What Does Walt Disney World Need?

I spend far too much time thinking about Disney theme parks, especially Walt Disney World.

While I hold a warm place in my heart for Disneyland, I’m an East Coast kid who spent his childhood vacations in Orlando.

The Most Magical Place on Earth has delighted me for decades now, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

Even Disney officials know that there’s always room for improvement, even at the most popular theme park in the world.

So, what does Walt Disney World Need?

More Character Dining

Presuming that we don’t count the reopening of 1900 Park Fare, Walt Disney World hasn’t hosted a new character meal in ages.

The last ones of note are the Breakfast à la Art with Mickey & Friends at Disney’s Riviera Resort and the Artist Point reimagining.

The latter character meal is Storybook Dining at Artist Point with Snow White, and I once considered it a prototype.

When this meal debuted, I felt confident that Disney would duplicate the concept at other flagging restaurants.

Once upon a time, Artist Point was arguably the easiest dining reservation to book on the Disney campus.

As soon as Snow White became the star, Artist Point switched to the hottest ticket in town.

Alas, any plans Disney may have had along those lines fell apart when the pandemic started.

Since then, Disney has been playing catch-up, but the parks have finally fully recovered.

So, now strikes me as the perfect time to double and triple down on the concept of character dining.

Honestly, I don’t understand why Disney wouldn’t. There’s seemingly endless demand for these meals.

Anyone who has ever tried to book a table at Chef Mickey’s knows what I mean.

Even better, the process of switching a restaurant to character dining is simple.

Therefore, I strongly encourage Disney to add more of these options, preferably starting with another comeback.

With 1900 Park Fare once again hosting characters, Trattoria Al Forno should bring back its Tangled/Little Mermaid breakfast, too.

The restaurant was always crowded for this experience, and guests left with a smile on their faces.

More Skyliner options

I’ve been calling for this one pretty much since day one of the Disney Skyliner, but there’s a good reason why.

In the days leading up to the Skyliner’s 2019 opening, so many lazy critics swore that the gondola system would fail.

Seriously, at the time, there were maybe five of us on Disney sites who liked the idea. Everyone else thought it was a joke.

And the explanations as to why were nothing short of comical.

The most popular one was that people would hate the Skyliner due to the temperature.

Disney didn’t install air conditioning units due to their engineers’ basic understanding of ventilation.

A few vents in a gondola shaft in mid-air were all that the Skyliner needed.

Yes, there was one high-profile crash at the time and a handful of minor fender benders over the years.

That’s a product of objects in constant motion occasionally jostling together, yet even those instances are rare now.

As proof, Disney recently announced a Skyliner refurbishment in January 2026.

That was the moment when everyone realized that Disney usually does these renovations each January.

There was no need in 2025 because the system ran so smoothly. Simply stated, the Disney Skyliner just plain works.

Guests avoid traffic by soaring through the skies. It’s a visually engaging experience and a more efficient form of travel.

The only problem with the Skyliner is that it’s not available at popular destinations like Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, or Disney Springs.

So, Disney should do us all a solid and extend the Skyliner by adding stations at these places.

Preferably, Disney would do this in time for some of the expansion lands at Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom.

More Water Rides

Here’s another area where Disney has room for improvement.

Florida’s getting hotter, as is the rest of the south…and everywhere else, really.

Not coincidentally, I’ve championed Disney’s addition of more indoor attractions.

I’ve noticed an uptick in rumored/confirmed projects that place indoors such as the Monsters, Inc. roller coaster.

However, Disney isn’t going to wall up the entirety of its Orlando campus and turn on the air conditioning.

I mean, technically, Disney has the firepower to do that via its solar farms, but it’s an unrealistic goal.

So, what every theme park needs is another wet ride, one that will soak us so much that we won’t care about the sun.

The return of Splash Mountain’s replacement, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, helped some, but it was really a lateral move.

Disney needs more wet rides and preferably better ones than Kali River Rapids, an attraction few people even understand.

Duplicating that Lion King ride from Disneyland Paris would be a good start…

More Stuff at Animal Kingdom

Disney is acutely aware of the problem I’m about to discuss, but it still merits mention.

Right now, the lack of high-quality attractions at Animal Kingdom is probably THE most glaring issue at Disney World.

The park currently hosts six rides, and one of them, DINOSAUR, will close at a later date. Disney has already confirmed that.

When it happens, the list of rides at Animal Kingdom is just:

• Avatar Flight of Passage
• Expedition Everest
• Kali River Rapids
• Kilimanjaro Safaris
• Na’vi River Journey

Now, the park itself hosts all sorts of amazing experiences. It is, at its core, a zoo as much as it is a theme park.

Still, five rides isn’t anywhere near enough for a Disney park.

Even after the Tropical Americas opens, that count will only increase to eight.

At the start of this year, Animal Kingdom had seven rides.

So, with the expansion, we’re not even talking about a massive increase in quantity, simply quality.

Give this park more, Disney!

Better Tech

Finally, I’ll offer a simple plea. Disney, please fulfill the promises you made about Disney Genie.

Like, I’m not even being unreasonable here about what you should add.

Instead, I politely request that you create the system you promised rather than the one you released.

About a year ago, I asked some of MickeyBlog’s park reporters and frequent guests whether they ever used Disney Genie.

I’m not joking when I say that they laughed at the very thought of it. That’s how bad the current Disney Genie is.

Regular park visitors scoff at the notion of using it. But the idea itself is good.

The next generation of consumers will trust AI in a way that nobody over the age of 30 ever could or would.

Even now, I cycle through articles about how much Gen Z relies on AI, and we’re talking about a first-generation product here.

Right now, AI is frankly terrible and a worst-case scenario implementation of the idea.

So, there’s a parallel with what happened with Disney Genie. The idea is vastly superior to the execution.

But Disney Genie is serving one primary purpose right now, albeit a hidden one. It’s collating massive amounts of data.

One day in the future, hopefully soon, Disney should be able to release a superior version of the product.

There’s even a technological analog. Amazon knows that Alexa has been terrible for years.

Alexa+ may not be, though. If Alexa can make a generative leap in functionality, so can and should Disney Genie.

Hopefully, this improvement happens soon because Disney Genie is laughable in its current form.

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Feature Photo: Disney