Go a bit further south and you also have two family-centric Water Parks in the San Diego area (Sesame Place and LEGOLAND).
Iger is also supposed to be gone in less than two years.
Make that less than one year, because this was announced in 2022, and it’s now 2023.
I find it hard to believe any new CEO would want to develop Toy Story into a 3rd gate at this point. It makes more sense to keep everything together and go down the expansion path on the west side.
It starts to make a lot more sense if Disney purchases the GardenWalk, that paired with an eastern gateway that gets rid of the immigration services tenant and instead orients the garage vertically(so it doesn't block a connection to the garden walk) makes the whole thing seem a lot more sensible. Add in the purchase of a few more motels and replace them with a Disney hotel and a bridge with access points from Harbor Blvd, there's definitely a way to tie it all together.
It would take a real creative visionary leader for the company to make a third gate at Disneyland, which is something Iger and his kind are not. I do think it can happen, and I do believe there's great potential in it, but like others have said it would rely on Disney purchasing Garden Walk and rerouting the Monorail.
Yeah... it's especially odd that Disney has passed on purchase opportunities for a lot of the land around the Toy Story lot. Hyatt House, Homewood Suites and Hampton Inn all went up in the last 15 years. Red Lion sold for $21m in 2021. All together like 15 acres and collectively sold for the same price Disney paid for the Carousel Inn and will certainly be more than double the price in the future given improvements.
You’re making the assumption that all those parties want to sell to Disney. Most of the Harbor businesses have a pact to never sell to Disney. So not sure how that would work.
Most of the Harbor Business owners around the carousel are nearly dead, it's a Fujishige. Badalian, the owner of the Tropicana and Camelot is 96. The Scalzo family that owns the Park Vue only has two daughters left in their 80's, the family will want to split assets. Lastly the only possible holdout in that area O'Connell who owns the Park Place best western is also the owner of the new JW Marriott. If Disney acquired the GardenWalk they could easily play hardball by jeopardizing his most valuable investment if he refuses to sell.
Couldn't agree more, it won't happen, but that's more an issue of the people in Disney than any outside factor.
Wow. I never knew that about the Tropicana, Camelot, and Park Vue.
Short term thinking, and probably how Iger and Co think. Those malls may be a dime a dozen, however this particular mall sits on the only piece of land that would allow contiguous development between the properties Disney currently owns. It allows Disney to build hotels along the stretch between DL & DCA and the third park(or Iger's version of ESPN Zone or Disney Quest) and control the guest experience between. It's only a 10 minute walk between properties, if Disney can route guests through more Disney owned property that's a big deal aesthetically and financially.
I'm not convinced they do know what they want. I'm fairly certain DisneylandForward is just a ploy to get Anaheim to change zoning and allow them to build the Eastern Gateway, "Look we're gonna develop these parking lots and that means we need a replacement."
The Toy Story lot may work better for Disney as a bargaining chip with the city ("we promise we're going to develop this land if you hand us this tax break!") but I'm not sure how you look at how they've approached Downtown Disney and say they have much investment in it anymore. They've continuously tried to cut it down with new hotels on the west side, and DisneyForward showed an even smaller DTD because they have seemingly decided that trying to maintain an outdoor shopping district inside of their security bubble is a fools errand.
