A new Notice of Commencement has been filed for Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress at Magic Kingdom, and the details suggest the upcoming overhaul may involve more than new show scenes.
Walt Disney Imagineering has filed the permit with Southeastern Construction & Maintenance, Inc. listed as the contractor, with a scope of general construction. It is not a vendor commonly seen working with WDI on theme park projects.
Southeastern Construction & Maintenance is a specialist contractor whose core services center on structural steel fabrication and industrial construction. According to the company website, their capabilities include:
Structural steel fabrication and erection
Industrial site construction
Structural concrete work
Equipment setting and alignment
Their project portfolio gives a sense of the scale they operate at. Southeastern fabricated the individual components of the Artemis 1 Mobile Launch Platform for NASA at Cape Canaveral — a project involving 1,500 tons of structural steel.
The nature of their services points toward significant structural or infrastructure work — the kind that goes well beyond updating show scenes.
Disney has confirmed the Carousel of Progress will close July 6, 2026, for a major overhaul that includes a new Walt Disney opening scene and four entirely new show scenes spanning the 1960s through a vision of the future. The attraction is expected to reopen in 2027.
But this latest permit filing suggests the work inside the building may run much deeper. Structural steel fabrication and industrial construction work of this nature typically indicates upgrades to the building infrastructure itself — potentially including the attraction’s rotating theater system, structural elements, or other core components of the facility.
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