Disney World PeopleMover to Reopen This Weekend

Following a ride malfunction last February and then the COVID-19 pandemic, the PeopleMover attraction at Disney’s Magic Kingdom park has remained closed for over a year. Even after the park re-opened in the summer of 2020 that ride was still non-operational, but not because of safety concerns instead Disney decided that it was time the ride get a facelift. Now WDWInfo.com has revealed that the ride is scheduled to re-open with its brand new look this weekend! This news comes from Jeff Vahle, the President of Walt Disney World Resort

“On a recent trip to Magic Kingdom, I stopped by to check in with the Engineering team overseeing the refurbishment of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, previously called the ‘WEDway PeopleMover’ when I first rode it as a teenager,” he wrote on Instagram. “Thrilled that this team has it ready to delight a new generation when it reopens later this weekend!” The post came in the morning of Friday, April 23.

Described as “a 10-minute tour of Tomorrowland aboard this mass transit system of the future,” the ride offers weary park goers a place to sit and rest while admiring the park, in addition to some sensible chuckles.

The PeopleMover was first opened in Disneyland in Anaheim in July 1967, though it ceased operations in August 1995. The Walt Disney World version of the attraction opened in the Magic Kingdom in 1975, and has received minor renovations and improvements in the years since it launched.

The re-opening of the PeopleMover will be a big draw for some Disney fanatics but the parks are still under strict safety protocols as the threat of COVID-19 infection remains.

“We are in a new normal right now, so what’s happening outside of the gates of Walt Disney World is our new world,” Disney Parks chairman Josh D’Amaro previously told CNBC. “I think you know we were one of the first theme parks to close, and we’ll be about the last to open. And we spent every minute of every day thinking about how to operate in this new normal that we’re in.:

“We figured out a way to really push hard on technology, really accelerate some of the ideas that we’ve had for a long time,” D’Amaro explained to Dow Report. “So you think about things like reservation systems in the parks that we can manage capacity and therefore guest experience a little bit better. It’s working exceptionally well for us.”