D23 Site Plans

The D23 Expo a couple of weeks ago brought a lot of exciting announcements about the future additions to the Disney Parks. It also brought a lot of confusion about where some of these additions are going to go and how they would work with the existing elements of the parks. To figure this out, I decided to try to decipher the concept art pieces that they gave us and draw my interpretations of the site plans.

Even though there were a lot of announcements, there are only 3 that would include significant changes to the site plans of the existing parks: Ratatouille in France, The Main Street Theater, and TRON in Tomorrowland. The rest are either too unclear at this point, or using existing buildings.

All three of these plans are based on my interpretations of the concept art, comparisons to existing attractions, and the hints from some of the more knowledgeable posters on Disney forums. They are probably not completely accurate, but I think they are close. Or at least as close as the concept art will really be to reality.

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For the addition to France, it is pretty clear by comparing the art to the existing building that this addition will go behind the existing pavilion, saving Impressions de France and the rest of the current country. If you need proof, look at the back of the pavilion in 3D in Google Maps, and then look at the art above. The access would be around the side of the pavilion, along the waterway, leading to a new tree lined street and courtyard. At least this is what the art show. It makes sense to make this back side nicer because it will be visible from the new Skyliner gondola system. 

The addition appears to include new facades along the backside of the existing pavilion, the main attraction, and some small covered pavilions on the opposite side of the courtyard. It looks like the attraction will not include the attached restaurant or the rest of the facade from the Paris original, which makes sense for the already dining dense pavilion. 

Other things of note: there is an existing electrical transformer pad right in the middle of this area, but I think that it will be incorporated into the new construction. That is the walled in rectangle just by the attraction entrance in my plan which I think will be disguised with facades to blend in. You can see a mass in the same space in the concept art. The covered path exit from the attraction passes just by it and to the larger covered pavilion, which could maybe be the gift shop. 

Also, the concept art shows the Eiffel Tower moving, but I don't think that is actually going to happen. It may look a little weird in this addition though because the perspective will be all off.

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The Main Street Theater is a bit more straightforward. Although many suggested that this was replacing the Town Square Theater and Tony's, there have been enough people online say that this is not the case, and that it will go off of the Main Street bypass and connected to Center Street. 

I copied the same size theater as the Hyperion at California Adventure for this site plan and altered it to match the facade of the art. It fits perfectly with an access gate on either side. I also maintained the planted edge of the existing bypass but opened up Center Street to look towards the new theater facade. For crowd flow and access to the theater, I assume that this area will become a permanent pathway instead of a controlled bypass, but I don't know if that would also mean that we would get more substantial facades on the backside of the existing Main Street Buildings. I didn't draw them with new facades, but I could believe it. 

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TRON in Tomorrowland is the largest of the new site plans. The entire showbuilding sits beyond the train tracks and fits into the remaining space by Space Mountain perfectly. The art shows the canopy spanning over the train tracks and sitting just next to the existing Speedway. The art actually shows the speedway with a different track layout, but I assumed that it was just an artistic mistake, not that the attraction was actually changing. 

It looks like escalators take guests up to a raised path above the train track and then into the attraction showbuilding, which is an exact copy of the one in Shanghai. The access to this new area is to the side of the arcade/exit building of Space Mountain, which really looks like it could be a pinch point to get to such a major E ticket, so it will be interesting to see how that works out. 

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We will see in a couple years how close I am. Even though I feel like I matched the concept art as well as possible, there is a good chance that things will change in the 3+ years before these open, so the site plans may end up being completely different.

As for what posts are next, these site plans are the first step for me in drawing new baseplans for the Walt Disney World Resort parks. Amazingly, the existing plans that I have been using as the start for my designs were drawn about 7 years ago, so they are both out of date and incredibly inaccurate. I can now draw more detailed and true to life plans. So that is what I am working on right now, which will lead to new versions of all 4 parks sometime this fall.