You Won’t Believe What Disney ALMOST Built in the Early 90s

Over the last 70 years, the list of projects Disney Imagineers have designed only to never see the light of day is much larger than the list of those that have actually been built. This is especially true of many projects designed in the 1990s, when many grandiose plans were announced… only to be canceled due to various factors.

One of the most interesting unbuilt 90s projects is a California complex called Port Disney, including a theme park named DisneySea. Yes, you read that right, DisneySea. Before that name graced the Tokyo Disney Resort’s second gate, which many deem the best theme park in the world, a park with the same name was almost built in Long Beach.

The story of the unbuilt DisneySea actually began with the Disneyland Hotel (Disney history can be a bit of a roller coaster). The short version is that when Disneyland was under construction, the company didn’t have the money to build its own hotel. Walt Disney reached out to a friend and businessman, Jack Wrather, offering him licensing rights to the Disney name for use on a hotel. Wrather accepted the deal and opened the wildly successful Disneyland Hotel in 1955.

Over the next 30 years, Wrather continued to grow the hotel, all the while refusing offers from Disney to purchase the property. After Wrather’s death, the Wrather Corporation continued to rebuff Disney. So after the death of Wrather’s widow, Disney simply bought the whole company and its assets in 1988. They not only gained control of the hotel, but also several other properties, including The Lone Ranger and Lassie television series, and our main focus today: The retired RMS Queen Mary ocean liner, which is docked in Long Beach as a museum/tourist attraction, and its port.

During the same period, Disney and their Imagineers began working on several plans to expand Disneyland from a single theme park to a multi-park destination resort in the vein of Walt Disney World. By the early 1990s, two plans emerged: One was the Anaheim-based WestCOT, which was a new and “improved” take on the EPCOT concept to be built in the Disneyland parking lot. The other was a sea-based theme park built around the aforementioned newly acquired Queen Mary, which was to be part of a larger project.

When plans for Port Disney were announced in 1990, the proposed project was made up of the following:

• The DisneySea theme park.
• Five new resort hotels (the Shoreline Hotel, the Tidelands Hotel, the Marina Hotel, the Canal Hotel, and the Port Hotel)
• 400 new marina slips (250 long-term and 150 guest slips).
• The WorldPort ferry landing (for trans-Queensway Bay service), historic vessel harbor, and local (Orange County) harbor cruises.
• The Quay, offering excursions, dinner boats, and charters.
• A five-berth cruise ship port to distant destinations.
• A monorail linking the City- and Port-sides of Queensway Bay.

While that’s a lot, let’s focus on the theme park. Like any other unbuilt Disney theme park, plans for DisneySea weren’t finalized and likely would have changed multiple times, but concepts that were initially released included:

• Oceana, the “architectural centerpiece of DisneySea,” would have consisted of a two-story “oceanarium” inside depicting the evolution of the seas. Oceana would also include The Future Research Center (a center for oceanographic researchers) and The Ocean Outreach Center (a “library of the sea.”)
• Mysterious Island, a recreation of Atlantis, headlined by Nemo’s Lava Cruiser, a suspended thrill ride, as well as other steampunk and Jules Verne-inspired aesthetics.
• A boardwalk paying tribute to Long Beach’s historic Pike, with amusement rides reminiscent of classic seaside amusements.
• Fleets of Fantasy, a harbor with replicas of ships hosting rides and restaurants, with the
• Hero′s Harbor, which would have been home to lands themed for mythological adventurers such as Sinbad and Odysseus
• Venture Reefs, a Caribbean lagoon featuring artificial tropical reefs and a shark cage dive experience

So, why aren’t we heading to Port Disney and DisneySea as part of our Disneyland vacations? Well, several factors combined to put the kibosh on the project. For starters, Disney was facing opposition from many Long Beach residents who didn’t want a themed entertainment resort in their community, from local politicians who scoffed at the public funds the company was requesting for freeway and infrastructure improvements around the proposed resort, and from environmentalists who worried about the effect the complex would have on the area’s waters.  On top of that, there’s the $3 billion price tag that came with Port Disney. Finally, there’s the issue of Anaheim. See, in addition to releasing plans and press materials about Port Disney, they also released the WestCOT plans, essentially pitting the two cities against each other. In fact, a long-running theme park conspiracy theory has argued that the Long Beach plan was never actually under consideration, instead being used by Disney as leverage against Anaheim. In any case, Disney canceled the project in favor of WestCOT (which, of course, would never be built either, but that’s another story) in December 1991. The following year,  Disney gave up the lease on the Queen Mary.

While Port Disney was never built in California, elements of the proposed complex can be found in other Disney properties built in the years since. Most obviously, the idea of DisneySea was adapted into the aforementioned Tokyo DisneySea theme park. While the Japanese park isn’t a direct clone of the plan, it features areas similar to the planned Mysterious Island (same name), Heroes’ Harbor (areas of the Arabian Coast, including the beloved Sinbad attraction), Venture Reefs (areas of Lost River Delta), and Fleets of Fantasy (Mediterranean Harbor). Tokyo DisneySea also features the S.S. Columbia, a faux sailing ship in the American Waterfront area that serves the same role the real Queen Mary would have.

In addition, the Boardwalk area would eventually morph into the original Paradise Pier, a key land in the original Disney’s California Adventure (the park that would eventually be built in Anaheim, replacing WestCOT).

Disney theme park history could have been very different had plans for Port Disney and California’s DisneySea been built in the 1990s. Stay tuned to AllEars for more deep dives into Disney history.

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Do you wish Port Disney had been built? Let us know in the comments below.

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