As Walt Disney World fans plan trips to say goodbye to attractions & restaurants that are closing in Hollywood Studios, many are wondering about closure date for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith. Others are wondering when the new version featuring the Electric Mayhem Band, Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the rest of the Muppets will debut.
The first thing we know so far is that Monsters, Inc. Door Coaster and Monstropolis mini-land is getting started much sooner than expected, with closure dates at the start of this summer for Mama Melrose, PizzeRizzo, and MuppetVision 3D. The day after the last of those restaurants and that show close, walls will go up around Muppets Courtyard, leaving open only Ice Cold Hydraulics, Baseline Tap House, and the Grand Avenue thoroughfare into Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
However, in announcing closure dates for MuppetVision 3D and everything in Muppets Courtyard, Walt Disney World declined to reveal a closure date for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith. Accordingly, it’s become a common question, leading us to speculate about possibilities. To be transparent, that’s all this is: speculation. Trying to piece the puzzle together and determine a plausible closure date and reimagining timeline. It’s not rumor, insider info, and certainly nothing official. If you’d prefer that, consider subscribing to our free Walt Disney World newsletter, where we’ll share instant updates as soon as they’re announced. For now, here are our best guesses as to when Aerosmith will retire from RnRC.
When announcing the phased closure of Muppets Courtyard, here’s what Walt Disney World had to say about the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster reimagining:
Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and more of their friends will be moving right along to Sunset Boulevard! The Muppets will be taking over Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, teaming up with some of music’s biggest stars for a rockin’ music festival!
We know so many of you share our love for The Muppets and know their energy will be a perfect fit for this coaster. Plus, as the first Disney ride ever to feature The Muppets, there’s sure to be laughter, screams and new tunes for this attraction for fans to enjoy throughout the adventure and plenty of Muppets-themed merchandise on Sunset Boulevard!
In the meantime, there’s still enough time to catch a super-stretch limo to the Forum to enjoy Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith and catch a glorious three-hour finale with Muppet*Vision 3D again before their final curtain calls.
While that provides zero clarity about the timeline for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster’s reimagining, Walt Disney World shared this with travel agents: “And don’t forget! Kermit, Miss Piggy and friends are soon headed just across the park to their new home on Sunset Boulevard. More to come about that timeline.” (Emphasis added.)
There’s our answer! Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets is coming soon to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Soon is good, right? Soon is…soon. But how soon is soon to Walt Disney World?
Trying to answer that feels like a fool’s errand and depends upon the perspective. Given that this is the same place that is still using a virtual queue for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure that was announced to be in place for the ride’s initial opening days, I tend to not put much stock in something like “soon.” We could be talking months, we could be talking years.
This is where I think there’s a danger in parsing these announcements too much. While Disney is sometimes very careful with its words, that’s not always the case. “Soon” could’ve been thoughtlessly thrown in there–or used to emphasize that this is still happening, and it’s one of the earlier projects in the 5-year plan pipeline.
One thing I do think we can safely rule out is Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith closing before June 2025. If that were the plan, Walt Disney World would’ve announced the date alongside the Muppets Courtyard closures. The intent is to give fans adequate time to plan farewell trips, so it stands to reason that Walt Disney World would disclose that date if it were very soon.
I would take that a step further and speculate that Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith probably isn’t closing anytime in Summer 2025. Same logic applies–if the date were already known and in the next ~6 months, Walt Disney World would’ve revealed it to entice fans to book farewell trips for RnRC.
Since they didn’t, we can probably surmise that Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith is safe through the heart of the summer tourist season. I would put the end date on that at around August 11, 2025. That’s when schools in Central Florida start going back into session and will mark the start of the early fall off-season.
For further speculation about the closure date of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith, we should look to other project timelines at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and beyond.
One thing we’ve already established from the early MuppetVision closure is that new Villains Unfairly Ever After and Little Mermaid Musical Adventure stage shows will debut sometime around Memorial Day or early June, barring delays. Those will provide the counterprogramming capacity previously offered by MuppetVision (and then some). If so, those shows don’t have any bearing on RnRC’s timeline.
Further down the road, there’s the New Mission featuring Mandalorian & Baby Yoda for Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run. (Did you forget about that?) With that movie opening on May 22, 2026, it stands to reason that project will occur in the days, weeks, or months leading up to that. At this point, it’s unclear whether that’ll necessitate a closure or be done overnight like the new scenes in Star Tours. As a more elaborate attraction, my hope is that Smugglers Run will go down for at least a few weeks for minor changes to make the queue and pre-show mesh with the mission. Who knows, though.
Normally, we’d say that projects in other parks have minimal bearing on refurbishments in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. However, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith is a thrill ride and there are only so many of those, so that’s probably the exception.
Currently, both Test Track and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad are down. DINOSAUR is closing in 2026, probably in January. As noted above, Smugglers Run is also (probably? possibly?) going down at some point in 2026. Thankfully, Test Track 3.0 debuts in Late Summer 2025, so it’ll be back before more thrill rides go down.
We’re inclined to believe that Test Track’s return does have a potential bearing on Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster’s closure, as that presents a window of opportunity before DINOSAUR goes down (and there’s likely to be overlap between that and BTMRR still being closed).
The problem is that “Late Summer” is a nebulous term, and that was announced last year when the Test Track reimagining was just kicking into high gear–Walt Disney World probably has low confidence in the timeline. In a perfect world, “Late Summer” to Disney would mean July. The second half of the month has been the busiest stretch of summer in recent years.
Walt Disney World may not be in a position to dictate the ideal opening date. It very well might be a race against the clock. September 22, 2025 is the official end of summer, so “late” could mean around then. Will Test Track open before then, or get pushed to EPCOT’s anniversary on October 1, 2025? Or will it get derailed and end up opening closer to Christmas?
This range of possibilities might also explain why there’s no closure date for RnRC yet. Because Walt Disney World isn’t certain about when Test Track will be able to reopen, and doesn’t want to be down yet another thrill ride. The cumulative effect of which might cause people to postpone or cancel trips.
There’s also the question of just how long the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster reimagining will take. Test Track is going to end up being closed for over a year. Ditto Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. DINOSAUR’s conversion into Indiana Jones Adventure will (hopefully) take at least 18 months. If RnRC’s reimagining is comparable, Walt Disney World might instead work backwards from the ideal reopening timeframe to dictate the closure date.
We strongly suspect the RnRC reimagining won’t take anywhere near that long. The roller coaster track and layout are almost certainly going to remain unchanged inside the current gravity building, and changes to any of that is what would balloon the timeline of this project. Unfortunately, it’s probably not getting a new facade or any structural changes to the exterior.
Given the concept art, we know the ride vehicles are not changing (aside from cosmetically). It’s also likely that the load area, launch, and unload will likely stay the same. If we had to guess, Imagineering will create story contrivances that offer considerable overlap with Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith. Maybe it’ll be the Muppets racing to get from their studio on the Jim Henson Company Lot in Hollywood to Downtown Los Angeles for a show. That would allow for a lot of what’s currently part of RnRC to remain unchanged.
Being a roller coaster in the dark with minimal props, there’s probably a decent amount of prepwork that could be done after hours while Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith is still operational without guests noticing. It’s also entirely possible that the current props don’t really change if the attraction retains the Los Angeles concert conceit.
The trickier and time-consuming changes will happen in the queue and pre-show. Even then, it’s our understanding that Disney has contingency plans in place that would allow the company to remove all references to Aerosmith overnight. That Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster could continue operating, without closure, in the event of an Aerosmith scandal that required Disney to distance itself from the band immediately. This is nothing new–these plans were probably formulated during the attraction’s development.
While there probably won’t be any salaciousness or scandals with the Muppets, this same contingency plan could allow for a reimagining with minimal downtime. If you’ve done RnRC early in the morning, late at night, or during After Hours events, you might know that it’s sometimes possible to bypass the pre-show. This is because, unlike many other attractions, the non-skippable safety spiel is not during the pre-show. With the doors open on that pre-show room allowing for guests to pass through, this theoretically opens the door for the Muppets Mayhem takeover to come to life without RnRC ever closing.
Honestly, I hope this isn’t the case. Going from Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith one day (but minus a pre-show) to the same ride Starring the Muppets the next would be a worst-case scenario from my perspective in terms of the ambitiousness of the reimagining.
It would mean we almost certainly aren’t getting any of the Audio Animatronics from MuppetVision 3D or any other “meaty” additions to Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. That may be a welcome relief to those of you who are holding out hope for a true preservation of MuppetVision 3D, and perhaps the creation of a Muppets Courtyard back here when Villains Unfairly Ever After ends its run.
Maybe I’m too jaded, but I just don’t see that happening. My view is that RnRC is the only Muppets attraction we’re likely to see at Walt Disney World in the next decade-plus. I fear this is a “no dough” project for Imagineering, only being done to placate fans and because Disney wants to ditch Aerosmith.
The more money and time that’s spent on Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets, the better. If this is a 6-month project that installs Audio Animatronics and makes fairly ambitious changes to the queue, pre-show, and post-show, that’s fantastic.
Not only does it mean that Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets will be a better attraction, but it increases the likelihood that the thrill ride will stick around for at least a decade, perhaps more. If this somehow ended up being an 18-month closure (it won’t), I would applaud that. The longer the closure and the more money spent, the longer Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets sticks around.
To each their own, but I’ll take the bird in hand over gambling on wishful thinking about the alternative of a Muppets Courtyard in this area. (This is precisely why I was on board with the Country Bear Musical Jamboree reimagining. It gave the attraction a new lease on life and extended its run, which was otherwise very much in doubt. When it comes to present day Disney and legacy attractions or characters, I’ll take imperfect certainty over unlikely daydreams.)
My worry is that less time and money spent on the RnRC reimagining increases the likelihood that both this and Villains Unfairly Ever After are placeholders for something totally different. That Disney believes Universal is going to relinquish the Marvel rights in the next few years, and this will become a Wakanda miniland. Or something else. Who knows.
Ultimately, my best guess is that Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith will close after the end of the summer season–probably once Test Track 3.0 has reopened. Although my fear is that the project will be able to be accomplished entirely overnight (in which case the timing could be whenever), I doubt that’s the reality.
More likely is that the RnRC reimagining necessitates a closure ranging from a few weeks to a few months. The saving grace here, just like with the Country Bears, is that there are hardcore Muppets fans in Walt Disney Imagineering. That’s probably precisely how this otherwise perplexing project got greenlit in the first place–WDI fought for it. And that means that they’ll also fight for a healthy budget, reasonably long reimagining, reusing elements from MuppetVision that would otherwise be discarded, and having as much unique Muppets humor as possible. This being a passion project is a very good thing, even if it’s accomplished on a tight budget (that’s how we got PizzeRizzo).
Assuming all of that is true, the timing of the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster reimagining could be mid-August to September 2025, or perhaps early 2026. Walt Disney World operations will likely do everything possible to avoid a closure between mid-October and January 12, 2026. Timing in early 2026 probably depends more on the reopening of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, closure of DINOSAUR, potential refurbishment of Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, and whatever else is on the table that has yet to be announced.
It’s likely that the new Mando & Baby Yoda mission (plus whatever else is hopefully coming to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge) will be the marketable draw at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for Summer 2026. Between that and the Muppets’ lack of mainstream popularity, I don’t see this project being dictated by its marketing impact–unless it becomes part of a smaller ‘package’ consisting of Test Track 3.0 (if it misses summer) and Zootopia: Better Zoogether during this year’s holiday season.
In the end, lots of unknowns. Our best guess as to a closure date for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith is August 11, 2025. Our best guess as to an opening date for the Muppets Mayhem version of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is around October 10, 2025 or November 7, 2025. Anything beyond that is too tenuous to predict. Here’s hoping we’re way off, and RnRc goes down this fall and doesn’t reopen until 2027. Now that would be the best case scenario!
For further commentary about the Muppets Mayhem takeover of RnRC, see: Are the Muppets a Good Fit for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster?
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YOUR THOUGHTS
When do you think Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith will close? What about an opening date for the Muppets Mayhem version? Think this will be a short reimagining or a lengthy one? Big budget or “no dough” project? Are you upset about the Muppets replacing Aerosmith, Monsters replacing MuppetVision, or both? If MuppetVision were going away regardless, would you still be mad about the RnRC reimagining? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
