Disney World Starts Demolition on Divisive Animal Kingdom Ride

09/22/2021 07:58 pm EDT

Disney Parks has started demolition on one of the centerpieces of a divisive Animal Kingdom theme park. Demolition started this week on the Primeval Whirl, a roller coaster located at Animal Kingdom's DinoLand U.S.A. Visitors noticed that several of the large archways that framed the chain lift of the ride were pulled off the starting hill. Walt Disney World News Today posted pictures of the demolition in process, noting that the ride's chain had been pulled out. ComicBook.com first reported on Primeval Whirl's pending extinction earlier this summer, noting that Disney had filed construction permits for the site. Disney placed construction walls around the ride earlier this month, signaling that the ride's demise was near. Disney has yet to comment on what would replace the ride. 

Primeval Whirl was one of the signature rides of DinoLand U.S.A. It sat in the middle of Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama, an area themed to resemble a roadside attraction in keeping with DinoLand USA's wider (fictional) history. The roller coaster had a time travel theme, and riders traveled back into time to outrun the meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. Of course, this wasn't the only ride in DinoLand U.S.A. that used the meteor strike as a catastrophic event. The nearby Dinosaur event also featured riders traveling through time to retrieve a dinosaur just before a meteor was scheduled to wipe them out as well. In 2019, Disney announced that the Primeval Whirl would become a seasonal ride and then permanently shut the ride down in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Disney fans have speculated for years that Disney Parks would replace or totally re-theme DinoLand U.S.A., and this speculation has grown immensely since the shutdown of Primeval Whirl. Some fans thought that an announcement could be pending when word leaked that Finding Nemo: The Musical was also shutting down, as the Theater of the Wild sat adjacent to Primeval Whirl. However, Disney announced that it was simply retooling the musical and re-opening it instead of getting rid of the attraction all together.

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