Monstropolis Is Rising Over Disney’s Hollywood Studios

In a former backstage parking lot at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, a steel skeleton keeps climbing. Cranes swing over it. Level stacks on level, diagonal bracing everywhere, plus two concrete shafts that look a lot like elevators and some curved pieces that read as coaster track. That frame is going to be the ride building for Monstropolis, the Monsters, Inc. land Disney announced and named at the D23 fan event in August 2024. Two years on, the project is taking real shape, and there is plenty worth watching.

Here’s what Disney has shared. Monstropolis is the monster city from the film, now powered by laughter, finally opening its streets to humans. You wander the neighborhoods. You eat at Harryhausen’s, the sushi place monsters line up for, moving into the building that used to hold Mama Melrose’s. There’s a venue called the Glob Theater. And the headline is a suspended coaster Disney bills as the first of its kind at any Disney park, carrying a first-ever vertical lift, sending riders through the factory’s door vault the way Sulley sent Boo home, closet door after closet door.

The coaster is the part that earns the excitement. Concept art shows scream-canister ride vehicles zooming past Mike, Sulley, and Boo with her door, and a lift that hauls the whole train straight up before it drops into the vault. Disney says claws will grab the doors and hoist them, just like the factory floor in the movie. The company has never built a suspended coaster before, so this really is new ground. And by June 2026, aerial photos showed that steel show building well underway, curved track on site, and the Harryhausen’s facade taking shape with its entrance columns already revealed. This one is happening, and you can photograph it from a plane.

The Glob Theater

To build the Glob Theater, Disney closed MuppetVision 3D, which had run for 34 years and had a genuine following. Its last day was June 8, 2025. In its place, Disney announced a whole new theater show in the same building, rethemed to Monstropolis.

Since then, the details have evolved. When Disney opened a preview center at Walt Disney Presents in October 2025, showing Monstropolis alongside the Piston Peak and Tropical Americas projects, the official Monstropolis signage listed shopping, dining, and the suspended coaster. The theater show was not on it. The venue’s name shifted from the Monstro to the Glob, and a “Late Night Screams” marquee was reworked. Asked directly, Disney said there were no changes to the previously announced theater show. Reporters who cover the parks closely have wondered whether the room might end up doing something other than a show. Either way, the space is set to be used.

The building work, meanwhile, just keeps going. In July 2026, Imagineering filed an electrical permit for the Glob Theater, so crews are wiring it right now. Disney’s own June 2026 blog post, “Discovering Monstropolis,” confirmed both Harryhausen’s and the Glob by name and promised more as the land marches toward its in-story “H.U.M.A.N. Day.”

After two years, one detail is still to come: the opening date. Disney has not announced an opening date yet. Construction watchers who track the permits and the rising steel figure 2027 is the realistic window, though that is their read rather than Disney’s word.

So here’s where it stands. The coaster looks like the real thing, a first for Disney, going up in steel you can count from the air. The restaurant is a warm, specific joke for anyone who knows the film. The theater is one to watch in a building fans already miss. Monstropolis is coming, and there is more still to be revealed.

The latest

This story is tracked live and will be updated if D23 2026 moves it.

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.

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Live updates

[Aug 14, 4:13 p.m. PT] At the Imagineering: Horizons pavilion, Disney shared a Monstropolis mood board of design inspiration sketches and painted maquettes of monster-fied animals, including a pigeon, a squirrel, and a rabbit.