Imagineers ‘Took Note’ Of Positive Fan Reaction to Villains Land Blue Sky Concept for Magic Kingdom

Katie Francis

Imagineers ‘Took Note’ Of Positive Fan Reaction to Villains Land Blue Sky Concept for Magic Kingdom

At D23 Expo last fall, Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products Chairman Josh D’Amaro showed off concept art for several “Blue Sky” ideas. One such idea was a Villains land for Magic Kingdom.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Imagineer Chris Beatty discussed the fan reaction to that particular concept.

Magic Kingdom expansion concept art

“We’re dreaming every day about what could be next at Walt Disney World. We just wanted to give you a peek at some of the amazing things that could be coming. It’s changing every day. It’s exciting. I think Josh was really trying to get across that spirit of creativity, of what could be next, of innovation, of the possibility of what could be is still alive and well at Disney and Imagineering,” he told Entertainment Weekly.

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“[The villains concept] got pretty good applause,” he admits. “We took note of how loud the applause was when we announced that.”

D’Amaro recently commented that the new TRON Lightcycle / Run is the “tip of the iceberg of what’s coming.”

D’Amaro points to a team of Disney Imagineers and Cast Members that are ready to continue the progress that’s being made in introducing new experiences to Walt Disney World guests in the coming years. Their perseverance, particularly seen throughout the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be just as strong when looking to the future.

“Our Imagineers, our entire team, are incredibly ambitious about the experience here and how it will continue to grow and evolve,” said D’Amaro. “You’ve seen it come to life with the 50th anniversary coming out of the pandemic and how we stood right back up and brought back all the things people love and added new things. You have seen it at EPCOT — it’s totally transforming — and that will continue to transform.”

During the most recent earnings call for The Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger also spoke about expanding the offerings at the parks.

“Lastly, we have learned that when we invest in increasing capacity —the Star Wars lands were a great example of that, Pandora was a great example of that — we can grow our business. In fact, if you look at the results when we put Pandora at Animal Kingdom, from year to year they were stunning at how many more people were visiting Animal Kingdom. I mentioned earlier in the call how we’re going to bring a version of Avatar to Disneyland. We have other opportunities as well. I’ve talked to Josh D’Amaro about this very recently, like this morning, to really look at all the great franchises in the company and see where we can invest in them into the parks to increase capacity while preserving guest satisfaction,” Iger said.

Do you want to visit a Villains-themed land at Magic Kingdom? Let us know in the comments.

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7 thoughts on “Imagineers ‘Took Note’ Of Positive Fan Reaction to Villains Land Blue Sky Concept for Magic Kingdom”

  1. YES The villains land is a great idea> It promises to be another “MUST DO” for each Disney vacation we take. I am a season pass holder as well as a DVC owner so we visit as often as we can get time away from work.
    Fingers crossed that this endeavor will be another wish come true.

  2. I don’t want Villains to have their own land! I think we should focus on the good, happy and kind characters, not on the bad ones. Every story has a villain, but we should defeat them not glorify them!

  3. I would love a villains themed land though I have a bunch of favorite characters the villains are my favorite I hope this idea comes to light

  4. Stop adding lands! It does nothing to help with capacity. It just brings in even more people to 20th century parks that were never able designed to hold that kind of traffic. It’s like building a mega apartment complex to a village that still only has rural roads. People don’t need to spend multiple days at one park. These second day people could visit a fifth park and elevate a ton of that capacity problem.

  5. I would love this land only if there is a Bob Chapek attraction where you pinch as many pennies as possible and nickel and dime families from Denver.

  6. This image literally looks like an ai generated concept image.. Anyways, if the breakthrough walkway space behind Big thunder ends up being this Coco themed mexican village I can see that working as a transition from the Frontierland theming. I would imagine they would also break open the old Splash Mountain photos area into walkway space over there as well, giving two corridors to the enter this back area, as just one would be too congested. Encanto fits this theme back here as well, but in regards to a Dark Kingdom project, I think it’s far too ambitious an idea to go in this space, but then again we’re not really sure how much space they actually have to play with over here, but I just feel like Dark Kingdom could go somewhere else, prefers a 5th gate park lol

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