New Fantasyland Will be Great, But it Could be Even Better

Most of you Disney fans out there should already know about the New Fantasyland coming to the Magic Kingdom in 2012. It’s the largest expansion in the history of the Magic Kingdom and is adding some pretty cool attractions and restaurants to Fantasyland, attractions like the Under the Sea: the Journey of the Little Mermaid (which is just a renamed version of the Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure at Disney California Adventure), Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Enchanted Tales with Belle, the Beast’s Castle, the Princess Fantasy Hall, and the Great Goofini; and restaurants like Gaston’s Tavern and Be Our Guest Restaurant. I am terribly excited about what is going on over and beyond the old 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Lagoon and the possibility that the East Coast Fantasyland could finally match up to it’s West Coast sister.

The plans in this image are the original ones, so the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is not included. This image is in this post just as a visual aide for the area

As stated earlier, the expansion is going to add a number of new attractions, but one thing that I noticed while looking over the concept art for the entire area is a lack of expandability. The announced attractions will completely fill up the open area in Fantasyland, from it’s a small world and Pinocchio’s Village Haus, across Fantasyland and all the way over to the Tomorrowland Indy Speedway, absorbing Mickey’s Toontown Fair in the process. I don’t have any problem with the attractions being added into Fantasyland, and they’re much better than the numerous Princess meet-and-greets that were originally planned. My problem comes from something that was told at Destination D, which was kind of like a miniature D23 Expo that happened this past weekend. Tony Baxter did a panel about attractions that were never built and two of the attractions named were a new version of the Alice in Wonderland dark ride and a Sleeping Beauty dark ride.

When I heard about these attractions via Twitter, as I could not be at Destination D myself, my heart immediately sank. Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland are two of my favourite Disney movies, and the thought of maybe being able to have attractions based off of those movies so relatively close to home was a tantalizing thought. In fact, that was the reason that I started doing the research, I desperately wanted to know if there was any more room in the Magic Kingdom (because there sure as hell isn’t any in Disneyland). The Alice in Wonderland attraction would be similar to that of Roger Rabbit’s CarToon Spin at Disneyland and would feature ride vehicles that looked like teacups that would spin throughout parts of the attraction, and the ride system could have even been like Crush’s Coaster at the Disney Studios in Disneyland Resort Paris, with a combination of a standard dark ride and a roller coaster sort of like Primeval Whirl at Animal Kingdom. All and all, the Alice in Wonderland dark ride could have ended up being like the announced Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (a combination dark-ride/roller coaster) but it could have been so much better. Besides, since when does Disney not have multiple attractions that are very similar in ride system (I’m looking at you Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye and Countdown to Extinction).

The Sleeping Beauty attraction would have been a more standard dark-ride attraction, but there would have been a possibly full sized Maleficent dragon that breathed fire at the ride car, which would definitely make it a more thrilling experience than say Snow White’s Scary Adventures. I really wish that these attractions could have been built in an American Fantasyland, that being said, the plans for Shanghai Disneyland is supposed to be a new breed of Disneyland style park, and we might get at least one of these attractions there. Fingers crossed!