Disney CEO Bob Iger set off a firestorm of speculation by uttering Avatar and Disneyland in the same sentence and now Mouse Watchers are all wondering the same thing: Where is this new “experience” going to be built at the Anaheim theme park resort.
Iger announced during an earnings call with investors on Feb. 8 that an “exciting Avatar experience” is coming to the Disneyland resort following the success of “Avatar: The Way of Water” in theaters and the Pandora: World of Avatar themed land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida.
“We’re going to bring a version of Avatar to Disneyland,” Iger said on the call.
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An “experience” in Disney parlance can literally mean anything — from a specialty food offering to an entire new theme park. But Iger spoke of the Avatar experience in the context of the Pandora: World of Avatar themed land at Walt Disney World — suggesting the new addition will be something more than a new blue churro sold at a Disneyland vending cart.
The 12-acre Avatar themed land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom features Pandora’s floating mountains, bioluminescent plants and two major attractions — the Avatar Flight of Passage 3D flight simulator and the Na’vi River Journey water ride. The land also includes the Satu’li Canteen quick service restaurant and Windtraders gift shop.
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Let’s take a closer look at the 11 places an Avatar experience could be built at the Disneyland resort ranked from the smallest to largest footprint.
1) Tomorrowland meet-and-greet characters
Disney World has walkaround characters in Pandora Utility Suits that occasionally wander through the World of Avatar in Florida.
Human pilots strapped inside the cockpits control the movements of the 10-foot-tall EXO-32 Light Mobility Platform exoskeletons.
While fun to see, this seems like a pretty small addition that wouldn’t warrant a CEO announcement.
2) Downtown Disney shop
Downtown Disney got rid of the Void VR experience, but an Avatar virtual reality game experience could be wedged into a temporary space in the former ESPN Zone.
Disney could also open a Build-A-Banshee shop in one of the storefronts — as the Disney Tourist Blog jokingly suggested. Downtown Disney once had a Build-A-Bear shop that has since moved to the Knott’s California Marketplace.
Anything in Downtown Disney would likely be too small for Iger to announce — and would almost certainly be a letdown based on the press reaction to his announcement.
3) Hollywood Land backlot soundstages
Disney California Adventure has a number of spots that could serve as a home for an Avatar attraction or land.
The underused or empty backlot soundstages in Hollywood Land would be the perfect spot for an Avatar immersive walk-through experience.
The Avatar: Explore Pandora is currently running in Shanghai Disneyland’s Tomorrowland. The 15,000-square-foot exhibition recreates Pandora with the 20-foot-tall Tree of Voices as the centerpiece.
4) Star Wars Launch Bay
The white elephant of Tomorrowland has sat largely unused for years — or at least underused for the amount of space it occupies.
Disneyland has used the Star Wars Launch Bay as a flex space for special events and has announced a Disney Vacation Club lounge will take over part of the building.
It would be easy to swap out the Star Wars character meet-and-greets that have occupied the building in the past with some Avatar characters.
Equally simple would be to transform the convention-like space into an Avatar Launch Bay that teases some larger project that’s further out on the calendar.
None of this seems like a worthy Avatar experience that Iger would be touting during a quarterly earnings call.
5) Tom Sawyer Island
Tom Sawyer Island seems like an unlikely place to put Pandora — but it could work with the right amount of Imagineering.
It makes no sense in the Avatar universe to have a riverboat, pirate ship and canoes circling the 2-acre island all day long. But an inward-facing land could solve that problem — and the river crossing could be tied into the sequel’s “The Way of Water” theme.
While seemingly far-fetched, Imagineering has built a version of Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland Paris where Tom Sawyer Island would normally sit.
Disneyland chopped down the size of Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America for the Galaxy’s Edge — what’s to stop the park from evicting Tom and Huck to make room for Jake and Neytiri.
6) Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge
There’s a large swath of 4 acres between Rise of the Resistance and Splash Mountain that some thought would one day become home to a West Coast version of the Star Wars hotel.
But now the Galactic Starcruiser is seeming less like a cash cow every day with occupancy rates dropping and Disney discounting stays to attract voyagers.
The wooded space could be used for a third Star Wars attraction — or turned into the new home of Avatar at Disneyland. Galaxy’s Edge and Pandora would make good neighbors and mesh thematically.
Using this footprint would mean scrapping the Winnie the Pooh dark ride and Hungry Bear restaurant and essentially removing Critter Country from the Disneyland map. But Tiana’s takeover of Splash Mountain will almost mean annexing the log ride into New Orleans Square for thematic reasons.
Critter Country’s current dead end will eventually have a bridge across Disneyland Drive under the DisneylandForward plan — but more on that in a bit.
7) Fantasyland Theater
Fantasyland Theater has a long and storied history — but its 5-acre footprint also takes a lot of space.
The often underused space has a new tenant with the popular Lion King stage show — but Disneyland has done the production on the Paradise Bay stage at Disney California Adventure in the past and could easily do so again.
The rerouting of the Disneyland Railroad for the Galaxy’s Edge expansion created a boundary around two sides of the theater that makes for a cozy out-of-the-way alcove in the middle of the park that would be ideal for an Avatar themed land.
The other sides would be boxed in by It’s a Small World, Storybook Land Canal Boats and Casey Jr. Circus Train. Small World is almost certainly untouchable, but the train and boat rides could be in play if Pandora needed more wiggle room.
8) Timon parking lot
There’s still a 7-acre parking lot behind Avengers Campus and Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters that could work as a pad for an Avatar land.
There are a host of built-in problems though with this space working as Pandora Place.
For starters, the Timon parking lot is right behind Avengers headquarters which will eventually serve as the entrance for an E-ticket ride planned for the Marvel themed land.
The other big problem: The Timon lot would be an awful location for a naturalistic Avatar land. The 199-foot-tall Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout would tower over one side of the land and massive electrical power lines would hover over the other. To say nothing of the land backing up to busy Katella Avenue.
The Timon parking lot is perfect for a big box attraction like a Quinjet E-Ticket ride but not a very good spot for Pandora.
9) Grizzly Peak overlay
The most interesting concept floating around the Disney blogosphere is an Avatar overlay of the Grizzly Peak area of DCA.
The largely forested 8-acre area would be a natural fit for an Avatar land with Grizzly River Run getting a Na’vi makeover, Soarin’ offering a flight through Pandora and the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail getting a light thematic refresh.
Grizzly River Run reportedly lost its audio-animatronic figures during cost-cutting efforts leading to the opening of DCA. The upgrade could add the Shaman from the Na’vi River Journey at Disney’s Animal Kingdom that Imagineering describes as one of the most sophisticated animatronics ever created.
Soarin’ fans would likely be sore — but the flight simulator could always be changed back to Soarin’ Over California or Soarin’ Around the World with the flip of a switch for seasonal events.
10) Tomorrowland makeover
Another bold move would be to scrape the back half of Tomorrowland and add an Avatar land-within-a-land that ties into the futuristic theme.
That would likely mean bulldozing Star Wars Launch Bay, Autopia and Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and unwinding the Monorail track that navigates the 10-acre area.
Tomorrowland has been a challenge for Disneyland since 1955 — in large part because the future always has a way of becoming the present. Freeways, submarines and monorails are not very futuristic anymore — but extraterrestrial humanoids from the lush jungle moon of Pandora will always seem out of this world.
Some type of Tomorrowland makeover is virtually always on the drawing board at Walt Disney Imagineering — and an Avatar annex seems like a Blue Sky idea that has likely been batted around in Glendale.
A thematic combination of Avatar, Star Wars and Buzz Lightyear would help future-proof Tomorrowland and give the land a series of intellectual property tie-ins that could be continually refreshed with new sequels.
11) DisneylandForward
The biggest version of an Avatar “experience” would be a new theme park dedicated to the film franchise.
The chances of that happening right now at Disneyland are zero — or very close to that.
This scenario would require Disneyland to float the idea of new lands and attractions within the resort boundaries — something Disney is already in the process of doing.
The DisneylandForward proposal envisions theme park experiences surrounding the three Disneyland hotels on approximately 90 acres along the western edge of the resort.
But that permitting process is expected to take years with the plans projected to roll out over the next few decades. Disney is highly unlikely to upset that complicated process with a new plan for an Avatar theme park.
