The city of Anaheim, California, just announced that its City Council voted to approve a Disney project called Disneyland Forward, giving Disney zoning approval to transform parking lots across the street from and near its existing theme parks into new theme park, hotel, and entertainment and retail areas. The City of Anaheim announced it here.
A procedural vote will take place on May 7, and then the plan would take effect 30 days later.
The approved plan requires Disney to invest at least $1.9 billion in expansion within 10 years, and also to pay for affordable housing, sewer improvements, and public park improvements.
I wrote about Disneyland Forward in September, 2023 (link here), when all that was officially known about the plan was its filed Environmental Impact Report. Based on that report and the City Council approval, most speculation centers around Disney building new theme park lands, or possibly even a new gate, in the parking areas that are across Disneyland Drive from its two existing parks. Disneyland Drive runs North/South along the western borders of California Adventure and Disneyland Park.
Former Imagineer Jim Shull posted this tweet, illustrating his idea of how this could work, along with the various lands that have been speculated about, based on official Disney concept art.
The yellow arrows show how visitors could exit the existing parks, cross Disneyland Drive on pedestrian bridges or tunnels, and enter the new themed lands.
One vlogger, "Hey Brickey," speculates that a duplicate of Hong Kong Disneyland's "World of Frozen" land could be placed at the northern end of the new expansion (where Jim Shull suggests it would go). He suggests that the "World of Frozen" was designed for Hong Kong with the idea that an exact duplicate would eventually go into the Disneyland Forward plan, because its footprint fits precisely into that spot adjacent to the Disneyland Hotel.
