Magic Kingdom 2017 Plan: A Realistic Approach

Today is Part 1 of my new plans for the Walt Disney World Resort. These are my for fun, hypothetical plans for how I would expand and improve the 4 parks of the Resort. I last published plans for these parks 2 and a half years ago, and a lot has changed. New attractions have opened and are coming soon to the parks, and I think I have improved as a designer as well. Plus the maps are a jump in quality.

For each of the parks, I am actually planning to do multiple versions that explore different goals. At the least, I plan to do a realistic plan that looks at what I think could really be done in the next few years and a dream buildout plan where I go full bluesky with no limits.

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This first post is the realistic approach to the Magic Kingdom. The corresponding dream plan will follow in just a week or two. There's some elements from this plan that will be repeated there, but plenty of new as well. So let's jump into what I am proposing for the immediate future of the Magic Kingdom.

Including the real things that have been announced, this plan features 13 additions or changes on a variety of scales. In this plan, I really tried to focus on adding or refurbing, not removing attractions unless they are already on the decline. And these are all things that I think could really happen. 

First, outside the park, I show an expanded Monorail Station. The Monorails and the rest of the transportation system from the TTC to the park have somewhat of a capacity and reliability problem. An obvious solution is new Monorails that are larger and longer to hold more guests. I show the station being extended by one car length for this hypothetical updated system. Transportation is a huge focus right now and this seems like a great first step to work out this problem. 

Inside the park, the upcoming Main Street Theater is shown on the East Side Street. The theater shown is the same size and scale as the Hyperion in California Adventure. 

In the Hub, I have replaced the Tomorrowland Terrace Restaurant with a new Table Service/Club 33 style restaurant, called Walt's. The architecture is altered to place the restaurant in Main Street, not Tomorrowland. The facade is loosely inspired by the Saratoga Bottling Plant in Saratoga Springs, New York, the city that inspired the architecture style of the parks Main Street. The rooms are based on the history and lands of the park, and the main room overlooks the Hub with prime views to the castle. We know that the parks are wanting to add Club 33 style locations and more high value dining, and this is an unused prime space, so this seems like an obvious addition to me. 

Moving to Tomorrowland, the Tron ride is shown adjacent to Space Mountain. In this plan, I suggest refurbing the existing Autopia with electric vehicles, which would be an improvement in efficiency and long term cost, plus improve the surrounding environment by eliminating the gas smell and loud noise. This is something that seems like an obvious long term benefit if the Autopia is to existing long term. 

To replace the basically dead Stitch attraction, my plan proposes restoring the guest favorite Alien Encounter, reworked to be somewhere between the two versions on the intensity scale. I never saw the original, but I know it was popular and scary and would be celebrated if brought back. This would be a relatively easy restoration, because so much of the infrastructure is still intact between versions. 

The major addition to the land in my plan is a new dark ride based on Big Hero 6 to replace Carousel of Progress. This is the best remaining expansion space on this side of the park, so realistically, I think it will eventually be taken at the expense of the attraction currently there. I still believe the best plan for the Carousel of Progress is for it to be relocated to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. The new dark ride could be based in a science showcase setting, which would fit into Tomorrowland well. Using the futuristic science and tech frame to get into the attraction, it could then expand into a more adventurous story about the Big Hero 6 team using the technology of the future. The science showcase area could also feature a new meet and greet with the team and Baymax, relocated from EPCOT. We know that there is the goal to add more IPs to the parks, and this is one that actually could fit well in Tomorrowland, so I think this is a great solution to expand the land. 

In Fantasyland, there is not much space for easy additions. Plus, it is still relatively fresh from the recent Fantasyland Forest Addition. The one addition I have in this plan is a new circus themed dark ride to the north of the land. This would only require shifting the backstage road and relocating the meet and greets in the current tent. The new attraction entrance and queue would be in that tent and the meet and greets would be in the unused small tent to the right. The ride would be a Mickey led trip through the wonders of the circus, with a variety of characters performing acts. This is of course based on the never realized dark ride developed for Disneyland. This is an easy expansion pad with a potential theme that we know has been developed, so I could see this happening successfully. 

Over in Liberty Square, The Hall of Presidents is refurbished into an attraction more like Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. The bigger addition is a Haunted Mansion themed restaurant. With the recent success of themed dining, and the huge popularity of Haunted Mansion, this seems like a completely obvious addition. I did not want to remove Columbia Harbor House for it however, so I placed it to the north of the Mansion along the river. A new path could be built along the water to the Mansion Side House, set next to the graveyard, where there is a perpetual haunted Dinner taking place. The expanded interactive crypts are removed for this to work. 

The only alteration in this plan to Frontierland is to refurb Big Thunder Mountain Railroad so it has the explosive finale from the Disneyland version. The development is already done, so I don't know why this hasn't been done. 

Last, Adventureland has the biggest addition in my proposed plan. To balance the big addition of Tron on the other side of the park, I suggest the addition of the Indiana Jones Adventure to the south expansion area of Adventureland. Again, since this is an existing attraction, the development would be minimized. And we know this is a popular and high capacity attraction that would bring the crowds and be highly successful. It would be the biggest investment of everything I have in this plan, but if done a few years after Tron, it would be a great addition to the park. The queue would weave along the Jungle Cruise river towards a temple in the jungle. Inside the cave queues would look into the jungle cruise river and feature many scenes similar to the Disneyland Version. Instead of going underneath the train tracks, here the path leads above to a camouflaged rocky bridge to the showbuilding. 

The final addition is a ropes course attraction like the one recently opened at Shanghai Disneyland. This would fit perfectly into the space adjacent to the Swiss Family Treehouse, and would be a low cost but super unique addition to the park. 

Below are some enlarged views of the additions to the park. 

Again, these are all things that I really think could happen in the next 5-10 years and would benefit the park. The dream plan that is being worked on and will be posted soon is quite a bit bigger and more ambitious. 

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So while we wait for that next post, let me know what you think about this strategy of realistic and dream plans. And leave a comment about what in this plan do you most wish would really happen.