The Season for Rumors

Following up on some of the rumors I've been posting lately, I have the biggest one yet just for today. I have heard from multiple sources that Walt Disney World President Meg Crofton will shortly be announcing that Disney has already broken ground on a fifth gate. Keeping with the resort's desire to have guests spend all their vacation on Disney Property, this new park will target SeaWorld's visitor base.

The new park will be called 'DisneySeas', and will be based largely on the Tokyo DisneySea park, but this time with a healthy dose of marine life shows. There are already big water tanks backstage at Disney's Animal Kingdom where Disney is training dolphins, killer whales, and other marine life for the Disney quality shows that will become the focus for the new park.

The Fifth Gate location will be on the 120 acres directly adjacent to the Magic Kingdom and across the Lagoon from Wilderness Lodge. The recent construction at the Contemporary is to help handle the expected increased hotel capacity the new resort will bring. The location also takes advantage of the monorail line. Construction on a new monorail station right overhead the existing bus station has already begun. A people mover will carry guests from the station to the DisneySeas entrance. The current parking lots will be slowly converted to multi-story garages with moving walkways similar to Universal Orlando. Capacity will be approximately double the current parking lots, with space left over for expanded ticket book and transportation center (with shops and dining).

A few guests have emailed me and reported seeing 'sight-line' balloons rising from the area adjacent to the Magic Kingdom recently. This also confirms the rumor, so Disney must have decided the time was right to make the announcement.

Expect this new park to open exactly three years from now on April 1st, 2010.

 

Wow... April 1st openings are always my favourite!! ;

 

Everyone should be a little careful about announcements today. I have a feeling there will be a lot of April fools day pranks. I will keep my ears and eyes open for this one to see if i can confirm. ;

 

APRIL FOOLS???

April 1, 2007 – Orlando, FL: (al-Reuters): This morning, Jay Rasulo, Chairman of the Walt Disney Company’s (NYSEIS) Parks and Resorts Division, announced a major expansion of the monorail lines in both Orlando and Anaheim.

“This is the first expansion of any monorail line at a Disney park in the United States since 1982. ; Expanding the lines at Walt Disney World and at the Disneyland Resort has to be the most exciting thing we are doing in 2007” said Jay at a press conference early this morning at the ground breaking of the new Four Seasons/Disney hotel located within the boundaries of Walt Disney World.

According to park Imagineers, the monorail line at the Disneyland Resort will expanded from the Downtown Disney station to the newly planned resort located off Harbor Boulevard about a mile south from the original Disneyland Park. ; This resort is currently being built by the Feulyeuos Native American tribe, who contacted the Walt Disney Company when they realized that the site of the planned third theme park actually belonged to their tribe previously. ; The tribe has planned a forty story hotel & casino on the site. ; The casino will host a variety of Disney Imagineered attractions and roller coasters, including the new “Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Bloodthirsty Lawyers” coaster at the top of the hotel. ; Guests will be able to play slot machines themed around Disney characters and attractions.

In Orlando, the new monorail expansion will take guests from the Magic Kingdom to both the MGM-Studios theme park as well as the Animal Kingdom park. ; The first expansion is actually to extend the line from Epcot to Downtown Disney. ; Jay Rasulo remarked “Guests will now be able to park in a central location and take an environmentally friendly transportation to Downtown Disney, where they can experience a shopping fantasy come true.” ; He mentioned that because of the length of time to create the new expansion, and the expected demand for the monorail, that guests will have to exit the monorail at the Downtown Disney station, and reboard if they want to continue to the Epcot theme park. ; “This is a change from the original Epcot line, which was directly from the Ticket & Transportation Center. ; This change was necessary, as we needed to move the current Epcot line to allow it to expand.”

“Unfortunately, in order for the new monorail line to meet minimum Federal EMCE (Electric Motor Conveyance Emission) guidelines, we were forced to move the monorail from the current track to one that goes several hundred feet in the air, above Spaceship Earth. ; The good news is the views from up there are fantastic!”

Early morning guests to the Walt Disney World this morning were quoted as saying “This really is the year of a million dreams! ; I’d never thought I’d be able to see Spaceship Earth from above!” and “Why can’t I go straight to Epcot anymore? ; Must be someone else’s dream”. ; One guest remarked to us on their way out early in the morning by telling us “We wanted to go ride Rock and Roller Coaster at the ; Disney/MGM Studios this morning. ; We got to where it used to be, and now it’s called Pixarland….we didn’t know where they put the Disney/MGM Studios park, but it’s not there anymore”

Late last night the Walt Disney Company also announced via a press release on their website that Frontierland at the Magic Kingdom will be renamed as “Piratesland” and the Splash Mountain attraction will be rethemed to match the situation in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie where Captain Jack Sparrow escaped in a coffin on the ocean. ; They also announced plans to begin construction of Walt Disney World in New Delhi, India. ; When asked for comment about the low key announcement for the second Walt Disney World, a Disney spokesman said “Why do you think we’ve been calling Walt Disney World, Walt Disney World in Florida lately? ; Because we like adding unnecessary names to our parks like the ‘Disneyland Park, part of the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim’?”