Magic Kingdom Rides Back Open After Widespread Shutdown Last Night

Feb 11, 2025 in "Magic Kingdom"

Posted: Tuesday February 11, 2025 9:00am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Magic Kingdom has resolved the technical issues that shut down a large portion of the park last night. As of this morning, all attractions are open and operating normally.

More than 15 attractions were closed at Magic Kingdom last night due to suspected compressed air system issues.

The disruption, which began in the evening, affected several major rides, including:

Space Mountain
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Pirates of the Caribbean
Peter Pan's Flight
Tiana's Bayou Adventure
Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
Haunted Mansion
"it's a small world"

Only a handful of attractions remained open during the outage, leading to long wait times and limited options for guests. Disney has not shared details on the cause of the shutdown, but sources told us that the closures resulted from technical issues with the park's centralized compressed air system.

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lazyboy97oFeb 12, 2025

Sodas are a mixture of carbonated water and syrup. The syrup isn’t carbonated. You need a pump to move the syrup from its container to the fountain. You can use CO2 for that, but then you’re using additional CO2 to power your equipment. Alternatively, you can use compressed air to power the pumps so that you’re not using your CO2 for that purpose.

MrPromeyFeb 12, 2025

That makes sense. As someone who work in McDs as a kid and who owns a SodaStream, I was confused by your initial comment but I hadn't considered that. Back in the day we had big heavy aluminum canisters for the syrup. Now I see those little boxes with pouches everywhere but I wonder if Disney has that pumping from a central location too from giant vats large enough for someone to use as a hot tub. ;)

BrerFoxesBayouAdventureFeb 12, 2025

TBA down? Quick, pretend to be shocked!

JoeCamelFeb 11, 2025

They are not making CO2 from compressed air, they may have a central tank they fill with liquid CO2 but it isn't made at the fountains. They may be making it from the exhaust of the central power plant or Reedy Creek plant but probably a big tanker shows up to fill their tank and the CO2 is made at Indian River.

Smiley/OCDFeb 11, 2025

Many times compressed air is used to move the product through the lines if the syrup mixes are located far away from the dispenser… not always, but it can very well be used

MrPromeyFeb 11, 2025

Do you? Isn't that compressed CO2?

peter11435Feb 11, 2025

It depends on the attraction. It’s used extensively across attractions for animated figures and props, station gates, switch gates/tracks, brakes, and much more. In some cases yes, It will cause some attractions to stop because the system will initiate an emergency stop.

PurduevianFeb 11, 2025

Again, no idea on specifics... but off the top of my head. Gates that tell people if they can board the vehicle Sometimes restraints on vehicles are air powered Animatronics or simple moving figures could be pneumatic On ride effects such as doors opening or heads popping out from grave stones Lifting mechanism on rides like dumbo or astro orbitor Basically everything that moves is either electric, pneumatic (air), or hydraulic (liquid/water).

Smiley/OCDFeb 11, 2025

Just remember, you need compressed air to make the CO2 for EVERY soda fountain in EVERY restaurant on property…

sixbagelboyFeb 11, 2025

Just curious…what would compressed air be used for on some of the rides which closed? Like Tomorrowland Speedway. And other attractions like HM and Small World, a compressed air failure might prevent items on the ride from functioning, but will it cause boats and Omni-movers to stop moving?

DisneyCaneFeb 11, 2025

I wonder what redundancies are in place or bypass valves so that a leak somewhere doesn't have wide scale effect.

lazyboy97oFeb 11, 2025

It’s really no different than electricity. Power issues can take down large parts of the park but we all understand that it would not make sense to have a small power generating facility at every venue.

PurduevianFeb 11, 2025

True... I'm guessing there are back up systems in place, but some sort of perfect storm hit to bring everything down. Would you rather (totally made up numbers btw): A: Spend $5 million a year on individual compressed air systems and every ride goes down due to air once every 6 months (disconnected from other ride closures) B: Spend $3 million a year on a central compressed air system and the whole system goes down once every 10 years. I can see why they went with option B.