News Villains Land Announced for Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom

easyrowrdw

Well-Known Member
I’ve always seen the lands as being related to larger genres of fiction, with Tomorrowland for sci-fi, Fantasyland for fantasy and romance, Adventureland for adventure, and Liberty Square + Frontierland for historical fiction and westerns. If done properly, a villain land could lean into unrepresented mystery, thriller, horror, or dark/gothic fantasy themes.
Ah, interesting. I’d never thought of that before.
 

Ichabod Crane

Well-Known Member
I’m really curious if Universal’s Dark Universe land was the motivation to green light this project because they literally had this concept on ice for almost thirty years now
The aesthetic they chose to go with for the land with it being classic Halloween style spooky, as well as the assumed two major rides being a coaster and a dark ride just like at Dark Universe, would sure seem to suggest Disney specifically wants it to compete with it and wants a piece of the horror/dark fantasy pie themselves.
 

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
I’m really curious if Universal’s Dark Universe land was the motivation to green light this project because they literally had this concept on ice for almost thirty years now

I honestly think the response to D23 2022 was a large portion of the reason. It was a bit of a large consumer test. Josh looked visibly taken aback with the hoopla that idea caused.

Internally a - hey - our now constant Halloween after hours park might benefit from a Halloween land might have also helped.
 

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Where are people hearing there's a dark ride? I see the coaster in the art obviously, but the claims of "2 major attractions" doesn't necessarily mean both are rides. Or that the second one is a dark ride specifically.

We don’t “know”, but deductive reasoning dictates there’s another thing in a box going on there. Galaxies Edge appears to be the framework on this one.

They’ve used weird wording before like their constant refrain of an Avatar “experience” for Disneyland resort. They still just referred on their PowerPoint last week to Frozen going to Disneyland Paris and Avatar to Disneyland.

Plus Josh isn’t dumb. He knows what people take away from his wording choices. I think there would have been more of a major show and major attraction if he didn’t mean rides.
 

Starship824

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
I really hope that it is oriented in a way to have a “different” fireworks show using the regular fireworks but having music and projections appropriate for a villains area.
Great point. Especially since they're doing it at Galaxy's Edge in Disneyland now. Funnily enough, I actually had the exact same idea I just didn't post about yet.
 

Captain Neo

Well-Known Member
The aesthetic they chose to go with for the land with it being classic Halloween style spooky, as well as the assumed two major rides being a coaster and a dark ride just like at Dark Universe, would sure seem to suggest Disney specifically wants it to compete with it and wants a piece of the horror/dark fantasy pie themselves.

Yea I was gonna say horror and dark fantasy are huge right now and have been gaining for the past ten years in gaming the most popular games outside of Mario and call of duty are stuff like Dark Souls, Elden Ring and Lies of P and horror is going through a renaissance at the box office including artsy horror fantasy stuff like The Green Knight. Disney needs to start tapping into this stat.

if I was Iger I wouuld give his the biggest budget and get the manpower to expedite construction now
 

rtmachine

Active Member
The perspective of that art work being the view from what most people might think from Frontier land to the left of HM, but it might actually be from the entrance from the yet to be seen entrance somewhere in Fantasyland
 
I was surprised and thrilled when this artwork popped up last night.

The trajectory, as it was explained to me, was that these projects were a bit volatile because of the ballooning cost of building the as-envisioned BBTM project. When the leading proposal was the Mesa Village of Coco transitioning immediately past BTMRR which then brought you to a dark woodline as the path continued into a Dark Kingdom concept, the cost projections to achieve suitability were skyrocketing. A direction explored here was a treatment of Villains that created a bizzaro village where they'd set up camp. This is when I started warning about expectations. Showing the OG concept art last night and promising 2 major attractions, the right proposal for the property was chosen.

I'm concerned that the Cars projects got the nod because they could fit on the remains of TSI/ROA, allowing them to do a less-expensive and smaller single-phase BBTM with Villains. Reading the tea leaves from last night, this seems to fit.

Or, if Cars and Villains are both going in the "big loop" BBTM original vision, the ballooning costs of that project could have been enough to kill the was-ready-to-go-months-ago Moana project.
As much as love Moana and would want her in Magic Kingdom. I Don't mind her sitting out because she got a whole mini land in Epcot
 
Two rides is basically what we have in most of the parks. Pandora has 2. Tropical Americas has 2. Ignoring carousels and such.

MK
FL = Splash/BTMR
AL = POTC/JC
LS = HM/HoPresidents
TL = SM/Buzz (pre Tron) ...Speedway, is that really "Tomorrow?"
FL = SW/PP/Dumbo (ok 3, plus Casey area).
Fantasyland has the most tbh they have Little Mermaid, Winnie the Pooh, and It's A Small World. Also Barnstormer technically
 

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