Yesterday, there was a small snippet in the Times about Disney’s California Adventure getting a $1.1B makeover. The details are starting to leak out; the following are summarized from the LA Times, NetCot, and Miceage (which has a really good 5 page article on all upcoming things Disney). I’m still unsure how this will affect ACSAC in 2008 in Disneyland, other than there may be portions of DCA closed and construction in the area.
So here’s the scoop:
- The park will trace the footsteps of Walt as he arrived in Los Angeles in the 20s. The park will also feature Carthay Circle as the new icon for the park; ‘Snow White’ premiered there in 1937. The park will also increase by about 12 acres and feature more tie-ins with the companies movies.
- The makeover will take 5 years.
- California Adventure will have more clearly defined theme sections and will tip its hat more frequently to the late Walt Disney.
- Favorite attractions, such as the Tower of Terror (and I suppose Soaring) will be retained. A host of new attractions will include several based on Pixar animated films such as “Cars” and “Toy Story.”
- There will be a new Pixar Play Pals parade opening in Spring, 2008. Once construction begins in the DCA entrance plaza, the parade will begin in the Pacific Wharf area and head west towards their conclusion in Paradise Pier. As the park boundaries of DCA eventually expand into the Timon parking lot, the parade route will expand with it and gain back some length it lost by avoiding the “Sunshine Plaza” area at the park entrance. You read that right: expansion into the Timon parking lot.
- The DCA Entrance Plaza will be expanded and completely reworked. The new entrance turnstiles will be moved out to where the California letters currently stand, before visitors entered a Mission Moderne styled street that would resemble Los Angeles in the roaring 20’s.
- The current backlot area will be redone to actually be Hollywood during the Golden Age of the 1930’s. It will purposely be an era just slightly later than the 1920’s entrance, and will be fleshed out with real stores and experiences behind what are now just false fronts and empty buildings.
- MuppetVision will be replaced with Mickey’s Philharmagic (I can hear my wife going “Awwwww”), but with a 1930’s era pre-show designed specifically for DCA’s new mission statement to play up the Walt Disney era. As they rebuild that 3-D theater, the shallow display windows will be replaced with real stores that can be entered instead.
- The Hyperion Theatre box will be completely reworked.There will be a full size facade on its exterior, and the stairwells will be enclosed. A fancy lobby will be built that leads to the newly enclosed escalators and elevators that will take the audience up to their seats. The interior of the theatre will be reworked as well. The plan is to make the Hyperion a self-contained and state-of-the-art theater facility that could possibly host major awards shows or concerts.
- The new exterior of the Hyperion lobby building is planned to be themed to a 1930’s Hollywood street, and new stores and visitor amenities will be included as visitors walk along the street south towards the Tower of Terror.
- There will be a Wonderful World Of Color lagoon show opening in 2009. To accomodate the crowds, the entire northern edge of the Paradise Bay lagoon will be torn out and rebuilt. The amphitheatre will be replaced by something with larger capacity. Additionally, the area from the Paradise Pier entrance bridge to just past where the Golden Zephyr currently stands will be transformed into multi-level terraces designed to look directly at the huge new lagoon show.
- The Route 66 section will be removed entirely, to be replaced with a beautiful Victorian beer garden adjacent to a new coaster themed to Ratatouille and a mad race through kitchens and alleys.
- The Golden Dreams attraction will be torn down. Only the Palace of Fine Arts dome would remain, and it would be used as the exit for a brand new Little Mermaid ride using an Omnimover ride system. This new Little Mermaid family dark ride would help strengthen the presence of San Francisco in a park supposedly about California.
- The empty San Francisco row houses will become a new Disneyland Resort Preview Center with models and sketches of the new attractions and park themes coming to Anaheim in the next few years.
These are just excerpts from longer articles. To get an idea with pictures, see the MiceAge articles.
