An 'Encanto' Land Could Be Part of Disney's NEW $1.9 Billion Expansion Project

Is Encanto poised to become a major part of Disneyland’s expansion?

©Disney

The next decade could prove to be one of the most impactful in the history of Disney’s theme parks. Overall, the company is sinking a fraction of $60 billion into its theme parks division with a new $17 billion deal just signed with Florida and the $1.9 billion Disneyland expansion known as DisneylandForward, which changes some zoning restrictions and in turn gives Disney the right to build on land that was previously only zoned for parking and other infrastructure activities. But what might we see pop up in the new DisneylandForward expansion?

As has been confirmed by CEO Bob Iger, this massive building spree will likely contain almost entirely Intellectual Property (IP) experiences based on Disney’s large library, including films from Marvel Studios, Pixar, LucasFilm, and of course Disney’s own animation studio. One of the properties that’s heavily speculated to be involved in the expansions on both coasts is 2021’s Encanto.

Initially, Encanto wasn’t a box office smash, but strong word-of-mouth, streaming numbers, and the viral success of the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” have led to the film becoming one of Disney’s most popular of the last decade. In-turn, that seems to make it highly likely that the film will be in Disney’s parks on a permanent basis sooner rather than later.

©Disney

While nothing is confirmed, it seems like more of a lock that Encanto is coming to Disney World, specifically in the Tropical Americas expansion/retheming coming to Animal Kingdom’s Dinoland U.S.A. Disney all-but confirmed that Encanto and Indiana Jones would be the anchor properties of this expansion at last year’s D23 expo, and further through various pieces of concept art released this year.

©Disney

As far as Disneyland, things are a bit less concrete. However, Disney Parks and Resorts Chairperson Josh D’Amaro did specifically mention Encanto when speaking about the Southern California expansion. In an April interview, D’Amaro said, “We will have enough room to build the equivalent of another Disneyland Park. And so then you start to think about, ‘Well, what can we do here? We haven’t told anything, any stories on Wakanda. We haven’t told any stories on Frozen, although it’s a 10-year old franchise. You think about franchises like Coco and Encanto. We almost have an endless stream of stories that we can tell.”

DisneylandForward concept art ©Disney

While we have to STRESS that that quote is not confirmation of anything, we also doubt that there wasn’t a bit of calculation to which franchises D’Amaro mentioned. Plus, the fact that Disney is seemingly also developing an Encanto attraction for Disney World would seem to make it more likely that at least elements of it would be used for Disneyland as well.

Only time will tell what Disney is planning to add during their massive expansion, but we’re hoping to find out more at the upcoming D23 Ultimate Fan Event. Stay tuned to AllEars for more coverage.