Inside Disneyland’s Scrapped Plans For an EPCOT-Style Park to Be Built Instead of Disney California Adventure

The Disneyland Resort as we know it today has expanded dramatically since Disneyland Park's opening in 1955, with three Disneyland Resort Hotels, the shopping and dining district Downtown Disney, and a second theme park that was introduced in 2001.

Some may not remember that there was almost a different future for the resort. This is the path that was not taken for a number of different reasons. Before the project was officially canceled, however, Disney released details and concept art for this park that would never come to be.

Let's take a look back at this now long-abandoned concept that might have existed instead of Disney California Adventure and the possibilities it held…

Original Expansion Plans Announced for Disneyland

In the early 1990s, Disney announced its plans for a massive $3 billion expansion of Disneyland that would introduce a second theme park and resort hotels. The goal was to turn Disneyland into a multi-day destination like Disney World, which had by that time opened three theme parks: Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Disney-MGM Studios (now Hollywood Studios). You can see the Disney site plan model for the expansion from Insights and Sounds above.

The second theme park proposed for the expansion, called WestCOT, would build on the concept of Disney World's EPCOT. Similarly to EPCOT, WestCOT would highlight themes of human innovation and achievement and celebrate various cultures from around the world. WestCOT, however, would not be an exact replica of EPCOT and instead took on a life of its own as its concept took shape.

Concept for WestCOT

The park would feature a central hub called Ventureport, a version of Future World at EPCOT, and World Showcase, with pavilions that would represent the “Four Corners of the World” instead of specific countries as they do at EPCOT. Together, the pavilions of Ventureport and World Showcase would have made up “The Seven Wonders of WestCOT.”

In the Premium Pass episode “Tony Baxter and the Disneyland That Never Was,” by The Season Pass Podcast, Disney Legend Tony Baxter discussed some of the ideas behind the scrapped project, painting a picture of how the park would have been structured. WestCOT would have had “hotels all the way around the entire project forming a six-story berm of architecture, and then it cascades down towards the lake in the middle, and as it cascades down it becomes more urban with reflections of four cultures of the world, so it was the Four Corners of the World, so we had Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe.”

With that overview in mind, here is a glimpse at some of the specific areas that would have made up WestCOT…

Ventureport

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In Ventureport, visitors would be welcomed in by a 300-foot gold sphere, SpaceStation Earth, on a lush green island. This landmark would be even bigger than the iconic Spaceship Earth at EPCOT which stands at 180 feet tall. A 1991 report by the Los Angeles Times about the Disneyland expansion commented that this icon “probably would join the Matterhorn as Disneyland’s best-known landmark.”

Inside would be an omnimover attraction called Cosmic Journeys, which would be, according to MousePlanet, “a combination of film, simulation technology and 3-D.”

The scale of this ambitious park icon would, however, eventually become a source of conflict with the residents of Anaheim as they feared it would dominate the city's skyline. In later iterations of the park's design, Spaceship Earth was replaced with a golden spire.

Ventureport Pavilions

Ventureport was planned to contain three pavilions. Tony Baxter describes that the concept of this area would have been “one enormous building that housed kind of a new version of the Future World in Florida(…).” These pavilions would be the Wonders of Living, Wonders of Earth, and Wonders of Space.

The Wonders of Living pavilion would focus on the wonders of the human mind and body. It would contain attractions from EPCOT like Body Wars, Cranium Command, and The Making of Me, and a different version of Journey Into Imagination. In the Wonders of Earth pavilion, visitors could explore exotic environments like the jungle, desert, underwater, or the Arctic. And finally, the Wonders of Space pavilion would invite guests on a “journey through the Cosmos.”

World Showcase

Instead of countries like in EPCOT, WestCOT's World Showcase would feature the “Four Corners of the World,” including the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Each of these areas would contain unique attractions and entertainment, and a major ride would loop around the park stopping in each of these different areas.

Here are the different World Showcase pavilions that would have been at WestCOT…

The Old World

The Old World pavilion would be focused on Europe. The pavilion would feature a Greek amphitheater, a show planned for a Russia pavilion in EPCOT that never came to be, and an attraction called the Trans-European Express, which would be a thrilling James Bond-style adventure on a speeding train. The Old World pavilion would also feature the attraction The Timekeeper.

World of Asia

World of Asia would feature elements of China, Japan, and India. It would be home to a dragon coaster called Ride the Dragon, with a design inspired by the Chinese lion-dragons seen in festivals, that would take guests along the Great Wall of China and through “Dragon's Teeth Mountain.” At its peak, red and gold silks would engulf the cars and block the view of the outside of the park. There would also be a carousel with mythical Asian animals in this pavilion as well.

World of Africa

In World of Africa, there would be attractions including a white water river raft ride down the fictional Congobezi River, entertainment including African drummers, and an exhibit on farming culture. There were plans for a grand Egyptian Palace for a future expansion.

We can see how some of these ideas eventually made their way into Animal Kingdom in the lands of Asia and Africa, with a different version of this raft ride concept manifesting in the park as Kali River Rapids.

The New World

The New World pavilion would focus on the Americas. This land would highlight ancient civilizations with an Inca and Aztec spirit show and would feature a new version of EPCOT's The American Adventure, a Native American spirit lodge show for Canada, and a fiesta show and restaurant representing Mexico. 

Baxter describes in the podcast how the concept of this Americas section would connect to the existing Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland. Main Street would have been connected to the gateway of the Americas segment of the Four Corners of the World, with the pavilion that looked like a World's Fair gateway entrance. “So it was sort of, almost like, big city, you know, New York America and then you crossed over to Disneyland and it was little city, you know, charming.”

River of Time—What Would Have Been Disney's Longest Ride

One major attraction of WestCOT was going to be a boat ride roughly 45 minutes long that would have been the longest attraction Disney ever made. The ride, called The River of Time, would take you through the park with stops at five ports of call about 9 minutes apart. This concept would be much like the Disneyland Railroad as it would double as transportation and entertainment, allowing guests to either experience the entire loop or disembark at the stations. The ride itself would showcase the stories and cultures of each of the pavilions.

Ride Experience on the River of Time

The River of Time attraction was quite ambitious in concept. In the podcast, Baxter shared how one's experience might go: “You would leave, let's say, Asia, and you'd be on your way to Europe, and you'd have about a ten-minute ride that was as fully immersive as Pirates with Audio-Animatronics, dip drops if it was important to make that part of the story, so there might be thrill, there might be Audio-Animatronics, there might be cinematic moments, the end of which would be ‘welcome to Europe,'” where you could get off.

Baxter went on to describe, “And then if you boarded there, you'd go on to the Americas, and you'd hear how, you know, the Americas have developed to the point they are, and then, you know, you'd become cascading down, and that one I know we had the waterfall thing coming down out of the Rocky Mountains into America.”

According to MousePlanet, the Audio-Animatronics in the ride would highlight moments like “Leonardo da Vinci working on the Mona Lisa, the burning of Rome, and Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel,” and more in a series of tableaus like the ones seen in Spaceship Earth.

Baxter shared in the podcast that the ride “had a capacity of 10,000 an hour.” The ride would have a much more efficient loading system compared to the Disneyland Railroad. Baxter commented on this: “And you wouldn't have like, you know, right now it's like five minutes at every train station at Disneyland. Instead you'd have the Pirate ride thing where rumble, rumble, rumble, and then people board and then rumble, rumble, rumble, it goes out.”

He expressed that a challenge was that there was no precedent for a ride of this scale. To get people to want to go on the ride, “It had to be five times as cool as Pirates of the Caribbean.” Unfortunately, however, the concept of the ride started to fall apart. According to Baxter, as they were trying to cut down on the ride's budget, more elements were taken out of it and they had to be honest about whether or not the overall idea would work.

WestCOT Hotels

Part of WestCOT's design would include hotel rooms built into the top three floors of World Showcase.

Tony Baxter describes how the architecture of the parks would blend into the hotels: “In China, we had great palaces at the back, you know, and in, you know, Europe, it was this, grand buildings with all the pompous architecture on the front of it and it kind of generated down into little charming streets out towards where the park park was and on the roofs of some of those medium level ones, we had the pools and amenities for the hotel.”

He describes how the line between the resorts and the park would be blurred and that people might be up on a balcony “leaning over the edge, watching the street traffic as they were sunning themselves at a pool(…)”

To demonstrate how this concept would work, Baxter describes how they made a video following a family, using their perspectives to show how each person could enjoy their own unique experience at WestCOT, even if they weren't sure about the idea at first. He describes vignettes like “when the father is being massaged at the pool in Istanbul, you know, Turkey, you know, and they have the, the hot towels and all this stuff and, and they go to a Kasbah night and they're having this romantic thing and the girl is dancing at a club in, in England with all the mod music(…)”

The idea was that you could travel around the world and enjoy all of these unique experiences that could easily fill multiple days.

What Happened to WestCOT?

WestCOT never came to fruition for a few reasons. Expansion in Anaheim has always been a complicated endeavor, and WestCOT was met with resistance from the residents of the city. According to SFGATE, residents fought against the plans with a television campaign “citing property value concerns and compromised quality of life,” and the organization Anaheim HOME called for a boycott of Disneyland.

Even though the company had gained approval from the City Council of Anaheim by June of 1993, there were still significant financial obstacles in the way. This ambitious project would cost billions of dollars, and the extremely rocky start of Euro Disneyland (now Disneyland Paris) had put a financial burden on the company. By 1995, the project for WestCOT had been canceled.

In the podcast, Baxter comments on this shift away from WestCOT: “So, Disney just packed it in for about, you know, I think from '93 or four up till when California Adventure came out of it, but it was sort of like we're going to rethink the whole thing. We're not gonna go into the range of what it would cost to build a fully fleshed-out park. We're gonna do something sensible.”

WestCOT's Replacement

Disney dramatically changed its vision for its second theme park in Anaheim after scrapping WestCOT. After the cancellation of the project, CEO Michael Eisner organized a three-day retreat with Walt Disney Company executives in Aspen, Colorado to develop a new idea in its place.

Disney then announced plans for Disney's California Adventure, which opened in 2001 in the same space WestCOT would have occupied. The $1.4 billion expansion would be significantly lower budget than the prior $3 billion plans and would introduce Disney's California Adventure, The Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, Downtown Disney, and the Mickey and Friends Parking Structure, amongst other infrastructure and landscaping improvements.

Disney California Adventure's Rough Start

Disney's California Adventure did not start off on the best foot when it opened. The park was uninspiring and didn't quite live up to the standards of what was expected for a Disney park. Disney understood they had to make some dramatic changes to fix this, and a big turning point was the introduction of Cars Land and Buena Vista Street. In our announcement of the Red Car Trolley closure, we discuss how the trolleys were a symbol of a greater transformation that helped to define this park.

Since then, Disney California Adventure (they dropped the apostrophe S during the relaunch) has introduced some of our favorite rides and experiences at the resort, from its amazing thrill rides to its seasonal festivals and standout dining. Despite all this, however, it has still struggled to maintain a firm grasp on its identity, as its original California theme has slowly slipped out of focus with the greater emphasis placed on intellectual properties. Disney California Adventure has undoubtedly become a quality park but has experienced some growing pains along the way.

Legacy of WestCOT

While some ideas from WestCOT were left in the past, others manifested in their own way across other Disney projects. We mentioned earlier how versions of the ideas from World of Africa became part of Disney World's fourth park, Animal Kingdom, like the raft ride Kali River Rapids in Asia.

We can also see the legacy of what was developed for WestCOT in Disney hotels that were built later on, with future projects leaning into the idea of hotels looking into the parks in place of berms. As for the concept of blurring the line between Disney resorts and the parks, Disney's Grand Californian and the MiraCosta in Tokyo DisneySea are both examples of resorts that blend into the theme parks—MiraCosta is situated up against the entry area of Tokyo DinseySea, and Disney's Grand Californian is located right on the edge of Disney California Adventure with theming that seamlessly melts into the park.

When discussing the concepts from WestCOT showing up in other projects, Baxter commented, “So nothing goes away, it's you know, you build the confidence and people start to go, well, maybe that would work, you know.”

Disneyland's Future Expansion Plans

While WestCOT as a park was unfortunately left in the past, Disney is chugging away at new projects as part of a multi-year expansion that will be the most dramatic yet since the introduction of Disney California Adventure and Downtown Disney in 2001. We are now in another era of Disneyland expansion in the wake of the approved DisneylandForward initiative. A big part of the initiative was originally centered around an effort to re-zone the property, something that hadn't been done since the zoning that allowed for the WestCot project to be considered in the early '90s.

Disneyland has already announced plans to introduce some major Disneyland additions including a new Coco ride, two new Avengers Campus rides, and an Avatar land coming to Disney California Adventure as well as a show featuring the first-ever animatronic of Walt Disney coming to Disneyland Park. When all of this was announced, Disney made sure to emphasize that all of these projects were in active development to emphasize that these weren't just Blue Sky ideas.

Even though WestCOT never came to fruition, it's still interesting to look back on what would have been a dramatically different second theme park in Anaheim, especially as Disneyland is entering another major phase of expansion now. Disney is constantly looking to introduce new and bold offerings as the Disneyland Resort grows and evolves, and we're looking forward to seeing what its future holds.

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