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Credit: DisneySemantics are important when you listen to any announcement. No more so than when you hear an announcement about the Walt Disney World Resort.
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In March, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Disney could have “seven new lands at Disney Parks around the world.” Fans quickly took this to mean that The Walt Disney Company was greatly expanding its theme park universe.
The following day, Disney retracted Iger’s comments, emphasizing the word “could.”
Just last week, Disney and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis buried the hatchet to the tune of $17 billion over the next 15 years. Disney fans immediately thought a fifth gate was coming to Walt Disney World.
But, the devil is in the details, or in this case, the semantics. When making the announcement, Disney said they “could” build a fifth gate, thousands of new hotel rooms, and restaurants.
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However, despite the “could,” experts who spoke with the Washington Post believe that rather than opening a fifth gate, Disney World will focus on expanding its current four parks and possibly opening a smaller park, like a water park.
Disney fans assumed that Disney World had no choice but to open a fifth gate, especially considering that Universal Orlando will open Epic Universe in 2025. The assumption was that a fifth Disney Park was the only way to counter Epic Universe.
Lou Mongello, host of the WDW Radio podcast, told the Post:
It seems like the focus is very squarely on not just expanding the theme parks but I think to a certain degree reinvigorating the passion from fans that may have waned a little bit over the last couple of years.
Disney has already announced that it is expanding Animal Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom. At last year’s D23 Expo, Josh D’Amaro announced that a South/Central American-themed land featuring Encanto is coming to Animal Kingdom.
However, very little is known about the expansion of the Magic Kingdom beyond its name: Beyond Big Thunder. Suppose the expansions at Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom are of the size and scope of Fantasy Springs at Tokyo Disneyland. In that case, the company can expect to pay around $2 billion each.
Some estimates suggest that Universal Orlando is paying more than $7 billion for Epic Universe. Dennis Speigel, founder of the consulting firm International theme park Services, told the Post that he estimates a fifth Disney World park would cost around $9 billion if they started it today.
Obviously, Disney is nowhere near starting the project, so they can expect those costs to increase as time passes. Spiegel also said it would take six or seven years for Disney World to open a fifth gate.
By then, Epic Universe would already be old, and the Universal Orlando Resort would have already announced expansion plans using the massive land purchase they had just made.
Within all these plans, there has been no announcement to expand Disney’s Hollywood Studios or EPCOT, which both need to expand capacity.
With Disney crunching costs, the quickest and cheapest plan would be to expand an existing park rather than build an entirely new one. It seems unlikely that Disney would use more than half its allotted money to create a new park when the current parks need so much more.
Sorry, Disney fans, but Disney announcements are all about semantics.
What would you like to see Disney do with its $17 billion investment?