Disneyland to Announce Major Expansion Plans

In the most aggressive expansion in its 35-year history, Disneyland this week is expected to unveil plans to add several new attractions to the Magic Kingdom’s entertainment repertoire.

While Walt Disney Co. officials are mum on the plans, employees and other sources said the Anaheim park intends to build two new themed areas--Mickey’s Birthday Land and a partial reproduction of the studio tour attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida. The new attractions may feature rides based on the movie characters Indiana Jones, the Muppets and Roger Rabbit.

The plans are part of a 10-year development project for Disneyland--its first major expansion since Bear Country, now called Critter Country, was added in 1972.

Michael D. Eisner, Disney’s chairman and chief executive, is expected to announce the company’s plans at a press conference on Friday. Other Disney officials would only confirm that Eisner will discuss the park’s expansion.

In a series of internal meetings this week, Dick Nunis, president of Walt Disney Attractions, and Ron Dominguez, Disneyland’s executive vice president, have been giving park employees a sneak preview of the company’s plans.

But employees were told that the expansion plans are being studied by Disney and so far are only on the drawing board. “Nothing is definite until Eisner announces it,” said Disneyland spokesman Bob Roth.

Disneyland spreads across 86 acres of prime property. While the park appears to be built to capacity, Disneyland officials said there are 30 undeveloped acres within the facility that can be built on. The company also owns about 40 acres nearby.

Company officials said the park could use much of the so-called backstage area--which patrons never see--including warehouse and maintenance facilities. The most likely area of expansion within the park is the northwest section, stretching from the areas behind Critter Country to Big Thunder Mountain and Small World.

The park also could remove existing attractions. A remake of Tomorrowland, with its outdated Mission to Mars ride, is on the park’s tentative list of plans, one employee said.

In their presentation to employees, Disneyland officials revealed few specifics. No construction timetables or cost estimates were given.

But the preliminary plans suggest an upgraded Disneyland that is glitzier and much more geared toward Hollywood--and with some elements clearly borrowed from Disney’s hugely successful, 30,000-acre Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla.

The preliminary plans include:

- A reproduction of Hollywood Boulevard from the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park at Disney World. The Florida studio tour is a romanticized, nostalgic look at Hollywood with re-creations of the Chinese Theater, Crossroads of the World and stores such as Mickey’s of Hollywood spoofing the famous Frederick’s shop in Southern California.

For Disneyland, “it would be like a second Main Street,” said a ride operator who attended one of the meetings and who asked not to be named.

- An Indiana Jones attraction, which employees were told could be added near Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland and could have park trains going through it. In Florida, the Indiana Jones ride is one of the most popular attractions on the studio tour and includes flash fires and explosions, perilous leaps by stunt actors and re-creations of famous chase scenes from the hit movies.

- Mickey’s Birthday Land, a new themed area that would be Disneyland’s eighth “land” to be added near the Small World ride. “It would incorporate a Kermit the Frog and Muppet ride and a 3-D Muppet movie,” said another employee.

Disney already is working on a 3-D Muppet movie that will premiere at Euro Disneyland, and word that Eisner has ordered a Muppet ride for Disneyland surfaced in the theme park industry soon after the company bought the rights to several Muppet characters in August.

A Mickey’s Birthday Land was added two years ago at the Florida park. It includes a Mickey Mouse show, a small zoo and a miniature community with Mickey Mouse’s house and Goofy’s Clip Joint and Barber Shop.

“It’s been the most successful new attraction we’ve added (at the Florida park) in seven years,” said Charles Ridgway, publicity director for Walt Disney World Resort.

The concept of a character land, where patrons could take photos with all of the Disney characters, is also under consideration for the Anaheim park--as was an attraction based on Roger Rabbit and Toon Town, the cartoon hometown in the hit film, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” “Dick Tracy also could be incorporated in Toon Town,” said a park employee who attended the meeting.

There have also been discussions of converting the now-closed America Sings attraction into a hovering spacecraft with Audio-Animatronics, those chirping, blinking, lifelike robots that populate Pirates of the Caribbean and Small World.

The proposed expansion comes six years after the Walt Disney Co. was resuscitated by new leadership--Eisner, former Paramount Pictures president, and Disney President Frank Wells, a former Warner Bros. vice chairman. The two came aboard in September, 1984, and the theme parks began getting plenty of attention.

For Disneyland, the expansion comes none too soon. Attendance at the park has been flat at about 13 million annually for the last two years. Still, the park is the second most popular in the nation, surpassed only by its sister attraction in Florida.

“The hope is to entice tourists to spend more time here and to give the locals more reasons to come back,” Roth said.

The park spokesman added that the expansion also is “keeping with Walt Disney’s founding philosophy that the park will never be completed as long as there was imagination left in the world.”

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