It may not seem like it from the current lull in active projects, but this project is really not very old. They are moving exceedingly quickly at it compared to most other project cycles I’ve followed out of modern WDI. At best it’s about 18-20 months in development. A more typical construction start point has tended to be 36 months.
Even if they ported a portion of the project over from Big Thunder, that was in no way older than 6 or so months by the time we saw it and was probably just early conceptual work. Encanto only became a phenomenon in 2022.
Even though by all accounts DAK is first, I think moving around the far more baked Moana project to Magic Kingdom actually makes the first phases of MK expansion earlier than they perhaps once were. DAK at little later.
All said, I didn’t personally think we’d see this project start this year at all, so it’s ahead of my expectations if it does.