2023 will be the year that, after five years of waiting, the Tron: Lightcycle Run roller coaster will finally open. However, that won’t be the only major attraction opening planned at Walt Disney World next year. Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana, is also currently under construction at Epcot, with a planned opening in late 2023. Today we got a new look at the attraction in the form of Te Fiti, a 16-foot tall display that looks beautiful.
Walt Disney Imagineering posted a look at the newly installed Te Fiti to Instagram and she looks beautiful, like she has truly come to life right out of Moana. The detail in this picture alone is quite impressive. Te Fiti is in the middle of the construction space so she’s not necessarily that easy to see from inside Epcot, but it’s great to know she’s there nonetheless.
The only thing that might be more fascinating than Te Fiti is that, at this point, we don’t even know what Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana even is as an attraction. We know that it won’t be a traditional ride, but will be some sort of walk through experience, and that guests will have the ability to control water in the way that Moana does in the movie, but exactly what that means we don’t really know. Exactly how this attraction will work is still a mystery, which is both kinda cool and very strange.
Journey of Water will be the final piece of the new World Nature area of Epcot. The front half of the park, formerly known as Future World, is being divided into three new sections, World Nature will include The Seas and the Land pavilion. World Discovery is the new space and future themed area which includes Mission: Space and the new Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind roller coaster. World Celebration will consist of a new hall and pavilion area that will be the hub for the various festivals that take place at Epcot around the year. It’s expected to be completed at the end of 2023 alongside Journey of Water.
People are certainly ready for Epcot's ongoing construction to end. The popular park has been covered in construction walls for years as a lot of new additions have been made. And while I would argue that Epcot needs even more work, I won’t pretend that I’m not also looking forward to all the walls coming down.
Once Epcot is finished, we know that one of the places that Walt Disney Imagineering is planning to work on is Disney's Animal Kingdom. Dinoland U.S.A. is due for redevelopment, and it’s possible that when that happens Walt Disney World could get even more Moana. At this year’s D23 Expo it was revealed that an entire land dedicated to Moana is just one of the ideas that’s currently being kicked around at WDI. A Zootopia land, likely similar to the one currently being built at Shanghai Disneyland is also a possibility.
