Disney’s first Coco ride is a boat ride to the Land of the Dead
Disney revealed new details for its first-ever Coco attraction at D23, including a boat ride through the Land of the Dead, a queue honoring Héctor Rivera, and no height requirement. Imagineers are drawing inspiration from Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion.
Disney’s Coco attraction is shaping up as something the parks haven’t built in a long while: a boat ride full of animatronics.
At the Horizons: A Carousel of Progress showcase at D23 on August 15, Imagineers Ali Rubinstein and Emily O’Brien joined host Neil Patrick Harris to share new details on the first Coco ride at any Disney park.
The attraction is coming to Disney California Adventure. Construction is underway near Paradise Gardens Park and Pixar Pier, and Disney’s post ends by naming California Adventure directly.
And no opening date has been announced. The 2026 in that headline refers to D23 2026, the event where this was announced. Disney says only that work is in progress.
The project was first revealed at D23 2024, so it’s been in development a while, but anyone planning around a 2026 opening should not.
The story picks up a year after the movie
The ride is set one year after the events of the original film.
Your queue begins in Pixar Pier, next to Inside Out Emotional Whirlwind, entering a “casa museo” dedicated to the music of Héctor Rivera, Miguel’s great-great-grandfather.
Héctor spent the film erased from his family’s memory, on the verge of being forgotten entirely. Opening the attraction inside a museum built to honor his music is the ending of Coco rendered as architecture.
From there, you join Miguel and travel by boat through his memories of the Land of the Dead, spotting Dante and the rest along the way.
Imagineers are working with Pixar so the ride nods to both the original and Coco 2, which Disney confirmed is in the works during Friday night’s Studios showcase.
Imagineers are building it like Pirates and Haunted Mansion
Here’s the detail worth sitting up for.
Disney says Imagineering is drawing inspiration from Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion while developing the attraction, bringing the skeletal cast to life with the latest Audio-Animatronics technology.
Those are the two classic dark rides in the entire Disney canon, both built on physical figures and practical staging rather than screens. Choosing them as the reference for a story about skeletons is not subtle, and it isn’t accidental either. Pirates has been animating skeletons since 1967.
In a stretch where a lot of new attractions lean on projection and media, Disney announcing an animatronic boat ride in the Pirates tradition is the kind of thing parks fans have been asking for out loud.
No height requirement, again
Like the Encanto ride announced for Animal Kingdom the same night, Coco’s attraction will have no height requirement.
That’s two new family dark rides in one showcase where everybody in the party can ride. For California Adventure, which leans thrill-heavy on the Pixar Pier side with Incredicoaster and Silly Symphony Swings, a slow indoor boat ride fills a real gap.
What’s still unknown
Plenty. Disney hasn’t announced a name, an opening date, a ride length, or which characters get animatronics.
What’s confirmed is the format, the setting, the queue concept, the accessibility, and that dirt is moving near Paradise Gardens Park.
Los Lobos got the crowd, the concept art got the applause, and the actual ride is still a construction site with no date attached. But a boat drifting through the Land of the Dead, built by people who keep saying the words Pirates and Haunted Mansion out loud, is a promising place to start.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Disney Parks Blog (August 15, 2026), the Horizons stage announcement, the boat ride and Land of the Dead details, the Héctor Rivera casa museo queue, the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion inspiration, the no-height-requirement confirmation, the Paradise Gardens Park construction location, and the Los Lobos performance
Disney Parks Blog (August 2024), the original D23 2024 announcement of the Coco attraction for Disney California Adventure