PHOTOS: We’re Taking a Closer Look at the Concept Art for the Disneyland Expansion!

After a year of theme park closures, a new hard-ticketed event, and a set reopening date, Disneyland Resort is doing its best to recover from the pandemic.

Despite the obstacles that Disney has faced in the past year, they just announced that they have plans to expand Disneyland Resort to include new shopping, dining, rides, and attractions! We’re taking a look at the concept art released to see what all that will entail.

The new expansion project is titled DisneylandForward and includes plans to add new shopping, dining, and attractions into the undeveloped areas of the resort. Disney released concept art and a map for the expansion to help guests better understand what’s going on with the changes, and we’re breaking them down today.

Let’s first take a look at the map of the resort to see which areas Disney would like to change. The orange parts of the map are the sections in which Disneyland Park can expand and the blue areas are the expansion for Disney California Adventure. A new addition is also proposed in the bottom corner of the map, on the east side of the parks. In order to make these changes, Disney will need to alter the layout of its current parking areas.

For the new entertainment area on the east side of the resort, they’ll need to take over what is currently the Toy Story parking lot. This will need to be approved by the city of Anaheim in order to move forward, so Disney hasn’t announced any more specific plans for this area at this time. On the Disneyland Forward website, it’s noted that this area will likely be inspired by Disney Springs at Walt Disney World, with the possibility for hotels, restaurants, shopping, and live entertainment.

Moving over closer to the parks, Disney hopes to add more rides and attractions, expanding their two theme parks into the area surrounding the Disneyland Hotel and Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel. These expansions could be filled with a wide variety of new experiences, including lands and rides from other Disney parks around the world.

While the company hasn’t made any official announcements on what they plan to put here, they mentioned the possibility of additions like Zootopia (Shanghai Disneyland), Toy Story Land (Walt Disney World), Arendelle (Tokyo DisneySea), and several others. It would be much easier for Disney to work with blueprints and expansions that are already in development or exist in other parks, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility of more original additions, either.

At this time, the project needs to be approved by the Anaheim government to move forward. Disney plans to provide detailed construction plans before 2023, so it looks like it’ll be a few years before this gets underway. We’re definitely interested to find out more!

We’ll make sure to keep you updated with any more details we receive on this project, so stay tuned to AllEars. We’ve got the latest Disney news to share with you, directly from the parks and online!

Click Here to Learn More About the Expansion!

Have you ever been to Disneyland Resort? Tell us in the comments!

Join the AllEars.net Newsletter to stay on top of ALL the breaking Disney News! You'll also get access to AllEars tips, reviews, trivia, and MORE! Click here to Subscribe!