During a recent Q&A for the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, Disney CEO Bob Iger teased that a new land based on the billion-dollar box office franchise Avatar will be coming to Disneyland.
“We have one Avatar-based land, Pandora, in Florida. We’re going to put a second one in California.”
For the last few months, Iger has teased that an Avatar experience would be coming to Disneyland, but in reality, they are prepping a whole new land. Walt Disney Imagineering is reportedly hard at work with creating innovative ways to introduce the world of Pandora and the Na’vi people to Disneyland Park.
Of course, there are some hurdles for this to get done, that is land and money, which Iger addressed on Tuesday. “The whole thing starts with how do you allocate capital as a company. And if you look at the return on invested capital of that business over the last 20 years, particularly over the last 10, the track record is extraordinary. And we have thousands of acres of land still to develop. We could actually build seven new full lands if we wanted to around the world, including the ability to increase the size of Disneyland in California, which everybody thinks is kind of landlocked, by 50%.”
Getting this done would require the city of Anaheim to approve the DisneylandForward proposal, which would take place on the west side of the Disneyland Resort, essentially where the Downtown Disney district sits right now, including the area around the Disneyland Hotel and the land to the north and south of the hotel, as well preexisting parking.
The changes would allow Disney to expand within their own footprint and mix theme park, dining, retail, entertainment, and hotel operations into a more integrated experience rather than individual elements. Suggesting that the current permits require Disney to have each show element separate and distinct.
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