Progress City, U.S.A.

(Photo: MousePlanet)

Might there be a reason that construction has not begun in earnest on the new Fantasyland? Perhaps…

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.

A saw a story yesterday that made me realize that there have been a lot of little bits and pieces of news trickling out lately about new attractions that are coming to some of the less-covered Disney parks overseas. These developments don’t tend to get the coverage that new American attractions receive, so I thought that I’d summarize them here.

Now, I know I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer lately, what with all the disappointing shenanigans at Feature Animation and Parks & Resorts, but I’m afraid that won’t be turned around by these projects. One can pretty much guarantee that any new project at Tokyo Disneyland will be top notch due to the incredibly high levels of quality and service that the Oriental Land Company manages to achieve, but even they’re getting stuck with some new attractions that are less than… inspiring. But let’s take a look:

Concept art for Fantasmic! at Tokyo DisneySea (Disney)

The most recent announcement came a couple of days ago when the Oriental Land Company announced that it would be replacing its current night-time water show BraviSEAmo! with the similarly punctuated Fantasmic! The new show will debut in April 2011 as part of the celebrations surrounding Tokyo DisneySea’s 10th Anniversary, which is on September 4th of that year.

This might seem underwhelming to Disney fans, who might already have seen Fantasmic! in either California (where it’s played since 1992) or Florida (where it debuted in 1998). Thankfully we can hope for a little of that OLC magic (and their roughly $33.5 million investment) to update the twenty-minute show, as the announcement promises scenes from Aladdin, Cinderella and Finding Nemo. One can expect some new staging, too, on the waters of the park’s Mediterranean Harbor area. The concept art above shows Mickey atop some kind of ziggurat rising out of the water, and it seems apparent that the setup of the show will accommodate the larger lagoon.

BraviSEAmo! will perform its last show on November 13th, 2010, and preparation for Fantasmic! will begin soon after. While it might seem sacrilegious in Disney circles, I really am not a fan of Fantasmic!. In fact, I kinda hate it; it’s just not my thing (save for the giant MechaMaleficent). But hopefully the OLC will pull out all the stops to make it worthwhile. After all, their live shows typically tend to blow the offerings in the American parks completely out of the water.

Of course, DisneySea has been paying the price lately for its decade of awesomeness by receiving a string of cast-offs from other parks. Last year they got Turtle Talk with Crush, which fits beautifully with the 1930s ambiance of the American Waterfront area and the stylish S.S. Columbia. The American Waterfront will be the site of DisneySea’s next expansion, arriving in 2012. We’ve talked about this one before – behold:

Eeeeeehh… (Disney)

Toy Story Mania! (what’s up with all the exclamation points?) will be added to the New York area of the American Waterfront. Hopefully its budget of $129 million will lead to a little plussing.

Now.

Over at Tokyo Disneyland proper, there are a few new attractions on the way. The park, of course, has recently received the massively popular Monsters, Inc. dark ride. While unannounced, it also seems certain that the park will be receiving the upgrades to Star Tours that are on the way to parks stateside. In 2011, Mickey’s Philharmagic will be added in Fantasyland. While that’s perfectly reasonable, it naturally makes me sad because it necessitated the loss of the legendary Mickey Mouse Revue which I will now never be able to see in person. Between the Revue and Meet the World, replaced itself by Monsters, Inc., Tokyo Disneyland was a haven for attractions that should exist at Walt Disney World and I always hoped to see them myself.

Anyway.

Another attraction I’d always wanted to see at Tokyo Disneyland was the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, a walkthrough attraction that took guests through the bowels of the park’s iconic castle. This attraction has to be one of the most truly bizarre in Disney park history, leading guests through a series of encounters with various villains to a final confrontation with the Horned King from The Black Cauldron as he tries to raise an army of the damned.

So, yeah. I kinda hated to miss that one. It sounded insane, it was the sole attraction ever to reference The Black Cauldron, and it furthered my inferiority complex about the Magic Kingdom having the only one of the first four Disney castles to not have an attraction of its own. But the Mystery Tour closed in 2006, without replacement. Until now.

Now, I understand the closing of the old attraction and I understand the desire to make the new walk-through, which opens in 2011, focus specifically on Cinderella. After all, it’s her castle. And if we’re embarking on a brave new world of endless princess meet-and-greet interactive experiences, this would be a reasonable place for one. But I want you to take a moment and absorb the piece of concept art that was released to accompany the press release announcing this attraction. This wasn’t released as part of a sequence of renderings, or to emphasize one specific aspect of the project. This was, and as far as I can tell still is, the only piece of artwork that has been released to promote this new attraction. Can you tell I’m really wanting to build this up? So much that I’m going to put a page break below to make you click through to see?

Drum roll, please – gentlemen, behold!

(more…)

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.

For nearly two decades, beginning with Frank Wells wining and dining Chinese officials in 1990, the Disney corporation has danced around the possibility of building a theme park in Shanghai. China’s largest city was long a target destination for former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, but despite frequent negotiations during the 1990s the park was never built. Some sources claim that Disney themselves delayed the plans, unsure that the city was ready to support such a project. On the other hand, in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre the Chinese government was keen to stem the tide of western cultural influences in their territories.

Map of the future Shanghai Disneyland site, zooming from a global view (top) to the site itself (bottom). Click to enlarge.

By the turn of the century, Disney’s attention was diverted to the planning and construction of Hong Kong Disneyland and Shanghai was put on the back burner. Work continued on the project; Disney signed a deal to build a park on the Chinese mainland in 2002, and, rejecting bids for the park by Beijing and Tianjin, contracted with Shanghai’s Lujiazui Group to develop a site there. But when the park in Hong Kong opened to poor reviews and seriously underperformed financially, Disney was forced to enter into years of intractable negotiations about the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to enhance that resort and progress stalled again on the Shanghai project. These delays were compounded further by a 2006 corruption scandal within the Shanghai government, which implicated local Communist Party chief Chen Liangyu. Still, Shanghai remained one of Disney’s key initiatives; the now-famous rendering from the 2006 Disney annual report shows a “new Disney theme park” that many believe to be a concept for the Shanghai park.

Possible rendering of Shanghai Disneyland concept, 2006

The rendering, shown above, depicts a new type of layout for a Disney park. Surrounding a central lake, it more resembles Universal’s Island of Adventure. Various lands that can been seen in the illustration; one resembles Tokyo DisneySea’s Mermaid Lagoon, there’s a futuristic area visually reminiscent of the original DisneySea’s Future Research Center, a fairytale castle sits atop a hill with a rollercoaster in the distance behind, there’s a South American temple straight out of Indiana Jones, and a European village surrounding the castle. Despite the prominent placement of this image in a widely-distributed publication, little else was seen or heard stateside about the Shanghai efforts.

In the Asian press, though, gossip about the park continued over the years. In March of 2006, Shanghai’s mayor had announced “preliminary preparations” for the park. Two years later, in March 2008, Mayor Han Zheng announced that the city had officially applied to the Chinese central government to build the park. Negotiations ground on.

This year, though, the wheels of progress began to slowly turn once more. A series of approvals, leaked in the state-run and local media, traced the slow but steady development of the resort plan. Since January when Mayor Han Zheng announced that the city had signed a nonbinding agreement and project report with Disney, and Disney themselves confessed to the plans, all parties have been waiting for word from Beijing. In June, it’s believed that the project was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Chinese government’s economic planning agency. Earlier this week, the state-run Securities Times reported that the central government in Beijing had given its final approval to the plan earlier this month, and that it was now up to Shanghai officials and Disney to finalize the details of the deal.

According to Reuters, they may finally have a deal. Sources are speculating to the wire service that a deal may be announced during U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to China from November 15th-18th. A front-page editorial this week in the state-run Shanghai Securities News called for such an announcement, giving a great deal of credence to the notion. News stories anticipating an “upcoming” announcement have popped up frequently over the years, but the recent string of significant advances suggest that the rumors might finally be true. Stocks in construction companies and other related local industries spiked on the announcement, at least the second time this year that has happened. Leaked quotes over recent weeks insist that all that remains to be negotiated are small details, and those are insignificant in the grand scheme of the deal.

Another piece of the puzzle has come this weekend, when the ever talkative Mayor Han Zhang announced he’d hold a press conference this week to discuss the project. According to the Mayor, since he apparently gets asked about the Disney project at every press conference, it’s now time to discuss the issue and there are so many aspects of the subject to discuss that it requires its own press event. Other reports echo that a deal is near, with many of the few remaining points of discussion surrounding various trade and media deals that accompany the park agreement. Disney is using the Shanghai park as its major entry into the Chinese entertainment market, and so the eventual deal will have a far greater scope than the park itself. It also hinges, in part, on the continuing progress of Sino-U.S. trade negotiations.

Rumors about the resort itself have flourished over the years; most recent reports peg it as a $3.6 billion development, of which Disney will own a 43% stake and a local government-owned holding company would own 57%. While the Shanghai government originally suggested that Disney build on the underdeveloped Chongming Island, Disney rejected that site and opted to build on the mainland. The park will now occupy an 8-10 acre site in the town of Chuansha, on the southern edge of Shanghai’s Pudong district. It is currently slated to open in 2013. While the delay in an actual deal might have proved frustrating to fans, it has also allowed the Chinese government to make the necessary infrastructure upgrades to the fairly rural area. Shanghai Disneyland, when built, will benefit immediately from high-speed rail links and direct connections to major highways.

Rumored “leaked” site plan for Shanghai Disneyland development. First phase of development is outlined in red; the theme park area is circled in pink. Note how the C-shaped lake resembles the park’s rendering from 2006. Also note the MagLev depot to the north of the park. Personally, I think the Piggery will be a definite E-ticket. Click to enlarge.

What the park’s attraction lineup will resemble has been a source of great speculation recently. While a leaked site plan, allegedly by the ARUP development corporation, contains a water feature that greatly resembles the 2006 park rendering, it’s unknown if the eventual park will match any of these designs. After all, Hong Kong Disneyland itself differed greatly from even its early official press releases, and the pirate land concept for Hong Kong that was also featured prominently in the 2006 annual report was eventually abandoned.

Much of the discussion online has been about how Disney’s new franchise mania will affect the park’s aesthetic. Many expect pirates, princesses, pixies, and Pixar to rule the day, and if fans think the current park attractions are character-heavy then they haven’t seen anything yet. The latest gossip, featured on Screamscape and elsewhere, brings up the possibility that the Shanghai site will be Disney’s first park to include characters from Marvel Comics. Others expect the park to receive Hong Kong’s rejected pirate land, although that is sheer speculation.

Nevertheless, this will be the first Disney park to fully reflect CEO Bob Iger’s oft-stated push for “franchises” and “properties.” The sole purpose of this park, from management’s perspective, often seems to be to fully inject Disney’s intellectual property into the subconscious of billions of young Chinese. Regardless of Imagineers’ sincere efforts to build a quality theme park, some fans are concerned that the real purpose of Shanghai Disneyland is not to create a great park but to capitalize on all those viewers of the new Disney cable and satellite channels and of millions of hopefully non-pirated DVDs. The final product’s makeup can be deduced by the occasional comments by management over difficulties in Hong Kong; they often speak of how Chinese children are unfamiliar with western fairytales and are thus unaffected by the traditional Fantasyland attractions. Unless they’re planning on basing Shanghai Disneyland on traditional Chinese stories, which I doubt, or letting quality attractions stand on their own merits, which I also doubt, one fears that the order of the day will be Pixar, Pixar, Pixar.

But again, this is all speculation. It appears that Disney is trying to build a new kind of Disney kingdom, which is good considering that there are already two traditional Disneyland-type parks within the region. There’s certainly room for innovation, and hopefully in the shadow of Hong Kong Disneyland’s difficulties the Imagineers will be given wider leeway to really build something that impresses. We still have no idea when we’ll ever actually find out something substantive about the project, but all signs indicate that it will be sooner rather than later.

UPDATE: It looks like land expropriation for the resort has begun. Apparently, for several years the Shanghai government has been filing preparatory expropriation plans for something called “Buenaland Shanghai”. Very clever, guys. Apparently the Shanghai press, who didn’t pick up on this at all, needs to hire some Disney nerds.