Disneyland has unveiled plans for a theme park expansion, as well as new retail, hotel, and parking projects.
“DisneylandForward” is Disney’s effort to work with the city to grow the Disneyland Resort post-pandemic. Disney will be asking the city to approve plans to add a mix of theme park, hotel, retail, dining and entertainment on the eastern and western edges of the existing Disneyland Resort.
In the 1990s, the City of Anaheim approved specific plans that would guide the growth of the Disneyland Resort and businesses in the newly formed Anaheim Resort area. And while those plans resulted in major improvements to the entire Anaheim Resort, their “traditional” district/zone approach does not allow for the diverse, integrated experiences theme park visitors now seek, severely limiting Disney’s ability to continue investing in Anaheim.
Today hotel, theme park, retail and dining are all part of one immersive experience. Guests expect that the future of entertainment will seamlessly weave all uses together in ways that were hard to imagine 25 years ago when the city created these specific plans.
DisneylandForward.com
The westside expansion envisions new theme park lands on the Downtown Disney and Lilo and Stitch parking lots, situated between the existing Disneyland Hotel and Paradise Pier Hotel. Originally, there was some confusion amongst news outlets at today’s announcement if this was a new park, but it appears they are actually large expansions of both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure. The confusion likely extends from their location in relation to the theme parks they are “in”.
The DisneylandForward.com website states that the lands could include Frozen, Peter Pan, and Tangled (already announced for Tokyo DisneySea’s Fantasy Springs), as well as Zootopia from Shanghai Disneyland, Toy Story Land from Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and TRON Lightcycle/Run, currently under construction for Magic Kingdom.
The existing Toy Story parking lot on Harbor Blvd, just across the street from the Anaheim Convention Center, would be turned into a new shopping and dining district, much like Disney Springs at Walt Disney World or DisneyTown at Shanghai Disneyland.
Concept art of the east-side retail area features a central lagoon surrounded by shops and a small hotel.
To support future development over the next few decades, Disney plans to significantly invest in transportation, parking, transit and pedestrian safety measures to improve mobility throughout The Anaheim Resort. In the future, Disney envisions creating a new parking destination on the east side of The Anaheim Resort, which would include a pedestrian bridge with upgraded entrance accessibility for hotels and businesses located along Harbor Boulevard. In addition, Disney will continue to work with area businesses and the city to invest in and encourage the use of public transit and ride-sharing for our cast and guests.
Details are still hazy at this point as Disney needs the approval from the city to build any and all of this, and of course, plans of this sort have fallen through before. Stay tuned to WDW News Today and Disneyland News Today as more becomes available on this breaking story.
Awesome news. So good to hear some great positive news
I’m actually surprised that there is space for a third park at Disneyland.
That certainly makes sense, lets expand in the same city that has kept our original theme park closed for over a year. This should go great.
Do you mean state government? The city has been lobbying to get it reopened for months.
agreed, OC, has been working to get us back to normal for a while. Looking forward to the day they open without restrictions. And if I win the lottery, I’m moving to Los Alamitos…
I hope this works out, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
YAY! Hopefully this will solve the problem of Disney Californ-IP Adventure, and Disney will bring more California back into that park. I love these new opportunities and they definitely make me more likely to visit (especially since I have WDW an hour down the road 🤣)
Frozen, Peter Pan, Tangled. Boring. Same stuff. Why is Disney so freaking afraid of building anything new? Without the attractions being based on existing IP? Show me something that I haven’t already seen. Show me something different.
I agree that duplication of attractions from park to park seems lazy but at the same time, it probably makes sense to take the best ideas of the 1000+ Imagineers who worked on Shanghai and apply those to other parks where many could not ride them otherwise.
And isn’t Peter Pan already represented in the actual Disneyland park? Why put that same movie in two different parks at the same location? Especially a movie that’s apparently so controversial they’re gutting the Indians.
have you ever noticed the line at Peter Pan? good point about the “reeducation” I had forgotten about that. I don’t understand the issue… like those who find the village in Jungle Cruise insulting… the villagers are attractive, creative, apparently skilled and successful in a natural but challenging environment no modern man could survive in, their village shows every sign of an intelligent successful culture. There is nothing insulting or shameful there, what is shameful is the cities filled with illegal dumping, rotting garbage and trash, graffiti and vandalism that is modern LA… I don’t see anyone looking at the Native Americans in Peter Pan and being insulted.. the awful guys in Peter Pan are the pirates… or, selfish Peter and Tinkerbell… “kill the Wendy bird”?
too much encouragement to be crazy and no culture has a corner on that market
It took them a year to issue refunds for annual passes and the communication was terrible. All the while they were using the people’s money to redesign rides and plan park expansions. I cancelled everything including Disney+.
Ugh. ENOUGH with Frozen.
not my favorite movie, people not making good decisions and ending up unhappy.. but, visually, it was beautiful
I do hope it is better than Mermaid…
some attractions are a great immersion in the movie, Star Tours, Monsters, RSR… incredible, Buzz Lightyear…
Pirates (though the attraction came first), Peter Pan, Alice, Snow white…
some… only when the lines for the others are too long and some,
They should probably cut their losses and build somewhere business and people friendly
We’ve been joking about a park in Texas for years…
just think, it would probably be open now…
but, maybe the climate is too much
I have some family there.. lots of land and lots of responsible hard working people…
too hot?
Perhaps the previous failure of the Disneyland Hotel expansion has taught some valuable lessons. The Anaheim city council will be tough to convince and likely skeptical of Disney’s ability to deliver on any promises they make. It is unlikely the company will get the kind of blanket approvals they would need. I wish Mr. Chapek luck.
Disney pioneered the “hub and spoke” layout that has become a theme park standard. The idea of a piece of a park being somewhere else on the other side of a road just has bad flow.
multiple park entrances, especially near the hotels, is a wonderful idea!