Parks Magic
Disney World's Coronado Springs Convention Center Begins a 13-Month Refurbishment on August 10, and It Is Not Closing While the Work Happens
News

Disney World's Coronado Springs Convention Center Begins a 13-Month Refurbishment on August 10, and It Is Not Closing While the Work Happens

Michael Travels
·
Published

Disney has put a start date and an end date on a project it has otherwise described only in broad strokes. Beginning Monday, August 10, the Convention Center at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort goes into a refurbishment that runs all the way through late September 2027.

That is roughly 13 months of work in a convention center with about 220,000 square feet of meeting space. Blog Mickey describes the facility as ranking among the largest on Walt Disney World property.

Wide daytime view across Lago Dorado at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, with the tall cream and gold Gran Destino Tower rising in the center behind a long wooden boardwalk, the Villa del Lago building at left, palm trees and Spanish colonial rooflines along the shore, and bright pink bougainvillea blossoms filling the foreground

Gran Destino Tower and Lago Dorado at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. The Convention Center is not pictured. Image credit: Disney, via Blog Mickey

The good news is that it stays open

This is not a shutdown. Per the reporting from Blog Mickey and WDW News Today, the Convention Center will not close completely. In Disney's own words, "Work will be completed in phases, with individual spaces being temporarily inaccessible at times. The work will take place overnight to help minimize impacts to daily operations." Blog Mickey, describing the same plan, reports crews will handle most of the construction overnight rather than all of it.

The complex houses the marquee rooms, the Coronado Ballroom, the Fiesta Ballroom and the Veracruz Exhibition Hall, plus 45 breakout rooms. Which of them go offline when has not been published.

KennythePirate notes that guests visiting or staying at the hotel may still hear or see construction anyway.

El Centro is the part that touches everybody

Here is the detail that matters even if you have never attended a convention in your life. The El Centro Corridor and the areas around it are getting a refurbishment tied to the Convention Center work.

El Centro is the resort's central hub, holding its food court, table service dining, and shops. Resort check-in itself moved over to the Gran Destino Tower lobby when the tower opened in 2019, but El Centro remains the building guests walk through for meals and merchandise. Anyone staying at Coronado Springs during this stretch is likely to pass some version of this project, convention badge or not.

The cream stucco monument entrance sign with a teal tile band, reading Disney's Coronado Springs Resort and Convention Center, set in a bed of pale gravel with tall palm trees behind it, a green lawn in the foreground, and the cream and gold Gran Destino Tower rising against a clear blue sky in the background

The resort's entrance monument sign, which reads Resort and Convention Center. The Convention Center building itself is not pictured. Image credit: WDW News Today

What Disney has not said

Almost everything else. Disney has not detailed what the finished spaces will look like, and there is no published phase-by-phase schedule showing which rooms go offline when. For anyone with an event on the books between now and autumn 2027, that is the open question, and the answer is going to come from the resort's convention services team rather than from a blog post.

Some context on the resort

Coronado Springs has been Disney World's convention-focused moderate resort since it opened in 1997, and it got its most recent major addition in July 2019 when the 15-story Gran Destino Tower opened alongside the restaurant Toledo and the Dahlia Lounge.

Sources

Image credits: Coronado Springs and Gran Destino Tower exterior, Disney via Blog Mickey. Coronado Springs entrance sign via WDW News Today.

Related News

Disney Named Monstropolis' Main Street Dark Avenue, and Imagineers Say Piston Peak Buildings Were Shortened After a Balloon Test Came Back Too High

Disney Named Monstropolis' Main Street Dark Avenue, and Imagineers Say Piston Peak Buildings Were Shortened After a Balloon Test Came Back Too High

Walt Disney Imagineering put out a new We Call It Imagineering episode on Friday, a 24-minute architecture tour that stops in on four Walt Disney World projects. The headline is a name nobody had heard before: Dark Avenue, the main street running through Monstropolis to the Monsters, Inc. factory that will house the suspended door coaster. The same episode explains what balloons like the one we wrote about on August 12 are for. Imagineers say the first Piston Peak sightline test showed some elevations were a little too high, and structures were shortened before a second test came back right on the money.

August 28, 2026 News
SeaWorld's Howl-O-Scream Menu Has a Cricket Tres Leches and a Card That Spells It Pizza Roles, While Its Own Food Page Says Coming Soon

SeaWorld's Howl-O-Scream Menu Has a Cricket Tres Leches and a Card That Spells It Pizza Roles, While Its Own Food Page Says Coming Soon

SeaWorld named the Howl-O-Scream 2026 food and drink lineup on August 26, including a Tripleta Sandwich, the Eggo Massacre, a Highway Havoc Bacon Mac and Cheese Dog, beef birria ramen and seven specialty cocktails. Tasting cards photographed at the August 20 media preview name six more dishes no outlet has named in prose, among them a Cricket Tres Leches, an Intestine Cinnamon Roll, and a card SeaWorld printed as Pizza Roles. Meanwhile the park's own Taste the Terror page still reads Information Coming Soon, and its menu page is still serving 2024.

August 28, 2026 News
Rain Kept Jack and Dr. Oddfellow Off the Street for Most of Universal's $415 Premium Scream Night, and Two Houses Were Listed as Delayed

Rain Kept Jack and Dr. Oddfellow Off the Street for Most of Universal's $415 Premium Scream Night, and Two Houses Were Listed as Delayed

Halloween Horror Nights 35 met its first paying guests on Thursday at Premium Scream Night, the preview that starts at $415 a head. Rain arrived around 6:45 p.m., ponchos went out, and the two icons fronting the whole event were not reported in the entrance scare zone until 10:55 p.m. By 11:10 p.m. the open houses were down to five minute waits, but MADLANDS: Caged Cannibals and Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness were listed as delayed. The first public night is tonight.

August 28, 2026 News
Vekoma Says It Installed Big Thunder Mountain Railroad's New Track and Trains, and Ties the Work to the Lowered 38 Inch Height Requirement

Vekoma Says It Installed Big Thunder Mountain Railroad's New Track and Trains, and Ties the Work to the Lowered 38 Inch Height Requirement

Dutch coaster manufacturer Vekoma went public on Thursday with its role in Big Thunder Mountain Railroad's 16 month refurbishment, saying it installed a new track and passenger trains at Magic Kingdom. Disney described the same work in May without naming a manufacturer. Vekoma ties the lowered 38 inch height requirement to the new hardware plus a comprehensive safety review, and closes with an argument for revitalizing old rides instead of replacing them.

August 28, 2026 News