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Tumbleweed gif wild west9/3/2023 ![]() "The Disney-MGM Studio Backlot has been approved and is destined to become the entertainment marketplace of the 1990s. How close did this project come to becoming a reality? According to a Disney press release the marketing staff released in 1987: What would a Disney MGM Studios theme park have looked like in Burbank? Eisner had determined that a West Coast theme park could serve as a more reliable source of income than the fickle film industry. It was to be built years before the one in Florida (that had been officially announced in 1985), but using much of the same things. Perhaps the most intriguing Disney theme park project that was ever proposed was the Disney MGM Studio Backlot, an ambitious entertainment complex that was to have been built in "…beautiful downtown Burbank" right next door to the Disney lot. After more than a year of considering the Imagineers' plans, OLC executives rejected the studio theme park proposal preferring to go with a different concept based on the aborted Long Beach Port Disney/Disney Sea project that would have been themed to the ocean. However, when that theme park under-performed after it initially debuted in April 1992, this plan was put on hold for nearly a decade, when it finally opened in a severely truncated form in March 2002.Įisner also tried to persuade the Oriental Land Company (OLC) to allow the Imagineers to build a Japanese version of Disney-MGM Studio theme park as Tokyo Disneyland's second gate. ![]() The first one was to have been built right next door to what was Euro Disneyland (now Disneyland Paris). Among the projects that got immediately greenlit during the theme park's frantic first years of operation was the Sunset Boulevard expansion project.Įisner actually seriously considered building at least three more Disney MGM Studio theme parks. That was why WDI went into overdrive to quickly "grow" Disney-MGM out into a full-size Disney theme park experience. When the studio theme park opened in the spring of 1989, it was immediately mobbed. However, Eisner had vastly underestimated how popular the concept would be. Using about the same amount of acreage as Disneyland, as well as the same basic design of the Anaheim theme park, Disney-MGM Studios theme park came to life. With Eisner's encouragement, the Imagineers greatly expanded their initial concept for Epcot's "Entertainment' pavilion. ![]() A half-day attraction is something like WDW's Typhoon Lagoon Water Park, where guests could spend the morning or afternoon there, and then go off and visit some other section of the resort for the rest of the time. He felt it could serve as the basis of a half-day attraction. It was Disney's then-CEO Michael Eisner who first realized that the history of motion pictures really couldn't be crammed into a single Epcot pavilion. Once inside, guests could have chosen between taking a ride through a show titled "Great Movie Moments" (Walt Disney Imagineering's first pass at the attraction that eventually became Disney-MGM's Great Movie Ride) or they could wander through an interactive display designed by Disney veteran Ward Kimball, which revealed the wacky way a Mickey Mouse cartoon was put together. Guests would have entered under a theater marquee and pushed themselves through the turnstiles at an old-fashioned movie theater ticket booth. This Epcot addition, which was to have been built between the "Land" pavilion and the "Journey into Imagination" pavilion, was supposed have featured an exterior that looked like a giant blue sky that hid the show building. The Disney-MGM Studios theme park, which first officially opened its gates for visitors back in May 1989, was initially planned as an Entertainment pavilion that was proposed for Epcot's Future World section.
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