Disneyland And Disney World Both Have Massive Expansions Underway, But That Has Me Concerned About The Future Of One Classic Land

Last year Disney Experiences announced that it planned to spend $60 billion over the next decade, and while a significant portion of that money will be spent on a fleet of new cruise ships, a massive amount will be dropped on Disney Parks, and we can already see that money being spent at Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort.

Disney World is about to have three major construction projects underway at the same time. We also got confirmation earlier this month that the first phase of DisneylandForward, the massive resort expansion, will be starting later this year. This is certainly wonderful news for any fan looking toward the future. However, this almost certainly means that an update that’s desperately needed on both coasts is likely years away.

Disney World And Disneyland Resorts Are Focused On The Future

As of this writing, there are construction walls up at both Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom as each has entire lands going through transformations. DHS is losing Grand Avenue, aka the Muppet Courtyard, to make way for a Monsters, Inc. land. DAK is saying goodbye to Dinoland U.S.A. and gaining a Tropical Americas land that will include attractions based on Encanto and Indiana Jones.

Meanwhile, Disneyland Resort is looking to replace its entire entrance area, while also seeing an Avatar land replace most of Disney California’s Hollywood Land, and a new Coco ride go into Pixar Pier. And none of that even touches on the massive expansion to both DCA and Disneyland park that we know is coming. When it’s done, Disneyland Resort may not even be recognizable.

All this is great. I’m as excited as anybody to see all the cool new Disney World attractions, the brand new Downtown Disney at Disneyland, and whatever else is on the way. The next decade is going to be an embarrassment of riches, but it’s somewhat ironic that the future looks so bright, considering that the land once dedicated to the future is the one that may be waiting a long time for its own update.

Tomorrowland Needs Help At Both Disneyland And Magic Kingdom

With so much new being built, it seems highly unlikely that significant resources will be given to updating any of the classic castle parks, beyond what's already been confirmed for Magic Kingdom, which is frustrating because Tomorrowland could use some love. Magic Kingdom’s version is starting to show its age, and Disneyland especially needs real help.

Tomorrowland has always been a difficult land to keep up to date, as tomorrow always eventually arrives. What was first designed to be futuristic eventually becomes old and dated. This is the problem both Tomorrowlands are having; most of the attractions are decades old at this point, and with the exception of the recent Tron: Lightcycle Run at Magic Kingdom, none of them feel “futuristic” with a modern eye.

You can't have a land dedicated to "tomorrow" feeling like it was made yesterday. New attractions could help with this, but honestly, Tomorrowland needs a new look. A design tweak to the land as a whole could make it look more like a future that we might imagine today, or potentially, something more timeless, that might have a longer shelf life.

There have been numerous rumors over the years of plans to revamp Tomorrowland at Disneyland, and while it seems there likely have been plans made at various points, the revamp kept getting pushed back. At one point, there were rumors of a Space Mountain update based on Pixar’s Lightyear. Perhaps if Lightyear had been a hit, we would have seen the trigger pulled on the idea, but the movie flopped hard, and so nothing happened.

With another core Magic Kingdom land undergoing a major overhaul for the next couple of years, with the Frontierland Piston Peak project, which will likely be followed in short order by the already announced Villains Land expansion, it seems all but certain nothing else major will be happening in that park until that work is done, which could be five or more years from now.

At Disneyland, things don’t look much better. While there are no major construction plans for major updates inside the existing Disneyland park, the expansion of the entire Disneyland Resort will likely be so significant that it will take up all focus. Of course, DisneylandForward is a 10-year plan, which means it could be a decade before Disneyland has the resources to do any major updates to Tomorrowland. Could it really be another 10 years before Tomorrowland gets any major updates?

Could The Fantastic Four Save Tomorrowland?

Of course, there is one possible way that Tomorrowland, at least at Disneyland, could see its much-needed facelift sooner rather than later. While every indication thus far is that the DisneylandForward project is specifically focused on expansion, there’s really no reason it couldn’t have a Disneyland land update folded into it. If the resort sees a reason to invest, it will, and it might, later this summer.

Next month will see the release of Fantastic Four: First Steps, and a few months back, I suggested that, assuming the characters would be brought to Disneyland Resort as happens alongside most MCU films, rather than bringing the superhero team to Avengers Campus, the Fantastic Four should be brought to Tomorrowland. The retro-future aesthetic of the film takes a great deal of inspiration from the same sources that inspired Tomorrowland, so the two fit together quite well.

Well, it was announced shortly after I wrote that, that the Fantastic Four actually will appear in Tomorrowland when they arrive at Disneyland alongside the movie on July 25. If these characters are well received and if, unlike Lightyear, Fantastic Four is a box office hit, which so far seems likely, perhaps we could see Tomorrowland’s update incorporated into the current plans.

Tomorrowland needs help. It needs to be done, and it needs to be done soon. As great as all the new additions will be, the parks as a whole will be lesser if there are parts of them that don’t feel as new and exciting. I certainly hope Disney Experiences has some of that $60 billion earmarked for Tomorrowland, and I hope they’re planning to spend it sooner than it would seem.