March 5, 2024, 7:33 PM ·
Disney CEO Bob Iger tipped that the company will build a second Avatar-themed land in California.
Iger previously had said that Disney was looking at building an Avatar-themed “experience” at the Disneyland Resort in California, following the 2017 opening of Pandora – The World of Avatar in Disney’s Animal Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort. But in a conversation today for the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, Iger upped the stakes a bit when he said, “We have one Avatar-based land, Pandora, in Florida. We’re going to put a second one in California.””The whole thing starts with how do you allocate capital as a company,” Iger said. “And if you look at the return on invested capital of that business over the last 20 years, particularly over the last 10, the track record is extraordinary. And we have thousands of acres of land still to develop. We could actually build seven new full lands if we wanted to around the world, including the ability to increase the size of Disneyland in California, which everybody thinks is kind of landlocked, by 50%.”Disney’s ability to develop that land in California is dependent upon the City of Anaheim approving the DisneylandForward proposal, which would change the land use rules for the Disneyland Resort property, allowing Disney to develop land that is currently reserved for use as parking, in part to provide a buffer between Disneyland Resort attractions and nearby residents.”You can look at every single location that we’ve got, and there’s land opportunity,” Iger said. “But most importantly, we have so much IP to mind that there’s opportunity there to create experiences that we know people would love to have in our parks.”
In addition to Avatar, Iger also mentioned the new World of Frozen and Zootopia lands that opened late last year at Hong Kong Disneyland and Shanghai Disneyland, respectively. He did not, however, indicate today that those lands would be coming to other Disney properties around the world, although Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro previously had cited those lands as the sort of projects that Disney might be able to build in Anaheim should DisneylandForward be approved.To keep up to date with more theme park news, please sign up for Theme Park Insider’s weekly newsletter. And to help support Theme Park Insider while saving money on discounted theme park tickets – including to all Disney theme parks around the world – please follow the ticket icon links our Theme Park visitors guides.
Replies (0)
