Reimagining Magic Kingdom: An Armchair-Imagineered Blue Sky Build-Out of Walt Disney World’s Iconic Theme Park

As we spoke about on the first page, I decided to make the (potentially controversial) choice to give Magic Kingdom’s Rivers of America the same treatment as Disneyland’s. That means re-routing the river to shorten the trip around it by about a third, and – in this space – to actually pull in the Railroad rather than pushing it out. That allows the Railroad to travel along the perimeter of the Rivers, on a new trestle nestled into a fresh, mountainous “berm” meant to shield the rest of the park from the space beyond.

I’ll say that in this case, I don’t think we need to shield the rest of the park. The spaces I’ll draft for here, on the north side of the river, aren’t offensive to the park’s existing sensibilities the way Galaxy’s Edge is in Disneyland. But I still kept the mountainous berm and the “left turn” for the train, because I think we see in retrospect that this setup actually strengthens the Rivers of America versus its very long, very forested back half.

So now, our path from the new Frontierland continues on a bridge with the Rivers of America to the right, and a new train trestle to the left. As the train begins its trip along the new, waterfall-fed mountain range, our path bends to pass into a cave beneath it. When we emerge, it’s at a crossroads in the woods, with two new lands occupying the north expansion pad….

HUNDRED ACRE WOOD

Build-Out

In many ways, it’s sort of wild that – even in the midst of his mega-resurgence in the ’90s – we never really got a Winnie the Pooh themed land. Many parks went in that direction. Disneyland’s Critter Country contains a Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh dark ride, a meet-and-greet space, and several Pooh-themed shops, but all just as re-skins of the land’s former Country Bear stylization. Shanghai Disneyland pairs its Pooh dark ride with a flat ride, and at least for a while, Magic Kingdom’s bumbling Pooh dark ride (in Fantasyland) had an associated playground, interactive queue, meet-and-greet, and retail space.

I am personally not a Pooh fan… but I do feel that the Hundred Acre Wood is a uniquely good fit for Magic Kingdom. It’s historic, merchandisable, and inoffensive in a way that fits well with Magic Kingdom’s “corporate mandate”; but it’s also organic, meandering, and low-stakes in a way Magic Kingdom needs. Especially in this form, The Hundred Acre Wood feels like a “Castle Park-friendly” equivalent of Toy Story Land, where we can pack in a whole lot of family capacity. So that’s exactly what I went for.

Crossing a covered bridge, guests would find themselves in a lovely woods, with a diverse set of family flat rides to explore. My hope was that a space like this could contain a family for hours, giving them plenty of experiences without the need for a Lightning Lane!

For example, just across the bridge is HUNNY POT SPIN – a smaller-model version of the classic teacup ride, contained beneath a canopy of glowing beehive lanterns and ooey gooey dripping honey. Directly ahead, the land’s centerpiece is ROO’S PLAY ACRE – soft-play space for climbing, crawling, sliding, bouncing, and chilling out.

The land would also contain THE FLYING HEFFALUMPS – a dreamy, Technicolor redux of Dumbo The Flying Elephant, here in a woodland grove. Finally, THE BEE TREE would be a sweet little yo-yo swings where (in an accidental homage to Disney California Adventure’s Orange Stinger) guests would become bees, seated in stinger-equipped striped seats, buzzing around a tree with its branches filled with warm, glowing beehives.

Those four flat rides would be joined by a Pooh dark ride. Both of the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh rides (at Disneyland and the real Magic Kingdom) are sort of boring, bumbling, lumbering rides. I don’t know. Maybe that’s appropriate for Pooh. But seeing Tokyo’s trackless version of the ride, you see the same kinds of scenes amped up, highlighting the jovial, comical, bounding aspects of the Pooh characters instead.

I decided to go another way altogether and imagined POOH’S HIDE ‘N’ SEEK ADVENTURE, a ride operationally resembling Tokyo Disneyland’s one-of-a-kind Monsters Inc.: Ride & Go Seek. If you haven’t experienced it, Ride & Go Seek is “interactive” in that guests are equipped with flashlights whose beams activate interactive scenes… but it’s not competitive. Instead, it’s about having fun together. I think that formula feels exactly right for a Pooh ride, as Pooh and friends decide to send us out at sunset to play Hide & Seek throughout the Hundred Acre Wood.

Along the edge of a perfect little babbling brook would be POOH’S FRIENDLY SPOT – a meet-and-greet trail with two or three stops where you can find Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, and other Hundred Acre Wood residents throughout the day. I also included a Quick Service restaurant – RABBIT’S GARDEN GRILL – with seating inside its main barn or outside among the gardens, where guests can dine among rows of carrots, pumpkins, lettuce, and more.

Hundred Acre Wood, I think, would be such a nice way to add a space for young children to the park – a sort of “competition free” zone specifically geared to families with kids under age six, with lots of pleasant family capacity to go around. It also blends nicely into the other land I’ve used this north expansion pad for…

GRIZZLY VALLEY

Whereas Galaxy’s Edge famously departs from the tempo and style of Disneyland’s other spaces, I wanted to use Magic Kingdom’s northern expansion pad – really, its third of three slots around the Rivers of America – to sort of continue the narrative already established.

In Liberty Square, we see America’s origin in the 1700s. In Frontierland, we see a country at its adolescence, boldly and brashly expanding into harsh new environments and making it work through the 1800s. I wanted to continue that idea, extending the cycle and bringing us a third place and time of great importance to the American story.

I decided on Grizzly Valley – a sprawling, forested National Park (certainly inspired by Disney California Adventure’s gorgeous Grizzly Peak) set in the mid-1900s; an embodiment of the real wonders that await in our nation’s protected spaces, and the Age of the Road Trip that literally made Disney’s theme parks possible.

All of Grizzly Valley is enveloped by a craggily gray rock formation, but its most photographed feature must be the imposing figure of Grizzly Peak – a curious natural form that resembles a bear. This is a land of legends, and exploration, and legacy, and of humanity’s relationship with the world we’ve inherited, and Grizzly Peak stands as a centering natural form that all paths are oriented toward.

Entering from Frontierland, bridges across a stream invite us into a small sub-section of the land that I really fell in love with the idea of. Directly ahead, past a statue of a dancing bear is Grizzly Hall – home of the COUNTRY BEAR JAMBOREE. Yes, the Country Bears have been kicked out of Frontierland, but only to find a refreshed show here in Grizzly Valley.

Nearby is a new C-Ticket I called BIG AL’S REDWOOD RALLY – a rumbling “antique cars” ride where guests are recruited by the legendary Country Bear to hop into the band’s classic, sputtering automobiles and make the commute back to his cave to pick up his missing guitar. Along the way, guests would drive past countless natural wonders of the West – grand redwood trees, surging waterfalls, bubbling geysers, and wildlife.

Crossing back over the stream, the path leads to Grizzly Peak and to the WILDERNESS EXPLORER CHALLENGE TRAILS. Adapting one of the stand-out, almost-unbelievable attractions that deputed at Shanghai Disneyland (the Challenge Trails at Camp Discovery), this attraction would be a really-for-real high-and-low-ropes course. If you haven’t seen this in action in Shanghai, it’s pretty indescribable.

Guests (safely harnessed, of course), are shimmying along narrow ledges behind waterfalls, scrambling up scaffolds, hopping between wooden planks over chasms, sliding down slopes… It’s absolutely incredible. Shanghai’s is made of three separate trails with varying levels of difficulty, each leading to a unique landmark, feature, or destination.

So here in Grizzly Valley, we’d take the same concept and give it the Grizzly Peak overlay; climbing up fire watch towers, entering the cool, gray caverns worn into the mountain’s side, inching around steaming geyser vents…

I know, I know. When the first images of this came out of Shanghai, the consensus was basically, “That’s something we’d never see in an American Disney park.” But I honestly feel that an attraction like this would be such a centerpiece of the land, and create here in this remote, removed-from-the-rest-of-the-park land an experience that felt so memorable, and so “real.” Legitimately climbing in and around this beautiful, green, densely-forested mountain space and the rivers that flow from it… I mean, unreal. Such a highlight.

Speaking of which, the main path through the park continues onward past GRIZZLY RIVER RUN, a rapids ride around and into the peak, with a final iconic splashdown into a beautiful, misty, geyser-filled basin.

The major problem with California Adventure’s Grizzly River Run is that the ride has a beautiful setting, but nothing to see along the course. (Weirdly, this has been on the short list of complaints about the park for nearly 25 years, and nothing’s ever really been done about it.)

My proposal in my build-out of Disney California Adventure was to add the Country Bears to the layout, giving it a musical quality. But since they’ve already been used here in their own little mini-land within Grizzly Valley, I think I’d instead turn toward the classic Humphrey the Bear cartoons of the ’50s. Humphrey has that kind of “originality” that Mr. Toad has, where a vast majority of guests would probably think he was invented just for the ride. But that’s just as well, as he and park ranger J. Audubon Woodlore could lend to some very fun vignettes along the river.

Having gradually increased the prevalence of misty, steaming geysers as we’ve headed east through Grizzly Valley, we’d end up at last at the land’s E-Ticket: GEYSER MOUNTAIN. Like Fire Mountain, Geyser Mountain went through a number of iterations and proposals in the ’90s and beyond.

The most prominent version was apparently planned to debut in Disneyland’s Frontierland. The idea, or so it’s said, is that Geyser Mountain would allow Anaheim to finally get its hands on the spectacular ride system behind Disney World’s Modern Marvel: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, cleverly inverting the formula (emphasizing a launch over a drop). In one fell swoop, Geyser Mountain could revitalize an aging Frontierland and (most importantly) convince guests to return to the old-fashioned, boring Disneyland after its much newer, cooler, edgier little sister – Disney’s California Adventure – opened next door.

Of course, as we know, it turned out that California Adventure wasn’t the golden goose that Disney expected. Geyser Mountain wasn’t needed, and quite the contrary, it was California Adventure that needed the boost provided by the thrilling E-Ticket ride system… hence, the Lost Legend: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was born. (Yes, I have separate in-depth histories of the two Towers. I can’t help myself.) After that, Geyser Mountain was apparently considered for Disneyland Paris‘ Frontierland, but then history repeated itself with its second theme park, requiring a third Twilight Zone Tower of Terror instead.

Anyway, here in Grizzly Valley, it’s finally time for Geyser Mountain to rise. Embedded in the bleached, steaming accumulation of sediment, the tower would rise over the forest – some remnant of industry long-since made impossible by the land’s protection. Now reclaimed by the park, the old ore cage now allows us to descend into the geothermal wonders deep underground, where legends of the “Old Unfaithful” geyser and its slumber hint at what’s to come.

Here, I’ve used the “DCA model” of the Tower of Terror. Partly, that’s because it’s high capacity and high reliability. But also because its adaptation into Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! shows that by making the “show” and “drop” share the same shaft, we end up with awesome capabilities to be zippy and unpredictable; to rumble and shake; to “take off” at any moment. Another aspect of Mission: BREAKOUT! I’d want to make sure this ride hits is its humor. As much as I don’t think Mission: BREAKOUT! makes sense for California Adventure in the long-term, there’s such brilliance to how it takes a ride system designed for anxiety and fear and just fully recasts it as a tool for joy.

To that end, I think it would be interesting to imagine the ride with a Mystic Manor-like duo – a retired docent park ranger who’s never seen “Old Unfaithful” go off in all his years with the park, and a side-eyeing, nervous ground squirrel sidekick who gets stuck taking the journey with us, narrating and screaming as he clings onto the cage roof.

Geyser Mountain would need to have that kind of joy, too, with randomized sequences. (Imagine blasting up and down to Harry McClintock’s “Big Rock Candy Mountain” or Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”) Just a free-wheeling, laugh-out-loud good time where – once that blast hits – an elevator full of people is just letting go and having fun together.

(By the way, a view like the one above would be the view when entering Grizzly Valley from the east side. Not bad!)

In Grizzly Valley, we manage to pack in a lot – an E-Ticket thrill ride, a D-Ticket raft ride, and C-Ticket antique car ride, plus an animatronic show and Challenge Trails.

Although it’s definitely much more modern in its sensibilities and immersion, I feel like this is a nice, contemporary continuation of the Rivers of America journey; the beauty of America – land of scenic wonders, ours to explore – as the finish line of the race we started in Liberty Square. Would Disney build a land like this? Probably not. We’re more likely to see Zootopia or Coco end up here, I’m sure… But for a Blue Sky Build-Out, I think it’s a home run.

Leaving the forests of nature’s wonderland behind, we have done what has always seemed impossible: connected a legendary “outer loop” around the northern edge of Rivers of America. But as the woods of Grizzly Valley give way to the enchanted forests of Fantasyland, we find ourselves in a very new corner of the space…