Land Changelog // updated 2026.05.26
Hollywood Studios · Walt Disney World
Reopened as Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets, a full retheme fronted by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem with a new G-Force Records queue, new storyline and soundtrack, a first-ever Scooter Audio-Animatronic, and Statler, Waldorf and penguin figures repurposed from the former Muppet*Vision 3D.
Closed permanently as Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith after its final day of operation, retiring the Aerosmith theme and soundtrack ahead of the Muppets retheme.
Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After grand-opened at the Sunset Showcase theater in Disney's Hollywood Studios, a live stage show hosted by the Magic Mirror featuring Maleficent, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, with an original song, 'Magic Mirror.'
Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After opened in the same Sunset Showcase theater, which Disney said was fitted with a brand-new stage and theater seating.
Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy played its final day of operation and closed permanently after five and a half years.
Disney announced that Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy would close permanently after October 7, 2024, to make way for a Disney Villains stage show in the same Sunset Showcase theater.
Fantasmic! returned in a reimagined form, adding an all-new Disney Heroes sequence (Aladdin, Elsa, Pocahontas, Moana, and Mulan) with upgraded lasers, lighting and sound, extending the runtime to about 29 minutes.
Fantasmic! went dark when Walt Disney World closed for the COVID-19 pandemic, and its lagoon was drained; it did not resume with the park's July 2020 reopening and stayed shuttered for roughly two and a half years.
Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy opened at the Sunset Showcase theater on Sunset Boulevard, a 10-minute show pairing a Lightning McQueen figure on stage with a 17-foot-tall wrap-around screen stretching over 200 feet end-to-end.
In the courtyard outside the theater guests could meet Cruz Ramirez and join a Cars-themed dance party hosted by DJ.
Disney announced Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy, a Cars-themed stage show for the Sunset Showcase theater beside Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, with a debut planned for early 2019.
On November 9, 2015 Disney announced that Star Wars Weekends would not return, ending Obi-Wan and Beyond permanently as the park shifted to year-round Star Wars offerings ahead of construction on the Star Wars land.
The show gave its last performances on June 14, 2015, the closing day of the fifth and final weekend of the last Star Wars Weekends, which ran Fridays through Sundays from May 15 to June 14, 2015.
By May 2015 the show was being staged at the Theater of the Stars, the large Sunset Boulevard amphitheater normally used by Beauty and the Beast - Live on Stage, rather than the Premiere Theater where it had been performed in 2011.
For Star Wars Weekends 2013, which ran May 17 through June 9, the show played every event day, alongside Ray Park's Visit to the Maul and Warwick Davis's An Ewok's Tale, which each played only selected weekends.
Obi-Wan and Beyond, a one-man voice-acting show starring James Arnold Taylor, the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, was running as part of Star Wars Weekends at Disney's Hollywood Studios by June 2011, staged at the Premiere Theater.
The fixed triple-drop sequence was replaced with a computer-randomized drop system that selects one of several preset profiles for each ride, marketed as "Never the Same Fear Twice."
A re-staged second version debuted, reordering the musical numbers to follow the film's chronology and adding an Enchantress prologue recounting the Beast's curse — the version still performed today.
Opened at Disney-MGM Studios as Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith, an enclosed launched roller coaster accelerating riders from 0 to 57 mph in under 3 seconds.
A third drop and enhanced effects were added, with roughly 30% more time in the shaft, greater acceleration, a rumbling shake and a stronger weightless feel, marketed as "Fear Every Drop!"
Fantasmic! opened at Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios) in the purpose-built Hollywood Hills Amphitheater off Sunset Boulevard, debuting the nighttime water-screen, pyrotechnic and live-performer spectacular.
A second full drop was added to the ride profile, expanding the original single-drop finale into a two-drop sequence, marketed as "Twice the Fright."
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror opened on Sunset Boulevard at Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios), a 199-foot Hollywood Tower Hotel-themed drop attraction whose elevator vehicle travels horizontally into a Fifth Dimension show scene before locking into a high-speed drop shaft. It launched with a single drop finale.
The show reopened in the newly rebuilt, now-roofed Theater of the Stars on the new Sunset Boulevard — its permanent home — after running since September 1993 at the Premiere Theater on New York Street during the boulevard's construction.
Beauty and the Beast – Live on Stage premiered at the open-air Theater of the Stars (then near Hollywood Boulevard), debuting the same day the animated film reached theaters — the first time a Disney feature and its stage adaptation opened simultaneously.
That's every change on the record in Sunset Blvd since 1991.
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