Inside Disneyland Paris’s Planned Lion King Land
Disneyland Paris is planning a Lion King land with a major new ride. Here is what has been announced so far and where it stands.
Todd Ruffner-Schoenfeld
Editor in chief. A knack for the fine print, and likes it.
Three cranes are turning over a corner of Disney Adventure World in Marne-la-Vallée, and behind the construction walls a long run of concrete panels has climbed above the barriers along Adventure Bay. That is Pride Rock, more or less, in its rebar phase. Disney has shared a great deal about what will eventually sit there, and the build is now well underway.
Here is what is confirmed. Disneyland Paris is building what it calls the first-ever immersive world themed to The Lion King, a whole land rather than a single ride. At its center is a water attraction that plunges guests beneath the caves of Pride Rock to follow Simba from cub to king, using next-generation Audio-Animatronics figures and effects the resort describes as cutting-edge. The centerpiece drop measures 16 meters. Disney says it will be one of the largest attractions the park has ever built.
If 16 meters sounds abstract, it is roughly 52 feet, the height of a five-story building, aimed down a flume. The French planning documents that surfaced around the reveal fill in the mechanics: a log-flume-style ride with multiple lifts and several descents, the tallest of them the 16-meter plunge, threading through a long sequence of scenes. It is designed to run year-round, with the splash dialed down for a Paris winter.
The park it’s landing in
The Lion King land is one piece of a much larger rebuild. On March 29, 2026, Disney reopened its second Paris gate under a new name, Disney Adventure World, retiring the old Walt Disney Studios Park branding. The reimagining is enormous. Disney says it touches the vast majority of the park’s offerings and roughly doubles its footprint, organized around a central body of water called Adventure Bay.
The same day the new park opened, so did its first headline land. World of Frozen arrived on March 29, 2026, the year Disney had set for it when the transformation was announced. It is a full immersive build, anchored by a 36-meter recreation of Arendelle’s North Mountain with Elsa’s ice palace on top, and a Frozen Ever After boat ride inside.
Disney has not announced an opening date for the Lion King land yet. The company’s expansions page describes the ride and the drop in loving detail and notes that it is still to come. Construction gives the clearest sense of progress so far. Permits cleared on August 14, 2025, work began that autumn, and Disney has offered one comparison: the build should take about as long as Frozen Ever After did.
Where 2027 comes from
You will see 2027 attached to this project in a lot of places. Roundups of upcoming rides slot it into that year, and fans work it out from the Frozen timeline. Those 2027 references trace back to estimates and inferences from the construction pace, so it is best to treat the year as an estimate rather than an official Disney announcement.
As of the middle of August 2026, the picture is a building going vertical. Trackers on the ground through the summer reported the show building expanding week over week, tall concrete panels rising along the far side of Adventure Bay, and soil testing and structural work carrying on. The structure is clearly taking shape.
A purpose-built Lion King land is genuinely a first for any Disney park on Earth, and a 16-meter flume drop through the Pride Lands, scored to the songs people already know by heart, is exactly the kind of headline attraction fans have been hoping this resort would build. The one detail still to come is the opening date, and it is worth holding any specific year in mind as an estimate for now.
The latest
We’re tracking this story live and will update it the moment Disney announces an opening date, including anything at D23 2026.
This is part of our live tracker of every new land and ride Disney announced at D23 2024. See where all eleven stand: D23 2026, live: every Disney parks reveal, and the latest on what is coming.
- Disneyland Paris News – the world’s first Lion King immersive area, and World of Frozen in 2026
- The Walt Disney Company – Disney Adventure World opens and World of Frozen debuts
- Disney Parks Blog – new details for the Lion King ride coming to Disneyland Paris
- WDW News Today, July 2026 – massive show building expands for the Lion King ride
Reported and edited to HeadLines Decoded newsroom standards. E.G. v4.16 · I.R.G. v1.13 · L.R.G. v1.9 · P.L.G. v1.10 · SEO G. v1.5 · AI Detection Gate v1.0. Part of our live tracker of Disney’s newest announcements from D23 and where each one stands today.
Live updates
[Aug 15, 10:16 p.m. PT] More on the Lion King flume: it drops 52 feet across three slopes, one of the largest attractions at Disneyland Paris, and retells Simba’s whole journey from cub to king, right through his final showdown with Scar. The route runs beneath a Pride Rock that stands 120 feet tall.
[Aug 15, 9:55 p.m. PT] A useful bit of context from the showcase: the Lion King land is the next major addition to Disney Adventure World in Paris, arriving after World of Frozen, which opens at the same park in 2026. That gives the Paris park two big immersive lands in close succession.
[Aug 15, 9:15 p.m. PT] Disney described the centerpiece as a water ride with a 16 meter drop and advanced Audio-Animatronics, sending guests beneath Pride Rock’s caves to relive scenes from the film. Imagineering showed a black light study model and a scale model of Rafiki’s tree.
[Aug 15, 8:35 p.m. PT] Disney confirmed the Lion King land at Disneyland Paris’s Disney Adventure World will center on the park’s first Lion King dark ride, with dining, shopping, and character meet and greets alongside it.
[Aug 14, 4:13 p.m. PT] At the Imagineering: Horizons pavilion, Disney showed models for The Lion King attraction at Disney Adventure World, including a black light study model, a ride vehicle maquette, and a scale model of Rafiki’s Tree.
