DisneylandForward — What, Exactly, Is It?

When The Walt Disney Company announced its proposed DisneylandForward project several years ago, it indulged itself with a bit of myth-making.

Invoking modern-day theme park successes such as Tokyo’s Fantasy Springs, Shanghai’s Zootopia land, and Hong Kong’s World of Frozen, Disney dangled some enticing carrots in front of fans in order to try to garner support for the legislation that, once you peeled away the fondant, was really a pretty dry bit of land use permitting. Yet, now that it has been passed by the Anaheim City Council, nothing about the Disneyland Resort complex can be discussed without it being invoked.

Where is Avatar Land going? DisneylandForward.

Coco ride? DisneylandForward.

Fantasy Springs? DisneylandForward.

The problem with all this wishful thinking, however, is that, when talking about this particular change to the parks, there is literally no there there. No DisneylandForward space exists. It’s not a place.

DisneylandForward does not give the Walt Disney Company a single inch of land more than it had before the agreement. Neither does it give Disney more area within their existing land to develop theme parks than they had already been given by legislation passed in 1993.

So, you may ask, what’s the point of it all?

Let’s back up.

History — If You’ve Ever Wanted a Detailed Discussion of Anaheim Zoning, I’m Gonna Hook You Up.

In the early ’90s, three-plus decades after Disneyland had transformed a sleepy city of orange and walnut farms into one of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, Disney and the city of Anaheim decided to work together to both expand the resort and try to make some sense out of the hodge-podge of retail and lodging businesses that had crowded themselves up to the border of the theme park. Together they developed a comprehensive plan for zoning that would allow for Disney to create a new theme park that would eventually become Disney California Adventure, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel and Spa, and Downtown Disney. It also allowed for the reshuffling of some parking and for a failed plan to build an overpass across Harbor Boulevard that would link parking that was to the east of the resort directly into the complex.

(The story of that eastern span is a whole can of worms that is beyond the scope of this article except to say that the battle between Disney, Anaheim and the Harbor Boulevard merchants caused decades of bad will between the city and The Mouse. DisneylandForward is their perestroika.)

That comprehensive plan was known as The Disneyland Resort Specific Plan (DRSP) and can be read in full — if you need something to cure your insomnia — right here:

The relevant section for this discussion starts at section 1.6.1 and contains diagrams of the new Theme Park District, Hotel District, and Parking District zoning. Commercial/retail zoning doesn’t really come into play, for reasons that we’ll see later, but there is a provision for something called “C-R Overlay” zoning, which allows businesses to lay retail shops over parking districts, but that is mostly used for the Anaheim GardenWalk shopping plaza.

The DRSP continued to take on amendments until the early 2000s, but the zoning has not, all that much, changed in the last three decades.

Disney’s own DisneylandForward site does a nice job of summing up the zoning, as it has remained since that point, with this image:

A few things you are probably noticing right away are that there is a hotel, Disney’s Grand Californian, and shopping area, Downtown Disney, that currently reside in the Theme Park District zone.

“Is this that C-R Overlay thing you were telling us about?” I hear you ask. “I thought you said it was only for GardenWalk?”

Nope. Disney didn’t need to do anything to put the hotel and the shopping area in the theme park zone because they cleverly managed to include, in the details of the DRSP, that the zone just… had them.

In addition, the plan provides for up to 1000 hotel rooms to be located within the Theme Park District. Any of the 1000 rooms not developed in the Theme Park District may be developed in the adjacent Hotel District. Up to 350,000 square feet of Theme Park District development can be located in the Theme Park District and/or Hotel District for retail entertainment center uses. — DSRP 1.6.1 Theme Park District

Before you go looking it up (“Goggle it, Baba!” I heard Bootsy Collins say once.) I’ll save you the trouble. The Grand Californian has 745 rooms and Downtown Disney is 246,702 square feet.

You may also have noticed the addition of the Toy Story Parking Lot which is not included in the DRSP zoning, and also the weird un-zoned area that the Pixar Place Hotel now sits in.

The Pixar Place Hotel was already a hotel (the Pan Pacific) which the company bought in 1995 and the Toy Story Lot was a parcel of land that they purchased in 1998.

And that’s pretty much where we stood when Disneyland Forward passed.

DisneylandForward — What it Is and, Mostly, What it Ain’t

Ok, so now DisneylandForward is a binding agreement between the City of Anaheim and the Walt Disney Company and Disney can start using the legislation to do whatever it was that they wanted it for. What does that mean?

It means that Anaheim has said that, for the most part, Disney can take their existing zones and move them in whatever way they’d like; including overlapping them — just like those C-R-Overlay zones – but with any combination they can dream of!

Disney has thrown a lot of ideas about expanding the parks into underused areas, building new lands within hotel districts, converting parking lots into massive outdoor shopping experiences. Much like a teenager left home alone for the first time by their parents, they have a lot of big ideas.

And much like that same teenager, they have extremely limited resources and might just end up making a grilled cheese and going to bed.

From the Environmental Impact Report:

Disney is not seeking additional square footage for theme park uses or retail entertainment uses or additional hotel rooms within The Disneyland Resort as part of this Project. Instead, the Project would allow Disney to move the existing approvals to other Disney property governed by the DRSP and ARSP.

That’s right. Disney did not get a single hotel room or a single foot of theme park space more than they had before. What they do have, however, is the ability to move the square footage of a zone from one piece of property to another. It all has to equal out to the amount of 1993 zoning that they already had, but they can do it.

Let’s take another look at the map with a few spaces pointed out:

The orange circles indicate the only areas zoned for theme parks in which there is no theme park.

For a lot of reasons, we can safely assume that the Grand Californian isn’t going anywhere — not the least of which is that its legal existence is contingent on that DRSP clause I pointed out above; it is a hotel which is not in a hotel zone — so Disney can’t get rid of it and reclaim the hotel rooms on a different spot elsewhere.

We’ll come back to Downtown Disney.

The spots on the northwest and southeast of the main Resort area, recombined and moved, could easily form a new land somewhere. Interestingly, even though that southeast block was zoned as theme park for the DRSP, it is the only space on the block not owned by Disney at all; it holds the Candy Cane Inn and Desert Palms, leaving no reason for Disney not to grab the zone and move it. (Not being a land use expert, I couldn’t tell you why that property was included in the Disneyland SPECIFIC plan to start with.)

If you combine both of those areas, and we assume that parking is plentiful and fungible (and not something we’re going to discuss here; who has that kind of time?) those zones would fill much of the land directly north of the Disneyland Hotel.

Those parcels could also be combined to fill the area below the hotel and around Pixar Place.

Doing some crude measuring with my wife’s fabric tape (shhhhh!), it doesn’t come anywhere close to filling both.

A lot of the designs released by the company show them taking an “Is this bothering you? I’m not touching you,” stance towards Anaheim’s Property and Land Use office by cutting their Theme Park District Zone cache into really small bits and peppering them all around property areas in order to, assumedly, spread it further.

Take a look at this diagram they put out; the orange bits are extensions of Disneyland and the light blue, California Adventure:

I would not put this past them, but It’s a little like saying that Peter Pan’s Flight is part of a theme park and Snow White’s Enchanted Wish is part of a theme park, and the thirty feet of pathway in between is a hotel.

Still, I suspect that, if this is what they want, they’ll get away with it; tying up land use attorneys in perpetuity.

These two areas — north and south of the Disneyland Hotel are not slam dunks, however, because of two other factors tied to the agreement.

First is this piece of the environmental report (Don’t worry, there’s a tl/dr at the end if you’d rather not risk the head injury.):

MM NOI-22 Prior to issuance of each building permit and to be implemented prior to final building and zoning inspections, the property owner/developer shall present a noise study and area development plans if part of a new theme park land or building plans if part of one theme park attraction in the expanded Theme Park District (west of Disneyland Drive), the Southeast District, or the ARSP Theme Park Overlays to the Planning and Building Department to demonstrate any Thrill (Indoor) and Family (Indoor) attractions shall be located no less than 200 feet from the center of the ride or attraction to noise-sensitive receptors and shall include a 30-foot-high building or a 30-foot high noise barrier between the attraction and the property line near noise-sensitive receptors. The planning of each attraction shall take into account any openings or outdoor areas of the attractions and directionally orient the openings away from noise-sensitive receptors and towards the center of the new theme park development.

MM NOI-23 Prior to issuance of each building permit and to be implemented prior to final building and zoning inspections, the property owner/developer shall present a noise study and area development plans if part of a new theme park land or building plans if part of one theme park attraction in the expanded Theme Park District (west of Disneyland Drive), the Southeast District, or the ARSP Theme Park Overlays to the Planning and Building Department to demonstrate any Thrill (Outdoor), rides taller than 50 feet, Parades and Large Shows shall be located: 1. For 1st to 3rd Offsite Floor Receptors: No less than 550 feet from the center of the ride to any noise-sensitive receptor and shall include a 30-foot-high building or a 30-foot-high noise barrier between the attraction and the property line near noise-sensitive receptors. — DisneylandForward, Draft Subsequent EIR №352, 5.11–33 Section 5.11 — Noise

What this says, and it’s a pretty common agreement for this sort of thing, is that indoor attractions built in these areas must be at least 200 feet from the property line of anyone that could hear the noise of them and that outdoor attractions must be 550 feet away. A later piece says something about if the receptor’s (listener’s) building is four stories or higher, the distance changes to 1100 feet, but a quick Google Street View look around the area doesn’t show that coming into play here.

On the following map, the green line indicates about 200 feet from the nearest non-Disney property line — across Walnut Street to the West and Katella Avenue to the South — and the red one, about 550 feet.

Now this is a little over-dramatic as the noise ordinances specify that the distance should be measured to the center of the attraction, not its closest edge. So, yes, you could put a volcano there with the central spout right where the P-for-parking symbol is in the Downtown Disney Parking lot and it would be fine.

But it is a restriction that will factor into their plans.

The other restriction is that part of the agreement requires that any new structure built that is visible outside of the resort area must be themed so that it looks good to nearby residents and not just resort guests.

From the Disneyland Forward FAQ:

Implementation of 360-degree architectural design to improve public views and views, especially from adjacent residential properties.

This adds up to potentially considerable expense as the company can no longer just theme large structures as they would movie sets, only being concerned with sight-lines viewable by the paying customer. And the closer the structure gets to residential city streets, the more care has to be taken to make it look good.

Basically, no more of this sort of thing:

So let’s review, Disney must make do with the amount of zoned theme park space they already have.

The two primary spaces, north and south of the Disneyland Hotel, are sizeable spaces, but have noise restrictions that limit them and 360-degree sight-line restrictions that make them more expensive; and they don’t really have enough available theme park zoning to fill them both up.

Ok, Mr. Buzzkill, What, Then, CAN They Do?

With some fancy footwork, a little of the New Math, some sort of Bippity-Boppity-Bureaucracy and a dawg-chokin’ muthaload of cold hard cash, they could take a big chunk of the parking above or below the hotels and turn them into a Pandora (well, Pandora 2 — Unobtanium Boogaloo), or a Fantasy Springs, or a place to put all the old Dinoland U.S.A. rides after they’ve been ripped out of Animal Kingdom. They could do that and they might, but there’s one chunk of Theme Park District zoning that doesn’t have a theme park in it that we’ve yet to discuss.

First, let’s review the one plan that Disney has harped on more than any single piece of this development and the one thing that I would lay money on happening very early on in this process (after the construction of a massive, multi-level, parking structure just north of Disney Way) — the conversion of the Toy Story Parking lot:

A New Kind of Disney Entertainment Destination

This property could be the perfect location to cater to locals, conventioneers, hotel and Disneyland Resort guests with restaurants, hotels, live music, shopping, ticketed shows and theme park experiences modeled after the popular Disney Springs at Walt Disney World Resort.— https://www.disneylandforward.com/possibilities

They are going to turn that space, as well as the space adjacent to it to the north — already zoned for retail — into a Disney Springs clone. You will not find a single piece of company promo for this project that doesn’t include this plan and, while the company has been careful to say that no plans whatsoever have been finalized, this is the thing they seem most sure about. This is, in many ways, the point of DisneylandForward.

Downtown Disney is fine but lackluster, and not the local destination that they had hoped for. Anaheim’s GardenWalk Center is a funky, significantly cheaper, alternative that draws a lot of teens away. Putting in a large Disney Springs-esque complex within spitting distance of GardenWalk solves both of these issues for Disney.

While we may see Earth getting moved for an Avatar experience earlier just because of the increased scrutiny over the parks right now, this Toy Story Lot/Disney Springs project will be the real priority.

But then I hear you ask, because you’re thoughtful well-intentioned people, if they build a new Disney Springs, isn’t Downtown Disney now redundant?

Yessir, it is! And what else is it? It’s already zoned as a Theme Park District!And it’s contiguous with Disney California Adventure! And it has no issue with noise ordinance restrictions being nowhere near any non-Disney neighbor! And it would enhance the hotel experience for the Grand Californian by giving it an amazing new park entrance! And it would help relieve the need for 360-degree landscaping because it is far away from residential areas! And it would partially back up into the already wooded Grizzly Peak area giving some needed background landscaping if you wanted to build something like:

There are several downsides to this idea. The space around the hotels is a lot bigger — though, as we’ve seen, some of it is will be difficult to use due to noise ordinances and the 360-degree design agreement. Assuming that the tram parking is also moved, the Downtown Disney space is about the size of Disneyland’s smallest land, Adventureland (including the jungle and Indy show buildings), and about half the size of the Pandora in Disney Animal Kingdom (though that’s a little illusory since the wooded buffer space around the original Pandora takes up much of that space).
Also in play, timing. The process of building a new parking structure, plus pedestrian egress from that structure to the parks, then demolishing the Toy Story lot and reconstructing it as a mixed-use retail space will take something like a Tron-and-a-half (about seven to eight years). Given recent announcements and new concept art — not to mention the Avatar movie release dates — this may be way too long of a wait.

Do we know anything for sure? No. Does Disney? Probably very little yet. All we know are the boundaries of the agreement that they made with Anaheim.

So let’s roll the dice and make a few bets based on what we know.

1. Toy Story Parking Lot will be demolished and turned into a Disney Springs clone.

2. Downtown Disney will be repurposed for theme park use.

3. Avatar is coming and will be put either on the south side of the Disneyland Hotel or, if they are not intending for it to happen within the next six years or so, in the Downtown Disney space.

4. Coco will go in the Paradise Garden Park area of California Adventure because why use up valuable exterior zoning when you’ve already got a land partially themed and can get rid of that affront to humanity, Goofy’s Sky School?

5. Hotel-specific amenities will move into overlay space around the hotels.

6. Whichever space Avatar goes in will leave one of the other spaces — Downtown Disney, north of the Disneyland Hotel, south of the Disneyland Hotel — open for a theme park expansion concept that we probably haven’t considered yet. (Dear Disney, would it be totally crazy to extend Pixar Pier across the street into an Inside Out-themed area? You may have noticed that people really liked that film.)

After that, they will be out of zoning space for themed attractions. If they want to utilize any of the other possible land they will either have to very carefully spread Theme Park District zoning square footage around, dot by dot, or petition Anaheim for more zoning.

The first move will be building a parking lot.

It will be the second move that’s going to be exciting!

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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times