Mickey Is Out, Magellan Is In at Portugal’s Historical Theme Park : Development: Under an ambitious plan by U.S. businessmen, 15th-Century explorers will star in an amusement attraction to open in 1993 near Lisbon.

Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan may seem unlikely rivals for Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. But under an ambitious plan by a group of U.S. businessmen, the 15th-Century Portuguese explorers could vie with Walt Disney stars as major European theme park attractions.

A U.S.-owned company, backed by the Portuguese government, is planning an $80-million to $100-million theme park near Lisbon, based on the pioneering Portuguese sea voyages to Africa, Asia and the New World some 500 years ago.

The Lusolandia park is set for a 1993 opening, one year after the scheduled launch of a Euro Disneyland park in France.

Lusolandia Holdings chairman Edward Kane, a Boston native, said the project sprang from Disney’s rejection five years ago of an idea from then-Portuguese Prime Minister Mario Soares to locate a European Disneyland in Portugal.

As Lisbon representative of the Washington-based International Trade and Guarantee Corp., a company advising U.S. businesses abroad, Kane had been asked by Soares--currently Portuguese president--to approach Disney.

“Walt Disney Enterprises basically said no way, Portugal is too small potatoes for them,” Kane said.

Disney decided to locate closer to Europe’s more affluent and densely populated “golden triangle” formed by London, Paris and Brussels. Their French amusement park program foresees costs of up to $2.8 billion to 1997.

After Disney’s refusal, Kane turned to Management Resources, an Anaheim company specializing in creating and running theme parks and formed by ex-Disney employees.

“I had the idea of . . . instead of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck . . . let’s make it a Portuguese historical theme park, let’s replace Donald Duck with Bartolomeu Dias and Mickey Mouse with Vasco da Gama,” said Kane, a retired U.S. foreign service officer.

Portuguese authorities backed the plan, and Mangagement Resources enthusiastically joined the project. Feasibility studies predicted 2.15 million first-year customers from Portugal’s 10 million inhabitants and foreign visitors to Portugal who last year topped 16 million.

The park is to be built near the town of Azambuja, 28 miles northeast of Lisbon along the main north-south freeway to Oporto, Portugal’s second largest city.

Kane said the park will also have good road links to Portugal’s main tourist destination--the southern Algarve region--and to neighboring Spain. The site proposed for a new Lisbon international airport is seven miles to the east of the park location.

Visitors will enter the 247-acre park into a mock-up of Renaissance Lisbon, complete with castle and 15th-Century main street.

From a reconstructed quay, replicas of the explorers’ caravels will carry would-be Magellans on a voyage of discovery across an artificial lake to “theme areas” representing Brazilian jungles, mysterious African kingdoms and the glittering civilizations of India, China and Japan.

Kane said the latest technology will be used to create a have-fun-as-you-learn environment for adults and children. The park publicity brochure promises ocean storms and Amazonian canoe trips as well as cultural exhibits highlighting lands along the Portuguese sea routes.

Portuguese historians will advise on the park’s authenticity and experts from other countries will be contacted to set up Japanese teahouses and African dance displays.

Lusolandia Holdings is registered in Bermuda and owned 50-50 by Management Resources and International Trade and Guarantee Corp.

Soon, Kane said, they will be joined by a Portuguese partner and create a Portuguese company--Lusolandia Empreedimentos Turisticas.

Private financing for the project is being sought mainly in Europe. Kane also hopes to gain Portuguese government funding and is discussing loan prospects with the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank.

The Portuguese government has created a special task force of officials from four ministries to steer the project through Lisbon’s bureaucratic maze.

Inspired by the ideas of Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese 14th- and 15th-Century mariners undertook a series of voyages that expanded Europe’s perception of the world and opened contacts with the people of other continents.

Dias became the first man to sail beyond the shores of North Africa down the West African coast to the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, da Gama discovered the sea route to India in 1499 and Pedro Alvares Cabral first landed in Brazil in 1500. Sailing under Spanish colors, Magellan began the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519.