Greetings to another roundup of Disney theme park news! I hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving and that your holiday season is off to a good start. I know I’m grateful for this little corner of the internet where we can come together and geek out over the Disney theme parks together. If you’ve spent anytime this year reading articles, I am so grateful for YOU!
I’ll be honest, with Thanksgiving, I thought this would be a quiet news week and was totally prepared to lump this week and next week together — boy was I wrong! Turns out this was a decently busy week with lots of smaller but no less exciting announcements coming out of Disney World and Disneyland! Let’s catch up on what’s new from the Disney theme parks for the week of November 25, 2024.
Disney Vacation Club Renames Reflections Property to Disney Lakeshore Lodge, Opening in 2027
Back in 2018, a new Disney Vacation Club property was announced for the Fort Wilderness area of Magic Kingdom. At the time, the property was called Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge. Since the onset of the pandemic, Disney World fell into a “will they/won’t they” pattern with Reflections, leaving the future of the resort up in the air.
We gained new-found clarity this week with Disney announcing its newest Disney Vacation Club property, Disney Lakeshore Lodge. The resort will be located in the former plot of Reflections, and from the newly released concept art, it looks like a lot of the original ideas crossed over into this rebrand. Disney Lakeshore Lodge will open in 2027. In the meantime, Disney Vacation Club is set to open its next property, Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Villas and Bungalows, this December.
READ MORE: THESE ARE THE MOST EXPENSIVE DISNEY WORLD RESORTS
EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays Begins
It’s festival season once again at EPCOT! The Festival of the Holidays kicked off on Friday, running daily through December 30. The Festival of the Holidays include plenty of festive bites and sips available for purchase at the various outdoor kitchens, merchandise, and the nightly Candlelight Processional.
New to the Festival of the Holidays this year are food booths Experimental Prototype Cookies of Tomorrow and Favorites of Festivals Past, both found at CommuniCore Hall. While visiting CommuniCore Hall, guests can also check out a brand-new gingerbread structure of Spaceship Earth.
READ MORE: PLAN A DISNEY WORLD HOLIDAY VACATION
2025 Disney Vacation Club Perks Include Redeeming Points For Disney World Annual Pass
If you’re a Disney Vacation Club Member, you’ll definitely want to catch up on this next piece of news. Earlier this year, Disney Vacation Club announced DVC Membership Magic Beyond, a $99/year benefits program that includes a lineup of added perks for Members. These perks include the ability to purchase specially priced theme park tickets, priority access to Member lounges, and more.
This week, Disney Vacation Club announced another perk that will be included when you sign up for the program: the ability to use DVC points to purchase a Disney World Sorcerer Annual Pass. It will cost 75 points for a new pass and 65 points to renew a pass. The pass will be available for purchase starting December 3 for use January 12 through December 31.
Extended Outdoor Queue Complete at Haunted Mansion at Disneyland Resort; Gift Shop to Open This Winter
The west side of Disneyland Park has been filled with construction walls this year, with multiple nearby projects taking place at the same time. One of those long-term projects has been the remodeling of Haunted Mansion’s outdoor queue space. Those construction walls have finally come down, and the new outdoor queue at Haunted Mansion is complete!
With the completion of the new extended queue, Haunted Mansion and Haunted Mansion Holiday will no longer use Disneyland’s virtual queue system. That means, as of this writing, the only ride at Disneyland Park that uses virtual queue is Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which officially opened on November 15.
That’s not the only change at Haunted Mansion — the ride has a new gift shop opening very soon! The walls have come down around Madame Leota’s Somewhere Beyond, located near the exit of Haunted Mansion. The shop will open this winter.
According to Disney, Madame Leota’s Somewhere Beyond will be filled with Madame Leota’s “eclectic furniture including a crystal ball, feinting couch and the original parlor chandelier that Leota used in séances at the mansion.”
D-Lander Shop Soft Opens at Downtown Disney
There’s more new shopping available at Disneyland Resort! This week, D-Lander Shop soft opened at Downtown Disney. Downtown Disney has undergone a major refresh over the past year or two, and this is one step closer to the project’s completion!
D-Lander shop is where you’ll find “trend forward fashions and co-branded collections of apparel, handbags and jewelry including Kate Spade, Dooney & Bourke and a dedicated Pandora Jewelry shop.”
D-Lander will be joined by Avengers Reserve and Disney Wonderful World of Sweets as additional new shopping destinations in Downtown Disney, opening this winter. We’ll also see the arrival of several new dining locations at Downtown Disney throughout 2025, so be sure to keep an eye on this space for more updates!
