Usually, fans leave the semi-annual D23 Expo panel with a whole lot to talk about. As well as providing updates on high profile projects, the eagerly-awaited Parks Presentation is the Disney Parks’ equivalent of an Apple Event: a chance to make big announcements, capture headlines, excite fans, and get people talking. Nearly every major project of the last and next decade has first been made public at D23, and as ever, 2022 left fans gathered around live-streams, live-tweeting, and (hopefully!) following along on Theme Park Tourist as we got new information, new concept art, and new headlines.
Given the three year stretch and myriad of project cancellations since the last D23 (due to the pandemic), fans expected big announcements this year, with epic new attractions sure to send the crowd cheering. We even collected a list of high profile projects fans felt pretty certain we’d see announced. But instead, Disney Parks’ biggest fans left Hall D23 in Anaheim with something they’ve never left D23 with before: zero new anchor attractions announced.
Yep, we can say without a shadow of a doubt – the Iger era of big budget projects, timeless additions, sweeping park updates, and mega-E-Tickets has ended. Welcome to the Chapek era, where high-yield merchandising, synergy-focused meet-and-greets, IP-obsessed overlays, and non-committal, budget-hawked mini-projects are sprinkled across theme-parks-turned-brand-loyalty-centers; where Disney Parks exist only to make Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars real and consumable; where parks are thematically interchangeable and equally as likely to have Moana or Zootopia or Frozen expansions, and where new project teases feel like threats…
Listen, you know what was announced at D23 – for better or worse. But today, we’ll look into eight projects we really, truly thought would be the headlining announcements of the Expo, but weren’t even addressed, leaving fans shocked and disappointed. Were you surprised by the lack of real news at D23, or is this what you expected from Chapek’s Disney?
1. EPCOT 40
If you’re a longtime Disney Parks fan, then you know that at the last D23 Expo three years ago, EPCOT was the Parks Panel’s golden child. Though it had been clear for years that a sort of informal update to the park was underway, 2019 revealed the park-wide concept art (above) and concrete details for an all-at-once, master-planned revitalization of the park. Ranging from massive new rides (like Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure) to minute upgrades to pathways, color palettes, and textures, EPCOT’s reimagining has been big… while also having significant setbacks, cancellations, and redirects.
Given that so much of EPCOT’s redesign was made public in 2019, no one would’ve expected EPCOT to be the focus of this year’s D23 (even if we did expect updates on several projects that were barely mentioned). Still, it would seem that the D23 Expo would at least be a great opportunity to announce a 40th Anniversary celebration for the park since that landmark date occured just a few weeks after…
Instead, we merely heard that the brand new nighttime spectacular Harmonious will “glow away” sometime in 2023 to make way for yet another new lagoon show. Obviously, Disney didn’t mention whether that’s because of the existing show’s lukewarm reception or because they had always planned to run their multi-million dollar, hardware-intensive nighttime show for just 18 months… But regardless, it sounds like the new show will be more a celebration of the Disney 100 promotion (unsurprisingly, packed with animation) rather than having anything to do with EPCOT’s anniversary, anyway. (Though the interstitial “Epcot Forever” show is likely to play in between, which we guess could be counted as an EPCOT 40 win.)
Frankly, it makes sense that Disney doesn’t want to have Walt Disney World host a promotional anniversary celebration with EPCOT as the centerpiece while half the park is covered in construction walls, but surely some announcement of an EPCOT 40 addition or feature would’ve been nice.
2. New Tomorrowland at Disneyland
A “New Tomorrowland” for Disneyland has been about the worst kept secret at Imagineering for years. And trust us, it’s needed. As we explained in our list of things we expected to hear about at D23, Disneyland’s Tomorrowland is in rough shape both in terms of its substance and its style.
Universally, fans have begged Disney to sweep through the land with an aesthetic upgrade, ideally adding some substantial new rides while they’re at it. But of course, the much-needed project seemingly kept getting sidelined by character-focused IP projects, like Galaxy’s Edge, then Pixar Pier, then Avengers Campus, etc. Finally in 2020, Disney announced a “cleaned up” entrance to the land… but would Disney ever commit to a New Tomorrowland? And if they did, would it just be filled with cartoons?
Ahead of this year’s D23 Expo, it was all but confirmed that a finalized New Tomorrowland project would be the big reveal for Disneyland, introducing a whole new retro-futuristic style and even ushering in the return of the Lost Legend: The PeopleMover to the park. Fans waited with baited breath as Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro riffed on the panel’s title (“A Boundless Future”), referencing “great, big, beautiful tomorrows” and other fan-service hints of a New Tomorrowland as the panel’s final reveal. When D’Amaro brought up Tokyo Disneyland’s redesigned Space Mountain, it seemed like the perfect segue to talk about Disneyland’s plans…
Instead, the presentation ended with a bizarre, ambiguous, uncomfortable session where Disney Feature Animation head (a bad omen for park purists…) Jennifer Lee came on stage to tease how much everyone hates Dinoland and that (despite Joe Rohde himself alluding to the film’s poor fit for the park and fans’ worst fears), a Zootopia land would replace it … but actually not. Just maybe. Or maybe not Zootopia, but Moana instead? Maybe both? Who knows. Nothing’s greenlit, and it’s all just “what if.” (Similarly, maybe a Coco mini-land at Magic Kingdom? With an Encanto mini-land next to it? But probably not. Anyway, isn’t the era of the Disney+ Park, the age of revenue-over-guest-satisfaction, and the leadership of a franchise-focused, IP-obsessed, synergy-fueled CEO fun?)
The awkward, non-committal, real-time “Raise your hand if you want Coco in Frontierland? Okay, and how many for Encanto?” fan survey was an inconclusive, uncomfortable, and totally non-committal way to end the panel… and considering that Disneyland’s New Tomorrowland didn’t even get precedence over that, maybe the California park’s “great, big, beautiful tomorrow” isn’t as close as we were lead to believe…
3. A replacement for Stitch’s Great Escape
Certainly, you don’t need us to retell the story of the Declassified Disaster: Stitch’s Great Escape. Cited by many as the worst attraction Walt Disney World has ever housed, this character-converted replacement of the Lost Legend: Alien Encounter was a gross-out, juvenile, direct-to-video horror show that mercifully closed without announcement in 2018. And weirdly, it’s sat empty ever since…
Sure, rumors have come and gone about what Disney’s envisioning for the space – most prominently, a Wreck It Ralph VR simulator – but no official announcement has ever been made, leaving one of Tomorrowland’s two large entry showbuildings just… empty.
While it was Disneyland that was expected to unveil plans for a floor-to-ceiling New Tomorrowland (which, of course, didn’t happen), fans thought that surely ahead of TRON Lightcycle Run turning Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland into the hottest spot in the resort, we’d get something to fill the Stitch space – even if it were just an arcade or a meet-and-greet for now. Instead, it looks like when TRON opens, the iconic Tomorrowland entry that leads to it will be home to a very outdated Monsters Inc. show and an empty building. Odd.
4. The retheming of Disneyland’s Treehouse
Disneyland’s Swiss Family Treehouse opened in 1962 – two years after the Swiss Family Robinson film it’s based on. Guests could ascend 68 steps winding through the limbs of a 60-foot tall, 80-foot wide artificial tree viewing the clever ways that the shipwrecked Robinsons had built a lovely 19th century home in the jungle – including running water! A cherished classic, the walkthrough was supposedly nearly demolished in Disney’s cost-conscious ‘90s…
But an Imagineer’s clever suggestion that the treehouse could be used to promote 1999’s Tarzan deflected the wrecking ball. Climbing a new spiral staircase to a suspension bridge over Adventureland’s pathways, guests would explore the same basic scenes, now repurposing the Swiss Family’s hard work as that of Tarzan’s shipwrecked parents with fiberglass characters and retellings of Tarzan’s story along the route.
Tarzan’s Treehouse operated for more than two decades until September 2021, when it was closed for a refurbishment. But it didn’t re-open. Instead, scaffolding and scrims overtook the tree. It’s not unusual for Disney’s artificial trees to undergo extensive repair and re-leafing, but in April 2022, something weird happened. The entry stump, staircase, and suspension bridge added as part of the 1999 conversion to Tarzan were demolished – no doubt as part of Disneyland’s continuous effort to carve any square footage they can from the park’s infamously tight paths.
While some fans held out hope that the extensive refurbishment would include the return of the Swiss Family branding from exactly 60 years ago, the rumor mill churned that instead, the Treehouse would use its downtime to replace Tarzan with a flavor-of-the-week animated hit, Encanto. (In the film, the Madrigal’s youngest – Antonio – has an enchanted treehouse where he can speak to animals.)
But weirdly, rumors now suggest that the Treehouse won’t house Encanto at all, but instead become the first Disneyland attraction to acknowledge the legendary lore of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers (S.E.A.) – the secret club whose globe-spanning mythology connects rides in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Orlando into one overarching frame story.
It makes sense. Disneyland’s Adventureland opened the Tropical Hideaway in 2018, swirling together the mythology of the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd., Indiana Jones Adventure, and S.E.A. The park’s 2021 relaunch of Jungle Cruise leaned even further in that direction. So repurposing the Treehouse as an adventurous, exploratory, artistic, and scientific S.E.A. base would actually be a very cool thing to do. Weirdly, though, it wasn’t announced at either the Parks Presentation or the S.E.A. Presentation, even though surely this project is very, very close to debuting.
Speaking of being close to debuting…
5. Approaching Opening & Closing Dates
In what totally feels like obvious, low-hanging fruit that could’ve sustained fans and be shared widely by the media, Disney chose not to announce opening dates for several high- and mid-profile projects.
For example, Fantasmic‘s return (featuring new scenes that include Aladdin, Frozen, and Moana) has been advertised as a highlight of the 50th Anniversary… but nearly a year into the celebration, the show hasn’t returned since it last played before the pandemic. It’s totally bamboozling that – while noting on a timeline that the show is still due for a 2022 reopening – they wouldn’t just tell us when. Like, seriously, there are only three months left in the year, and dropping a date would’ve given fans a “win” after a panel with few actual announcements of things we didn’t already know.
Same, of course, with the clearly-nearly-finished Treehouse project at Disneyland. These are low-hanging fruit; easy, cost-free announcements that would give fans a “win” and give the media something to celebrate and circulate. It’s just so odd that Disney didn’t even seem to want to confirm things that are happening next quarter at the parks.
And so it goes for Woody’s Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restuarant, the new eatery in Toy Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios that was announced way back in 2019! It’s clear that construction is nearly complete on this eatery, so surely, there’s at least an update on what season we should expect that offering to come online?
The oddest delay must be – for seemingly the hundredth time – TRON Lightcycle Power Run. While fans had surmised that surely this five-year-long development of a cloned attraction would be ready to go by the busy Holiday season in 2022, Disney at least told us not to expect it. Instead, TRON will be online by “Spring 2023” – still not the firm date fans had expected, and really a shocking extension of a project that already taken five times as long as it took to go from orange grove to Opening Day at Disneyland in 1955.
Likewise, while news and details about the upcoming Tiana’s Bayou Adventure redesign of Splash Mountain were plentiful, a closing date for the current ride was not. Though perhaps not the kind of celebratory feature you’d expect for a fan convention, knowing a closing date for Splash Mountain at both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom will be very helpful in allowing fans to get their last rides and plan for closures.
With Tiana’s Bayou Bash scheduled for a “late 2024” opening, that leaves just 24 months between the 2022 D23 Expo and the ride’s premier, so Splash Mountain is surely entering its final months… Given park reservations, flights, and the incredible pre-planning needed to get to a Disney Park, it may already be too late for many fans to see Splash Mountain one last time, so even knowing it will close “May 2023” or “July 2023” would’ve been a helpful thing to mention.
6. The EPCOT Oddballs
As we explored in our list of D23 expectations, EPCOT’s reimagining being interrupted by the pandemic has been a real frustration. Some projects were delayed (Ratatouille); others completed (Guardians of the Galaxy); some were sidelined (Journey of Water, now set for late 2023); some canceled and re-announced in different forms altogether (the Celebration pavilion becoming Communicore Hall). But the weirdest subset of EPCOT attractions are those seemingly still caught in Limbo – neither discussed at D23 nor publicly, officially canceled…
Take the Play Pavilion. This retrofit of the former Wonders of Life pavilion was announced as part of the 2019 D23 EPCOT overhaul. It promised no rides, but to create a central space for families. Its glowing, digital, neon cityscape would infuse emoji-stylized Disney characters into rotating exhibits and interactives in a mix of science museum, Imagineering test bed, and playground. Sources differ on how far along the project was when COVID and its budget cuts hit, and without Disney’s official word, we really don’t know if it’s even still in development.
So it goes for the concept of a Mary Poppins presence in World Showcase’s U.K. pavilion. We weren’t very confident we’d hear about this one anyway since even at its announcement, details were sparse (with insiders suggesting Chapek was reluctant to invest in a full dark ride, hoping instead for a simple outdoor carousel or maybe just a meet-and-greet) and that the promotional cycle for Mary Poppins Returns has now passed anyway, making Chapek’s interest in the property probably close to zero.
The king of them all, of course, is Spaceship Earth, which was meant to go down for a multi-year reimagining in 2020. That was, of course, canceled. But given the ride’s aging ride system and Chapek’s hunger for IP integration, it was almost certain that the project (even a scaled down version) would be on the docket for re-announcement. Instead, it appears that Spaceship Earth will need to survive a while before getting any budgetary fixes…
7. The EPCOT Anchors
That’s to say nothing of the projects fans were certain would be part of EPCOT’s Phase II – a Coco reimagining of the Mexico pavilion’s Gran Fiesta Tour boat ride and a so-obvious-how-was-it-not-part-of-Phase-One redesign of Journey into Imagination. Instead, what would’ve been the home-run, fans-crying-happy-tears-in-the-aisle, talk-of-the-town, headline-grabbing project was teased and teased, then announced as… a Figment meet-and-greet. And even that is scheduled for “Late 2023”! Ouch.
Now sure, we can hope that the meet-and-greet will be a sort of “back door pilot” for gauging fans’ interest in Figment in the 2020s, selling merchandise, and being proof positive for the popularity of the character – all necessary steps in Chapek’s Disney to greenlight a ride – but seriously, can be skip it? How about if we debut the Figment meet-and-greet, I don’t know, next month and just get started on this badly-needed ride reimagining? Ugh.
8. Anything Concrete Post 2024
Most years, D23 Expo leaves fans speechless – for better and for worse – about what was announced. This year, it’s kind of the opposite… Despite the two-hour Parks Presentation ostensibly being the anchor of the 2022 D23 Expo, fans left with… well… nothing. Aside from meet-and-greets, confirmation of already-announced projects, and that bizarre Blue Sky finale of non-commital (and largely, non-agreeable) concepts that probably won’t happen, we leave D23 Expo exactly where we entered it: with no concrete plans for Disney Parks after Tiana’s Bayou Adventure opens in 2024…
Think about what that means… Given Disney’s infamously long timelines for getting things done, even those projects confirmed today – like an Avengers attraction en route to Disney California Adventure – couldn’t possibly open until at least 2024. For major projects, Disney tends to work in half-decade development cycles, meaning that even if a brand new E-Ticket had been announced this month, the chances of seeing it open before 2027 would be slim.
Instead, it looks like meet-and-greets, character overlays, and swapped out entertainment will be Disney’s go-to methods of attracting guests going forward.
At least based on what we’ve seen here, Disney doesn’t appear at all worried about needing to line its next five to ten years with E-Ticket attractions. In an era of slashed perks and new upcharges, Disney makes no apologies, with Chapek plainly stating that fewer guests who spend more money is the goal. So why even bother to increase capacity? Instead, limit attendance to those who want popcorn buckets, Genie+, and lots and lots of Disney Animation merch, right?
Which perhaps leads to the inevitable next question… what will Walt Disney World have debuting alongside Universal’s Epic Universe in 2025? Right now, the answer is: nothing. There is nothing publicly announced on the calendar for 2025 or beyond. And now, just three years out from the opening a third Universal gate, the chances of Disney having some “secret weapon” up their sleeve are slim to none.
Will Universal’s massive new theme park and its headlining Super Nintendo World continue to shift the gravity in Orlando? Or – as this disappointing D23 lineup has got fans wondering and executives hoping – will people continue to flock to Disney, content to meet-and-greet, buy snacks, and watch rotating nighttime spectaculars highlighting Disney animation? We’ll see…
