Surely you must be in favor of losing a river, boat, and island playground for what will likely be E-ticket attractions in Cars?
I enjoy calling out double standards
When talking 'expansion pads' - no one cares about literal ground coverage sq ft which seemed to be your criteria. Expansion pads are areas that have been earmarked and SET ASIDE for intended future growth of the customer attractions. Not just the literal footprints of attractions. What matters in this context is the use or loss of these areas that were previously set aside - not worrying about the boundaries of prior attractions shifting.
These expansion pads are not 1:1 for an attraction, but they are distinct units that have minimums in terms of viability. Giving up 5% of an expansion area to another use is not the same as giving up enough of the area that it no longer becomes viable for new additional uses. No one would consider a new backstage use that reduced an expansion pad's use by minimial impacts as 'giving up' or 'using the expansion pad' unless it materially limited the potential of it's use. Example: A new road/path that gives up some margin, but doesn't prevent the area to be used for future attractions.
Additionally, no one considers expansion of ground foot print into areas that weren't explicitly set aside as future growth spots as 'giving up' or 'using expansion pads'. People do not consider Cosmic Rewind as taking up expansion pads because the area the attraction expanded into was not set aside for planned growth. It's growth in footprint did not displace other spots that had already been earmarked for planned use. When Soarin added a 3rd theatre it was not 'using an expansion pad' because it was built in backstage areas never intended for on-stage. Same way with Rewind... the new structures are not in areas that were set aside for planned growth.
So all this chatter about 'what is expansion' or not simply because a building plot was bigger is just foolish. It's disingenuous to the real conversation about the park's long term plan. Attraction "volume" is hard to quantify with just 1, or 2 dimensions... because attractions vary so much.. but it should be obvious that really is what is in question here... not split hairs over building a new structure backstage and thus calling that 'expansion'. Foolish.
Then let's talk about Bugs Land attractions.. Yes, technically Bugs land had 5 attractions plus the theatre. But we all know that literal count is not very telling because 1 was a water pad, and the 4 were all very small attractions all tailored to the same young child demographic. No one would rationally take the attraction count of tomorrowland.. at 7.. and say bugs land was 85% of what tomorrowland was because it only had one less attraction. Counts are not very telling, especially when the attractions in question are of a cluster setup for a specific demographic. To equate two major attractions being added, and then saying 'but bugsland really had 6... so that's still 4 less' is absurd. It's disingenuous to all the things we all realistically know matter. That scale and variety are also part of the conversation.
So all that said, your comparison post does include real things - but is totally misleading and practically meaningless.
Cosmic Rewind was not a park expansion, it was an attraction replacement with a bigger building.
Encantó is not a park expansion in the same sense as DisneyForward... but is growth in other terms, while still being a 1 in, 1 out situation.
Cars you call a replacement - but we know it's much more than a 1:1 replacement. You don't count TSI on the same footing as a major E-Ticket. Plus TSI is unique due to the anchor factor the ROA has on a major quadrant of the park.
You labeled Remo, Tron, and Mickeys Railraid as expansion pad uses. Only Remy was an expansion pad use. Tron and MRR were both expansions because they added new attractions, but both managed to repurpose and squeeze in spots that were not originally earmarked for planned growth.
Its hard to talk full list here because so many of the new projects we don't know what their real impact will be. But we do know Disney is not shying away from retiring and replacing older attractions and areas they want to repurpose.
