Disneyland and Walt Disney World currently exist as the two Disney Resorts in the United States of America, catering to vacationers all across the country and even beyond. But in the last few years, it has become increasingly clear that some of the Disney Parks in the US are at their limits.
Disney Parks are increasingly reaching capacity on a regular basis, and crowds are getting to an unmanageable level. Meanwhile, they have proven themselves to be even more profitable than before the pandemic even with lower crowd levels.
So is it time for Disney to consider building another resort within North America?
This may seem outlandish, but as recently as the 1990s this was in active consideration by Disney, as represented by the never-built Disney's America resort proposed for Virginia. There is clearly a demand for Disney Parks that a new resort could fulfill better than perhaps anything else.
If Disney was to do this, where could a new Disney resort within the United States potentially be located?
With the exception of Walt Disney World, every Disney Park around the world was built near an already existing major city. It is reasonable to suspect that this would be the case with a hypothetical additional park.
Also, if this were to happen the park would likely have to be located a significant distance from both Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
So what could some potential locations be?
There are three major logical locations for an additional Disney Resort within the US, based on location and population, and they are Texas, the area surrounding New York City, and the area surrounding Chicago.
Now let us explore each of the potential locations and the benefits and drawbacks of each.
Texas is a state of roughly equal distance from Disneyland and Walt Disney World which could minimize its impact on the existing parks, and it has several major cities that could be a good location for this park. The climate would also allow for the year-round operation of the theme park without issue. But this area of the country is also full of already existing amusement parks that a Disney Park would have to deal with in terms of competition, far more than the other two locations.
The area surrounding New York City would work better than Texas in terms of population as there is merely one centralized city to locate a park near, and it is far bigger than any in Texas. It also has the advantage of being located in the Northeast US, where several major cities are within reasonable driving distance within both the US and Canada. However, it is closer to only one of the two existing Disney Resorts, Walt Disney World, meaning it could hurt that park to a greater extent than a theoretical Texas park. The climate could be an issue however with this park as this area does see cold winters and snow. However, Disney does see snow in some of their international resorts and is able to still be open year-round so this is not a deal-breaker. It would likely merely require some alterations to how the park is built, mainly more indoor rides and fewer water rides. There is some significant competition in this region already, with a new Legoland park being located nearby, and one of the biggest Six Flags parks located in New Jersey.
Finally, the Chicago area offers some of the same benefits of New York in a larger city than there is in Texas. It also offers one of the key benefits of Texas in its location roughly halfway between Walt Disney World and Disneyland. It also faces a similar drawback to New York in terms of weather, but without the major competition issues of the other two locations.
Each of these three locations would work theoretically if space is availible, but also have drawbacks worth noting.
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