The Walt Disney Company’s first and oldest theme park is going to get its largest expansion in decades after the Disneyland gets its first approval to expand from Anaheim City Council approved Disney’s DisneylandForward plans.
Walt Disney acknowledged many missteps when opening his first theme park. The largest of these wasn’t acquiring land around the park to keep unsavory business away and to provide for future expansion. As a result, Disneyland is boxed in by freeways, hotels, restaurants, and residential communities. However, the Disneyland Resort area still holds a lot of potential, with some company execs saying that they could grow the park by 50% all within its existing footprint.
DisneylandForward is the plan to do just that and has been in the works for several years now. However, it can’t without approvals from the Anaheim City Council, as even expanding within its existing footprint will have impacts on surrounding areas. But with how much the resort contributes to the city’s budget – 31% – it’s a no-brainer to allow a responsible expansion. Thus, Disneyland gets its first approval to expand based on its DisneylandForward plan.
Disneyland Gets Its First Approval to Expand
Before we get into the what, let’s address the title of this post first. I say Disneyland gets its first approval to expand because its plan actually needs two votes to get the final ok to proceed. As mentioned earlier, the first of these occurred last week. The second is currently scheduled to happen on May 7 – so it’s going to happen really soon! However, now’s a great time to discuss all the goings on because it’s a lot.
As Disneyland gets its first approval to expand, it comes with caveats. For example, the park must invest in infrastructure improvements to ensure things like surrounding roads and area sewer system can handle increased use. However, beyond this, the Walt Disney Company must also give the City of Anaheim $30 million for the City to use to develop more affordable housing, along with $8 million for the City to use to develop and maintain city parks. These contributions come on top of the $40 million Disney will pay to acquire Magic Way, which it wants to convert into a pedestrian street.
And that brings us to the “what” as we discuss that Disney gets its first approval to expand. Magic Way currently separates the Mickey & Friends parking structure from the northern Downtown Disney parking lot. However, under the DisneyForward plan, all of the Downtown Disney surface lots would go away. In their place would be two new lands encircling the existing Disneyland Hotel district, along with a new parking structure to replace the existing lots. One of the new lands would be associated with Disneyland, while the other will become part of California Adventure.
So what will these new lands be? We don’t know yet, but Disney has floated the idea of building two or more from a list of concepts that include:
- Avatar Land
- Arendelle (Frozen)
- Neverland (Peter Pan)
- Rapunzel Land (Tangled)
- Toy Story Land
- TRON Lightcycle
- Zootopia Land
Execs have hinted that an Avatar Land currently leads among the contenders.
However, these lands next to the existing resort aren’t all Disney has planned to the area. No, they’re also looking at redeveloping the area to the southeast of the park currently occupied by the Toy Story Parking Lot. In its place would go a new entertainment district catering to, not only theme park guests, but also conventioneers and locals. This new district will be patterned after Walt Disney World’s Disney Springs district and will include live music, ticketed show, theme park experiences, shopping, dining, and hotels. This area would also include a new parking structure to replace lost capacity.
Final Thoughts
I haven’t been to Disneyland in over a decade… Ok, I went to Downtown Disney three years ago, but I’ve been wanting to go to check out Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge. These new lands, depending which ones are selected, may make the resort even more intriguing. However, even if Disneyland gets its first approval to expand and its second (which it likely will) things won’t happen over night. Execs are currently saying that DisneylandForward sets the development path for the next 40 years. Hopefully, it won’t take that long, but we’ll just have to wait and see.