Good morning from Magic Kingdom, where we are getting a sneak peek first look at a redesigned ride vehicle for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. As you may know, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad has been closed since early this year for a lengthy refurbishment. Disney is currently targeting sometime in 2026 for a reopening, where the company promises “new magic”. Overall, Big Thunder isn’t being reimagined or rethemed, just refreshed as part of a quality of life update for the aging roller coaster. In fact, we’ve seen Disney completely remove and reinstall new roller coaster track as part of the work.
However, what we’re interested in doing with this article is taking a closer look at the newly revealed ride, which has some changes compared to the old look. Don’t worry though, you’re still very much rolling along in a runaway train. Here’s a closer look!
New Ride Vehicles for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
We’ll start with a look back at the old ride vehicles. Some things to take note of before we take a look at the new ride vehicles is the vibrant orange color of the wooden cars, and the faded, rusty look of the main train.
Our first look at the ride vehicle comes from one positioned quite near to the Frontierland train station. We’ll actually see a bit of a reversal here, with the train becoming more vibrant (probably due to a lack of sun damage so far), and the wooden cars becoming a bit more muted (thanks to a change in paint color).
One of the first things I noticed was a lot of “mud” on the bottom half of the train and throughout the cars. This appears to be a theming decision, and not environmental. I’m not sure that any vehicle has been sent through the tracks yet, so this would be a choice made back when painting and theming the vehicle itself. I think it looks good, and it makes a ton of sense given the vistas that we travel across in the ride itself.
In terms of the engine body, there is a lot more color and a lot less rust. You always hope that the rust that you see at Walt Disney World is theming, but sometimes it isn’t. I still think that the rust on the old vehicles was absolutely theming, and the relative lack of rust for this new engine appears to be a deliberate decision. Perhaps they traded rust for mud to make visual inspections of the trains easier, who knows.
One theming element that appears to be missing is the builder’s plate, positioned below the front steam stack on the old vehicles. Thankfully, it looks like we can just make out a hole on the black section of the engine on the far right side of the photo below where the builder’s plate would go. Let’s hope that it returns!
Turning our attention to the wooden ride boxes pulled along by the train engine, we find a much more muted color pattern. This change goes from the vibrant orange look of the old ride vehicles to something much closer to a more natural color of wood.
Other than that, it looks like we’ll still retain the same bench-style seating and single lap bar. Parents, best hold on to your hats, glasses, and sliding young children, because this here’s still the wildest ride in the wilderness (until Cars arrive).
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
