Disney Parks History
The Disneyland Resort is constantly looking for ways to expand. Due to their limited amount of land they have to be creative whenever they want to add new rides or lands to the two parks of the Disneyland Resort. This leads to some innovative expansion planning.
But not all of these plans end up amounting to new rides and lands. In fact some end up completely falling apart right in front of Disney with them having no control over the end result. One of these expansion plans fell apart relatively recently.
This is the story of the failure of Disneyland's Eastern Gateway plan.
First of all some backstory on this plan. Disneyland at this point was in the middle of adding Star Wars Galaxy's Edge, a massive expansion plan that was really only replacing a part of Rivers of America, as well as an underutilized area of Frontierland. Following this expansion it was going to become increasingly impossible to find a way to add any new rides to the Disneyland Resort without removing something. For theme parks like Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, which are increasing in popularity with each passing year, not being able to expand is not something that could happen for long so they can continue to allow more people in with each year.
Now how was Disneyland going to do find more expansion room?
Disneyland's plan was to replace some of their infrastructure that existed on their main resort and move it to land they owned just off of the main property of the Disneyland Resort.
In addition to the land that holds the main Disneyland Resort, including both theme parks, Downtown Disney, and the three Disney hotels, Disney also owns a significant amount of land in Anaheim just surrounding the parks, including land across the street behind the hotels of Harbor Boulevard. To access it they purchased one of the hotels on that street, in preperation of a massive restructuring of guest flow and car traffic surrounding the Disneyland Resort.
The plan for the Eastern Gateway was for the bus plaza between the two theme parks to be removed, with a new pathway along the Tomorrowland side edge being built, leaving the rest of the land for a future expansion of Disney California Adventure. A bridge would then be built across Harbor Boulevard to a new parking garage and bus plaza. This would grant Disney California Adventure space for more rides while keeping all the same infastructure in the Disneyland Resort.
As a result of this plan, the current entrance to Disneyland from Harbor Boulevard would be closed and the area used by the buses would eventually become a part of Disney California Adventure as a part of an unannounced future expansion to the theme park. It is unclear as to what this would be, but rumors for this land at the time included it being the location of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway instead of Mickey's Toontown, or it being the location of Avengers Campus instead of A Bug's Land.
It is also worth mentioning that Disneyland is legally obligated to provide an entrance to the Disneyland Resort from Harbor Boulevard due to agreements it has with the businesses on Harbor Boulevard. Disneyland unlike Walt Disney World is located in the middle of a city, and immediately across the street from Disneyland is a collection of hotels not owned by Disney as well as accompanying restaurants and shops. The situation on Harbor Boulevard is basically a symbiotic relationship between Disneyland and the hotels and other buisnesses alongside Disneyland. These businesses only exist because of Disneyland, and as Disneyland does not have enough room for hotel rooms for every Disneyland tourist, these provide lodging for Disney's visitors. Each needs the other in order to survive and have an agreement to protect their mutual interests. It's an imperfect relationship but it has historically worked.
This Eastern Gateway plan would have technically satisfied this requirement for an enterance to the Disneyland Resort from Harbor Boulevard, but it would have completely changed the nature of these hotels and their relationship with Disney.
The new entrance from Harbor Boulevard to the Disneyland Resort would have been located across the street from the current entrance. Guests would then have to travel down a winding path all the way back to where the new parking garage was set to be built, then they would enter security and walk across the foot bridge over Harbor Boulevard into the Disneyland Resort.
This would have made all of the hotels on Harbor Boulevard a lot less valuable as they would no longer be within easy walking distance of the Disneyland Resort due to adding significantly more length to the walk to the theme parks.
Unsuprisingly the businesses and hotels of Harbor Boulevard were not happy about this proposal. Their entire reason for existing is being within easy walking distance of Disneyland, and this would have forever removed that benefit to them. Following opposition, this plan would ultimately be cancelled by Disneyland who did not want to alter their plans to allow for a better entrance to the Disneyland Resort from Harbor Boulevard compared to what was in the initial plan they proposed.
It is also worth mentioning that at this time several other things were happening with the Disneyland Resort. They were on a time crunch where they desperately needed more parking spaces before Galaxy's Edge opened, so they did not have time for lengthy negotiations over how this plan would work.
They were also at the same time proposing building a new hotel over major portions of Downtown Disney, mainly the area that has historically held ESPN Zone, Rainforest Cafe, the AMC Theaters building as well as Earl of Sandwich. As a part of this plan all of those would have been torn down for a new hotel to be built over this area, with new Downtown Disney shopping on the first floor and hotel rooms located above. A new Disneyland Monorail station was also set to be included in this plan, replacing the existing Downtown Disney one.
These plans were also apparently canceled for unrelated reasons that are still not known to this day.
Once Disney faced a level of opposition to this plan, they immediately had to come up with another way to get a massive amount of parking spaces built within the Disneyland Resort before Star Wars Galaxy's Edge opened.
This ended up happening with Disney building the Pixar Friends parking garage alongside the existing Mickey and Friends parking garage, although this would not be the only change to the Disneyland Resort that would happen as a result of the failure of the Eastern Gateway plans.
Disney California Adventure was not given additional expansion space. While it is impossible to say if Bug's Land would have survived if Eastern Gateway had happened, there is a chance its closure might not have been needed. The bus loop meanwhile remains on the main Disneyland property.
Finally, the area of Downtown Disney that was set to be replaced as a part of this plan is actually being replaced, although much later than initially intended. This area of Downtown Disney is currently being reimagined into a new shopping plaza as part of Downtown Disney, although this plan is different from what was originally intended, and no hotel is included in these plans.
Disneyland always has to be creative when they expand, and it doesn't always work out, as can be seen with the Eastern Gateway plans.
This would not be the last attempt for Disney to plan a massive expansion of the Disneyland Resort that required outside approval. Much more recently they proposed the elaborate Disneyland Forward plans which would involve massive expansions to both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, and if it was to be built it would require changes to regulations that the Disneyland Resort faces, The end result of this plan is still currently unknown, but it is just to show that the Disneyland Eastern Gateway is just one in a long line of proposed expansions to the Disneyland Resort, many of which are not successful and leave open the question of what would have happened to Disneyland had it been more successful.
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