There has been a lot of talk over the past few days about a Disneyland expansion that is in the works. The facts are that Disney has been buying up parcels of land surrounding the Disneyland resort for a number of years however very recently Disney purchased two buildings at 1515 and 1585 S. Manchester Ave. for $48 million. While this seems like a huge investment, a lot of people don’t actually know that Disney obtained control of those properties last year.
Very recently Disney also purchased the Carousel Inn property on Harbor Boulevard and going back even further than this, Disney purchased 11 acres of land just northeast of interstate 5 (very near the resort).
All of these purchases combined gives Disney over 15 acres of land to play around with, no small patch of land by any means. Of course the big question is, what is Disney going to do with the land they have purchased? Well hopefully we will find out a bit more at D23 later this month but for now, here our my best guesses.
More Parking
Parking at Disneyland has been a problem for quite some time, especially weekends on a Friday when the annual pass validity kicks in. While this isn’t perhaps as exciting as some of the other possibilities that could come out of the land purchase, expect to see parking at least play a part here.
Star Wars
Disney CEO Bob Iger has already gone on record and told investors to expect new Star Wars themed attractions at all of the Disney Parks around the world. Considering as Disneyland Resort is fast running out of space, we could see Disney utilising some of the space for a Star Wars theme attraction, if we are really lucky a Star Wars themed land could be coming into play.
Marvel
Out of all of the options I would say that this is the most likely simply because Disney own the rights to Marvel characters in Southern California and are heavily restricted on what they can do in both Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disney sue to the contracts that Marvel has with Universal Parks. Marvel makes a lot of sense here as it is unlikely Disney have the room to produce anything huge for both Marvel and Star Wars as well as expanding on the existing parking.
Photo credit: here
Of course, there is a possibility of Disney using the space to do a combination of the three, something that I think would be the best case scenario for the fans!
Nothing has been confirmed yet but heres hoping that D23 next week provides us with some answers! What would you like to see Disney do with the space?
Ryan has been attending theme parks since as long as he can remember and his first proper memory comes from when he was just three years old sitting in Main Street USA drinking a Nesquik milkshake from a carton while the piano was being played outside Casey’s Corner.