‘Avatar Experience’ Coming to Disneyland – New Details, Location, What We Know

During Bob Iger's first earnings call back as CEO of Disney in February 2023, there was an entire slate of announcements made about the focus of the company. Among those announcements was a teased brand new “Avatar experience” coming to Disneyland.

Further commentary since this initial revelation has made it clear that this will be more than just a temporary addition and perhaps could be a significant expansion for Disneyland. We just got the first concept artwork for the new area coming to Disneyland.

Keep reading for the breakdown of the commentary regarding this Avatar experience and our speculation on what this may entail.

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Disney CEO Shares New Concept Artwork for Avatar Experience at Disneyland

During The Walt Disney Company Annual Shareholders meeting today Disney CEO Bob Iger shared new concept artwork for a proposed Avatar-themed Pandora area that could come to Disneyland.

After discussing the upcoming final vote for the DisneylandForward initiative to allow for further Disneyland expansion, the Disney CEO transitioned to discuss the previously announced Avatar experience.

Iger said he wanted to give us “a first look at the creative inspiration for this possible new destination.” We know very little about this project. This new concept artwork is the most concrete detail that we have seen for this new attraction and this even leaves plenty up to be interpreted. It appears that the new area features a boat ride.

We don't have any sense of where this new area will be located. As you can see in our sections below, there have been other previous mentions of the new experience coming to Disney California Adventure. This water ride appears as if it could be related to the existing Grizzly River Run area. Previously we discussed the potential for this area to replace Grizzly River Run and Soarin' Over California. We hope that it doesn't replace anything. See more of those thoughts below.

The way that Iger discussed the new area today it made it sound like it was linked to the DisneylandForward expansion which could mean it could be located on land that is impacted by those expansions. Again, note that Iger used “possible” to describe this new destination.

Here's a closer look at the boats. You can also see the water tables a little bit more. They appear to resemble some of the landscape in “Avatar: The Way of Water”. It could make sense that this new area would be based on the sequel or coming Avatar comings.

New Information Indicated for Avatar Experience at Disneyland

One of the biggest questions surrounding the “Avatar Experience” coming to Disneyland is what its scale will be. We muse in the sections below on whether this could manifest as a ride, a walkthrough attraction, or an entirely new themed area. At a Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, Disney CEO Bob Iger may have given us a clue about what we can expect.

At the conference, Iger said, “We have one Avatar based land, Pandora, in Florida we’re going to put a second one in California. That doesn’t mean we can’t put one somewhere in Asia or somewhere in Europe for instance.”

Iger is typically very calculated about his words, so this is interesting that he would use the word “land” to describe what is coming to Disneyland and made a direct comparison between the Avatar-based experience in Florida and California. This could indicate that the “Avatar Experience” might be bigger than we initially anticipated. Nothing has been formally announced, but Iger's choice of words was noteworthy here.

Avatar Producer Meets With Walt Disney Imagineering

It's been a busy time for news from Disneyland. We just got details on what the investment tied to the new DisneylandForward effort will look like at the resort. Disney will be making big billion-dollar investments for the future of Disneyland over the next 10 years. Read our piece on what DisneylandForward entails and the big investment number as it sets the scene for this next discussion on Avatar at Disneyland.

As we share below, Disney CEO Bob Iger brought Avatar up as coming to Disneyland during his first earnings call back as CEO. Now, the main producer of the Avatar franchise has shared a post on social media hinting at further expansion.

Avatar producer, Jon Landau, shared a post on Instagram saying “Had a great day at Walt Disney Imagineering talking about the future”. Landau handled much of the relationship between the Avatar creative team and Walt Disney Imagineering during the creation of Pandora at Walt Disney World in Animal Kingdom.

In the photo at the top of the section you can see Landau walking with Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde, Disney Imagineer Bruce Vaughan (who returned last year to again head Walt Disney Imagineering after leading a team at Airbnb), and former head of the Parks Tom Staggs. Rohde is no longer with Imagineering so it could be possible that this meeting was one of a set of meetings meant to restart the creative relationship with Imagineering.

 

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A post shared by Jon Landau (@jonplandau)

This post from Landau could be focused on expansion for Pandora at Walt Disney World but as we have heard nothing about an Avatar project in Florida we expect this is a sign of continued progress at Disneyland. I am a bit surprised about this post from Landau as I just made a prediction that Avatar would not be fast-tracked for Disneyland and instead was just a big announcement that Iger made without much planning behind it that would end up not happening. This photo from Landau is a big sign that the Avatar “experience” could be moving forward more quickly. This changes my D23 announcements bingo card a little bit. Avatar at Disneyland could be one of the big announcements we see this August at the D23 Disney Parks presentation.

New Location For Avatar Experience at Disneyland

Update After This News! Disneyland released a statement that retracted this previously shared (or accidentally leaked…?) information. No official announcement has been made regarding the location of the Avatar experience at Disneyland.

We wonder whether this is because the experience is not located where the announcement stated or because that location was shared too early. The comment on the panel came from a senior Walt Disney Imagineering leader so we believe it could have just been shared too early.

Ever since this addition was first announced by Bob Iger on an earnings call all the details released have seemed to catch some team at Disney off guard. During a presentation to the community, Disneyland President Ken Potrock acknowledged he didn't know that announcement was coming when Iger shared the news about the new experience on the call (see details on this below). This is all interesting. We still wonder whether the “experience”, as Disney has been careful to call it rather than a ride or attraction, is fully flushed out and where it will land. More on that below.

Now, on to the original comments…

During an IAPPA Walt Disney Imagineering Lunch and Learn presentation, a Walt Disney Imagineer shared that the new Avatar experience coming to Disneyland will be located in Disney California Adventure Park.

This news is not surprising and is one of the potential locations that we discuss in the below sections of this article. We discussed whether Avatar could be a retrofitted version of the Soarin' attraction that would bring the Flight of Passage experience to the west coast. We hope that this is not the case as the Grizzly Peak area is now one of the best areas of the park. They really got that land right when they completed the 2012 redo of California Adventure.

The other location for Avatar in Disney California Adventure could easily be the Hollywood Land area of the park. There is so much room in the back corner that is currently occupied by warehouses and event space. The new Avengers Campus store also just free up a lot of space. As they have been careful to say that this an “experience” and not necessarily a ride we could also see some sort of walk through addition that fits comfortably in that big building without any retrofitting needed.

We will just have to keep waiting to see what this new land will be. I continue to doubt whether we will get any big Pandora land the way that there is one in Animal Kingdom. My current expectation is some sort of walk through attraction.

This new addition was first brought to our attention by @DrewTheDisneyDude on Twitter here.

Read on for the previous mentions from Disney on this new Avatar experience coming to Disneyland.

“Bold” Avatar Experience Coming to Disneyland

In the February 2023 earnings call, Bob Iger mentioned that a new “Avatar experience” is coming to the Disneyland Resort. His comments gave a clear indication this is more than just a temporary experience in honor of the new film.

A recent OC Forum event revealed that Disneyland is working closely with James Cameron on this Avatar project and that it is intended to be a “bold” new experience. This choice of words just further supports our commentary below that this Avatar experience is going to be a significant addition to Disneyland.

According to Disneyland Resort President, Ken Potrock, “Our Imagineers are working with Jim (James) Cameron and his team. We’re going to share lots more details as they become available. By the way, as I become aware of what the heck we’re going to do. But stay tuned, it’s going to be really exciting. We’re thinking bold.”

Perhaps this “bold” Avatar addition will work in conjunction with the result of the DisneylandForward expansion. One of the first reactions from many Disneyland fans was wondering where this new experience would be. It's no secret that Disneyland is cramped for space in many ways since it is located in the middle of a town and does not have easy access to the land around it, unlike Walt Disney World. But coincidentally, this comes along with the news of more updates about DisneylandForward as Disney begins releasing the research they spearheaded to show the city of Anaheim what a benefit this expansion could be. It is expected that a decision from the city on whether this expansion will be approved will come sometime early next year.

Potrock also revealed that he didn't even know about this addition until it was announced by Bob Iger at the earnings call. Sounds like the planning is still in that initial phase and perhaps much of the decision making rests on the success of getting Anaheim's approval to expand Disneyland. This could likely have a large impact on the scale of this Avatar addition.

Keep reading for the full breakdown of the Avatar experience from the earnings call earlier this year.

What could the new Avatar experience include?

Disney has used “experience” to describe things ranging from a new photo op to a massive new attraction like Rise of the Resistance. In this case, we expect that it is definitely something larger than a photo op as that wouldn't warrant an announcement on the earnings call or even be known by someone at the Disney CEO level.

Later in the earnings call, Iger circled back to the Avatar concept when speaking about the immediate success seen after adding capacity to a park. He used Pandora – World of Avatar at Animal Kingdom and the Star Wars Lands at Disneyland and Hollywood Studios as examples of this, “If you look at the results when we put Pandora in Animal Kingdom from year to year they were stunning in terms of how many more people visited Animal Kingdom.” His next sentence then turned back to Disneyland where he said “I mentioned on the call that we are going to bring a version of Avatar to Disneyland. We have other opportunities as well.”

While we can't read into the quote to say for sure that Pandora – The World of Avatar or any of the attractions from the land are coming to Disneyland, we can read into the fact that Iger mentioned the new experience twice during an earnings call. I feel we can confidently say that this is not just a small props exhibit inside the old Star Wars Launch Bay building.

Walt Disney World already has the Pandora – World of Avatar experience which features an incredible simulator type attraction (“Flight of Passage”) that takes guests on the back of a banshee and a boat ride that brings guests up close with a massive Na'vi Audio-Animatronic, but the scale of that land seems far larger than something we would get at Disneyland due simply to expansion space.

Perhaps we will get just the Avatar Flight of Passage attraction and not the entire land? At one point this was rumored to be the technology used for the new Avengers Campus attraction that is still in the works. Maybe some of the areas included in the Disneyland Forward proposal will be used for Avatar? We will have to see.

What might an Avatar experience replace at Disneyland?

We have had a rousing discussion about this new Avatar experience on our Facebook page. People have raised a number of different points.

• Some suggested this could be a virtual reality experience like the Star Wars experience that took place at Downtown Disney. My take here is that a VR experience that is an additional cost wouldn't warrant a mention on the earnings call.
• Another mentioned that the Avatar experience could replace Soarin' and the general Grizzly Peak Airfield Area in Disney California Adventure. I personally would hate to see this perfectly themed area go.
• Others suggested that it could fit into Tomorrowland or the current area utilized by the old Star Wars Launch Bay build. While a DVC lounge is slated here, the lounge won't take up the entire building so this is a possibility.
• What if they changed Star Tours over to an Avatar experience? I would personally not be devastated to lose this additional Star Wars experience and I could see them pretty quickly making the change. This would also allow for a faster turnaround than building out an entirely new attraction which would allow them to slot the attraction in sooner than something completely new.

However, perhaps if DisneylandForward receives the greenlight on an expansion we won't necessarily see a new Avatar experience replace any existing areas. What do you think?

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