So in working with Laravel's database migrations feature it appears you can't rename columns in tables which contain enum columns (the issue is noted in their documentation: Note: Renaming columns in a table with a enum column is not currently supported but can be easily missed)

When you do attempt to migrate it may give you an error as follows:

[Doctrine\DBAL\DBALException]                                                                    
Unknown database type enum requested, Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\MySqlPlatform may not support it. 

The quick away around it I found, while retaining data, is to run the raw query using the DB::statement function:

DB::statement('ALTER TABLE [table_name] CHANGE [from] [to] [column_definition]'); 

Just make sure you add the reverse query in the down function!