Disneyland Resort Update: The Final One
Disneyland Resort, Anaheim, CA
Today is a melodramatically solemn occasion, as we mark our final construction update from the Disneyland Resort (or at least final one in the foreseeable future. As you no doubt have noticed, we haven’t posted much lately—a consequence of doing this blog as a hobby, not as anything regular. But also, when it comes to the Disneyland Resort, there are a number of different sources people can go to who will get Disney park updates sooner and more detailed than here. And some of them will even give you Disney park news without sensationalist, sometimes outright false clickbait!
In any case, it doesn’t really make sense of Westcoaster to offer Disneyland Resort construction updates, now that the major projects of the past few years (Galaxy’s Edge, Avengers Campus) have been completed. And sure, there’s still the major refurbishment of Mickey’s Toontown going on, but it’s hard to see what’s going on there without a helicopter, and we definitely don’t have helicopters.
That doesn’t mean there will never be Disney updates again—they’ll just be more geared toward finished products as opposed to in-progress news. So, one last time for tradition’s sake, lets take a spin around the Disneyland Resort to see some of what’s been happening lately!
Disneyland Hotel Construction
This project has been rising out of the corner of the Disneyland Hotel for the past several months, since the end of April, but since we don’t head that way too often or it was too late to get any usefully bright photos, we haven’t covered it until now. But progress has been moving quickly on the new Disney Vacation Club tower at the Disneyland Hotel. This twelve story structure will be for DVC members only, with a more modern look and more luxurious room layouts that incorporate larger studios, a few dozen suites, and two grand villas for the big spenders.
Currently, the concrete structure has progressed past halfway of its twelve stories, quickly rising to match its Fantasyland and Frontierland Tower neighbors. It’s become an unmissable sight around the pool area and Trader Sam’s. With a completion date of 2023, the project is definitely moving fast, and it will provide a solid enclosure around the central courtyard space of the hotel.
Downtown Disney
There are two parts to this update. First of all, little visible progress has appeared in the area where the AMC Theaters complex was turn down earlier in the year. Work walls have been up, but nothing vertical has risen above them, suggesting that the site is still in the grading and utility preparation stage.
We start here at Downtown Disney West… west…
Work walls have been up for a while.
The AMC Theaters complex was demolished pretty quickly.
But this scene has been unchanged for a little while.
In addition to this, two food trucks, Nashville Hot Chicken and Happy Ice, have set up camp outside the old ESPN Zone for the summer.
A pair of food trucks has popped up for the summer, one serving hot chicken.
The other cold shaved ice!
Secondly, Downtown Disney’s landscape furnishings have taken on interesting, artful, and sometimes whimsical looks over the seasons, and this summer, a new variety of displays have been unveiled to celebrate diversity and inclusion across a wide spectrum of the population. Building off the success of Encanto and utilizing the Colombian flower display tradition of silletas, the summer decorations at Downtown Disney represent Diseny’s various “Business Employee Resource Groups.” Bold, colorful florals and displays celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride, cultures from around the world, the military, representation across demographics of all abilities, and a general spirit of peace, love, and tolerance.
New floral arrangements celebrating different communities have popped up at Downtown Disney. .
They are lavish and stunning.
They’re a vibrant and fun display with great messages—and they might irritate some people who think that Disney is pandering to “woke” politics (ironically, the same people who proclaim, “All lives matter,” so this shouldn’t actually bother anyone, should it?). But regardless of how well Disney stands behind its principles of diversity and inclusion in certain (often corporate) cases, it’s nice to see welcoming messages display openly and emphatically where they do occur. The craftsmanship and heart put into these displays is very evident, and they provide beautiful, saturated backdrops that add extra life to the Downtown Disney scene.
And they’re a nice backdrop for guests too!
Avengers Campus Characters
Avengers Campus opened over a year ago, but we’ve never really done a proper update of the finished land. We’ll get around to that… at some point… Though not nearly as large or dazzling as its expansion neighbor across the Esplanade, Galaxy’s Edge, Avengers Campus does feature a superior use of synergy between Marvel franchises and marketing and in-park character meetings that help enrich the experiences of guests. In conjunction with its movie and Disney+ show releases, Marvel has keenly kept Avengers Campus “updated” with new characters to keep up with its topical media changes.
It’s Thor! Asgaard’s mightiest hero!
Thor and Spider-Man were on a training exercise with Black Widow on this day, learning how to disguise themselves by imitating other Marvel characters.
Captain America was also hanging around, doing this all day.
There is a core group of Marvel superheroes that guests can encounter regularly, including Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Black Widow, Black Panther, Ant Man, Doctor Strange, Loki, and more. But over the past year, guests have been able to run into other characters like Shang Chi, Hawk-Eye, Kate Bishop, Moon Knight, some of the Eternals, and more. More recently, Miss Marvel and America Chavez have joined the fray—be it in one of the land’s “spontaneous” shows or as wandering photo ops or both. And last weekend, Mighty Thor made her first appearance in Avenger’s Campus as part of the release of Thor: Love and Thunder. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch her during my visit, so I’ve linked some photos from some talented Disney photographer friends of mine on Instagram for anyone interested to see her look!
Shang Chi is back at Avenger’s Campus, but in his dragon scales superhero outfit.
Ant Man is around too. He and the Wasp have been seen carrying a miniature model of A Bug’s Land, but not on this day, unfortunately.
Behold, Black Panther.
Although Avenger’s Campus’ ride line-up isn’t mind-blowing (Guardians of the Galaxy is really fun but not “new,” while WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure is really just another screen-based shooting game with re-ride value in those who want to compete for high scores but isn’t that astounding), it does compensate with its entertainment and character line-up. And for guests with kids or for fans of Marvel period, this is a great way to maintain appeal and interest in a land that had to make the best of the limited footprint it was given.
A member of the Dora Milaje greets a guest.
America Chavez and Miss Marvel were on patrol together.
Boba Fett at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
Speaking of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a new character has appeared on planet recently—the infamous bounty hunter, Boba Fett! This marks the first appearance of a Star Wars character in Batuu who does not hail from the sequel trilogy era and signals a shift in the way Disney is approaching the storytelling of this land.
Instead of maintaining Batuu in the timeline of Episodes VII - IX, the new strategy is that each of the characters on Batuu exist in their own timeline currently associated with their movies or shows. So when Rey and Kylo Ren and Vi Moradi are wandering Black Spire Outpost, they are 20 years after the original trilogy. But when Boba Fett (and Fennec Shand, and eventually Din Djarin) wander the territory, they are still before the rise of the First Order. Of course, Disney is also taking care to make sure that characters from different periods don’t run into each other. It’s similar to who Kylo never actually finds Rey on Batuu—or how Mickey Mouse is never out on a meet-and-greet when he’s also passing by on a parade.
Boba Fett has been spotted in the outskirts of Black Spire Outpost and interacts with guests in a way similar to who the Stormtroopers operate.
This strategy has clearly taken its cues from how Marvel has managed Avenger’s Campus, but it’s a better move to break the chronology of a land if it means that interest can be maintained by having fresh appearances and character attractions keep people attentive to Galaxy’s Edge. Plus, given the original ambitious, story-immersive, near-role playing nature of Galaxy’s Edge that quickly got pared down, it’s perhaps a way to return to that more enveloping environment and get more guests and fans interested in visiting.
Mickey’s Toontown Construction Update
Moving around Disneyland, we now present the latest update to Mickey’s Toontown!
TA-DA!!
This concludes our latest update from Mickey’s Toontown!
It’s all boarded up, and the view from the Fantasyland Theater with some of the backdrop poking up above the Disneyland Railroad line and between the trees is the only real angle into the land from within the park. So we’ll check back next year when everything’s open.
From Tarzan to Encanto, With Love
Tarzan’s Treehouse closed in September 2021 to undergo refurbishment, and it has never reopened since then. The months passed, and people started wondering what was going on, since this well exceeded the usual refurbishment schedule. Well, as it reportedly turns out, work on the attraction revealed considerable deterioration that would require more intense work, and ultimately, Disney has elected to expand the construction at Tarzan’s Treehouse into a full retheme and comprehensive change. As noted in the OC Register, when the attraction reopens, it will have a new theme. No details have been made official, but popular speculation online has centered on something from Encanto, especially since Antonio’s gift essentially gives him a jungle inside his bedroom.
In the meantime, most prominently, the entrance to the Treehouse has been completely demolished. This definitely frees up a big bottleneck at this end of Adventureland, and it’s unknown if it will be replaced, or if the entrance will be shifted (likely the latter, given the park’s guest circulation improvements over the past several years), but it’s definitely a bit jarring to longtime visitors to see a prominent part of Adventureland missing.
Speaking for ride revamps, Disney finally announced a timeline and new attraction name for Splash Mountain. You may recall that Disney previously had said that the beloved attraction, which is themed to the problematic Song of the South film that has never been publicly released since its original cinematic release, would be transformed into a ride themed to The Princess and the Frog. Well, we now know that this reimagined attraction, named Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, will arrive at Disneyland and Walt Disney World in late 2024. No word on when Splash Mountain will close for the final time, but we finally have a timeline in place.
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage Gets a New Visitor
Finally, the work walls recently finally came down around Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, revealing a new arrival at the venerable lagoon in Tomorrowland. It seems that Hank the septopus, from Finding Dory, has joined the seagulls on the water (while giving them some seriously annoyed sideeye!). The attraction has undergone an extensive renovation and refreshing, with new theming, a complete repaint, and new effects to be provided. The ride will finally reopen on July 25th, which means that when the work walls were promising that the attraction would “resurface” in winter 2022, they just meant in the southern hemisphere. Which I guess makes sense, because that is where Finding Nemo is set.
Finally, the work walls around Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage are down!
Hey, a new pokemon has appeared!
Sorry, I meant Finding Dory character.
The subs do look as vibrant as ever, and Hank is a fun addition (would have been even cooler if he was an animatronic, but that would have been understandably difficult, since he’d be exposed to the elements and want to be much more complex than the seagulls. Any hope that the submarines might be transformed into a different attraction as part of any substantial Tomorrowland refurbishment can probably be put to bed for a while, as Disneyland wouldn’t have spent the budget to do this much work on the ride if it wasn’t planning to have it around for a while.
Why is Hank so apparently annoyed? These guys of course.
That is some serious side-eye.
The subs look nice and ready to load new passengers!
That does it for this, the final Westcoaster construction update from the Disneyland Resort. Of course, we reserve all right to retract “final” like they do in Disney’s Star Wars and Marvel franchises, but again, there are plenty of better places to get your news in a more timely and comprehensive manner. It’s been fun, and hope you’ve enjoyed the photos, but so turns this chapter of Westcoaster history!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
