Peter Pan's Flight Closing for Updates at Walt Disney World This Summer

Jun 27, 2024 in "Peter Pan's Flight"

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Posted: Thursday June 27, 2024 9:32am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

According to the official Walt Disney World operating hours calendar, Peter Pan's Flight at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom will be closed for more than a month this summer.

The closure begins July 8 and continues through August 20, reopening to guests on August 21, 2024.

Peter Pan's Flight at Magic Kingdom

Walt Disney Imagineering recently filed a permit for Peter Pan's Flight, carrying the description of "Install set elements." The permit suggests that we will see some changes when the ride reopens in August, although Disney has not announced the details of any updates.

Peter Pan's Flight has been the subject of scrutiny and criticism for containing scenes that some consider culturally insensitive. The primary concern revolves around the portrayal of Native Americans in the attraction, which reflects outdated and stereotypical representations. In particular, the depiction of the "Indian Village" and the characterization of the Native American characters can be seen as perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

Disney has been gradually addressing such issues in its parks and media properties, revising attractions and content to be more culturally sensitive and inclusive. For instance, the Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain rides were recently updated to remove racially insensitive portrayals.

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easyrowrdwSep 12, 2024

Accepted was the term you used so I responded to that. As to your question, neither. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I think Disney is doing it because they think it is the right and appropriate thing to do.

JMcMahonEsqSep 12, 2024

Its not a Boolean set response. It isn't an acceptance/rejection scenario. Its a question of trending modern societal norms, the same way changes were made to jungle cruise. Were people "not accepting" the ride, no, but changes were made. I mean what do you think is more likely, WDW decided to just spend money replacing things on Jungle cruise and Peter Pan...because they like spending money? Or that they have data that shows the changed items were getting negative feedback in some form, and decided to alter them?

DranthSep 12, 2024

You can enjoy a ride and still find parts of it a little problematic. It isn't an all or nothing situation and many people share those thoughts with Disney. Who knows how much of that happened in this case, but it does happen.

OG RunnerSep 12, 2024

They made a change that was totally unnecessary and replaced the old scene, (which was from the original movie), with a new scene. ( that was not)

easyrowrdwSep 12, 2024

What evidence is there that customers weren't accepting the ride as it was? From everything I've seen guests love the ride and have for a very long time. Guests loved Splash too. I don't think they changed it because of guests, but just because it's what Disney thinks is right and appropriate. That's their prerogative, of course.

JMcMahonEsqSep 12, 2024

WDW is a business today, not some time capsule of the past. WDW is looking to attract customers today, with the societal norms of today, not the past. This isn’t re-writing history, this is a business making a decisions it thinks will be better accepted by its current customers

V_L_RaptorAug 23, 2024

Got to see this in person the other day, and speaking just as an observer, the whole arrangement looks like trying to improve on what was previously there with constraints from what's still there. The first thing that hit me was how tremendously low animation the whole ride is. Easily the most kinetic element (to me, anyway) is having all the pirate ship vehicles dangling from the ceiling. The scenes themselves are fairly static; by extension, so is the tribe scene. As far as that goes, first off... I don't remember figures in any of the "islands" being quite as large as these are. That surprised me, but it's been ages since I've been on this ride, so that may just be me. But the scene's animation, or lack thereof... I'm not sure how much of an improvement they could have done with scene selection while getting a decent representation of movement with the ride's overall (mostly static) animation style. Either because they were retrofitting existing mechanisms or because they chose to keep the scene relatively low kinetics in keeping with the rest of the ride, there's really not too much they could use here to get a good representation of Fancy Shawl. If you count the drummers as a single mechanism (hey, maybe), that's a grand total of two elements in the whole scene for them to play with. Since they went with drum beats for the audio there, animating striking the drum seems like a no-brainer. That leaves them one more mechanism, and I can't imagine they'd want a completely static Tiger Lily after the previous version of this scene. Ribbons would have been great, but I wonder how long it would take for them to start looking like strips cut from a Swiffer duster. (Proactive maintenance on these classic dark rides... ain't.) Adding animation for Tiger Lily's arms and legs to really show off the dance would've been a lot more movement than any other scene in this ride has. They could've had a (slow) animation in the shoulders to move the arms, but for whatever reason, they came up with a turntable to have her whole body move while keeping her joints static. I can't defend it, except to say that if the whole ride sucks for movement, additions would need to suck, too, just to fit in. Beyond that, if it has to fit the constraints of the ride, what's there looks better to me than what was there previously.

BocabearAug 23, 2024

the other thing is this was an indigenous tribe of Neverland.... not an indigenous American tribe...From the original book illustrations it was clear the inspiration was a romanticized view of an American tribe... any sort of accuracy seems wrong in a complete fantasy piece that basically takes place on another planet. The new scene looks fine, but why didn't they base it on the dance between Peter Pan and Tiger Lily?...something that happened in the actual film instead of something off-model.

Tha RealestAug 23, 2024

This is an important question, given Disney’s recent history in this regard. https://www.fodors.com/world/north-america/usa/california/experiences/news/disneyland-resort-tenaya-stone-spa

DisneyCaneAug 23, 2024

Since this change allows Peter Pan's Flight to remain mostly as it was, I'm fine with it. At least they didn't decide the whole ride needed to be rethemed like Splash. In this case, there was something potentially offensive IN the ride that they altered.

TrainsOfDisneyAug 23, 2024

I’m fine with the change, I’m ok with the previous version as well, and I’d also be ok with only showing the teepees or replacing the scene altogether. I did like hearing from members who are Native American and hear thoughts on the new scene from them - it kinda sounds like the new scene creates as many problems as it solves.

flynnibusAug 22, 2024

It’s never been about historical accuracy- it’s always about not offending

Ice GatorAug 21, 2024

which is ripe coming from Disney park fans of all people who preach about progression and Walt never wanting the parks to become museums This one is just funny to me because they literally just replaced the Native American scene with another Native American scene. I’m lost at what the problem is or how the old one was better as a scene that lasts 5 seconds in a 2 minute ride.