Walt Disney Imagineers shared with the Wall Street Journal that continued attempts to bring original ideas to the Disney Parks have been consistently rejected by executives.

Imagineers Restricted to Franchises by Executives

Since Bob Iger originally took over as CEO in 2005, Disney Parks have received new lands and attractions almost exclusively based on existing IP, from Star Wars to Marvel to Avatar, and original attractions have been rethemed to fit IP. The list is long: Splash Mountain turning into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, EPCOT’s Maelstrom becoming Frozen Ever After, and Star Wars overlays on multiple Space Mountains.

In Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, the Rivers of America in Frontierland — home to the Liberty Square Riverboat — is currently being demolished to build Piston Peak, a new land inspired by Cars. Disney California Adventure is also set to see its Hollywood Land become a new Avatar area. Across the ocean, Disneyland Paris’ Disney Adventure World is taking shape with lands inspired by Frozen and The Lion King.

This trend goes against Walt Disney Imagineering’s long history of being able to exercise creative freedom and bring original concepts to life:

Movie characters have been part of the parks since Disneyland opened, but Imagineering also has a rich history of creating original stories in attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion and Jungle Cruise. That largely stopped by the 2010s.

That was because Iger had a singular vision for the parks:

Focus on franchises.

Imagineers have struggled under the tenures of both Iger and his short-lived successor Bob Chapek, who shut down plans to have multiple missions on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, reimagine Disneyland’s aging Tomorrowland, kept the team constrained by restrictive budgets, and laid off hundreds. With Iger now back as CEO after a power struggle, “focus on franchises” is also a continuing creative guideline:

“At every all-hands meeting, I would be asked if we’d get to create new Imagineering original stories again,” said Barbara Bouza, who was president of WDI from 2020 to 2024 and is now an executive at architecture firm CannonDesign.

In 2023, Imagineer Peter Carsillo revealed that there were plans to reimagine Maelstrom at EPCOT, but they were scrapped. Maelstrom was eventually changed into Frozen Ever After, which has been transplanted to Hong Kong Disneyland and is being built in Disneyland Paris.

However, there is some hope for the Imagineers to regain some creative liberty in the form of Villains Land, also under construction at Magic Kingdom:

Though [Villains Land] will feature characters from “Snow White,” “Peter Pan” and “Aladdin,” it’s not based on a specific film. That makes it the closest thing to an original land in Disney’s U.S. parks in 25 years.

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