Disneyland’s Multi-Billion Dollar Expansion Plans Are Approved, Here’s What They’ll Build First

Disneyland has received the second and final vote necessary to approve their DisneylandForward re-zoning and expansion initiative. The initiative is meant to pave the way for future expansion and growth of the Disneyland Resort.

The DisneylandForward initiative allows for the rezoning of existing land owned by Disneyland to allow for future theme park and hotel expansions and guarantees Disney will spend at least $1.9 billion in the next decade. It also sets up new agreements with the city for certain improvements and to purchase a city road. We'll dive into the specifics of this in the first section below.

Now that this initiative has passed the Anaheim City Council I thought it was important to understand what this approval means and what it doesn't to set expectations for the coming years. Plus, new comments from Disney CEO Bob Iger today with more information on what's coming first.

Here's What DisneylandForward's Approval Means

This approval means that Disney now has the optionality to develop theme park attractions, entertainment, lodging, shopping, and dining on the current surface parking lots to the west of Disneyland beyond Downtown Disney and below Disneyland on the current Toy Story parking lot near the Convention Center. They will also have the ability and plan to build a parking structure on the property they own behind the hotels on Harbor Boulevard which is the upper right yellow box below.

Beyond this rezoning Disney also made financial commitments to invest in new attraction capacity. They will invest a minimum of $1.9 billion in the resort over the next ten years. The investment could also go up to $2.5 billion and beyond. If they do not spend at least $2.5 billion, Disney will pay an additional $5 million in street and transportation improvements. All of this expansion is expected to bring 4,500 operational jobs to the Disneyland Resort in addition to 9,000 construction jobs in the first 10 years.

This expansion funding is not happening in a vacuum. It comes at a time when Disney is planning to invest over $60 billion in the Disney theme parks over the next decade to turbocharge the Disney theme parks.

Beyond the theme park investments, Disney will also spend to drive improvements in Anaheim even beyond the expected increases in tax revenue from this project. They will invest at least $30 million in affordable housing, $8 million in city parks, and $90 billion for street improvements including Disney's takeover of one public street that is largely used by Disney guests.

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All of this leads us into our musing on what Disney will build now that DisneylandForward has been approved.

Here's What Disneyland Will Build Now

During the approval process Disney teased popular movies as inspiration for the future expansion. They pointed to the new $2 billion expansion that's adding Peter Pan, Tangled, and Frozen to Tokyo DisneySea and the new Frozen Land in Hong Kong as inspiration. They've also listed Coco, Black Panther, and Zootopia as other potential inspirations.

Now, Disney CEO Bob Iger has again spoken about one particular expansion. During an investor interview, Iger confirmed that some sort of Avatar experience will be the first addition built.

“We have just gotten approval from the city of Anaheim for the biggest expansion of Disneyland since we opened California Adventure in 2001. In over two decades. It's a huge expansion. We haven't been specific about what will be in it, except for Avatar…which is an extremely successful land in Orlando.”

The Avatar Experience coming to Disneyland has been continuously mentioned by Disney CEO Bob Iger and will likely be the first new land to be built. We do not yet know where this attraction will go, but it is reliant on Disneyland Forward.

Disneyland Resort President Ken Potrock specifically called this out saying: “We’ve all heard about the Avatar experience that’s at the top of the list for Disneyland Resort…But what we can do with this experience regarding the size and scope is inherently influenced by DisneylandForward.”

The reliance on Disneyland Forward may not be because it is going into one of the expansion pads shown above but because it is going into an expansion area that other work frees up. We will have to wait and see. We mused (and HOPED that one location wouldn't happen) for this new Avatar land.

Now, what will actually be BUILT first? Likely something far less flashy. It is finally time for Disneyland infrastructure week! Or more likely infrastructure years. In order for Disney to be able to support all of this expansion they need new infrastructure to support more visitors. They will build a new parking structure and Eastern Gateway entrance area. This was previously attempted in 2017. This will also likely include a dedicated off-ramp from the northbound I-5 route to allow for speedier parking, a new bus loop, and expanded security area. As it is, Mickey and Friends and the Pixar Pals Parking structures are often impacted with waits to enter that just can't be prevented today.

The new parking structure will free up the surface parking lots which are now available as expansion space and allow for Disney to relocate the security and bus loop coming in off Harbor Boulevard. That relocation will allow for Disney California Adventure to push into this area for expansion eventually.

At the same time that the parking structure is being built we could also see Disney begin work on a new hotel property. To support and benefit from an expanded theme park footprint at the resort Disney will want more Disney-owned hotel nights. This one is much more of an assumption than something that is for sure happening, but we do know that with this new zoning they have the option to build hotels on any of the approved property. In their concept artwork, they specifically show the property that is currently the Toy Story Parking lot as a sort of hotel and mixed use area. A new hotel is more up in the air than the parking structure but I would not be surprised if one of the D23 Expo announcements for Disneyland is that there's going to be a new hotel built quickly.

We will have to stay tuned to August at D23 Expo for more from Disney on what this first round of expansion at Disneyland will look like. Based on Disney CEO Bob Iger's recent comments, it sounds like we are about to kick off another round of expansion akin to the Disney California Adventure transformation that added Cars Land and Buena Vista Street and transformed the Paradise Pier section of the park.

What Won't Happen For a While at Disneyland?

This is a legacy project meant to shape Disneyland for decades to come. The zoning is about giving optionality and all of the concept artwork and wonderful ideas presented by Disney were meant to pull at our heartstrings and get the city excited to approve the project.

When Disney leadership presented more on DisneylandForward during the final approval meetings, they stated over and over again that this is a “legacy project” that is meant to define the Disneyland Resort for decades to come. That means that we won't immediately see work begin to take advantage of every single expansion pad identified during this process. They will be thoughtful and methodical to ensure that the resort is setup to keep adding lands and expansions in the future.

When I heard from Disney CEO Bob Iger recently, he echoed a similar sentiment that they don't want to use all of the $60 billion investment in the theme parks upfront because they never know when they'll have another Frozen-sized hit and they want to ready for those opportunities as they arise. This applies to both their investment budget and their available square footage.

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We could have to wait a little bit until we hear news of Disney taking full advantage of the expansion plots across Disneyland Drive. Disneyland is just now finishing up the west end expansion of Downtown Disney which will be changed again dramatically to allow for this expansion. By the time that the new gateway into Downtown Disney and the new restaurants like Din Tai Fung will be open, it will have been over two years since the announcements were made at the D23 Expo in 2022.

To anyone worrying about the increase in scale of Disneyland, you’re not going to see this all happen overnight. There’s a cadence to expansions. Each new additions needs to be given its own window to open and drive attendance as the center of a marketing push. Remember that we are still on phase one of Avengers Campus and that Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge took eight months to get the second key attraction open. These things take a long time to build and we are at the beginning of a long expansion phase.

So, when will we see Coco, Black Panther, Frozen, and Encanto at Disneyland? We will just have to wait and see. We could see a “speedy” timeline for the expansion set out at the D23 Expo in August but even with announcements at D23 Expo they'll still leave room for future expansions and changes.

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