People keep suggesting that Imagineering has a plan to – at last – replace the unfortunate Innoventions exhibit at Disneyland with some sort of attraction modeled on the Stark Expo from last year’s Marvel release Iron Man 2.

Yeah, that’s totally not a thing.

For [...]]]> So, there’s this rumor that seems to be spreading everywhere…

People keep suggesting that Imagineering has a plan to – at last – replace the unfortunate Innoventions exhibit at Disneyland with some sort of attraction modeled on the Stark Expo from last year’s Marvel release Iron Man 2.

Yeah, that’s totally not a thing.

For those of you who haven’t seen the film (and you really should), amongst the film’s many Disney references is the Stark Expo – a fictional event held in Flushing Meadows, New York, that is heavily based on the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair. Many of the actual event’s iconic buildings and features can be seen in the layout of the fictional, computer-generated fairgrounds in the film. Stark’s expo even has a theme song written by Richard Sherman, who wrote all those catchy ditties for Disney’s real World’s Fair pavilions. There is, therefore, a lot of thematic crossover between Disney’s real-world efforts and Stark’s fictional celebration, and of course Disneyland’s Innoventions is housed in the building where the Carousel of Progress once turned. The building looks like it’s ripped straight from the old fairgrounds, so it seems like it would be a thematic match.

But it’s not going to happen.

I’m not saying that no one at WDI has considered this, or sketched it on a napkin, or what-not. I have no idea. But I can tell you with a pretty good degree of certainty – and with a source who would know, that I trust implicitly – that this is not on anyone’s radar and not going to happen.

If I can add some pure speculation (and I reiterate that it is only that!) I would guess that WDI is more likely to wait and push for a larger overhaul of Tomorrowland itself instead of doing things piecemeal. Perhaps this is merely wishful thinking, but since Disneyland is known to be the darling of everyone with clout these days one hopes that it will get a sweeping rehab of Tomorrowland that will reverse the transgressions of 1998. Al Lutz has reported that areas adjacent to the land are under consideration for new attractions, and we also know that WDI is trying to figure out what to do with the old PeopleMover track. It sure would be nice to tackle these issues along with Innoventions, the Astro Orbiter, and all the other thematic trainwrecks that currently occupy the area.

Just don’t go looking for Stark Industries to be taking part.

In fact, there have been a series of minor revelations about changes both expected and not, and the online Disney realm seized accordingly. A rather hit-and-miss record in the parks over the last fifteen years has left fans somewhat shell-shocked, and that can make things [...]]]> It’s been kind of busy on the news front lately.

In fact, there have been a series of minor revelations about changes both expected and not, and the online Disney realm seized accordingly. A rather hit-and-miss record in the parks over the last fifteen years has left fans somewhat shell-shocked, and that can make things a little touchy when beloved attractions are altered without a heads-up. It also means announcements are meet with a skepticism that would previously have been unheard of. This leads to some interesting conversations.

First thing’s first. Following the closure of Toontown Fair, bulldozers have swooped in to clear the way for Storybook Circus. Mickey’s house has been demolished; check it out courtesy of this video by Jeff Lange:

You have to wonder why they’ve left the construction fence completely devoid of artwork or signage, leaving the poor conductor to improvise something that will keep people in their seats while the train is watered. You might also notice that the recorded narration in the train mentions the return of the Barnstormer. While we knew that the existing kiddie coaster would be retained for the new area, to this point the re-themed attraction has been referred to only as “The Great Goofini.” Apparently the Barnstormer franchise is just too vital to lose, as the full name of the refurbished attraction will be The Barnstormer Starring Goofy as The Great Goofini. Succinct, right?

Apparently WDI is trying to set up some battle royale between their beloved characters over who will lay claim to the mantle of “Great”, as judged by this concept art for the new meet-and-greet for Mickey in the old Main Street Exposition Hall:

Why even bother anymore? And what in God's name is wrong with that one kid's hand?!

Yay – more angular people with genetic abnormalities aggressively enjoying themselves. A kid standing on a trash can. Another apparently vogueing. Others flat-out sprinting towards the building – why are you sprinting if you have a Fastpass? And what’s the weird spectre looming on the second floor?

This rendering accompanies Disney’s announcement that the new Mickey meet-and-greet will utilize the Fastpass system for booking encounters with the characters. The building, formerly used for the Gulf Hospitality House, the Walt Disney Story, and a preview center for future attractions, has had its vintage infrastructure torn out so that the facility can be reconfigured as the Town Square Theater. It’s unknown if there will actually be any theater left – one of the two former Walt Disney Story auditoriums is currently used to screen classic Disney animated shorts – as the meet-and-greets will be themed to Mickey’s backstage dressing room. It sounds that very little will be left of the building’s past; the fairly famous character mural, painted by the great Disney artist Bill Justice, has already been destroyed.

The new meet-and-greet will feature an interactive standby queue to entertain those not using Fastpass to reserve time with the characters. Also note that Disney takes pains to state that Main Street is Mickey’s “new permanent home” – looks like he’s here to stay! So now we have the Town Square Theater (which may or may not have a theater) and the Main Street Cinema (which doesn’t actually show movies anymore).

Meanwhile, there’s the Haunted Mansion, where a massive queue redesign is underway. Pictures of the work can be found online, and reveal a number of references to obscure Mansion lore from the Sea Captain to Phineas Pock. It works in theory, but the brief glimpses we’ve seen really concern me that this new interactive queue is going to be way too on-the-nose. The pipe organ player’s crypt is shaped… like a giant pipe organ. With skulls coming out of the pipes. Just like in the ride! And the Sea Captain’s crypt has a bronze statue of a sea captain drowning! Right on the crypt! I know that I personally plan on having my cause of death commemorated in life-sized recreation on my own tombstone.

I know this is all nitpicking, but the more cartoony the attraction’s entrance becomes, the less effective it will be. The Mansion is great because it starts off as this mysterious, abandoned house – where nothing is obviously amiss but where there is an atmosphere of forboding. Slowly that unravels, and by the time Leota has her seance things go berserk. I’m not keen on scattering the queue with wackiness – especially wackiness that steals the thunder of the show’s original gags.

Yes, yes. Nitpicking.

The other big event on the Mansion front came a few days ago when, with no prior announcement, the “hitchhiking ghosts” segment was covered up and replaced with rather… inelegant… digital projections of the ghosts. Take a look, via Inside the Magic:

Word has emerged that this is only a temporary fix while the animatronics that usually inhabit this area are refurbished, but without any prior announcement from Disney the change caused widespread panic. In this atmosphere of change, with interactivity being added to the queue and “NextGen” on the way, I think that people had horrific visions of bad CGI projections interacting with the guests who had shelled out $85 extra for the magic NextGen RFID wristband. Thankfully, though, it appears that the animatronics will indeed return – the effect used for this scene since 1971 gives the ghosts a wonderfully dimensional and tactile appearance that projectors would be unable to achieve.

There’s one last thing we should mention while we’re at the Magic Kingdom. We’ve all continued to wonder what’s happening to The Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Managment since its fire last month. We’ve rooted, of course, for a return to the original show, but while Disney has neglected to reveal their plans a June re-opening appears to be on the cards. This has led most to assume that the Under New Management show will return as-is, but we’ve been told that Disney has not ordered a new Iago animatronic to replace the one that burned. This would preclude a mere restoration of the existing show, but what will appear instead is anyone’s guess. The original show? A hybrid of the two? Additional fuel for these rumors was added last week when one of the animatronics from the pre-show was removed; this could mean anything from mere repair work to something more significant. It would be nice to hear from Disney on this matter, but at least we still have a glimmer of hope that the terrible Under New Management show has gone the way of the dodo.

So that’s what’s happening at the Kingdom… for now. There are still rumors as to what happens next after the Fantasyland expansion – whether big things will be afoot for Tomorrowland or Frontierland – but that’s a story for another day. In the meantime, if you hear something, say something!

I have no idea if this is true or not. I really don’t. But if in fact this is [...]]]> There’s a rumor going around that you’re doing guest surveys in EPCOT as to what countries guests would potentially like to see be added to World Showcase. Countries like Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Russia or “Other”.

I have no idea if this is true or not. I really don’t. But if in fact this is something that even in your wildest dreams you’re contemplating, let me help you out with some free market research.

Please, please, please, please, please do it.

It has been twenty-two years since Norway: Gateway to Scandinavia opened in 1988. Twenty-two years. Think of that. In that time, we’ve seen two of World Showcase’s films replaced – in China and Canada – and a minimal facelift for the Mexican boat ride. But that’s it.

For the love of school bread, it’s time to add something to World Showcase. Stop fuffing about and do something.

Incidentally, the rumor also states that the poll asks guests which pavilion they’d mind the least having removed from Showcase. I take it you’re digging for something here, as the idea that you’d ever cast a nation out of EPCOT seems just a bit too odd. Perhaps you’re trying to find out which pavilion is the least popular, and thus needs expansion the most?

That’s easy – Italy. Italy is by far the worst of the pavilions, but it’s also a nation so well-known to Americans that you couldn’t possibly kick it out of Showcase. The least-known nation of the eleven, at least in America, is probably Morocco. But that’s the most lavish and beautiful of the pavilions, and no way you’re going to phone up the King and tell him you’re throwing him out of the pavilion he built on his own dime.

So what are you up to, friend Disney? What indeed.

At least the whole thing really takes me back to the days of the EPCOT Poll in the Future Choice Theater, and that’s always a good thing.

You might recall in all the discussion of the NextGen technology initiative that’s underway at Disney, there was some talk of how this would be implemented. Some suggested that RFID chips would be embedded into guests’ tickets or room keys, while others thought [...]]]> A brief correction from the Progress City Department of Humble Mea Culpas…

You might recall in all the discussion of the NextGen technology initiative that’s underway at Disney, there was some talk of how this would be implemented. Some suggested that RFID chips would be embedded into guests’ tickets or room keys, while others thought that they might make their way into rubber wristbands. This is a model that is used at a number of other parks and water attractions.

Anyway, about the time that there was buzz about these possible wristbands, the term “X-Band” was… bandied… about and I reported here that it was a possible name for the wristbands – if Disney decided to go in that direction.

Of course, if I had bothered to read the literature, I would have known that the X-band is part of the microwave spectrum that it is hoped can be used for RFID applications. As I understand it, increasing the use of RFID tags depends mostly on lowering their price. This could be achieved through miniaturization, which would allow the chip and its antenna to be cut from the same die. The smaller antenna, the higher the broadcasting frequency needs to be, which pushes the RFID transmission into this now-famous X-band.

Keep in mind this is entirely a layman’s interpretation of some journal articles. Most of what I know about physics was left in Dr. Kolena’s classroom lo those many years ago. But I just wanted to let you know that if you were waiting for your Disney’s X-Band t-shirts, it’s not going to happen.

With Jim MacPhee now in charge of the Next Generation Experience at Walt Disney World, we’ll hopefully be hearing something about this program fairly soon.

But wait a minute.

No doubt pushed to show their hand by my shocking exposee from two days ago, Disney has done nothing [...]]]> Disney put out a press release this evening, which has already led to an article in the New York Times, trumpeting the fact that a deal has been approved for Shanghai Disneyland.

But wait a minute.

No doubt pushed to show their hand by my shocking exposee from two days ago, Disney has done nothing but confirm things we already know. Of course, putting out such a visible and definite statement serves to emphasize the feeling that all but very minor details remain in the final negotiations between Disney and the Shanghai Government. If things still looked iffy after the approval came from the central Chinese government, one doubts that Disney would step out on that limb. For Disney to comment on anything anymore is notable. This could be coming to a head very, very soon.

The only real news from the release is that they speak of the new park as a Magic Kingdom type park. While they might just be speaking in generalities, it could mean that the rumors of a less traditional park layout might come to naught.

This could be an interesting week.

Aside from the brief distraction of Comic-Con last week, the entirety of discussion in the online Disney community recently seems to have centered around the “leaked” blueprint that supposedly shows an upcoming expansion for Florida’s Fantasyland. With no comment from Disney, except a possibly telling statement from Imagineering that they have nothing new to [...]]]>

Aside from the brief distraction of Comic-Con last week, the entirety of discussion in the online Disney community recently seems to have centered around the “leaked” blueprint that supposedly shows an upcoming expansion for Florida’s Fantasyland. With no comment from Disney, except a possibly telling statement from Imagineering that they have nothing new to announce “at this time,” all that’s left to go on is speculation and a few vague facts from a handful of sources. So, let’s try and whittle down the possibilities at least a bit.

The first question everyone had when the plans appeared was whether or not they were real. While no one I know personally can confirm this specific plan, I’ve had reliable people confirm that at least the various elements of the plan have been discussed at WDI and are not just fanboy speculation. This led to the next question: was this plan a legitimate WDI concept for the area, or just a bunch of real (and therefore plausible) rumors that had been collected together to fool people?

This is an area in which we’ll have to trust a number of prominent bloggers, as they’ve circulated the news recently that the plans are, in fact, from Imagineering and that Disney management is none too happy about their leak. This has been confirmed by Al Lutz in his recent update at MiceAge, and Lance at Screamscape, among others. So if the plans are real, how real are they? We all know that even the most definite, fully-designed attraction can vanish in a puff of smoke if something goes wrong. Projects much better known that this – projects that have been publicly announced! – have fallen by the wayside many times in Disney’s past.

Any analysis of the rumors must also factor in consideration of the motives behind the leak, possibilities for which have been mentioned in an earlier thread by our valued poster “Another Voice.” Of course, there’s always the chance that someone in the know decided to leak a juicy tidbit to a friend and it wound up online. But there’s always the possibility that the leak was an attempt by an Imagineer to drum up public support for their project, or to affect some desired political goal inside the company. With the fiscal year approaching its end, Imagineers could be trying to justify their positions, or to drum up some additional funding. It could also have been an intentional leak, designed to draw attention away from other Disney woes – some have speculated online that it was ballyhoo to distract from economic issues or even the recent monorail fatality.

One subject that online discussions about the leak seem to return to time and time again is the popular supposition that the plan is Disney’s official retort to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which opens at Universal’s Islands of Adventure park next year. Some seem to think, with varying degrees of hyperbole, that Disney is worried they’ll take a huge hit in attendance from Potter’s arrival in Orlando and are planning a wave of new attractions to fight back. Others, including “Another Voice,” insist that Disney management is not at all concerned with the new competition.

Rendering of Hogwarts Castle for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – no cartoonish rendering here!

I tend to believe that this is the case; Disney has maintained their market share fairly consistently over the years and concerns about competition seem to have faded away. To put it more pessimistically, if you look at the things they’ve chosen to offer in recent years, it’s hard to believe that they don’t think that guests will swallow anything that they put out if they just slap the Disney name on it. A company that respects its customers and feels the need to compete for their dollars does not create something like Stitch’s Great Escape. But, having said this, I still find the timing interesting from a historic standpoint.

Conceptual rendering of Hogsmeade Village from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Having followed Disney rumors online for quite a while now, the last time I can remember such a quantity of “insider-vouched” speculation going on was in 1999 – coinciding exactly with the impending opening of Islands of Adventure. The story at the time was that Disney was indeed concerned about the new competition; after all, Animal Kingdom had just opened to less than overwhelming attendance. Universal invested heavily in Islands of Adventure, using a staff heavily populated by laid-off Disney Imagineers, and many of its major attractions looked to top some of Disney’s offerings. It also featured a few attractions, including the Dueling Dragons coaster, that bore a striking resemblance to concepts originally developed for the Animal Kingdom’s abandoned Beastly Kingdom area. Disney head Michael Eisner saw the new park as a challenge to Disney’s dominance in Orlando, and allegedly allowed Imagineers to develop a slate of ambitious new projects which would be greenlit should the new Universal park prove a success. It seemed that Orlando was on the verge of a theme park arms race.

Sadly, it all came to naught. There’s been a lot written about why, exactly, Islands of Adventure never drew even a sizable fraction of the crowds it expected those first years. The park was gorgeous, and wonderfully themed in some parts. It contained an ambitious slate of attractions, and one – The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man – is among the greatest dark rides of all time. Unfortunately, over the years, park maintenance took a downturn and there was a lack of expansion due to a series of changing corporate owners that held no interest in the theme park business, but in those first years it was quite a jewel. Still, a botched pre-opening ad campaign completely failed to create awareness of the new park, and instead misguidedly tried to create an identity for the entire resort as something called “Universal Studios Escape.” This disastrous campaign left potential guests confused, and unaware that Islands of Adventure was a completely new park. Disney never got the competition it expected, and the grand plans to best Universal were abandoned.

It’s easy to see how, despite the sudden resurgence of so many rumors, Disney wouldn’t see the new Universal expansion as competition. After all, Universal gave it their all in 1999 and still failed. And while I do believe than in the long term Disney will remain fairly bulletproof due to their space in the collective consciousness, the upcoming Harry Potter attraction will have an effect. Certainly in the short-term, and possibly in the long-term.

Conceptual art for The Three Broomsticks tavern from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

I think it’s sometimes difficult for Disney fans and theme park fans in general to step back and put themselves in the mindset of the general public. As the person who, since childhood, was always known as the “Disney guy,” I’m usually the go-to person for anyone at school or work who is planning a trip to Orlando. For most of these people, usually first-timers, the Orlando theme park landscape is kind of nebulous. There’s “Disney” or “Disney World”, of course, and that usually means the Magic Kingdom. Then there’s EPCOT/EPCOT Center, and Universal, and that animal thing (Is that Busch Gardens? Is Sea World part of Disney too?). These people have no resort loyalty, and the second they see that Harry Potter is in Orlando they’re going to start packing their bags no matter which park he’s in. They might still think Universal is in Disney World, and will have no idea what Islands of Adventure is, but they’ll call the number on the screen to make their reservations. I have a number of friends, all otherwise perfectly respectable adults, who’ll flip out when they see the Potter art and want to go – immediately. I don’t know if any of them have ever been to Walt Disney World, or if they even like theme parks, but they’ll be peeling out of the driveway before I even get to give them directions.

This is the danger to Disney in the short-term. I’ve no idea if people will take a pass at Disney parks for a while, but I know that they will spend a day at Islands of Adventure. If the new ride, allegedly to be called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, lives up to its potential, then Islands of Adventure will finally get the attention it deserves. Even if it’s only for a short time, I would imagine that any dips in Disney park attendance would mostly affect Animal Kingdom or the Hollywood Studios. Those are always the first parks to feel the effects of any downturn, anyway.

The danger to Disney in the long-term is impossible to determine; but while it will most likely be negligible, it’s possible for Universal to do some real damage. This, for the most part, is in the hands of Universal. The Harry Potter area will bring them attention that they’ve rarely, if ever, received on a national scale. If they leverage the attendance boost into a wave of new expansion and manage to expose those new guests to the other legitimately impressive attractions in the park, it’s possible that Islands of Adventure will finally make its name in the public consciousness ten years after its opening. Will they ever overcome Disney’s lead? No. But if they play their cards right they can certainly cement a permanent rise in attendance and start, at the very least, to threaten the less-attended Disney parks.

The interaction of these events with the Fantasyland leak is speculative, but again I point out that this is the most heated period of rumor-peddling since the debut of Islands of Adventure. Not only have we had the Fantasyland leak, but there’s also been a resurgence of talk about the Animal Kingdom expansion. Then there’s the always-forthcoming Monsters, Inc. coaster at the Studios, and some sort of rehabilitation of EPCOT’s Imagination pavilion. In the Magic Kingdom, there’s the often-rumored and much needed remodeling of Tomorrowland. And as for Fantasyland, with all the talk of the leaked plan there’s been no meaningful discussion of the Personal Experience Portal, the X-Band/RFID technology, or any of the other rumored technological upgrades for existing attractions.

Al Lutz, in his story today, says that Imagineering is mad because the Fantasyland plan was to be their big reveal for the upcoming D23 convention. Of course, some more cynical readers suggested that they’re mad because the plan they’re going to announce is pared down from the leaked designs and will leave fans cold. That’s definitely a possibility, but if WDI does plan to bring a worthwhile plan to announce I think the leak might have had its benefits. First, they got a massive and unsolicited focus group, as well as an enormous amount of publicity. If they do announce a plan, and if it’s of comparable scale, they’ll actually have details and renderings that will far surpass the vague leaked blueprint.

The key, of course, is whether they’ll announce anything. Lutz is the most significant indicator that they will, but we won’t know until then what the scale of the remodeling will be. At the very least, week by week we seem to be learning more. These plans are real, the intent to expand the park is real, and now we just have to see if they’re going to make up for past mistakes by making this something really special.

Today, the D-Report’s Soft-Opening site posted the above image; [...]]]> There have been many intense rumors lately that the Magic Kingdom’s desperately needed Fantasyland facelift was coming, once more, perilously close to a greenlight. We’ve heard that before, and the Fantasyland rumors now go back several years. But today, things got a little more interesting:

Today, the D-Report’s Soft-Opening site posted the above image; allegedly it’s a leaked copy of plans for the new Fantasyland. There are a few possibilities here: First, it could be some excellent work by an internet fan who collected the best of the online rumors and put them together to trick rubes like me. Or, it could be the real plan; the problem is, we all know that until the shovel hits the soil, plans are just that. Even if this came straight from Glendale, without a budgetary greenlight we still might never see it built. Also don’t forget that even if it’s a real proposal and gets approved, plans often tend to get downsized.

But what if this is real? How does it jibe with existing rumors? Alain Littaye and the webmaster of WDWMagic have already both said that this plan matches what they’ve heard from other sources; what if this is what we’re getting in Orlando?

Well, if so, it’s far more vast than I expected. Mickey’s Toontown Fair will mercifully face the bulldozer, removing this half-hearted “land” twenty years after it was originally intended to be removed. It seems that much of the existing Fantasyland area will be enclosed and set apart with a castle wall; this was a conceit seen in much of Disneyland’s original concept art, and will in effect set the Carousel in a medieval courtyard. The area outside the castle walls seems to be fairly heavily landscaped with lots of water features, and seems more bucolic in nature.

The largest addition, as has been so often rumored, is a new dark ride based on The Little Mermaid. Taking up much of the footprint once occupied by the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea show building, the Mermaid attraction will be modeled after a similar ride now under construction in Anaheim. In the blueprint, one can make out an extensive queue area and an Ariel meet-n-greet area.

Next to the Mermaid attraction, taking up the space currently occupied by Ariel’s Grotto, is a new area themed to Beauty and the Beast. Earlier rumors had a dark ride based on this film replacing Snow White’s Adventures, but that older attraction remains in this plan. The new Beauty area features a “Be Our Guest Restaurant,” “Gaston’s Tavern,” and something labeled “Belle Attraction.” The blueprint doesn’t seem to show an area large enough for a ride attraction, so one assumes that this is another meet-n-greet. Earlier rumors said that Mickey’s Toontown Fair would be removed and converted to a series of Disney Princess photo stops; in this plans, those photo stops seem to be sprinkled throughout the land.

Rendering of the unbuilt Beauty and the Beast attraction/restaurant from Disneyland Paris

What’s really mysterious is the “Be Our Guest Restaurant.” While this could, of course, be another simple food court or restaurant, one can see that the Pinocchio Village Haus still exists in this new Fantasyland to suit that purpose. Could this new restaurant be a revived version of the unrealized dining concept for Disneyland Paris’s Fantasyland, which would feature an animatronic dinner show based on Beauty and the Beast? In that attraction, guests would dine while the Beast’s castle slowly came to life around them; it would be as if they had combined the Enchanted Tiki Room with an actual restaurant. It would certainly be a nice addition to the park.

Where the 20,000 Leagues lagoon once sat, and where the Pooh playground sits now, the blueprint shows another “attraction” themed to Cinderella. This, and the Aurora “attraction” next to it, are most likely photo opportunities similar to Belle’s area mentioned above. A small remnant of the Pooh area looks to remain across from the Pooh attraction; this, too, will be a photo spot.

What was once the main street of Toontown will become Pixie Hollow as was rumored, where Disney’s latest marketing opportunities will hold court. Across from Pixie Hollow sits the Barnstormer; while it’s labeled as such on the blueprint, its current theming as Goofy’s barn would make absolutely no sense in the new layout. Could this kid-friendly rollercoaster be re-themed to the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves mine train coaster that has long been rumored?

One of the most intriguing (and to me, most pleasing) rumors that had emerged of late was that the Aladdin spinner attraction would be removed from Adventureland, where it is a terrible eyesore, to Fantasyland where it better belongs. In this design, it appears that the ride will be moved but given a facelift; in this blueprint, there are now dueling Dumbo flying elephant spinners sitting next to each other where the Toontown show buildings now are. This would be a big move for the little elephant, moving him clear across the east side of Fantasyland and doubling his capacity. Next to the spinners is something labeled “NextGen Interactive Queue” – whatever that means – and the Toontown train station will also gain Dumbo-related theming and be renamed as the Fantasyland Station.

It’s a pretty bold plan – far bolder than we’ve come to expect from the Florida resorts, yet it still seems to aim lower than Disneyland’s 1983 Fantasyland renovation. Of course I’d like to see more new attractions – I’ll always say that – but can’t we have at least one more C- or D-ticket? We’re still several attractions short of Anaheim’s tally. I could also grouse that I’d rather have the Bald Mountain Flume from the late 1990s instead of those meet-n-greets, but all that open space could certainly be used for future expansion. Still, if done correctly and on a decent budget, this could be a nice transformation for the Magic Kingdom’s outdated Fantasyland, and at least start to bring it up to the level of its peers. The cosmetic change alone could be extremely impressive. If it’s real, the devil of the plan will be in the details. If it really winds up bringing only a lot of new shops and meet-n-greets, it could disappoint. Then again, if it truly leads of the removal of the Flying Carpets from Adventureland, I’ll bow down and kiss Phil Holmes’s shoes.

We’ll hear more about this, I’m sure, and I’m going to do some sleuthing. But does anyone know anything about this?