The Magic Kingdom is THE most visited theme park in the world. It's time-tested and well-proven for generations. From a revenue point of view it is THE absolute strongest park on planet Earth. It's NOT broken and only needs excellent daily maintenance to stay #1. It is the Disney park that will be LEAST affected by Epic Universe. It's the OTHER three parks that need serious financial lifting. Epic Universe is going to hurt the other three the most. Magic Kingdom will stay #1 as long as you properly maintain it. It's iconic in American pop-culture!
Yet,...Burbank want's to rip out a giant, historic portion of Magic Kingdom and leave a crater there for 5+ years. Burbank is acting like "Disney's Rivers of America" was somehow a useless thing that didn't help the park's incredible success over the generations??? ?
Burbank,...you are taking your most successful park, your crown jewel and dropping a bomb blast inside there,....for,....no,....damn,...reason. You are taking a 100% PROVEN success formula and shredding it. You are saying something is socially "problematic" when literally NOBODY is complaining about it being that way. You are taking Burbank's BEST "cash register" and smashing it with a hammer. Your customers are NOT complaining about RoA, it's only "you" that complain about it.
This reminds me of "New Coke". Some brilliant Coca Cola execs said: "We don't like the taste of Coke anymore,...so let's change this monstrously successful product into something new". Nobody asked for "New Coke"!!! It was pushed on their customers by stupid Coke execs and the consumer outrage was enormous. Eventually, somebody at Coca Cola decided to reverse this insane idea and get back to reality.
Sadly,...this decision Burbank is making can't be reversed.
Having a gigantic bomb-crater in the HEART of your most prized park WILL hurt attendance for 5+ years. Building Cars on the unused SIDE of the park would not have disturbed anything and would have made EVERYbody happy.