It’s official. The Muppets may have moved out of Muppets Courtyard in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but they’ll be taking over the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster in 2026.
Disney recently revealed the opening timeline for the new Muppets ride, too: summer 2026. Okay, that’s great and all, but it’s also surprising…and a little concerning. We’re going to tell you why.
Disney previously revealed that the current version of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster would not close until 2026. So if the Muppets version is opening in summer 2026, let’s assume Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster will close in January 2026. If that’s the case, then that only leaves about eight months for the work to happen to convert it to the Muppets. And that seems very short.
By comparison, Test Track’s reimagining took about 13 months to be completed. Now that was a complete overhaul of the ride, but it’s still about the time it takes to re-theme an attraction. However, much of the ride’s bones stayed the same, so just the ride vehicles and scenes within the ride were changed out.
We can also look at the Splash Mountain re-theme to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. That involved some minor changes to the ride vehicles, as well as changing out the scenes. That alone took over a year. Again, the bones of the ride pretty much remained the same.
So, overall, eight months seems like a relatively short amount of time to complete a re-theme, and that’s estimating that the ride will close on January 1st, 2026, and reopen in late August or early September. We are assuming that the ride’s bones will remain the same, and the ride vehicles will probably just get a new paint job. But it still takes time to swap out scenes, and we’re wondering if Disney just doesn’t have a lot of plans for the scenes in the ride (which would be disappointing).
We know the pre-show will be changed, too, although much of that is a screen; Disney has promised that part of it will include some animatronics. Given the work that needs to happen, eight months seems awfully fast, and we have to wonder if this is going to feel more like a Muppets ride overlay than a Muppets ride. This would be doing the Muppets a great disservice, especially as they left their own attraction, Muppet*Vision 3D, so Disney could replace that entire area with a Monsters, Inc. land.
However, Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout in Disney California Adventure might be the closest project to compare to the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets. The Tower of Terror closed there in January 2017 and then reopened just four months later as the newly re-themed ride. So Disney can do a complete ride re-theme quickly, but we just haven’t seen it recently.
So we’ll just have to wait and see if Disney can stick to its opening timeline for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets. For now, we’ll try to be cautiously optimistic.
Check back with AllEars again soon for more.
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What do you think about the opening timeline for the new Muppets ride? Let us know in the comments!
So far, it looks like they are just changing the pre-show and the exterior. That shouldn’t take a long time. Rockin Roller Coaster is not likely to change too much. The store will probably be changed to sell Muppet Merchandise that was in the store in Muppet Courtyard that was demolished.
I think Disney has been planning this conversion for a lot longing than they are letting on. I would think that during the long refurb Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster had they probably made it very easy to upgrade/change over into Muppets.