Disneyland in Anaheim is about to get a whole lot bigger as plans are announced to add new parks, hotels, restaurants and entertainment options at opposite sides of the park. Called Disneylandforward, the plans will see favourites from other Disney Parks come to the west coast.
“DisneylandForward” is Disney’s effort to work with the city to grow the Disneyland Resort post-pandemic. Disney will be asking the city to approve plans to add a mix of theme park, hotel, retail, dining and entertainment on the eastern and western edges of the existing Disneyland Resort.
The westside expansion envisions new theme park lands on the Downtown Disney and Lilo and Stitch parking lots, situated between the existing Disneyland Hotel and Paradise Pier Hotel. Originally, there was some confusion amongst news outlets at today’s announcement if this was a new park, but it appears they are actually large expansions of both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure. The confusion likely extends from their location in relation to the theme parks they are “in”.
The DisneylandForward.com website states that the lands could include Frozen, Peter Pan, and Tangled (already announced for Tokyo DisneySea’s Fantasy Springs), as well as Zootopia from Shanghai Disneyland, Toy Story Land from Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and TRON Lightcycle/Run, currently under construction for Magic Kingdom.
The existing Toy Story parking lot on Harbor Blvd, just across the street from the Anaheim Convention Center, would be turned into a new shopping and dining district, much like Disney Springs at Walt Disney World or DisneyTown at Shanghai Disneyland.
Concept art of the east-side retail area features a central lagoon surrounded by shops and a small hotel.
Exciting times, and interesting to see what effect this has on access to and footfall for Batuu West. We’ll find out next August when many of us meet up at Celebration Anaheim 2022.
