Monsters Inc. ride gets a reprieve at California Adventure
Mike and Sulley are getting rescued at Disney California Adventure - at least for the rest of 2026.
Last year, Disneyland announced that it would close the Monsters Inc. Mike and Sulley to the Rescue! dark ride at the beginning of this year, in preparation for a new Avatar-themed ride at the park. At a press briefing yesterday, Disneyland officials announced that the Monsters Inc. ride will remain open throughout 2026, closing in 2027 instead.
The delay in closing the Monsters Inc. ride does not mean that the Avatar project is being delayed, Disneyland officials clarified. Disney has not yet announced a timeline for the Avatar ride, which is one of several new attractions in development for Disney California Adventure.
Two new rides are under construction for the Avengers Campus expansion: Stark Flight Lab and Avengers Infinity Defense. Disneyland also has started site preparation work for a new Coco-themed boat ride at the end of Pixar Pier. The Avatar ride will be an all-new experience in the what is now the Hollywood Land backlot.
Disneyland Resort officials have committed to increasing the ride count at Disney California Adventure, as they work to balance the park's value with that of the original Disneyland. To that end, officials are hoping that keeping Monsters Inc. open for 2026 helps maintain the park's appeal to families with small children, as Disney works to bring more of those families to the resort this year with a new Bluey experience at Disneyland's Fantasyland Theatre.
Bluey's Best Day Ever! opens March 22. Disneyland officials also teased a new $5.99 kids meal that will debut this summer, as the resort looks to make visiting easier and more affordable for families. Disneyland is offering a Kids' Summer Ticket Offer this year that prices children's tickets to the parks as low as $48 a day. (You can get that deal through our ticket partner here. Just scroll down to "Kids' Summer Ticket Offer" under "1-Park Per Day Tickets.")
In addition to the new attractions, the Disneyland Resort is building a new parking garage and resort entrance on the east side of the parks. Disneyland officials said that they are looking for ways to improve the resort's security screening procedures as they look to make the new resort entrance a more inviting and efficient experience for resort guests.
Replies (8)
I see this more as moving the chess pieces around on DCA construction. There are finite numbers of people and equipment that can be working on all the projects underway at Disneyland: Avengers, Coco, Avatar and Eastern Gateway. If you shuffle the schedule to compress it here and extend it there for each of the projects, you could delay the start of demo at Monsters without delaying the opening of Avatar. But the fact that Disneyland has announced zero opening dates for any of these things makes it impossible for fans to track those schedules.
I believe they just sold bonds this week or are intending to, thought I read that in finance news. Is it possible that this is a financial move to extend their construction costs into next year ? Just a thought
D’Amaro is a super nice guy. I hope he has a successful reign. But it’s also his fault that Disney is in the state it’s currently in.
The Disney parks and experiences division has been bringing in record revenue while the other divisions lag and is back to being the keystone of the Disney company, which is why D’Amaro was chosen. Not sure what you mean by it being his fault for any presumed issues with the stock price or state of the overall organization.
I don't fully buy that this won't cause any delays to the Avatar project. My guess is that the timeline on the new parking structure has slipped, and since that will be a core part of the arrival experience on the eastern side of the resort they've pushed back the start of construction on Pandora to keep the existing dropoff areas intact for now. Whether they can make that up or not is to be seen, but if the debut winds up being 2032 instead of the generally expected 2031 I don't think anyone is really going to care. They are right about needing the attraction capacity, though...DCA only has about half as many attractions as DL next door and doesn't handle the crowd as well, so it's best to keep the ride as long as possible.
Revenue doesn’t equal profit or guest satisfaction. I’m just saying he’s been in the building when they were planning it. It’s not like he’s a new up and coming savior. To an extent he always had agency of the project, so I’m not sure why it’s such a big story.
Well I for one am glad I’ll have the opportunity to get one last ride in. I actually moved up my planned July visit to June since it’ll be nice to do Soarin Over California again as well, which I haven’t seen since the new version took over.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
They can say that they're not "delaying" Avatar, but that's really only because Disney never gave a firm date for that attraction to open. Methinks this, along with sending WDI back to the drawing board for MK's Villains Land, is D'Amaro actually influencing decisions from his new position as CEO understanding the importance of these 2 expansions that weren't quite ready to hit the final design stage, so that process could be paused to initiate a review and improvement in the designs to make them even better.
I actually view these pauses as a positive development from Disney and a clear sign that D'Amaro is leveraging his power as CEO and experience as the former head of Parks and Experiences Division to get the most out of these expansions. When Chapek took over, his first acts were to cut budgets and speed design processes that resulted in some projects that didn't deliver or were completely cancelled because they were not deemed to move the revenue needle.