This Canceled Disney World Project Could Have Changed EVERYTHING

Disney almost built their own Wizarding World of Harry Potter in the early 2000s, until the tide of theme park history changed FOREVER.

That’s right, long before Universal completely reinvented the theme park industry with the 2010 opening of the first Wizarding World of Harry Potter (now known as Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Hogsmeade) Disney almost entered into a deal with Warner Brothers to bring the franchise to Disney World. So, what happened? Well, suffice to say Disney’s plans were very different from what Universal eventually did…

During the mid-2000s, when the Potter books and films were both at the apex of their popularity, series author J.K.  Rowling and Warner Brothers were being courted by both Disney and Universal to bring the Harry Potter franchise into their parks. At the time, many assumed that Disney’s reputation as the industry leader and established history of adapting outside properties (Star Tours, Indiana Jones, The Muppets) gave them the edge.

Sure enough, Rowling did sign a letter of intent with Disney in 2004. However, the relationship would fall apart over what exactly Disney had planned for the property. According to longtime Disney reporter Jim Hill during a 2018 podcast appearance, Disney’s plans were “tiny. Itty bitty. There were two attractions. Basically it was going to be Buzz Lightyear. You were going to be in an Omnimover attraction with a wand instead of a gun, and you were moving through basically a Dark Arts teaching class. The other aspect was going to be a Care of Magical Creatures Petting Zoo.”

Rowling and Warner were both unimpressed. They also bristled at the company’s insistence on including outside brands like Coca-Cola and merchandise in the land’s gift shop. Disney in turn were unwilling to give into the author’s demands for strict creative control. Once the two sides reached this impasse, Disney terminated negotiations.

Universal, arguably desperate to reinvigorate their Florida parks, jumped back in and agreed to all of Rowling’s demands (including revising their original creative plans of a light retheme of Islands of Adventure’s Lost Continent area into something much more grand) and announced their deal with the author in 2007.

Three years later, Universal opened up their first Wizarding World… and completely changed the game. The highly-detailed, single intellectual property land eschewed typical theme park trappings, instead folding everything – – from merchandise to food to even the bathrooms into the land’s cohesive story. In other words, doing exactly what Disney refused to do.

Suffice to say, the land was a MASSIVE hit, jumping attendance and merchandise sales at Universal Studios Florida to unprecedented levels. The success of Potter has caused a massive ripple effect throughout the industry, leading to single-IP-themed lands becoming the norm for massive expansions at Universal and Disney parks around the world.

The former building further Potter lands, all culminating in the building of Epic Universe, while the latter has built Cars Land, Pandora: The World of Avatar, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Toy Story Land, the lands of Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea, among others. It’s not a stretch to say none of these lands would exist, certainly in the form they do now, had Disney built their version of Harry Potter.

However, while it’s easy to read all that and say that Disney missed out on Harry Potter, that might not be the case. For starters, in the last decade, author J.K. Rowling’s reputation has been sullied. In addition, perhaps due in part to the sullying of Rowling’s reputation, the Fantastic Beasts film series flatlined at the box office. Granted, Universal seems to have crafted yet another spectacular theme park land with Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic at Epic Universe, but the overall future popularity of the franchise seems to be in a somewhat precipitous place.

Had the boy wizard and his world come to Disney World as originally intended, the last two decades of theme park history would be VERY different. Stay tuned to AllEars for further looks at the biggest “what might have beens?” in Disney history.

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What are your thoughts on Disney’s initial Potter-land plans? Let us know in the comments below.

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