Disney History Institute Podcast · Disney History Institute

DHI 325 - The Disney Update - December 2025 - Part One

·41 min·4 clips

Four stories carry the episode. The host starts at the California resort, where Rapunzel's Tower is arriving and Rapunzel seems to be moving into some of Snow White's old character territory. Then Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln comes back at the Opera House, with attention on what changed in the attraction's staging after the closure. Avengers Campus takes up the middle stretch. The host connects Disney's expansion plans to lessons that appear to come out of Galaxy's Edge. Infinity Defense looks like the bigger bet. From a recent park visit, its show building had metal framing across the roof and looked like a two-story structure. The steel gets read against Rise of the Resistance, though the building still does not seem as tall as the existing Avengers structure. Stark Flight Lab is nearby, but it looked less far along. That leads to a careful construction read: Infinity Defense probably needs more installation and finishing time, so Disney appears to have pushed the larger building ahead first. The ride tech is part of the fun here. Stark Flight Lab seems to use a kooka arm system connected to an earlier unbuilt Avengers ride idea built around jetpack-like movement. That reuse says a lot. What once belonged to a bigger Wakanda battle concept now seems to become the ride premise inside Stark Labs. Thanos is still at the center. Infinity Defense moves through Wakanda and an alternate world where the Avengers did not win in Endgame and an elevated Thanos rules other worlds. The campus, in other words, is looking backward as much as forward. The final story broadens the worry. Disney's wave of machine learning animatronic figures powered by generative AI sounds impressive, but the host leaves room for the catch underneath the shiny part.

As heard by us

A calm, exacting Disney news roundup with a sharp eye for how the parks are being remade.

Disney's parks come across here less like spectacle and more like a running audit of changing priorities: what gets built, what gets brought back, and what gets reworked as the company updates its own logic.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want Disney parks news that reads design changes as strategy, not just spectacle.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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