The Great Hall Dining Room and Weasleys' Castle Tours

And this month we are back with a pair of new exciting attraction/restaurant plans, for the first time not for a Disney park but for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

In my Islands of Adventure plan from last year, I proposed removing Dragons Challenge and using the space for two new Harry Potter attractions, a Forbidden Forest dark ride and a castle tour dark ride. I also proposed a Great Hall Dining experience adjacent to the castle. Now a year later, part of that is really happening. A Forbidden Forest family coaster will open at some point next year. So I decided that it would be fun to design my concept for the other parts of my plan.

So this post comes with two parts: a restaurant concept for The Great Hall Dining Room and an attraction concept for Weasleys' Castle Tours.

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First the restaurant. I believe that this idea is not original. I remember hearing on a Jim Hill podcast that this was part of the expansion plan at some point in the past. I guess there are reasons that it has not happened yet, but the idea always stuck with me.

In the Islands of Adventure plan, the only place that I could fit the restaurant is to the left side of the castle, with the entrance by the greenhouse area. There are a couple obvious problems that I had to solve. Capacity will always be an issue for something that will be this popular. The Great Hall is a defined size, so you can't just oversize it to fit more tables. So I decided that two identical Great Hall Dining Rooms was a necessity. Also, the geographical relationship of where the restaurant was placed and the visible castle was a problem. You can't walk into the Great Hall at ground level while looking up at the force perspective Great Hall on the cliff above. But this was an easy solve because luckily magical transportation is a thing here. So I knew that the Floo Network was going to have to be incorporated into the experience to get guests up to the castle.

So with those problems solved, this is the story and experience of the restaurant. Guests enter the greenhouse-adjacent dungeon storerooms that are used to store the produce grown for use in the castle. Guests check in and wait in the dungeon area before their group is called. Then your party enters into a side room, where there is a large fireplace. A short preshow style introduction is given by a student of Hogwarts and then the group travels by the Floo Network up to the castle. The fireplace opens and special effects give it a magical green glow, leading guests through the fireplace and into another room on the other side. There they are greeted by another student that will lead them up to the Great Hall. Follow along on on the dashed path in the plan below. 

At this point, the hallway splits left and right to lead to the pair of dining rooms. It is very important to keep the illusion that there is only one hall, so they are completely separated from this point and each actually have their own set of bathrooms so that guests do not accidentally go back to the wrong Hall if they were to go during their meal. The student guides the group around the corner and up a staircase or elevator to the Entrance Hall of the castle.

At this point they are led through the main doors and into the Great Hall to be seated. The seating is obviously communal at the four long sets of tables. The food is served family style both for efficiency and because that best aligns with the story experience of eating in the Great Hall. When you are seated, bread and drinks are already on the table, and student servers bring out the rest of the courses during your meal. So in the actual story, the food magically appears on the table, but that seems a little impossible. But I do imagine that it would be possible for a little magic during the serving process of at least one course, with some kind of trick serving bowl to make the food seem like it has just appeared. In reality, the food comes from the kitchens below the hall, rides up a pair of service elevators between the halls, and is served by a team of waiter-students.

During the dining experience, there would also be periodic entertainment on the stage at the head of the hall. Every half hour or so, there would be a short musical performance by the Hogwarts orchestra and choir after a introduction and welcome by a staff member. The entertainment cast would alternate back and forth between the two halls during the night and their dressing rooms and prep spaces are adjacent to the kitchens below.

After your party is finished with the meal, they exit back through the Entrance Hall, down the stair, and through an exit hallway that includes another fireplace.

The total capacity would be 672 seats at one time. Assuming an average of an hour turnaround for each seat (lower than average because of the family style menu) and about a 10 hour serving day (11am to 9pm) that is just over 6,500 seats per day, which I believe is a higher capacity that Be Our Guest Restaurant. 

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The other plan is for one of the attractions I proposed to replace Dragons Challenge. The idea was for a very family friendly traditional dark ride, something absolutely everyone could go on. At first I thought that the setting would have to be in Hogsmeade since that is where the attraction entrance would be, but then I realized that there are many magical means to quickly go somewhere else, so I had a lot of possibilities. I also always thought that it would be fun to see more of the castle in a practical setting, not just screens.

So that led me to decide that this attraction would be a dark ride tour through the more interesting spaces of the castle. Unlike the official tour given in Forbidden Journey, this would be an unofficial tour run by the Weasley twins in order to show guests the "real" Hogwarts. As the few that know all the secret tunnels into the castle, they are operating their tour out of the office directly above one of the most secret tunnels, which just so happens to be the Hogsmeade office of the Quibbler. 

The entrance and queue leads through the tabloid offices, passing the work desks, the storage of unsold issues, and their mini museum of bizarre artifacts and memorabilia. The queue then leads into the rocky tunnels at the back of the office and the load/unload space of the attraction. The dark ride is an omnimover style system with shell style vehicles that each seat 3. 

The attraction starts by entering the main tunnel to the castle, which is dark and windy and has a never ending branch leading off of it. Then we emerge out through a opening behind a painting into the actual castle. We are in a side hall by the moving stairs and at then end of the hall is the Weasley twins welcoming us to the castle, by form of peppers ghost musion projection. We are told that we are there unnoficially, so keep a watch out for any one looking official and to keep on the path they set. They will follow along with us to show us the best of Hogwarts. We continue to hear their narration through the rest of the tour from speakers in our vehicle.

The track then leads us into the Grand Staircase, where one of the legs above us is moving back and forth and the dozens of paintings on the walls are all moving and talking. The stairs fade into darkness and floating candles above us. We then pass through a fireplace and travel by Floo Network up to the Trophy Room of the castle, which is filled with the treasures and trophies. The Weasleys' narration tells us about some of the most unique items in the room, particularly those won by their friends. Outside of the Trophy Room is the Armoury hall, which features a corridor of talking suits of armor. That leads into the Hospital Wing, which holds a couple sick students and a great view of the sunset out the windows. The Weasley twins tell us of some of their most notable injuries at this point.

The path then takes us down a hall of magically animated tapestries that show the history of Hogwarts and then we continue into the Library. We pass rows of bookcases and desks, where books are magically floating around and students are studying. After exiting the Library, we pass through a dark hallway that is inhabited by the ghosts of the castle floating above us, talking to us and pointing out that we really are not supposed to be in this area of the castle. We continue on and are lead into the Transfiguration Classroom, where the Weasley twins are at the head of the classroom giving us a magic demonstration. The birds in cages around the room are constantly changing into comical objects in time with the spells.

The last set of rooms leads us out of the classroom and down a hall that includes a overlook over the rest of the castle and the forbidden forest at twilight. The Weasleys then tell us that they have saved the most important room for last. We turn and enter the room of requirement for the Weasleys, which is actually their joke test and storage room. The Room is full of tables of products and jokes, including many that are in the process of being tested, creating a dynamic room of flashing lights, smoke, smells, and movement. We finally pass through another fireplace and find ourselves in the Entrance Hall by the staircase, where the Weasleys are again found standing on the upper stairs. They thank us for coming to the castle and try to sell us some of their products one more time before we finally head back to Hogsmeade. We move down a hall, back through the painting, down the tunnel, and then find ourselves back at the unload space.

We leave our vehicle, exit the tunnels and walk down a hall into a new retail space. There are 5 new small retail spaces in this addition that are all themed to various magical businesses, forming a back street to the existing Hogsmeade.

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I had a lot of fun working on these two Harry Potter additions but I am also really excited for what is actually happening in this area next year. Looks like a really great attraction that the park really needs. 

So that is it for this month. There are two other concepts I am currently working on, so I will make sure to get one of them finished for next month. Hoping it will be another big attraction I am working on, but it is pretty ambitious so I may end up behind schedule. So check twitter for any updates and thanks for reading!

It All Started with the Hub and Spoke: An Analysis of Park Forms

I would assume that the vast majority of the type of people that would read a blog this hyper specific to theme park design would know what the term "Hub and Spoke" means. It is the classical term for the shape of the traditional Disneyland style park. It is a park that literally has a hub at the center and various lands arrayed around it as spokes.

I have written about park form before, a couple times actually. Most notably in this post about the Urban Form of theme parks. In reality, that post is Part 1 to this post you are reading, so its worth looking back at that essay.

The simplicity and effectiveness of this form has always fascinated me. It works so well that it seems obvious, but you have to know that there was an incredible amount of trial and error that led to it and a lot of theory behind its success. It did not just magically be the shape of the original Disneyland by accident and it does not continue to be used for nearly all major parks by coincidence.

However, there are other options for park layout that have started to become popular to varying degree of success compared to the original. The fairly common loop park is the most notable, but there are some super unique cases, especially some parks that are combinations of two or more forms. That makes me ask what makes these parks successful enough to be used, but not successful enough to have overtaken the original?

In this post, this analysis of park forms, I want to go deeper into all the common park forms and analyze their pros and cons. I also want to look into applying forms to individual lands of the parks to see if there is any interesting patterns there. And finally look at some of the formal urban planning theory that I think creates some of the logic behind how these forms work.

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First, a breakdown and summary of my interpretation of the various dominant park forms. I'll specifically be looking at the worldwide Disney and Universal parks, and will list what parks fall into what groupings. Some parks will be in multiple, because they are a combination of forms. Zoom into the images to see the diagram of each park.


Hub and Spoke Park - Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Disneyland Paris, Disney Studios Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland

The standard and the classic, used by the most parks around the world. Its pros are evident: easy and clear navigation by way of the hub and the adjacent park icon, the single entrance corridor which help with navigation, and the inclusion of a thematic transition and gathering space at the center of the park. Cons? I'm sure they exist but I am not sure what they are. The best I can think of is that it has recently created a dependence on the hub for major entertainment and gathering events, which is a crowd control problem.

One element of the Hub and Spoke that is an addition from the opening day model is the circular path that intersects the spokes and forms a ring around the park, connecting the lands. In the original Hub and Spoke concept, each spoke was a self contained land and to get to another land, guests had to travel back through the hub. The intersecting path, which I guess technically is the rim of the hub and spoke, makes the park overall much more functional.



Loop Park - Islands of Adventure, Universal Singapore, EPCOT, Universal Orlando, Universal Osaka, Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo DisneySea

The runner up in the worldwide popularity contest. This seems to be usually used for smaller parks or as a part of a larger park that combines forms. The primary characteristic is a shorter entrance corridor leading to a left or right split that loops around a central element, usually water. Essentially its a hub with just one looping spoke. The benefits are that it is the clearest form, it has very easy navigation since it is just one continuous path, and it allows for some kind of central body of water for use in entertainment or transportation. The negatives to this form in my opinion is that by vacating the center of the loop, a lot of usable park space is wasted which could be a problem for smaller and denser parks.

Another weird condition that I have noticed is that the space directly adjacent to the central element is sometimes underused and hard to activate. There are two cases: the EPCOT model where the edge is the public space and results in kind of one sided lands that sit on the neutral pathway, or the Islands of Adventure model where the path is embedded in the immersive lands but it is hard to actually activate and engage with the central water element. Not saying either are bad, but its an interesting condition with different results.

There are twists on the loop park that make some very unique parks. Hong Kong Disneyland is essentially a Hub and Spoke park with a loop being built around it, which is a really cool way to expand a park. Tokyo Disney Sea is practically a loop park with another loop inside of it and then another smaller loop inside that, placing the water elements between the loops. It is pretty simple but solves a lot of problems. Also, the loop forms half of a couple parks when combined with another form, such as EPCOT and the Universal Studios Parks. Lastly, it is interesting to me that it appears that Hollywood Studios is being transformed into a loop park with the two new lands at the back of the park. There would be nothing in the center, but the single continuous path that loops the back half of the park is being clearly defined.



Divergent Hubs Park - California Adventure, EPCOT

This is a strange and specific twist on the Hub and Spoke that I noticed while studying park forms for this post. There are just a couple parks that appear to have a simple Hub and Spoke plan but actually turn out to have multiple connected Hubs with various interconnected spokes. California Adventure is the best example, where there is the Hub at Buena Vista Street with 3 spokes, but also a second Hub at Paradise Pier that connects to the same 3 spokes. EPCOT also does this in a way because Future World Central is a Hub, but both Future World East and West are also Hubs.

Pros for this form appear to be a more complex organization system of relating lands and can better fit into strange shaped sites for the park, but at the expense of sometimes making a more confusing park to work your way through. I would say it works well in EPCOT and maybe a little less well in California Adventure. This should probably really be a subform of Hub and Spoke, but I wanted to get specific with this analysis.



Grid Park - Universal Orlando, Universal Osaka

This is the category for parks set up on a regularized grid of streets, like a real city. This is maybe the least theme park-like form because it was never really meant to be a theme park. It's only examples are in the studios parks, where the intent was to recreate a studio backlot. That means its meant to appear to be varied settings but actually pretty compact in scale. That's both a positive and a negative because you can get a lot of themed space in a small area, but it may be pretty confusing to navigate because it can change setting quickly and its hard to see and understand the overall land.

This really only exists at this point in two parks, the pair of Universal Studios Parks, but it could be used to describe old Disney MGM Studios too to a lesser extent.

The irony of this being a difficult form for a theme park is that its precisely how cities work. Cities are grids. So if you attempt to recreate a city based land, it is hard to avoid its problems while also making something that looks like a city. Solutions are to either make it a city of one street, like Sunset Boulevard or Marvel Superhero Island, or vacate the center of the land-city and place something like a park or public square in the middle, like New York Harbor in Tokyo Disney Sea, so that visibility is maintained across the park.



Organic Growth Park - Universal Hollywood

The last park form I want to mention is kind of the no-form park form and really only has one example, Universal Hollywood, which was never meant to be a theme park. It organically grew into what it ended up becoming, so there was not an opening day plan like the rest of these theme parks. In the past, it has been a confusing and a random network of connected paths. There have been efforts recently to add some organization and there is now a clear crossroads of the dominant pathways, but it still definitely has to be considered an organic growth park.


There are surely more theme park form than the ones listed above that break down the specifics of the patterns even farther. But I think those above give a good outline to the shapes of the most common parks and are enough information to start an analysis of how and why these park forms function.

To me, it is clear that the two most important functions of a good theme park layout are that it is clear enough for guests to understand how to navigate it and that it allows for the creation of immersive spaces. However, in a way these are opposing goals. Of course you want a park that guests can figure out how to move through, which often means increased visibility between lands and along major pathways. Guests want to be able to visually understand relationships and where to go next. And you want a park that you can theme immersively, which often means visual separation between dissimilar themed spaces. You want total sensory control inside the immersive world. A good park finds a way to balance those two opposing goals.

An example for that previous conundrum is Diagon Alley. It's a great land in a great park. It is super immersive and its interior layout work well. But for a while now it has been documented that some guests just can't figure out where it is. That's a problem, but one that could only be solved by guests having a better visual understanding of what and where it is. Unfortunately that opposes the story of the place, so it sacrifices navigability.

I think this is why the Hub and Spoke model works best, specifically because of the Hub. In the best application, it presents an immediate preview of each and every land from a single space, immediately forcing the guest to build a visual understanding of the park. Then as you leave the hub and work your way down a spoke, you can be isolated into the separate lands but always know your way back to that Hub and the moment of navigational clarity. The loop also works because even though you often do not get a full picture of the land options when you enter, the navigation is so simple that you have to see it all just by continuing on a path. Can't get lost on a single path. Divergent Hubs, Grids, and the rest start to create moments of isolation from the overall navigation where you can get lost and separated from the big picture of the park, even if they can better immerse you sometimes.

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Individual lands in these parks can also have distinctly planned forms. Not every land necessarily can be categorized neatly with a clear form, but there is always some kind of internal logic as to how elements of the land relate. Never, or I guess very rarely, are pieces of a land dispersed without some kind of designed plan of some complexity. I'll go over a couple that I see frequently in the parks and give a couple of examples for each.

Hub and Spoke Land - Magic Kingdom Tomorrowland, Future World West

This is the mini version of the big idea park plan. This is when a land is designed to lead you to a center point and then elements are distributed around this "hub". The benefits are basically the same as the park form, it is a clear organization system that efficiently brings guests into a themed world, clearly shows them the options of the land, and distributes the guests out. There's a lot of options for movement in this kind of land and usually is either pretty open plan or has a network of paths connecting major points to create a variety of routes.

Though its the most common park form, its not a very common land form. The best example is a couple of the Tomorrowlands. The entrance corridor of the land leads to the rocket-tower plaza area, acting as the hub. Then the elements of the land are arrayed from there and all visible at once from the center point.


Linear Land - Sunset Boulevard, Main Street. Toy Story Land

This is a much more common land form and a very simple one. In its simplest essence, its just a single path through a land. Enter on one side, exit on the other, with attractions and elements along the single path. Navigation is clear and its usually pretty immersive, but depending on the size and shape of the path, guests may not always be able to see all the elements of the land at once. This is not a bad thing, because it could be used to create a more mysterious and explorable land that feels bigger than it actually is. The linear nature of the land, especially when multiple linear lands are set back to back to back, forces a lot of backtracking through already explored spaces, which sometimes can be frustrating to have to walk the same line over and over.

Examples of this include nearly all lands in a loop park, except EPCOT of course, Sunset Boulevard, and the new Toy Story Land. Some of those are really simple single paths, some are a little more complex with branches coming off the main path, but in those cases, I think the dominant move of the land is still best represented with a linear path.

It is interesting to me that one of the qualifications I gave for this land is one entrance/exit on either side connected by a path, when in reality that describes basically all lands. I guess it really comes down to the patterning of the guest experience between those two points that define how the land is formed.


Loop Land - Pixar Pier, Magic Kingdom Fantasyland

Another land that is based on a park form. The loop land is simply a looping pathway around a central element, usually with one (or two maybe) access paths to the loop. It's basically a linear land that bends on itself. This has the same benefits and drawbacks as the park form. Easy navigation and great visibility, but might use a lot of space.

There's not a ton of these, with the best pure example being Paradise (Pixar) Pier looping around the Paradise Bay. New Fantasyland is pretty close to a loop as well in a way, just with more branches from the main path.


Border Path Land - Adventureland, Asia

This is a subset of the linear land that I am really interested in. These are usually linear lands that have some kind of defined edge on one side only that the path runs along. Think Adventureland, with the jungle on one side and the buildings on the other. That is a solidly defined line. There are many examples with a path running along a body of water or some other kind of defined edge.

The thing I find interesting about this is that it creates a path that seems less arbitrary because of course you would put the path next to the water or the jungle or whatever it is. It makes a more natural and believable edge to the land. It also means that you often can not see the whole land at once because the majority of the elements are on one side of the path and elongated along the edge.


Pocket Land - Muppet Studios, World Showcase Pavilions

This is a fairly clear land type, a dead end land with just one entrance and exit. It exists as its own little pocket off the rest of the park. These are not the most efficient with guest flow because of the dead end, but in small situations, they can work. The World Showcase pavilions are the best example and work perfectly for their size. Anything much larger would be a crowd control nightmare. The good thing about lands this small and with this clear of an entrance/exit is that its usually very easy to navigate and understand where you are.


There are just a couple land forms, I am sure there are plenty more. Also, it could easily be said that many or most lands could fit into multiple groupings. I tried to be very general on purpose to get an outline of a couple types, but I could believe other arguments. For instance, a loop land might also be a larger pocket land with an element in the center. A linear land could be a hub and spoke if there are branches off from the main linear path. Its a flexible set of definitions.

The success of a park is clear navigation and ability to be immersive, and the same can be said for a land, though I would flip their priority. I think the higher goal of a land is to enclose you in the theme to the point that the land seems fuller and richer than it actually is. That may mean that the internal navigation of the isolated area is not 100% clear, but if the navigation of the park overall works well, then guests should always be able to work their way through the park.

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Now that we have looked at what these forms are and how well they work, the question to ask is why do they work like they do. During my time in architecture school, there was one particular theory lesson that stood out to me for its application to theme parks. "The Image of the City", written by Kevin Lynch, includes a discussion of the ways that people understand and use cities in predictable ways by reading the city as made of 5 key elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.

When I read that, I immediately related it to theme parks in my mind. They have natural comparisons on first glance. Districts are lands. Landmarks are park icons. But there is more to understand once you get into the more detailed definition of the elements

Paths - Paths are the channels by which people travel, like roads, sidewalks, and trails. Their purpose is to connect points of space. They are the most important element because they are the structure that the rest of the elements are formed on.

Edges - Edges are boundaries that define the extents of a space or a path. They can be either real and solid, or perceived and flexible. Their purpose is to define space by either separating space or acting as a seam between defined spaces.

Districts - Districts are sizable two-dimensional areas that have a common character to its space. It is a grouping of space that you enter and exit by way of a path. Its purpose is to represent the grouping of a collection of similar spaces into one object.

Nodes - Nodes are large defined spaces that can be entered and serve as focus points in a city. These are significant connection points that define pathways and serve as the notable and important spaces of a city. Their purpose is to define the big picture network of the city.

Landmarks - Landmarks are iconic elements that act as points of reference for movement in a city. They are objects you cannot occupy, not spaces that you can which are nodes. Their purpose is to act as reference points that connect the rest of the elements of the city.


I think this theory and those 5 elements of the city have a profound influence on how theme parks work. Theme parks are nothing more than idealized urban planning exercises that happen to also have a theme. Guests don't come to the park with an understanding of planning theory and theme park history. Hub and Spoke means nothing to them. They come with just the societal understandings of how urban space works that all of us instinctively build up over time. The idea of a town square (node) and a iconic building (landmark) that forms the center point of a network of roads (paths) makes total sense. That's all the hub and spoke is when you see it as an urban planning element.

Basically all the park and land forms I mentioned have ties some of these elements. Hub and Spoke is Node and Path. Loop is Path that loops around a central Landmark, even if it is just water. Grid is a grid of simple paths. A border path is a Path along an Edge. A pocket land is a district.

On top of that concept, the 5 elements also help explain why some actual cities are confusing. Endless grids with no space defining districts, nodes, or landmarks make a city that is impossible to read and easy to get lost in. See what I said about the Grid Form park. Essentially, the 5 elements are character building elements that form patterns of movement, making or breaking an urban plan.

So the lesson I take from this is simple and intuitive: design with how humans understand space in mind. If you ignore the Image of the City that we have trained ourselves to have, your park will be in trouble. It just so happens that the Hub and Spoke aligns well with this theory while some of the other park forms are a little less successful.

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Thanks for reading this, especially those of you that made it all the way to the end. This is a concept and an essay that I have seriously been thinking about for 3+ years at this point, so I am glad that I finally have put it down in writing.

Next month, back to a design post. It's likely going to be an attraction, and something totally different than those I have done before. Maybe even magical in a way. Check back near the end of August!

WDW Parks Expansion Plans Recap and Wrap Up

Over the last half year, I posted here a series of expansion plans for the Walt Disney World Resort parks with my hypothetical takes at how I would grow and improve the parks. This was a big project for me with some really good results I think.

This post is a recap and wrap up, plus a closer look into a couple of my favorite lands. First, the look back at the posts.

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We started with two plans for the Magic Kingdom back in October.

Magic Kingdom Plan A - This was my attempt at a realistic plan, incorporating the real additions coming soon and a couple of other small but impactful additions to the park, mostly in Tomorrowland and Adventureland. Of course, this was made before the Main Street Theater was cancelled, so it still remains in this park.

Magic Kingdom Plan B - This is the crazy ambitious dream plan that goes a little overboard with new additions to the park. Major additions come to Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, but every land sees something new and exciting, including expansions to Fantasyland and Frontierland in the northern undeveloped area of the park.

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EPCOT was the focus in January with 3 versions of the park with 3 different goals.

EPCOT Plan A - This is another realistic plan, though it is on the ambitious side. The focus was to redefine the central spine of Future World, add new relevant characters to pavilions in both halves of the park, and add a new country to World Showcase. I defied expectations and instead of Brazil or Spain, I went with Saudi Arabia because I was interested in how some Middle Eastern representation would look in World Showcase. Plus, I followed the strong rumor and placed a new hotel outside the park gates.

EPCOT Plan B - This plan is the ambitious plan if the park were to go all in on characters and IP. It includes many of the additions from Plan A, plus new Future World pavilions for space featuring WALL-E, the seasons featuring Bambi, and a new take on Horizons at the center of the park. New World Showcase countries include Peru featuring the Emperors New Groove and Equatorial Africa featuring Tarzan, plus all other countries get a character based attraction.

EPCOT Plan C - This big plan is an alternate take on Plan B, where instead there are no characters anywhere in the park and actually assumes that some current additions didn;t actually happen. New Future World pavilions are created for Imagination, Weather, Health, and Computers plus Horizons from the last plan. New World Showcase countries featuring all original attractions are Ethiopia, India, South Africa, and Malaysia, plus Peru and Saudi Arabia from past plans.

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Hollywood Studios had just one plan posted back in April, because I decided that so much was already happening to the park that a realistic plan was redundant.

Hollywood Studios Plan A - The goal of this big plan was to follow the lead of Toy Story Land and Galaxys Edge by creating more fully immersive single universe lands that represent the other studio brands of the Company. So that led to the creation of new lands for Marvel, Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc, and Toontown, plus some additions to Sunset Boulevard to represent live action films.

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Lastly, two plans for Animal Kingdom were posted early this summer.

Animal Kingdom Plan A - This is a step above a realistic plan, but with this being my favorite park, I got a little carried away. I added one all new land, North America, with attractions and an animal trail. I rethemed one land, changing Planet Watch to Zootopia with a new attraction. And I made major additions to Dinoland with a new coaster and a heavily reworked version of Mystic Manor. Plus a couple small additions to other lands.

Animal Kingdom Plan B - This might be the largest and craziest of my dream plans because it basically doubles the park in one move. There are new lands for Europe, North America, Australia, and South America, all with many attractions, both original and IP.

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Some stats for these plans.

Across all the plans, there are approximately 20 new lands, approximately 30 new IPs represented, and approximately 80 new attractions. That's a lot.

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To conclude this wrap up, I decided to share enlarged plans of my favorite land from each park. This was a bit of a difficult decision for some of the parks, but I was able to decide on just 4.


In the Magic Kingdom, I choose Tomorrowland from Plan B.

I took inspiration from the organic canopy of the future TRON attraction to create a new sweeping element that crosses the east side of the land, incorporating the entrance to Space Mountain, a new elevated table service restaurant, and a permanent outdoor stage. The other big move for the land is the redesign of the Autopia into a very organic and winding track that includes a flyover above the public walkway and around a large freestanding rocket. The concept of the land is that the setting is an intergalactic science showcase of the future. All the new attractions support this idea by showing various fantasy science/technology topics. Time travel, alien technology, robotics are featured in the additions.


For EPCOT, I decided on Future World Central from Plan C.

The big change here is a complete rethinking of the spine through the center of the park in geometry and logic. The goal was to open up the center of the park, make it greener and more organic, and add new attractions that make sense in the core of the park. The two new attractions are new versions of Imagination and Horizons which along with Spaceship Earth form the thesis statement of the park. These are three attractions about the bigger picture of human progress and the topics of the rest of Future World support them. The center of the land is redeveloped with a new high tech fountain, a permanent stage and viewing area, and a new counter service restaurant that serves healthy Earth based food and features a 360 degree outdoor view of Future World. Also visible in this plan are a pair of new outdoor attractions for Future World East and West with the intention of adding kinetics to the area. A trackless water based teacups style ride sits in the west side and a jetpack spinner is placed in the east side.



In the Hollywood Studios Plan, I picked Toontown.


This is an urban take on Toontown, set in the downtown of the city featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The entrance it through a pair of tunnels from Sunset Boulevard and lead to a cartoony and exagerated city street. First is the downtown area, which includes a Ducktales suspended dark ride in the McDuck Bank, a large spinning dark ride taxi tour of the city, an apartment themed meet and greet location, and many very themed retail locations. The other end of the land is Toontown Gardens Park, which includes a carousel of animated animals and the Toontown Amphitheater, playing Fantasmic. The highlight attraction is a boat ride through the Sorcerers Workshop, where magic lets us travel right into the animated classics.


And for Animal Kingdom, I choose Europe from Plan B.

This land takes over more than half of Dinoland and serves as the mythological animal land in my version of this park. It is set in a Greek village adjacent to a mountain and the ruins of an ancient temple. The town square includes a restaurant and a new version of Mystic Manor that focuses just on mythological animals from history. The mountain, which is topped by a giant ruined statue head, holds a flume dark ride based on Hercules and focusing on his trials that feature animals of mythology. The rest of the land holds an outdoor spinning coaster around and through the ruins and an adjacent spring that is guarded by a dragon.

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And that's the conclusion to this huge project, for now at least. At least a couple of attractions from this project are likely to be future posts.

But I also want to be able to move on to other original projects. In fact, I have tentatively decided to retire from doing these expansion plans for existing parks and really just do original projects from now on. That means new parks with new themes, and new attractions for both existing parks and new parks. That's way more fun and more challenging for me, so that's what I want to do from now on.

So there will be another post this month, an analysis essay project that I have been wanting to do for a long time about theme park layout form. And then likely an attraction the month after that.

Disney's Animal Kingdom: The Dream Plan

And the end is here, the last post in this series of plans for the current Walt Disney World Resort parks, ending with a dream plan for the Animal Kingdom.

This follows up my plans for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and the first plan for Animal Kingdom posted over the last year. 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 3 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.

This is a big plan and maybe my favorite of all the ones I have done in this series because this is my favorite current park and I was able to fit in a lot of cool ideas. Animal Kingdom is a special park so I really felt the need to maintain its message and style through these additions. My goals were to add the rest of the continents if possible, add more live animal trails, make sure each land has a basis in a real setting and concept, and to fit logically fit in IP only when it serves the overall land.

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Let's start with a diagram of the new lands in the park. There are 5 new lands in this plan, doubling what is existing and now every continent (except Antarctica) is represented. As you can see, the plan maximizes the open land in the northeast of the park for most of this expansion.

And here's the plan with the labels. Definitely zoom in, there is a lot of detail.

There are only a couple elements from the previous plan that remain in this plan. We start at the front of the park, where there are less changes and work towards the all new back half.

The Discovery Island Riverboats return and now make a full one stop loop that loads at the Discovery Island dock. A large indoor section is added to the trip to add some unique sights.

A third attraction is added to Pandora, a trackless exploration dark ride through the forest in search of animals. The dark ride vehicles are ACE all-terrain jeeps that can go anywhere in the jungle to find even the most rare creatures. The queue leads into an indoor bioluminescent cave, like the one featured in Flight of Passage, where guests load and start to explore. The unique element of the trackless system is that guests can make choices along the way as to which direction they will actually go. A "nightvision" system on the jeep gives a look at what animals are ahead at a few splits in the path, and guests can chose which animals they would more like to see. The animals themselves would be a mix of practical figures and screen elements, and the climax of the attraction would be the discovery of a full size sleeping banshee in its cave, forcing us to make a quick escape before waking it up.


In this plan, Dinoland goes a different direction than the last plan. I decided to use the expansion space next to Dinoland for a brand new land, so the existing land was shrunk down to a minimum of the Boneyard, Restaurantosaurus, Dinosaur, and two small new attractions.

The first is a Dinosaur rehabilitation enclosure where guests can get up close with a couple real life dinosaurs, created as highly detailed animatronics that can interactively react to guests.

The other is a whip style spinner, the same as Alien Spinning Saucers, themed to excavation equipment. The rocky wall behind the spinner has exposed dinosaur bones forming an interesting backdrop.


The land that takes over the rest of Dinoland is Europe. This land is set in a Greek village adjacent to ancient ruins and serves as the mythical animal land of the park. The mythological history of Europe gives a lot of potential. The new land contains 3 attractions and a small counter service location. To make room for this land, the backstage dock is relocated to the space just behind Expedition Everest. That space is nearly unusable for public space because of the backside of the Everest showbuilding, so make sense to make it backstage space.

The land starts after guests take the path around Dinoland and enter the Greek village (Image 2). The left is a Mediterranean counter service restaurant with a seating courtyard, the right is retail, and straight ahead is a Greek artifact museum, which is another unique take on Mystic Manor (Image 4).

Instead of being set in a house, it is set in a museum with a huge and diverse collection of artifacts and art of Greek mythological animals. Similar to the original version of the ride, events cause the artifacts to come to life while we tour. Animals on the trip include Unicorns, Mermaids, Gryphons, a Dragon, and more.

Just past the village is the iconic sight of the land, a mountain side with a huge wrecked statue head perched near the top, with water falling from its mouth and flowing down the mountain to the river stream below (Image 3). Flume boats fall down the mountainside and splash down between a equally huge pair of crumbling statue feet. This is a Hercules themed flume dark ride along the animal based trials of Hercules, including the Hydra as the final climax before dropping down the flume. Like the use of Lion King in Africa, I think IP can work well in the lands of Animal Kingdom if the setting makes sense and if the exterior is treated with the same level of realism and detail as the rest of the park. So it is hyper-real on the exterior and animated on the inside.

The other attraction is a spinning coaster based on the story of the Ismenian Dragon which guarded a spring near Thebes and was defeated by Cadmus (Image 1). The coaster uses small cars that have controlled spin through segments of the ride. It starts with an outdoor segment but quickly moves into a substantial indoor segment of coaster track and showscenes featuring the dragon. Then there is a high speed launch that leads into a high banked turn up and over the rocky mountain side that is visible throughout the land and then concludes with a lot of banked turns through the landscape as the car is spinning.


The next change is in Asia and the space between Asia and Africa. This area is redeveloped to include a pathway north to the expansion plot and the new lands. The current Up bird show theater is removed and in its place is a Jungle Book omnimover dark ride with the classic animated characters.

The path leading north leads under a train trestle and then through a tunnel under the existing backstage road. Adjacent to this path is a new smaller theater space for animal shows that are not necessarily Asia or bird specific. The small theater could have hourly rotating shows with a closer look at various types of animals.

Also of note is that the train is expanded from being just a two stop loop with not much to see into a large 3 stop loop that winds through these new lands. It includes a unique showscene out behind the new lands that is half outside, looking into a canyon, and half inside a cave. The train seats are reconfigured to face forward like a normal train instead of facing out so guests can see both sides of the track.


The first new land to the north is North America. After passing through the tunnel, the path opens up into a Redwood Forest style setting with a large wooden National Park style lodge ahead and the train running along an elevated trestle to the right through the woods. The path first goes past a log cabin counter service location and along a stream.

Just past that is the entrance to the animal trail for the land. I am unsure if in reality there will ever be any more animal trails built, but I felt the need to include it. The Red Creek Trail winds through the forest, first passing a raccoon habitat, then going through a bird enclosure, followed by environments for elk, beavers, and foxes. The feature animal of the trail are bears, who have a very large habitat to look into (Image 1). The trail then concludes with otters before exiting back to the land.

Inside the main Lodge building is the majority of the retail for the land and the main attraction, a balloon simulator that flies guests through the wonders of many National Parks (Image 3). Guests fly over a variety of settings including canyons, deserts, forests, and mountain ranges (Image 2). Native animals are featured elements in many of the settings. This is a ride system that I detailed in a post earlier this year.

The last attraction of this land is a Pocohantas boat dark ride. Guests ride in 8 person canoe boats down the river and around the bend into the story of the movie. Animals and our connection with nature are featured elements of the story.


Past that last attraction and through a section of transition forest is a split to two more lands, South America to the left and Australia to the right. Straight ahead is a transition attraction, a large treehouse, that in a way occupies all 3 of these lands. The treehouse looks over this northern expansion and is themed to the Society of Explorers and Adventurers who have explored all these locations.


Australia is the smallest of the new lands and also does not have an IP tie in. Finding Nemo would have been the only real choice but this is meant to exists at the same time as the dream plan with IP from EPCOT and Finding Nemo is already well represented there. Through the transition jungle, we enter into a rustic Village with a train station that is the second stop on the enlarged loop (Image 1 and 4).

The animal trail is entered through the village and leads under the railroad to the forest on the other side of the tracks. It starts with Koalas and then Emus before entering a large reptile and bug house, showing many of the exotic and dangerous animals of the continent. The main animal of the trail is kangaroos, which have a large habitat that takes up most of this trail. It concludes with Sugargliders and Tiger Quolls, then leading back to the village.

At the end of the village street is small gorge with a stream running down from it and forming a small river that runs through the land (Image 2). A dock and a large boat sit next to this stream, marking the entrance to the main attraction for the land, a submersible boat trip down the river and to the great barrier reef (Image 3). This is a dry for wet suspended dark ride, like 20,000 Leagues in Tokyo Disney Sea, that simulates a trip underwater. The queue takes us through a research aquarium before we load into our boats. On the trip, we start by seeing freshwater fish before exploring the open ocean, created with a mix of real coral reef sets, animatronic fish, and projections.


The third and largest land of this expansion is South America and has two areas, a village on the west side of the land and an abandoned factory city on the east side, based on Fordlandia, a real abandoned rubber processing city in Brazil.

From the split in the path by the treehouse and North America, the first attraction on the left is marked by Carl Fredricksen's house sitting in the jungle. The attraction is a "trackless" suspended dark ride that tours guests through the jungle, led by the Wildernes Explorers. Next to the area with the house is a huge waterfall and lagoon that connects into the small river. The village area is nearby and includes retail and a table service Brazilian restaurant. 

Across the river is the animal trail for the land, the third and final new one for the park. This includes the most amount of animals in any of the new trails. It starts with Holwer Monkeys and Capybaras before entering a frog and reptile house. After that is a bird enclosure that also features owls. Then guests pass Llamas and Sloths before the main animal habitat for Jaguars. 

A path through the jungle leads to the other half of the land with a tall rusting water tower leading guests towards it. The factory town has been reclaimed by an environmental group that tracks endangered animals in the region. This area includes a counter service restaurant that overlooks the river and one large attraction that begins in the abandoned factory building. 

The ride uses the Radiator Springs/Test Track ride system to create a high speed jeep exploration through the jungle, searching for an animal that has gone missing. The first half is indoors with a lot of showscenes and animatronic animals, and the second half is a outdoors, starting with a launch and then running through the jungle below the path above. 

The last changed area in this plan is a reimagining of Rafiki's Planet Watch as the city of Zootopia. The path from South America leads into Bunny Burrow, a suburb area of Zootopia where there is also a train station. The path leads past a couple local produce stands and a Bunny Burrow themed carousel on the way to the main city. Guests enter the Zootopia central Train Station, where there is a large retail space and then pass into the central plaza of the city. Straight ahead is the Zootopia Police Department where the main attraction is, to the left is a counter service restaurant, and to the right is the Hospital, which is the existing animal care building, rethemed to be in story for the city.

The attraction is an indoor family coaster dark ride where guests join a ride along with ZPD for a trip through the different districts of Zootopia.

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And that completes my ideas for this dream plan for Animal Kingdom. I really love this park a lot, so I was really excited to put some ideas together to add to it. I hope that the additions would be able to expand the style and message of the park while increasing the diversity of animals and experiences.

Like I said, this concludes the series of new plans for the Walt Disney World parks. I am not sure what is next, but I'll be sticking with the one post a month plan, so come back in July to see what I end up making. Before then, I will probably do a wrap up summary post of this series to look at the overall plan, but that will be a bonus post in the next few weeks. 

Thanks for reading!

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Image Credits

Europe
1. https://akhsmonsters2b.wikispaces.com/Drakon+Shrishail
2. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mmm-yoso/16654103659/
3. Hercules
4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/andyhay/28226806320/

North America
1. https://www.flickr.com/photos/blacktigersdream/26126991224/
2. https://www.flickr.com/photos/anitagould/8433712377/
3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_miley/5943734608/
4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjmagnuson/35003863925/

Australia
1. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gouldy/5384257558/
2. https://www.flickr.com/photos/28127145@N06/2901147552/
3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/farbenfrohewunderwelt/8030811530/
4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulcarmona/13689150105/

South America
1. https://www.flickr.com/photos/duda_arraes/8237251935/
2. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dagget2/11595715453/
3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/guido_otero/3960059797/
4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tucotuti/34373719685/

Disney's Animal Kingdom: The Realistic Plan

Last in my series of new plans for the Walt Disney World parks are two plans for Disney's Animal Kingdom: this realistic plan posted today and a dream plan that will follow in a couple of weeks.

This follows up my plans for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Hollywood Studios posted over the last half year. 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 3 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.

This realistic plan is maybe a little ambitious, but because this is my favorite park, I had a lot of ideas and had a lot of fun putting this plan together. My goals were to add at least one new land and new attractions across the park, add some properly placed IP, and reinforce the animal concept of the park.

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Here's the map with all the text labels and a second image with some enlarged areas with more detail and description.

Starting at the front of the park, I added one more major attraction to finish out Pandora. I wanted to reinforce the animal element of the land and the park, so the attraction is a trackless dark ride where guests explore the forest searching for the variety of exotic animals of Pandora. The dark ride vehicles are ACE all-terrain jeeps that can go anywhere in the jungle to find even the most rare creatures. The queue leads into an indoor bioluminescent cave, like the one featured in Flight of Passage, where guests load and start to explore. The unique element of the trackless system is that guests can make choices along the way as to which direction they will actually go. A "nightvision" system on the jeep gives a look at what animals are ahead at a few splits in the path, and guests can chose which animals they would more like to see. The animals themselves would be a mix of practical figures and screen elements, and the climax of the attraction would be the discovery of a full size sleeping banshee in its cave, forcing us to make a quick escape before waking it up.


Across the park, I made some significant changes to Dinoland, including an update to its backstory. The Dino Institute half remains but the Dinorama half is gone. The new story:

A world renowned conservationist/explorer/collector has seen every kind of animal and been to the most remote corners of the world, but he realizes that there is one major group of animals he has never been able to see: those that are extinct. He decides with his wealth and connections, he is going to do whatever he can to fix that problem. He moves to the middle of nowhere, founds the city of Dinoland USA, and funds both an excavation operation to find fossils and the Dino Institute research operation to find actual living dinosaurs. His house sits above the excavated dig site, filled with his worldwide collection including plenty of extinct animal artifacts. Once the time travel tech is perfected, the dig site is abandoned, but on the day of the Dino Institute Open House, he decides to open both the dig site and his house for tours. That day is today. Dinoland USA is open for exploration. 

So this new story allows me to introduce two new attractions to the land and some smaller changes as well. The first change is to the pathways of the land. A new direct path is cut through the existing vegetation to lead to Dinosaur so that it is easier to find and more visible.

The rest of the land is redeveloped as a dig site with an excavation themed "wooden" rollercoaster running through it. The dig site and coaster is set down below grade, running below the wooden boardwalk style pathways through the land. The entrance and load to the coaster is set in dig site tent structures. The coaster starts with a lift hill and a short segment of banked turns before entering a fossil filled cave for some quick dark ride scenes. The coaster the launches out of the cave for a speed run through the excavation site in the center of the land, with a lot of banked turns and straightaways.

In the excavation area, there is also a classic spinner themed to excavation equipment.

The last attraction for the land is a variation on Mystic Manor that is very rethemed for its new home. The facade is different, the style is different, and the scenes are different, all changed to fit the Dinoland story and style. The scenes focus on the conservationists collection of art, artifacts, and fossils of extinct animals from around the world, all of which begin to mysteriously come to life because of the power of an idol. It includes a huge dinosaur skeleton come to life, woolly mammoths, dodo birds, and other weird extinct animals.


The next change is in Asia and the space between Asia and Africa. This area is redeveloped to include a pathway north to the expansion plot and a new land. The current Up bird show theater is removed and in its place is a Jungle Book omnimover dark ride with the classic animated characters. Like the use of Lion King in Africa, I think IP can work well in the lands of Animal Kingdom if the setting makes sense and if the exterior is treated with the same level of realism and detail as the rest of the park. So it is hyper-real on the exterior and animated on the inside.

The path leading north leads under a train trestle and then through a tunnel under the existing backstage road. Adjacent to this path is a new smaller theater space for animal shows that are not necessarily Asia or bird specific. The small theater could have hourly rotating shows with a closer look at various types of animals.


The new land to the north is another continent for the park, North America. Of the 4 viable continents left (North America, South America, Europe, and Australia), I decided on this option because I wanted to highlight the animals and natural environments of the continent that are so often overlooked in favor of more exotic options. After passing through the tunnel, the path passes under the trail again and opens up into a Redwood Forest style setting with a large wooden National Park style lodge ahead. The path first goes past a log cabin counter service location and along a stream that we then cross.

Just past that is the entrance to the animal trail for the land. I am unsure if in reality there will ever be any more animal trails built, but I felt the need to include it. The Red Creek Trail winds through the forest, first passing a raccoon habitat, then going through a bird enclosure, followed by environments for elk, beavers, and foxes. The feature animal of the trail are bears, who have a very large habitat to look into. The trail then concludes with otters before exiting back to the land.

Inside the main Lodge building is the majority of the retail for the land and the main attraction, a balloon simulator that flies guests through the wonders of many National Parks. Guests fly over a variety of settings including canyons, deserts, forests, and mountain ranges. Native animals are featured elements in many of the settings. This is a ride system that I detailed in a post earlier this year.

The last attraction of this land is a Pocohantas boat dark ride. Guests ride in 8 person canoe boats down the river and around the bend into the story of the movie. Again animals and our connection with nature are featured elements of the story.


The last changed area in this plan is a reimagining of Rafiki's Planet Watch as the city of Zootopia. The train takes guests from Africa but now unloads in Bunny Burrow, a suburb area of Zootopia. The path leads past a couple local produce stands and a Bunny Burrow themed carousel on the way to the main city. Guests enter the Zootopia central Train Station, where there is a large retail space and then pass into the central plaza of the city. Straight ahead is the Zootopia Police Department where the main attraction is, to the left is a counter service restaurant, and to the right is the Hospital, which is the existing animal care building, rethemed to be in story for the city.

The attraction is an indoor family coaster dark ride where guests join a ride along with ZPD for a trip through the different districts of Zootopia.

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That completes this "realistic" plan for Animal Kingdom and its a plan that I really like.

A much more ambitious dream plan will be following in a couple of weeks. For the past parks, I've had all versions done at the same time, but wasn't able to do that this time and didn't want to make you wait.

So follow me on twitter for updates about when that next plan will be up, and let me know with a comment what you think about this version. 

How I Make My Posts: The Design Process

Last year I wrote a post about the technology process of how I make my posts, specifically the park maps.

I had said then that the eventual plan was to do a part 2 to go over the design aspect of the maps. And now so many months and many projects later, I have gotten back to that post.

This is going to be a bit different than the last one though just because of how technology is precise but design is subjective. I can't say that there is a right way to do any of this. And it even feels a little weird for me to say that I have any kind of authority to talk about how to design as someone without real training and doing this just for fun. But I'll try to share some ideas.

So what I am going to do is just describe what I do and what I think about with my maps, not the end all guide to how to design a theme park. If you want to know that, start turning to many many books on the subject and all the real experts. The following steps and tips are just some of the things I have picked up from both my architecture school training, all the books on the subject, and things I have just figured out as I went along.

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To walk through this, I'm using the last post, the Hollywood Studios Plan, as the main example, so it helps if you've already looked at that and are familiar with what I tried to do.

First step for this plan and for all the expansion plans for existing parks is to identify the areas for potential expansion or replacement. Anything that I think might be worth improving or changing. I need to get an idea of what I have to work with before really starting. Here's an image of when I diagrammed that out for Hollywood Studios. Obviously a lot of space to work with in this case, but in others I get as specific as individual attractions that I think could go.

Diagram of potential expansion area

Once I see the potential space, I start to put a plan together for what lands or big moves I want to make. This doesn't happen for all parks but most have included at least one new land or big addition.

In the case of this park, I knew I was going for the obvious Marvel, Pixar, and Animation trio to be my big additions, so this was not that difficult compared to other parks. Along with this step of figuring out the lands, I also try to figure out the idea of the park, the concept that I am aiming for. Knowing my goals early helps the decision process for what big moves to make. In the case for this park, the idea was obvious, but for a park like EPCOT for instance, this was a crucial step. I needed to make the decision about the tone and style at the start before getting detailed.

Then in cases where I am adding new lands, I start to rough in where the new lands will go. This step requires me to try a bunch of different options, but because I am just doing quick studies, it does not take much time. Things to consider include how the lands will work with existing attractions, how much space I anticipate needing for the land, the flow between lands, and the goals I have for the park. It doesn't have to be binding, I changed the diagram below a little after getting started, but the general guiding idea still worked.

Rough layout of how the lands could fit together

Important in this step is to consider the traffic flow through the park and the general form of the pathways. Here is where I start to figure out if I can work in a hub and spoke plan or a loop or something else. This shows how I was seeing the loop plan that this park developed. Well, loop with some offshoots to the right.

Diagram of main pathway

The next really big step is to start to work out the attractions list. This takes some time and is basically always a different process for each park. Sometimes I am trying to pick out attraction concepts to replace a specific attraction, sometimes I am picking out attractions to develop a whole land from scratch, and often it is both. This step really happens at the same time as the last, laying out the lands, as I think about the amount of space each land should need.

I try to work out a full list of all the attractions I want to add, both by theme and ride system, to start. The types of ride systems is something I really focus on, trying to bring balance of types of rides to the park. I like each park to have some big E ticket rides, some coasters, some classic dark rides, some flatrides, and some unique elements. I really try to make sure I don't end up with a park of 80% dark rides. Some times I will actually make a list of the types of rides I want to add before even thinking about the themes or characters. In the case of this park, I made a list of ride systems and a list of themes and then worked through many options of bringing the lists together until I was happy with the direction I was going. I used this same process with EPCOT, where I was adding many attractions. I may revisit the land layouts once this list is together to make sure it all looks like it will work.

At this point I have the ideas for the lands and the attractions and I have not started drawing anything yet. Its all in lists and diagrams.

Once I am settled on the plan, I start the drawing file for the new park plan. First step is to delete everything that I plan to demolish and start to look at what I have to work with. I also start copying in attractions from other parks that are either clones or similar to what I am adding. These are to help judge the amount of space needed early on. You can see here that I copied in Pirates, Forbidden Journey, Haunted Mansion, Pooh, and some flatrides. That's a pretty good group to show different attraction scales. Large boat ride, big E Ticket, moderate size dark ride, small dark ride, spinner. I can get a lot of reference from a group like that.

Park in early progress

I now start to really get into laying out the lands. This begins really with a lot of placeholder boxes and text to start to shape the space. I want to see how the elements of the land will relate to each other and the existing park before really putting anything permanent. For this park, the shot below shows that early step for the Marvel land. Bonus, you can see when I was exploring including a giant helicarrier in the land. This is like how I blocked out the lands of the park to start, now I block out each individual land, getting more focused each step.

Diagramming out a land

One thing I will frequently do that I didn't do on this park is actually do some diagrammatic drawing on a blank site plan. These examples were done with a digital tablet. I usually do this when I am starting completely fresh with a park or a land. Without context to start to work from, like existing buildings and attractions, I have a lot more options of how the land develops. So it helps to really quickly sketch through a lot of plans to explore relationships, sightlines, scales. Here are two examples, from Beastly Kingdom and the park I did for WDWmagic forum last year. It's messy sketching, but helps me think through issues before I make them permanent.

Beastly Kingdom diagram sketch

WDWMagic forum park diagram sketch

Once I am happy with a layout, I start to draw the buildings and roads and other elements. Still starting rough and boxy, but that is all I need to explore the way the land could develop. At this point, the process is just refinement and adding detail. I don't work straight through from diagram to finished product at once. Its really rounds of detail as I get more comfortable with what I have. And I may get to the point that I decide to start over with a land once I discover something in how I am drawing it.

Eventually, I am happy with the layout and the buildings and add final details. Rooflines, planted areas, trees, other kinds of landscape features. That really helps sell it as an aerial, not a diagram. Then I reach the finished product.

Land in progress of refinement

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As I design and refine, there a many things I consider, but here are a couple of the most important.


Sightlines are incredibly important, both in making sure that you see what you should and that you don't see what you shouldn't. The main use that I consider is how sightlines can draw guests towards an element and how sightlines can create a sequence of movement. I have talked about both of these ideas in the past in short essays on this blog, found here. There are three ideas I focus on with this.

First, a big goal is to create a sequence of interesting landmarks or elements that guests want to walk towards and explore. And then once they get to that element, there is another element that keeps you moving deeper and deeper into the park.

With sightlines, I also want to make sure that attraction entrances and major elements are placed so that they are the view terminus to a path instead of being on the side of a path so that they are emphasized. This is a Space Mountain vs Stitch Great Escape situation. One you walk towards and is much more popular, and one you walk by and may not notice.

And I also want to use sightlines to keep you from seeing something until guests get to a particular reveal moment, like the train station tunnels hiding the castle, or in the case of this park, the tunnels that hide views into Galaxy's Edge, Toontown, and Pixar. In all of those cases, guests can see into the tunnel and see that there is something beyond, but can't get the full picture until you enter, moving guests forward. In Pixar Place, you can see the start of Monstropolis through the tunnel straight ahead, but are blocked from seeing Monsters Inc. until you are in the land.


Considering scale is also important. There is less of a rule here or guidelines to follow besides just that I try to be conscious of fitting into the scale of the context. Like I said, I considered building a giant helicarrier for the marvel land, but it would overpower Hollywood Boulevard and the center of the park, which would hurt the overall park. The new element should naturally fit in to the land and park. Unless of course it is meant to stand out, and then playing with scale can be useful, like how Pandora is over scale to the park, making it even more impressive and other wordly.

For an example in this park concept, I decided to scale down the rockwork of Radiator Springs compared to the California version because it is the backdrop to a much smaller and more intimate land, and I did not want it to be overtly visible from the other Pixar mini lands. Original Radiator Springs would be visible from the whole park, but that would not work.

Compression and expansion is a frequent tool as well and is basically the idea of alternating the experience of space to create transition, sequence, and enclosure. I wrote about that too in one of the essays linked above. Among the benefits are that compression and release encourages movement as you feel the need to continue to expanded areas, like the narrow Main Street funneling you towards the open hub. Also, the technique can create "rooms" out of the open park, better creating individual themed worlds. That was the idea for the individual worlds in Pixar Place. Create compression moments between the areas and then expand to a wider specific world.


Last element to think about is how the lands and spaces of the park are connected. I look at the node diagram of the main gathering spaces and pathways of the park to see how they flow and how they balance. You don't want many dead end nodes or areas that are too dense with pathways. And you want the pathway network to be clear and obvious. Guests shouldn't get lost or stuck in one area of the park. Ideally, you want the hub to be the core connecting zone of the park that your nodes branch off from in a simple diagram.

Node diagram of the park

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So this post is a really quick guide to my process and what I think about. For those of you who make your own projects, I hope this helps and I also hope that you find your own best way to work, because not all of us will have the same process. Ask questions in the comments if you have any.

I am currently starting work on the Animal Kingdom plan for this series. Hope to have it for next month, but no guarantee. 

Thanks for reading. 

Disney's Hollywood Studios 2018 Plan

Next up in the series of plans for the current Walt Disney World Parks is a dream plan for the park currently known as Hollywood Studios.

This follows up my pair of plans for the Magic Kingdom and a trio of plans for EPCOT, posted in January. 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.

While I have done multiple versions of plans with the last two parks, this park just gets one dream version. The reason I am not doing a realistic plan like I have typically done is because I feel like the projects that are already happening, Galaxy's Edge, Toy Story Land, and Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, are likely enough for the next couple years. I don't imagine any other large additions in the immediate future after all this is done. Unless of course Galaxy's Edge causes such crowd control problems that they immediately need more interesting capacity in the park to draw guests away. But I'm going with the assumption that the real life plans are enough for a realistic plan.

So that means that I am just going to be presenting my dream plan for the park, what I would like to happen in the years after the current phase of expansion, even if its a bit ambitious and unlikely.

Though I will say that because of the nature of the studios park model and the fact that I really entirely focused on IPs and franchises, I think this is far less unlikely than my all original EPCOT dream plan. I really tried to look at properties and concepts that would actually be popular enough to lead to being included in an expanded park.

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Before getting to the specifics, I'll start with the structure of the park, both physically and logically.

Many think the existing park is confusing. The layout is irregular because it was not meant to all be a public theme park. It does not follow the standard hub and spoke style, or really any other style.

It seems to me that the park is in the process of changing that with the two big lands that are being added. Instead of fitting into the spiderweb structure of the current park, the new lands fit into a clear loop. One entrance on either side, lands connected end to end. If that was expanded to the rest of the park, which I think it can, the park layout could end up being a bit clearer. It's still not a perfect path, but closer, so I followed this concept with the lands I added.

For the logical structure of the park, I also followed the system the new lands are setting up. These are highly immersive single setting lands, which is the new style for theme parks. Whether or not you think that is a good idea in general, it definitely works in a studio park setting, so I went with it. But I also wanted to explore how these diverse single setting lands could tie together into a bigger setting and transition across the park, so that became a goal.

Also, I should mention that I decided to approach this with reality with respect to the Marvel situation. I only wanted to use properties and characters that Disney can actually use right now. That was of course limiting, but I wanted to lean into it.

And last, with respect to the types and amounts of attractions, I decided to go for fewer attractions overall but attractions that are of bigger scale instead of going for more attractions that are smaller scale. The movie theme for the park and the comparison to the two mega Star Wars attractions means that I think it would be more important to do big and exciting and really immersive attractions instead of doing more lesser quality attractions. So in my plan, the total count for the park is still below the other park totals even though it definitely is jump up from the current park.

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I will start with a diagram map of the lands so you can understand the loop pattern that I talked about.

And here's the map with all the text labels. For reference, CS means counter service, TS means table service.

The entrance are core of the park remain the same in this plan, with the addition of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. This is the ideal view of golden age Hollywood, leading towards the Chinese Theater at the center of the park. At this center point, the park experience branches in opposite directions, left and right from the center, beginning the formal loop that makes up most of the park. Technically, the area of Echo Lake is absorbed into this land, no longer standing as its own area. The path branch from the hub towards the current ABC Commisary is closed as as backstage area to clarify the main pathway into the land on that side, forcing guests to take the path on along the lake.

In addition to the Mickey ride, there is one other attraction in this central area. Replacing the Frozen sing along is a new version of the Cinemagic film from Paris, filling the need in the park to represent the history and importance of cinema. Since The Great Movie Ride is gone, I think the park needs something like this to reinforce the core concept at the heart of the park.


Moving on to the left of this entry/hub land and passing Echo Lake, guests enter the first big new land of the park: Marvel City. We also leave Hollywood and enter a newly defined New York area, the natural setting for this land. The background trees of Echo Lake become a Central Park like area, bounded on all sides by the facades of the city. The land extends all the way back to where Grand Avenue starts, including the former ABC Commissary. The new construction also means that the 50's Prime Time Cafe and Tune in Lounge is removed, but I think that is a concept that should be recreated at Disney Springs.

Starting on the left side of the land and the central park, the first big attraction is marked by Dr. Strange's iconic Sanctum Sanctorum. The attraction inside is a kuka arm motion dark ride across space and time. I feel like the motion and the disorientation possible with the ride system could play into the theme really well and create a mind bending experience. The queue takes you through the entry hall and the gallery space of the sanctum before you step right through a portal ring in a preshow room and travel to another dimension for your training session.

Next, at the rear of the land is an attraction that is a bit undefined at this point, because the movie for the character has not come out yet. Captain Marvel is one of the few characters that can be used in the resort, and I am making an assumption that it will be a big success, so I have called out a space for this character in this land. My vision for the attraction is a coaster/shooting dark ride hybrid, which I think could work for the character since the story is apparently about the Kree-Skull War. Sounds like something with a lot of fighting that our ride could join in on. 

The last attraction of the land is a rethemed Star Tours, now set as a downtown SHIELD base. The exterior is built up as a modern and high tech building, fitting the style of SHIELD, and is topped with a hangar and landing platform with a full size Quinjet. The attraction inside is a flight on a SHIELD jet through the city, featuring Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and Falcon. This is where the inability to use many of the more high profile characters is a disappointment, because this could be much more with the main characters involved. But with so few that are available to Disney, this is the best I could do. 

On the right of the land is a side street that leads towards the Commissary and the path towards Grand Avenue. The buildings here hold retail and the Commissary is rethemed as a classic New York City diner with a super hero twist. Pictures and news clippings and memorabilia on the walls document the various Marvel characters of the city, including as many as Disney can include and many that are just comic characters, not movie characters. The Sci Fi Dine In is rethemed to be a restaurant in an old New York City Broadway house, showing movie clips that feature the city. Same concept, new setting.


The streets of Marvel New York transition to Grand Avenue, which is also rethemed to now be set in New York. The idea is that this half of the park is all set in New York City so there is some continuity. That shouldn't be that difficult since the facades were meant to be New York anyway. This street serves the purpose of primary entrance and waiting area for Galaxy's Edge. Muppet Studios sits just off the street and is expanded with one more attraction at the rear of the courtyard. Now that the Great Movie Ride is gone, there's no problem to build its Muppet themed parody. This would be a classic omnimover dark ride through the active Muppet Studio where plenty will go wrong. Elsewhere in the land, Mama Melrose is rethemed with a Muppets concept and live entertainment is added in the windows adjacent to Pizzarizzo, like the current show in Liberty Square. The tour bus for Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem is parked below in the courtyard to provide some musical accompaniment for the entertainment. The Muppet Labs show is also relocated here to centralize this land as the hub for Muppet activity.

Galaxy's Edge follows this land, and is presented as my best guess of how it will end up. It sure is a big land, but I have to assume it will be great and worth the space and the wait for it. I also didn't even attempt to represent the adjacent hotel or how that will be connected. I will update in the future as more information comes out.

For the transition to Toy Story Land, I have added a tunnel element, themed to an abandoned structure on the Star Wars side, and a cardboard toybox on the Toy Story side. Is it too on point to make it a Star Wars playset box? The land remains as is, except for the entrance on the other side. Instead of leading towards the path along the side of Midway Mania, it now leads into the expanded Pixar Place land. The transition is also through a large cardboard box tunnel that is wedged through an opening in the fence that borders the land.


To describe the rest of Pixar Place, I am going to start back at the hub by the Chinese Theater. This larger Pixar land takes up all the space that was formerly Animation Courtyard, the Animation building, and the backstage parking deck. Space is a premium in the park, so all those backstage functions needed to be relocated to make room for this land. I wanted to make sure that this Pixar land had real variety, not just Toy Story, which I feel is a little big for the limited space of the park. I ended up deciding on adding 3 more smaller areas to the existing largerToy Story Land: Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, and Cars. These were the properties that I felt deserved to be in parks but were not included somewhere else in my complete set of dream plans.

The path from the hub leads straight towards what was Animation Courtyard and the large archway and walls are completely removed. City street facades that could blend into the Hollywood style form the edge of the land, but the street branches in two directions into the different themed areas. The current Playhouse Disney theater is rethemed as Pixar Studio, where inside there is an interactive exhibit type space about making animated films and a theater showing the shorts, plus meet and greets for other characters aside from the 4 properties selected here.

The street continuing straight ahead leads into Monstropolis. The city is formed of a couple intersecting streets and the Monsters Inc factory beyond. The streets include a variety of themed retail, a snack location with monster frozen drinks, and two small counter service locations. One is a monsters farmers market with monster themed traditional meals and the other is Harryhausen's, serving sushi and Asian specialties. 

Inside the factory building is a large suspended family coaster dark ride. This would be a large and heavily themed E ticket ride through the world of the factory, ending with the door vault scene.

Back by Pixar Studio, the road to the left leads into Metroville from the world of the Incredibles, specifically the Metroville History Museum and an adjacent city park. This isn't a setting from the film, but I am expanding the world by suggesting that the Incredibles are being honored with an exhibit about their superhero feats after they saved the city from the Omnidroid. The logic here may change after the upcoming sequel is released. I wanted to do something besides another generic city though and include some greenery, so this plan made sense to me.

The main attraction in this area is a large mini-kuka dark ride where we are lucky enough to get the chance to follow the Incredibles out on a night of crime fighting. Across the road is a second attraction, a spinner themed to the remains of the Omnidroid. After the Incredibles defeated it, the city repurposed it as an art piece in the park.

Paths from both Metroville and Monstropolis lead into the third and final area of the addition, Radiator Springs. Because there is less space, this is not a full recreation like in DCA. It is instead just the four buildings at the main intersection, plus the town hall, which is the entrance to the main attraction, and a much smaller rockwork landscape behind. The main attraction is a dark ride similar to Radiator Springs Racers, but without the racing element. The ride starts with an outdoor section behind the town hall, then inside the building for a drive through the town, meeting all the locals.

Flo's V8 Cafe is a similar counter service restaurant to the California version and the rest of the buildings are retail.

From Radiator Springs, the path to Toy Story Land leads into a rockwork cave and then out in the oversized lawn.

The path structure through Pixar Place therefore takes you though either Monstropolis or Metroville, then by Radiator Springs, and then into Toy Story Land and on to Galaxy's Edge, maintaining a rough loop layout.


The last additions to the park are down Sunset Boulevard, which remains set in Los Angeles. Structurally, that means that the right side of the hub is Los Angeles, the left side is New York, and the back of the park is fantasy settings.

The big addition here is a brand new land replacing the Beauty and the Beast theater and all the land behind it. This is Toontown, based on the version from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and is meant to be set adjacent to golden age Hollywood. This is where every animated character can live in this park, no matter the theme or setting, because by definition of being a toon, it works here. This is the perfect conceit for this park and really should have been done already.

Toontown is accessed through a pair of tunnels off of Sunset, transitioning to the fantasy toon city where everything is exaggerated and comical. The land is formed of a main street that branches and rejoins at the far end, where the entrance to the Fantasmic theater is located. This is the densest land with attractions in this park, partly because I think of this as the parks Fantasyland, so it has some smaller scale dark rides. It also has a variety of themed retail and plenty of spaces for meet and greets with literally any animated character.

The first attraction on the right as you enter is set in Scrooge McDuck's Bank and is a classic suspended dark ride themed to Ducktales, featuring Donald and his nephews on an adventure. Across the street is a Toontown apartment building, which is the primary permanent meet and greet facility for the park. Mickey, Minnie, and a rotation of a couple other most popular characters could have multiple rooms in this building, all well themed to the toontown style.

The next attraction down on the right is a toontown taxi tour attraction that is kind of a overview trip through the city on a wild taxi dark ride. It features a lot of cameos from all kinds of characters as we race through different settings, like the streets, a toon comedy club, a theater, an apartment building, and a market, all filled with gags.

Farther down at the end of the street is a small toon park, which includes a carousel with a variety of animated animals, and a garden area for meet and greets. Next to it is the entrance to Fantasmic, which is now the Toontown Amphitheater. This seems like a natural relationship to set the events of Fantasmic inside toontown, explaining all the variety of characters and events. It would make sense to do a major refurb and rewrite of the show with this new setting to modernize it.

The last attraction is the largest, and set inside the Sorcerers Workshop. This is a boat dark ride using the Shanghai Pirates system and takes us through the Sorcerers Apprentice Fantasia scene and then uses that to lead us into a couple of scenes from other animated films. Similar to Philharmagic, but without the music concept.


The last additions to the park are back out on Sunset Boulevard, and in a way represent the very last major Disney studio that has not been included so far. That is live action that is not Star Wars or Marvel or Animated remakes. To be honest though, there is not a ton of options left. Original live action movies have really struggled in the last many years, so not many great choices for the park. So that means that the remainder of Sunset Boulevard is speculative for future films in the live action studio.

First, I think it makes total sense for Disney to eventually attempt a live action Tower of Terror inspired movie that the attraction could then relate to. I know they want to lose the Twilight Zone attachment so they do not have to license it anymore. I think it could be the perfect property to try to turn into a successful movie, especially if they went a little more PG-13 and scary with it to match the tone of the ride. So I am hypothetically assuming that happens and that it is able to work in theme of golden age Hollywood.

And then for Rockin Roller Coaster, I decided to retheme it to another potential film that is also set in golden age Hollywood: The Rocketeer. I know this is a reboot that has been in the works for a while, so I am hoping it will happen and that this retheme could work, just because it would fit the setting so well. The attraction could be set in some kind of workshop where we take a ride with the Rocketeer as he or she learns how to fly.

Next to The Rocketeer, the current Sunset Showcase is rethemed on the exterior to the South Seas Club from the original movie, and is now used as a table service club style restaurant and for special events. This ties the area together well to end Sunset Boulevard.

Last, back on Sunset Boulevard, half of the existing outdoor counter service is replaced with a new building that holds retail and an indoor counter service location.

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And that completes the additions to the park in this hypothetical dream plan. But that is not all that I have for this post.

I'm going to do something I haven't done before and mention a couple of ideas that I had that I almost included in this plan but decided against for various reasons. I am doing this because I think they are actually pretty cool ideas and I was seriously tempted to do them.

First, while I was thinking about how much space Toy Story Land takes up, I strongly considered retheming part of the land to another Pixar property so that I could fit more characters into the Pixar Place land I defined. What I almost did was retheme the new coaster to a Bugs Life, making it into Flik's Flying Machine traversing through the overgrown grass of a Bugs Life themed area. The track would be hidden as best as possible with built up rockwork and vegetation. I thought it could blend well up against the oversized Toy Story Land. But I decided against this just because it made more sense to leave the brand new land alone for now and just add more Pixar to the available land next to it. 

Second, I strongly considered making a drastic move for the Marvel land and building it all inside a giant to-scale helicarrier that would replace basically all of Echo Lake. I just thought it would be super cool and impressive to make up for the fact that the characters available for use would not be. But it became a scale and sightline issue. To make it seem "realistic" it would have to be massive, and if it was massive it would overtake the view from Hollywood Boulevard. And if I made it small enough to not stand out, it would be comically small. So it ended up being just an idea. 

Next, I had a different idea to retheme Rockin Roller Coaster: Wreck it Ralph. The vehicles could be rethemed as the train between the games and the queue and load would be inside Game Central Station. Guests would then be launched into the worlds of the game, flying through a variety of super colorful game worlds and transitioning through portal tunnels. I thought it would work perfectly. But I decided against it just because it would end up sort of standing alone and out of theme on a street themed to Hollywood. And I wanted to try to define a bit of a live action area, so decided to go with the Rocketeer. 

And last, the big one that I was most tempted to go with. A retheme of Tower of Terror to something Marvel, but not Mission Breakout. Instead, I seriously considered retheming the tower as Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum. So much made sense. Dr. Strange is master of space and time, so it made sense in a way to be in golden age Hollywood. The exterior of the Sanctum is elegant and photogenic, so would not be an eye sore at the end of the street. The up/down/forward/backward makes perfect sense in the space and time bending story. It would be something new and exciting for the park, and it would be all Disney, not an outside property. But it would be at the sake of the Tower of Terror, which was just honestly something I wasn't willing to do. I like the existing attraction too much. But I thought it was a cool idea, so that is why I am talking about it.

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So that is what I have for this post, which although is being posted in April, was meant to be the post for March. Sticking to my goal of one post a month, that means that I'm planning to have another post up later this month, and it is likely going to be a follow up to my "How I Make My Posts" instructions, this time going over the things I think about when designing these plans, using this park as an example. 

So check back soon and follow me on Twitter if you don't already to keep up with what is coming next.