OVERALL RESORT LAYOUT
Right now we’re focusing on the all-important Castle Park, but there’s a whole resort needed to support it! How to design that?
How about expanding on Disneyland’s hub & spoke model to create a compact and walkable resort? Somewhat like how Disneyland Paris is laid out. The Castle Park (Mumbai Disneyland) is located in the Fantasyland spot, with the Adventureland & Tomorrowland spots on either side as expansion pads for the 2nd & 3rd gate (with shared backstage infrastructure). The hub & Main Street areas can serve as the resort backbone – the hotels, the Disney Springs equivalent, the transportation center for arriving guests. (In Mumbai guests will mostly arrive by public transportation; car ownership is limited.)
What about all the lands?
MAIN STREET USA
Let’s be realistic: Small town America circa 1900 won’t mean anything in Mumbai. We need a new concept which keeps the Main Street ethos. Shanghai tried that with Mickey Avenue, which is a big swing-and-a-miss honestly (too toony, the shortened street is a poor castle reveal).
Instead of USA, I suggest
World Main Street (the name is not final). Reuse & modify facades from World Showcase, creating a sort of “global small town” vibe. Arrange different international styles like the park’s overall flow – Tomorrowland/Asia, Fantasyland/Europe, Frontierland/North America (if it happens), Adventureland/South America & Africa & India.
My boldest idea:
It’s a Small World goes here! Place the ride in the Opera House location, to serve as the park’s thesis statement. IASW’s colors & music would play really well to an Indian audience! To avoid the clone rule, redo the whole ride. Use the Shanghai Pirate ride tech, with projected visuals like MMRR’ 2½-D tech.
And of course there will be a Railroad! If there’s any country in the world which is more nostalgic about trains than the U.S.A., it’s India!
ADVENTURELAND/FRONTIERLAND
Yeah, probably Frontierland is getting cut. If it remains, I see it and Adventureland switching roles. So Adventureland becomes about the local historical past, and Frontierland becomes about the exotic other in distant lands.
But it might be simpler to focus on an expanded Adventureland. One word of CAUTION:
Let’s not reference British colonization in any way!
We can divide Adventureland into different sections to represent different tropical parts of the world.
India should be represented; The Jungle Book is extremely popular in India, so I propose a Splash Mountain retheme. Bare Necessities post-ride shop. Something concerning Arjun – see the IP list below.
Africa section. Lion King stage show? It is 2nd only to Jungle Book in Indian popularity. Hakuna Matata restaurant, heavily-themed like Tokyo’s Queen of Hearts.
Latin America section. Do a new version of Haunted Mansion centered around say Mexican ghostly folklore (ghosts are A-OK in India). It gets a Coco overlay during Dia de los Muertos. Use the Ride & Go-Seek flashlight tag idea so this isn’t a clone of any existing Haunted Mansion.
Since SAU clones are okay, add in Fire Mountain from Brazil. It’s a Mexican version of Big Thunder, basically. Brazil’s Adventure Bay is ripe for cloning!
What should we do with Pirates of the Caribbean????!?!?!??
FANTASYLAND
First things first: Tangled castle! We all good with this?
Fantasyland is overloaded with potential! Let’s just go to the IP list right up front:
That’s enough for two whole lands! Actually, that’s one of my ideas – Two lands!
Fantasyland for the western European fairy tale stuff, and
Beastlyland/Mythicland/Wildlands for the more worldly tales like Hercules, Aladdin, Mulan, Raya, etc. Both lands would be somewhat behind the castle, with Mythicland a bit to the side towards Tomorrowland (like the new Beauty & the Beast subland in Tokyo).
@mickeyfan5534 proposed a new suite of Fantasyland dark rides. Here’s a quick rough draft attempt at that:
Scary (Snow White): Sleeping Beauty
Adventurous (Pinocchio): Tangled (land’s headlining E-ticket, let’s use the Enchanted Tale of Beauty & the Beast ride tech – basically the Rise of the Resistance ride tech)
Wonder (Alice): Bambi (this could use the omnimover approach so much better than Little Mermaid does)
Insane (Mr. Toad): I dunno…101 Dalmatians?
Beautiful (Peter Pan): Aladdin
There should probably be a Frozen thing somewhere too. A retheme the Seven Dwarfs coaster perhaps?
We’ll want non-clone flat rides & filler too. For Tea Party, what about a Mrs. Potts teacup retheme? For Dumbo, the Pegasus spinners we proposed for Wildlands. For Carousel…OK, can we clone this one? Other flat ride ideas: Tangled up-&-down baskets around Rapunzel’s tower. An Alice-themed Caterpillar spinning ride based on the Caucus Race scene. A sort of Philharmagic 2.0 in the vein of Star Tours 2.0, with randomized song sequences and regular updates. One major meet & greet attraction (in the castle?) done with quality & care. A Winnie the Pooh playground maybe.
There is a pile of potential in Fantasyland. We might consider leaving expansion pads beyond the railroad berm, like Hong Kong did for Grizzly Peak & Mystic Point, for everything we want here.
TOMORROWLAND
The big question we must answer for Tomorrowland:
What is the future?
For a while now, Disney has been adding IPs to their Tomorrowlands in a way which undermines any attempt at a coherent theme. Discoveryland in Paris no longer makes sense now that it has Buzz Lightyear an Star Wars.
We’ll want several IPs in Tomorrowland, of course. Can we keep their visual intrusion mostly limited to indoors? So that the Tomorrowland exteriors keep a timeless, futurist feel. While I’m totally open to other suggestions, I can see a agrifuturist aesthetic working well – sort of like Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay mixed with some Eden Project et cetera. Shanghai’s Tomorrowland leans in this direction, but I think we can take it further (while reducing the big concrete expanse they have).
As for rides? I love
@ThatGuyFromFlorida ‘s proposal for a WALL*E Space Mountain. Could we add a unique ride system to this? Like perhaps Disney’s patented vertical-loading flying coaster idea?
Other ideas? In place of the Buzz shooter ride, let’s do it as Wreck-It Ralph!
Marvel’s Avengers is the elephant in the room.
Endgame is the biggest foreign film in Indian history! They
HAVE to appear! Will it be in Tomorrowland as a single gigantic E-ticket, or will we be making an entire Avengers Campus land? For now I’m in favor of a single Avengers ride, which can later become part of a new land expansion if we wish (like Star Tours folding into Galaxy’s Edge in WDW).
Oh, and
NO Star Wars! Save that for a 2nd gate.
Some of these are very popular and will be expected in some form. (How can we prevent Toy Story Land? WDW aside, those are all awful.) Some, like Muppets, can fold into places like Main Street easily. Some, like most of the Pixar stuff, are best left for a 2nd gate.
