The new steel columns on the poured concrete wall, with the green Encanto show building behind them and a crane still on site. Photo: Blog Mickey

Disney's concept art for Casa Madrigal shows the house perched on a hill behind a stone retaining wall, which matches the arrangement Blog Mickey believes the new steel is being built on. Image: Disney (artist concept only)

Hand-carved rock at the side entrance

Away from the main entrance, Blog Mickey found artisans hand-carving textured rockwork columns at a secondary entrance, one the outlet locates over toward Expedition Everest and Finding Nemo. WDW News Today has the useful before shot: on Sunday the outlet noted that as of its July 23 update, twisted rebar was still poking from the top of one entrance column, and that the armature has since been covered, turning what were skeletal elements into solid, jagged pillars.

Disney has talked about stonework in this land, though not about these particular columns, which Blog Mickey describes as Disney's faux-rock work. In an April 2026 post, executive creative director Joan Hartwig wrote that a small group of Imagineers took a research trip to Honduras, met Maya artists whose work recreates details at the Copán site, and visited the quarries supplying the region, and that the same materials that built Copán would find their way to Tropical Americas to be, as she put it, "crafted by carvers using time-honored techniques."

What Tropical Americas is

Announced by Josh D'Amaro at D23 in 2024, Tropical Americas is an 11-acre section of Disney's Animal Kingdom built around the town of Pueblo Esperanza. It gets two signature attractions: what Disney calls the first-ever "Encanto" themed ride-through, set inside the Casita, where Antonio has just received his gift of talking to animals and his room has transformed into a rainforest, and an Indiana Jones adventure set in a perfectly preserved Maya temple. The land also gets a large hacienda that Disney says will be "one of the largest quick-service restaurants at Walt Disney World Resort," a central fountain, and a working carousel that a woodcarver has filled with his favorite animals from Disney stories.

Disney has said 2027 from the start and has never narrowed the window. There has been no official statement about Monday's milestones.

Sources

• Blog Mickey, Tropical Americas Entrance Archway Takes Shape, Encanto Casita Goes Vertical
• WDW News Today, Tropical Americas Entrance Gate and Carousel Queue Rise Into View at Disney's Animal Kingdom
• WDWMagic, New Aerial Photos Show Casa Madrigal Taking Shape at Tropical Americas, Disney's Animal Kingdom
• Disney Parks Blog, Indiana Jones and 'Encanto' Confirmed for Animal Kingdom
• Disney Parks Blog, Discover the Newest Land at Disney's Animal Kingdom: Updates from Tropical Americas

Image credits: construction photos by Blog Mickey. Casa Madrigal concept art by Disney.