Liberty Square
Liberty Square is one of the six themed lands of Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, and the only one with no Disneyland counterpart. Themed to colonial America in the era of the Revolutionary War, it sits between Fantasyland and Frontierland. It opened with the park on October 1, 1971, and contains two of the park's best-known attractions: the Haunted Mansion and the Hall of Presidents.
Origins
Liberty Square began as an idea for Disneyland. In the late 1950s Walt Disney planned Liberty Street, a colonial-themed side street off Main Street, U.S.A., which would have included a hall telling the story of American independence and, eventually, a presentation involving the presidents. The expansion was never built in California — work on the 1964 New York World's Fair and then the Florida project intervened — but the concepts survived. When Magic Kingdom was designed in the late 1960s, the idea was revived at full land scale, partly because the approaching United States Bicentennial of 1976 made an early-American theme timely. The projected Hall of Presidents grew out of the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln show created for the World's Fair.
Design
The land is arranged as a deliberate walk through early American architecture and geography. At its eastern end stands the Haunted Mansion, styled after the Dutch Gothic Revival houses of New York's Hudson River Valley in the late 1700s; proceeding west, the buildings pass through Georgian and federal styles associated with Philadelphia and New England, before the land gives way to Frontierland and the nineteenth-century West. The buildings' two-digit house numbers, prefixed with "18", give the decade each style represents.
Period detail extends to deliberate absences. In keeping with colonial practice, the land was built without restrooms, a rule relaxed only decades later, and a brown ribbon in the pavement represents the open sewers of a period town. At the square's centre stand its two symbols. The Liberty Tree is a large southern live oak, transplanted from elsewhere on the property, hung with thirteen lanterns for the thirteen colonies. Beside it is a replica of the Liberty Bell, cast from the original bell's mould and placed here on July 4, 1989; because Pennsylvania, which keeps the original, returned its Bicentennial replica, Florida became the only state with two replica Liberty Bells.
History
Liberty Square opened on October 1, 1971 with the Haunted Mansion, the Hall of Presidents, and riverboat rides on the Rivers of America, which formed its western border. The land changed less over the following decades than any other in the park; its attractions were revised rather than replaced. The Hall of Presidents has been updated with each new administration, and its script was rewritten in 1993, when the sitting president began delivering a recorded speech in the show — a practice maintained since. From 2016 to 2020 a live Muppets show on American history was performed from the windows above the square. The riverfront era ended on July 7, 2025, when the Rivers of America, the Liberty Belle riverboat and Tom Sawyer Island closed for construction of Piston Peak National Park.
Attractions
- Haunted Mansion (1971) — a dark ride in slow-moving Doom Buggies through a manor inhabited by 999 ghosts. The Florida house's Hudson Valley styling makes it visually distinct from the antebellum mansion at Disneyland.
- The Hall of Presidents (1971) — a theatre show combining film of American history with Audio-Animatronic figures of every president of the United States, housed in a building modelled on Philadelphia's Independence Hall.
- Liberty Square Riverboat (1971–2025) — a stern-wheel riverboat, latterly named Liberty Belle, which circled Tom Sawyer Island until the waterway closed.
Dining and shopping
The land's restaurants include the Liberty Tree Tavern, a colonial-style inn serving family-style meals; Columbia Harbour House, a counter-service restaurant themed to a New England seaport whose upper floor bridges the walkway into Fantasyland; and Sleepy Hollow Refreshments. Shops include Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe and Memento Mori, a Haunted Mansion-themed shop opened in 2014.