Over the last decade or so, Disney has gotten into a bad habit: overpromising.
It’s easy to imagine why. Incredible artists work for Disney Parks, translating site plans, models, and mere ideas into promotional material the rest of us can make sense of – concept art! But the art that Disney releases at its project announcements can be a double-edged sword. After all, Imagineering is notorious for extraordinarily long turnaround times on bringing its in-park projects to life… and three, four, even five year gaps between “sketch” and “reality” can mean that by time a project makes its debut to guests, it’s a whole lot different than that concept art showed…
Today, we’ve collected five Imagineering projects that underwent a “Take 2” redesign, with Disney releasing amended concept art in the middle of the project’s development. In some cases, the “Take 2” effort ended up being a stronger product. But sometimes, Disney’s “revised” artwork gives fans direct proof of exactly where budgets were cut. We’ll let you tell the difference…
1. Toy Story Land
One of the most recent examples of Disney dazzling us with concept art, then backtracking in subsequent announcements is Toy Story Land. There are some elements of the changed plans for Toy Story Land that make sense. For example, the artist who created the initial concept art likely didn’t have a final layout for the Slinky Dog Dash roller coaster to work off of. That would explain why, in the “before,” the coaster’s first hill looks more like a standard lift than a launch, rising into a 270-degree turn before dropping whereas the “after” sends guests sailing up into a banked turn.
But it’s clear that a lot disappeared from the project, too. Most noticably, the initial art showed guests entering into a “Woody’s Round-Up” playset plaza, with a “giant” Woody riding Bullseye in the center of the path. We can’t be 100% sure what the “Western town” area would’ve contained. Based on the showbuildings depicted behind each, it’s likely that most of the town’s facades served as quick-service food and drink stalls, while one could’ve been a quick service restaurant or a shop (though we’d like to imagine it as a “Woody’s Round-Up” marionette show). The entry area also appears to contain an Al’s Toy Barn playset, which likely would’ve contained… a toy store.
There’s also an enclosed structure of some kind between Toy Story Mania and Woody’s Lunch Box. We’re not sure what it might’ve contained, but a retail location seems most likely.
Otherwise, it appears that what Toy Story Land “lost” from sketch to reality is a lot of placemaking. For example, the initial concept art shows trenches dug for Slinky Dog Dash, apparently dug by a giant orange shovel that guests would’ve passed by on the ride. The “before” concept art also displays large setpieces and toy “windmills” that likely would’ve spun as guests passed by.
Ultimately, if you don’t like Toy Story Land, these changes might not have been enough to change your opinion. But it’s an interesting example of Disney releasing ornate, ideal, built-out artwork, then “downgrading” its design in a revised art release.
2. New Fantasyland
When Magic Kingdom’s New Fantasyland was announced in 2009, the project was touted as the largest expansion project in the park’s history. You have to remember that, in 2009, Disney was just coming to terms with the notion that Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter was going to be a competitor the likes of which Disney executives had never imagined could exist. Many fans saw the “Fantasy Forest” project as Disney’s “fight-fire-with-fire” response, adding a similarly immersive “Living Land” to Disney World.
But as fans poured over the artwork released in 2009, they noticed a very, very big issue… The “largest expansion in Magic Kingdom’s history” amounted to just one new ride – a copy of the Little Mermaid dark ride from Disney California Adventure – and lots and lots of meet-and-greets. Sure, next-generation “play-and-greets” would turn encounters with Belle, Aurora, Cinderella, and Tinker Bell into mini-“attractions”… but nothing that would seriously rival the Wizarding World… And more to the point, a gender-skewed focus on the Disney Princess franchise.
In December 2009, it was announced that Disney’s Chairman of Parks & Resorts, Jay Rasulo, would effectively swap jobs with the company’s CFO, Tom Staggs. (Many suspected that then-CEO Bob Iger had made the switch to cross-train both men, assuming one would be his hand-picked replacement to takeover as CEO when he retired.) Now in charge of the Parks, Staggs reportedly took the New Fantasyland plans home to his pre-teen sons, who promptly told him that they weren’t interested.
So when fans returned for the 2011 D23 Expo, they were met with a revised New Fantasyland. The meet-and-greets placed in the land’s central “island” were replaced with the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. But that’s not all. The planned “Pixie Hollow” was cancelled and replaced with Storybook Circus (a very nice redress of the existing structures from the Lost Legend: Mickey’s Toontown Fair).
Though not so obvious from the artwork, there was one other change. Though the Disney Princesses had been booted from their separate meet-and-greet spaces, they’d get a new one to share. The Princess Fairytale Hall would house them all… replacing the Lost Legend: Snow White’s Scary Adventures. If you’re counting, that means that the New New Fantasyland still added a net one new ride to the park’s lineup… but at least Seven Dwarfs Mine Train feels like a more substantial addition.
And believe it or not, that’s not the only New Fantasyland whose plans changed…
3. New Fantasyland (Tokyo Disneyland)
Just as Magic Kingdom was finishing up its New Fantasyland, Tokyo Disneyland announced its own. In emotional send-offs to the park’s Opening Day Original Star Jets and Speedway, a very large plot of land between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland could serve as a “blank slate”, kicking off an ambitious, cinematic redesign.
Essentially rebuilding the northeastern quadrant of the park, Tokyo’s reimagining of the land would include a new, “Living Land” section themed Beauty and the Beast (featuring Belle’s village and an associated dark ride in the Beast’s castle) and another dedicated to Alice in Wonderland (presumably anchored by an Alice dark ride). The latter would even require the relocation of “it’s a small world,” which the park was apparently on board for, with art showing “small world” relocated a few hundred feet, closer to the park’s Tomorrowland.
But apparently, the Oriental Land Company that owns and operates the Tokyo Disney Resort was a little too hasty. Just a year after the announcement, OLC released a new batch of artwork, shifting their work area more toward Tomorrowland.
The 2016 version of New Fantasyland left “it’s a small world” alone and dropped the Alice in Wonderland area. Instead, the company doubled down on the Beauty and the Beast mini-land (with an indoor theater joining the planned trackless dark ride) while adding a little oomph to Tomorrowland by way of a spinning family flat ride themed to Big Hero 6 and plussing Mickey’s Toontown with the “Minnie’s Style Studio” walkthrough / meet-and-greet.
Ultimately, the whole project – which was meant to be a shining landmark of the park during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games – hit a bit of a snag. Due to COVID-19, the Olympics were postponed, and the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast opened months after planned: September 2020. It’s an unusual ride, but still an E-Ticket for the park!
The question is, should Tokyo Disneyland have stuck to its original plans? Or are you happy with how to park’s Fantasyland / Tomorrowland project turned out?
4. World Celebration
By now, it can’t possibly surprise you to see that what Disney initially says is coming isn’t always what shows up. That’s doubly true post-COVID, when incalculable budget-cuts, scale-backs, and new leadership have changed the parks plans forever. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for EPCOT – just kicking off a much, much needed foundational redesign. Given that the park has been plagued by decades of piecemeal solutions, quick fixes, and mismatched patchwork, it would’ve been really, really nice if Imagineers’ master-planned, all-at-once aesthetic upgrade to the park had worked out.
A lot of the project has been “edited” since it was initially released in 2019, but the most recent announcement has to do with the former Communicore / Innoventions area, now grouped into a “neighborhood” called World Celebration. Initial art showed that Imagineers planned to tear one of the two mirrored, parentheses-shaped buildings out entirely, replacing it with the outdoor walkthrough Journey of Water and – most interestingly – with a new Celebration pavilion that would at last give the park a permanent Festival Center aside from the abandoned Wonders of Life pavilion. The multi-tier, “table” shaped pavilion with a planted, park-like roof would be a great place for upcharge Harmonious dinner packages, doncha think?
Disney did manage to demolish the west half of Innoventions. Trouble is, they probably wish they didn’t. Post-2020, the company quietly edited D23 announcements, blog posts, and social media to replace any mentions of a “festival pavilion” with the language “festival area.” It obviously took a while for the plans to coalesce, but in May 2022, new, edited concept art showed the new plan for World Celebration.
Essentially rebuilding half of the half of Innovations they just finished demolishing, the new “festival area” will include an indoor expo hall for rotating celebrations, a large outdoor plaza for entertainment acts, and a smaller stage facing into the park’s center for smaller acts or DJs. In a nod to nostalgia, the whole complex will be called CommuniCore (Hall and Plaza), even though that doesn’t necessarily make sense.
5. DisneySea’s Frozen Land
At least we can end on a high note. At the same time that the Oriental Land Company announced plans for its New Fantasyland in 2015, they also announced an expansion to Tokyo DisneySea – a whole new “port” themed to the 2013 blockbuster hit film Frozen. Handled like the rest of the park’s themed lands (part Disney, part National Geographic), the “Scandanavian-themed port” would’ve been located on an expansion pad between the park’s Lost River Delta and Tokyo Bay.
But a year later – when revised concept art of New Fantasyland was released – OLC announced that they’d “paused” the Frozen-themed port. The increasing costs of construction leading up to the Olympics may have been part of the reason, but no matter the case, it appeared that even the usually-ambitious OLC had backed off its plans.
Just kidding! In 2018, OLC announced something much, much grander than the park’s Scandavian port. A massive plot of land between Disneyland and DisneySea would be transformed into Fantasy Springs – a gargantuan, 25-acre land (twice the size of Cars Land) dedicated to Frozen, Tangled, and Peter Pan (each with its own E-Ticket ride), plus a deluxe, in-park resort hotel.
Given that DisneySea is known for its photorealistic, reality-rooted “ports,” Fantasy Springs is quite a divergence. With enveloping mountains, characters carved into rockwork, mish-mashed intellectual properties, and a glowing, otherworldly vibe clearly modeled on Pandora, it’s a jaw-dropping project that even exceeds DisneySea’s typical scale… even if stylistically, it feels like a whole other park entirely.
What do you think? Will Disney’s “Take 2” when it comes to adding Princesses and fairytales to DisneySea ultimately be a better project than its initial plans? And to that point, what other “Take 2s” ended up being the better path forward? Let us know in the comments below!
