News Disney Sets Sights on Possible Hollywood Land Reimagining at Disney California Adventure

Model3 McQueen

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
In the Parks
No
indiana jones That belongs in a museum GIF

What good is all that history if we can't see it? :(
 

NateD1226

Well-Known Member
It's in a warehouse back by Toontown. Not allowed to take photos for obvious reasons.

Tons and tons of neat little pieces of park history backstage... From old artwork, to ride vehicle, signs, and figures from both parks.
omg! A year ago I went past a warehouse behind Toontown since I had a tour back there. The door was open to the warehouse. I should've tooken a closer look inside. All you could see from the entrance was some old Toy Story signs and few Monsters Inc stuff
 

chadwpalm

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
“As the Avengers are moving out, we’re certainly looking at, ‘OK, does something need to move in? Does it go back to where it was?’” Finnegan said of the Hollywood Land back lot. “It’s very much something that we’re talking about.”
All he's saying is that the Marvel meet and greets are moving to the new Avengers Campus and is asking what other meet and greets should move in. Everyone is extrapolating from this based on wishful thinking. They just added fastpass to Monsters Inc. The backlot isn't changing in the way you guys think it is.

The worrisome part is the allusion to bringing Mad T Party back.
 
Not a fantasyland style dark ride, but this idea literally leaps off the page.

The Disney Vault©
Disney finally peels back the curtain of it's infamous vault which storehouses the greatest collection of art in animation history. Guests are loaded in vehicles (for ease of journey) and led through the pristine corridors where they will see quintessential Disney animation up close...

However, Maleficent has been plotting with some other villains to literally erase their demise from the pages... when that happens each car must select a hero to face off in an epic clash of characters. Taking on a life of it's own, the ride vehicles propel us and our hero on a fast-paced journey across a wide-array of classic movie scenes as they seek to save the vault or risk having Disney animation get re-drawn before our very eyes...

I think that's the right direction for it, for sure. Since the land is themed around classic Hollywood, it needs a dark ride that capitalizes on that--and Disney has more than a few classic films to choose from. I think something like The Great Movie Ride that samples from a bunch of different films, while a great concept, has a little less emotional power than a more focused ride on one IP--on a film that has lots of nostalgia and memorable visuals and music.

It wouldn't be hard to shoe-horn it in: Just frame it as the premiere of that film and then in a pre-show, have the audience magically enter the film. It could be any of Disney's classic animated films, though many of them are already represented across the way in Disneyland. For DCA, I think the strongest contender would be the original Mary Poppins. A ride like Pooh's Hunny Hunt from Tokyo (trackless vehicles and whimsical, random-feeling dance through songs/scenes) would be a great way to capture the tone of the film.

It would solve three DCA problems: The lack of rides in that corner of the park; the lack of kid-friendly dark rides; and the lack of non-Pixar/Marvel attractions.
 

Nirya

Well-Known Member
Honestly if they turned the Animation building into a literal Disney Vault and rotated museum pieces in, that'd be a solid use of the space and would drive APs to the area. They clearly have more than enough history pieces available to make something good (for example: bring back the Toy Story zoetrope).

Hyperion should stick around, maybe with some fixes to the facade/entrance. The stage shows have both been excellent (saw the Frozen one for the first time last week, and it was very well-done) plus it provides a large stage area for other functions.

The south side of the land could realistically all go away without much care, and if the Eastern Gateway ever gets approved, they'd have more room to work with. In my perfect world, they finally make the Great Muppet Ride, which would get a large people-eater attraction into the area while satisfying the need to always have IPs. Plus it gets the Muppets back into the parks without having to bring back an outdated (let's be fair here) 3D show. I'd also consider moving Goofy's Sky School over here and enclosing/retheming it, just to give the area a higher-intensity ride while also freeing up space in Paradise Park for something better.
 

Blu

Member
Let's do a little refresher course on the Hollywood expansion plans Disney inadvertently revealed in their official permit filings with the City of Anaheim earlier in the 2010's, shall we? There's probably some new folks here, and even us old timers could use a refresher on this fun old topic....

In 2014-15 the Miceage website leaked news about a TDA plan to turn the big chunk of real estate they had just purchased through their longtime 3rd party real estate guy (and if you live in central OC you've seen his signs up everywhere), the land north of the existing Pumbaa parking lot. Miceage detailed plans for a massive parking structure and transportation center, linked to Disneyland via a skybridge over Harbor Blvd. Those plans sounded fanciful and wild back then.

In early 2016 TDA submitted plans privately to the City of Anaheim. Later in 2016 TDA fessed up and released the plan publicly, which Miceage said was downsized and scaled back from its original incarnation, but was still impressive in its scale and purpose.

Amazingly, that original plan is still available on the Disneyland Public Affairs website as a Neighborhood Workshop event here (catch it quick before the Public Affairs intern gets in trouble for leaving it up there and it gets removed) https://publicaffairs.disneyland.com/dlr-neighborhood-workshop/

The plans and documents submitted to the city in 2016 had just a tad too much detail included. Most famously this one...

disneyland-eastern-gateway-plans.jpg


As you can see, the skybridge led to a new walkway towards the central Esplanade. But what was also revealed was a move of the Toy Story Shuttles to a currently unused tram route parallel to Harbor, plus the complete rerouting of the Disneyland monorail to the north (the dot-dash line just north of the new walkway), which all frees up a big chunk of new acreage directly north of the current Hollywood Pictures Backlot area of DCA. The cat was out of the bag!

The USCIS building, a US Customs and Immigration office, was on the land purchased by Disney but the building had a lease thru the federal government until the far-off year of 2020. The plan was to build the Eastern Gateway around that building by 2018, and then at some future year after 2020 expand the complex to use that space.

The Eastern Gateway was famously shelved in 2017 in a huff, when the Great Disneyland & Anaheim War of 2017 played out and General Tait and Admiral Colglazier fought each other to the death. They built the Pixar Pals parking structure instead since Disney already had permit approval for that big facility grandfathered in from the 1990's.

And that leads us to today, where the land for the Eastern Gateway was leveled for use as surface parking lots for CM's. The Carousel Inn was purchased and bulldozed by Disney before the Eastern Gateway was cancelled.

And now the folks at USCIS aren't answering their phones and the land just sits there quietly under Disney's ownership.

20190122_134742-M.jpg

cant imagine will see this one ever revisited. New car park is already built, Star Wars land didn’t draw as expected and, Disney won’t build a pedestrian bridge just to move the bus drop offs and appease harbor hotel guests. thus it’s looking like no expansion and instead an oddly inserted IP of the year over the sound stages for the glorious backlot.
 

Blu

Member
Honestly if they turned the Animation building into a literal Disney Vault and rotated museum pieces in, that'd be a solid use of the space and would drive APs to the area. They clearly have more than enough history pieces available to make something good (for example: bring back the Toy Story zoetrope).

Hyperion should stick around, maybe with some fixes to the facade/entrance. The stage shows have both been excellent (saw the Frozen one for the first time last week, and it was very well-done) plus it provides a large stage area for other functions.

The south side of the land could realistically all go away without much care, and if the Eastern Gateway ever gets approved, they'd have more room to work with. In my perfect world, they finally make the Great Muppet Ride, which would get a large people-eater attraction into the area while satisfying the need to always have IPs. Plus it gets the Muppets back into the parks without having to bring back an outdated (let's be fair here) 3D show. I'd also consider moving Goofy's Sky School over here and enclosing/retheming it, just to give the area a higher-intensity ride while also freeing up space in Paradise Park for something better.
Love the enclose a mouse coaster idea. a wacky tour through some old Hollywood heiress’s mansion, a fun house, a villain nightclub, dust off dick Tracy, anything is better than what GSS is now.
Yeah, its sadly asking a lot of current management to pull off a GMR re-do and actually make it decent and not just the current slate of Disney+.

Gotta dream though.
love this one also, maybe keep the show scenes in purposely separate rooms to allow causal replacement of the various movies as the years go by. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 

NateD1226

Well-Known Member
I am PRAYING they do something right here and take out Monsters Inc: Mike and Sulley to the rescue. With Stage 17 being right next door, they can build a traditional dark ride that celebrates Disney's movies or GMR 2.0
 

Model3 McQueen

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
In the Parks
No
If Galaxy's Edge taught us anything, it's that the best use of space is to add 1 or 2 rides, several shops with expensive junk, and several food / snack / drink stands with overpriced garbage.
 

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