DinoLand U.S.A.
DinoLand U.S.A. was a themed land at Disney's Animal Kingdom in the Walt Disney World Resort, Florida. Opened with the park on April 22, 1998, it covered the park's category of extinct animals, combining a serious fictional research institute with a deliberately gaudy roadside carnival. The land closed in phases during 2025 and 2026 and is being replaced by a Tropical Americas land, announced for the same site with attractions based on Encanto and Indiana Jones.
Concept and backstory
DinoLand was set in the fictional Diggs County, somewhere in the American interior. In the story devised by the Imagineers, amateur fossil hunters found dinosaur bones near the town in 1947, and scientists, students and tourists followed. The newcomers founded the Dino Institute, a research body devoted to dinosaurs and, in time, to time travel; its headquarters, dig site and converted fishing-lodge restaurant formed the respectable half of the land. Nearby, local gas station owners Chester and Hester took the opposite approach, converting their forecourt first into a souvenir shop and then into a small amusement park to extract money from the passing tourists.
That tension — sincere science against cheerful exploitation — structured the whole land. The Institute's areas were built in concrete, glass and museum lettering, while Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama was asphalt, string lights and painted plywood, a parody of the American roadside attraction. A road sign for highway US 498 quietly encoded the park's opening date, April 1998. At the land's entrance stood a brachiosaurus skeleton spanning the path, and near the Institute a full-size replica of Dino-Sue, the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimen known when the park opened.
History
On opening day the land contained Countdown to Extinction, an intense dark ride through the late Cretaceous; The Boneyard, a fossil dig playground; the Cretaceous Trail walking path; and a working fossil preparation laboratory where visitors could watch Sue's replica being readied. The ride was renamed DINOSAUR in May 2000 to tie in with Disney's animated film Dinosaur, though its story and content changed little. A planned wooden coaster, the Excavator, was designed as a runaway mine train around the dig site but never built.
Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama opened in two stages, TriceraTop Spin and the midway games arriving on November 18, 2001, and the spinning coaster Primeval Whirl following on April 18, 2002. Primeval Whirl operated seasonally in its later years, closed in 2020 and was demolished in 2021. From 2018 the land also hosted Donald's Dino-Bash, a character event built around Donald Duck's claimed ancestry from dinosaurs.
Closure came in stages. Dino-Rama shut on January 13, 2025, and The Boneyard followed in September 2025. DINOSAUR carried its last riders on February 1, 2026, and the remainder of the land, including Restaurantosaurus, closed on February 2, 2026, ending a run of nearly twenty-eight years. The replacement Tropical Americas land, centred on the village of Pueblo Esperanza, will reuse the DINOSAUR ride system for an Indiana Jones attraction, alongside an Encanto attraction and a carousel of Disney animal characters.
Principal attractions
- DINOSAUR (1998–2026; Countdown to Extinction until 2000) — riders boarded Time Rovers on a routine tour of the Cretaceous, diverted by a rogue scientist into an attempt to bring an iguanodon back to the present moments before the asteroid impact.
- The Boneyard (1998–2025) — a large shaded playground styled as an active dig site, with slides built into rockwork and a sand pit in which children could excavate replica fossils.
- Primeval Whirl (2002–2020) — a spinning wild mouse coaster presented as Chester and Hester's homemade time machine.
- TriceraTop Spin (2001–2025) — a hub-and-spoke spinner with triceratops vehicles, in the Dino-Rama area.
- Fossil Fun Games (2001–2025) — pay-per-play carnival games with dinosaur prizes.