Ahead of Pandora – World of Avatar, Marvel Avengers Campus, Coco and other expansion, Disneyland has announced new plans for a revival of its Eastern Gateway project, almost a decade after the project was first announced–and then abruptly cancelled. This shares details of the largest infrastructure project in Anaheim’s Resort District in over 20 years, which is now part of DisneylandForward.
The new Eastern Gateway transportation hub at Disneyland Resort will be built on a portion of what’s currently the Manchester Cast Member parking lot. This new area will provide approximately 6,000 parking spaces, shuttle and rideshare areas, security screening and dedicated access for traffic off of Disney Way, improving parking and traffic flow throughout the resort area.
As you can see from the slick new concept art below, the new Eastern Gateway parking & transportation hub will also feature a pedestrian bridge over Harbor Boulevard, leading to an all-new esplanade arrival experience. This pedestrian flyover will also provide convenient public access to and from Harbor Boulevard.
If previous plans are any indication, the pedestrian pathway and bridge will be constructed on the former site of Carousel Inn & Suites, which Disney purchased a while ago. Other plans below should give you a pretty good idea of where this parking structure, security checkout, transportation hub and flyover will be located.
These enhanced parking, transit, and arrival offerings are the first step in Disneyland Resort’s next phase of construction, creating the infrastructure necessary to prepare for future growth and to welcome more guests as new experiences are added. The multi-year construction of the new Eastern Gateway arrival experience is slated to begin in Fall 2026.
As the Eastern Gateway has been discussed since 1993, there’s a lot we can surmise based on past announcements and details, including recent releases during the DisneylandForward campaign…
What’s interesting is how this deviates from Disney’s commitment to building a parking structure east of Harbor Boulevard and bridges over Harbor and Disneyland Drive as part of DisneylandForward. Here’s what was previously revealed as part of that pitch deck:
- Proposed 17,000-space eastside parking structure serving northbound arrivals on the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway with walking bridge to theme parks
- Eastside structure would add to existing 16,300 spaces at Mickey & Friends and Pixar Pals structures on Harbor westside serving southbound freeway arrivals
- Disney support for building up to three foot bridges over Harbor and up to two over Disneyland Drive
Instead, this Eastern Gateway project is more like the one that was first announced back in 2016 as laying the groundwork for the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge expansion. (Original concept art pictured above with site plan below.)
The original Eastern Gateway project called for 6,800 parking spaces. It would also push the transportation hub away from the Esplanade, freeing up space behind Disney California Adventure for expansion. At that time, the rumored project was a Captain America roller coaster and expanded Marvel land replacing the Hollywood Backlot.
All of this is pretty similar to what was previously announced, with Pandora – World of Avatar being the new project that’ll utilize the space freed up near the Esplanade by virtue of moving the bus arrival and security gateway to the other side of Harbor Boulevard.
The biggest change seems to be that there will still be access to the Esplanade via Harbor Boulevard. One of the big sticking points previously was that the new gateway would force guests staying on Harbor to backtrack to enter via the pedestrian connector. It now appears that won’t be the case based on both Disney’s statement and the concept art. Our best guess is that there will be another security checkpoint at the canopy under the big ‘Disneyland’ marquee.
While Disney has not yet released a new site plan of what this could look like, we’d expect something similar to the 2016 plan:
At the time, my analysis of the Eastern Gateway proposal was that Disney would face staunch opposition from local businesses and may have a difficult time building the Eastern Gateway due to the terms of the master plan governing Disneyland expansion, which was true.
Nevertheless, I predicted that Disney would nevertheless succeed in muscling the Eastern Gateway through after that fight, which was untrue. The Eastern Gateway project died a quiet death, replaced by expansion of the Toy Story surface lot along with the Pixar Pals parking structure, which debuted just in time for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
In addition to abandoning the Eastern Gateway, Disneyland proposed and abandoned a luxury hotel project to replace part of Downtown Disney (concept art below). Beyond that, a morass of political disputes did significant damage to Anaheim’s and Disney’s 60+ year relationship.
In only a few short years, the stand-off between Disney and Anaheim caused serious harm to both sides and the community. At the time, it seemed like the special relationship between the company and city had been irreparably harmed. Thankfully, a lot has changed since then.
First, a more Disney-friendly mayor and members of the Anaheim City Council have been elected since all of those plans were cancelled or put on indefinite hold. In large part, that’s why Disney had no issues getting the DVC Villas at Disneyland Hotel approved by Anaheim. That expansion was practically rubber-stamped.
Second and more significantly, there was the year-long closure of Disneyland that decimated the city’s economy. As a result of that, the Anaheim City Council authorized borrowing $210 million to close budget deficits caused by tourism downturn. I’m not sure the lesson I’d learn from that is “let’s double down on tourism,” but it was easiest surface level conclusion for voters to draw–and Anaheim’s existing infrastructure and businesses lends itself to tourism, so a pivot would be difficult.
Consequently, the city approved the DisneylandForward proposal with the support of the citizens of Anaheim. Pursuant to this approval, Disney has promised a minimum of $1.9 billion invested in Disneyland Resort over the next decade, with penalties if that number doesn’t reach $2.5 billion in 10 years. Given what’s already been announced and Disney’s statements about spending, we’re probably looking at $3 to $5 billion in investments over the next decade.
In any case, this development deal with Anaheim legally obligates Disney to spend at least $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion between now and 2034. While the possibilities of DisneylandForward are really exciting, it should be noted that the proposal is not a “project” itself. DisneylandForward is all about paving the way for future developments of an uncertain nature by giving Disney more autonomy over land use by relaxing the Disneyland Resort Specific Plan No. 92-1 (“DRSP”).
The DRSP was adopted in 1993 with subsequent amendments, and is an interesting look at what was planned versus what came to fruition. I’m very familiar with the DRSP because back when the Eastern Gateway project was proposed over 5 years ago, I read most of its 200+ pages. With DisneylandForward, the company has essentially been given permission to build what they want, where they want. It’s all about autonomy and authority over Disney’s property.
You could pretty easily draw a straight line between the cancellation of the Eastern Gateway project and the rise of DisneylandForward. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to call that the origin story of DisneylandForward, or to say that massive campaign was basically a glorified trojan horse for this parking structure. Sure, there was a lot more to DisneylandForward than the Eastern Gateway–Disney got a lot of things it wanted. Still, I doubt DisneylandForward happens but for the cancellation of the Eastern Gateway. That was the impetus.
It’s been very clear for a while that Disneyland really wants the Eastern Gateway parking structure. You may not be inclined to care; after all, who is a fan of parking structures? I would advise rethinking that.
From my perspective, the Eastern Gateway is the strongest sign of all that Disney is very serious about expansion. Now that they have Pixar Pals, they don’t need to build another parking structure based on current guest demand for parking.
The only way Disneyland needs another parking structure is if they want to free up space for attendance-driving expansion. Meaning that the Eastern Gateway proposal in a post-Pixar Pals environment signals both that Disneyland wants to free up space to build new things and that whatever they build is going to be a major driver of demand, necessitating more parking.
As has been discussed previously and will be discussed in greater depth elsewhere, the space freed up in the Esplanade this time is to accommodate construction of Pandora – World of Avatar.
As someone who lives south of Disneyland and hates the Toy Story lot, I’m also biased towards this project for personal reasons. I’d hazard a guess that this could shave 10 minutes or more off our commute time, especially given that the walk would be shorter than the current one from Pixar Pals.
I’ve always been a proponent of the Eastern Gateway for that simple reason, but since having a toddler, it has become crystal clear that this is the project that will improve our Disneyland experience more than anything else. You might think that’s hyperbole, but the whole parking and arrival experience is the biggest wildcard in our day–and a longer drive can derail our whole day.
It’s gotten to the point that we now park almost exclusively at Toy Story because Mickey & Friends/Pixar Pals is so unpredictable due to staffing issues and backups. (We’ve had it take over an hour from the time we arrived at the parking structure until the time we entered the park!)
Suffice to say, the cancellation of the Eastern Gateway was a massive disappointment–and huge unforced error for Disney back in the day. Its revival is fantastic news, even if you aren’t a parking enthusiast like me. Here’s what I wrote back about the Eastern Gateway prior to its cancellation back in 2017 when the project was on thin ice (from The End of Disneyland as a “Local’s Park”):
The Eastern Gateway Project has been part of Disneyland’s Master Plan since before Disney California Adventure, and its repeated delays are emblematic of the issues that arise when President of Disneyland is a stepping-stone position only held for a few years by each occupant of the role. Knowing their tenure is limited and infrastructure projects are not ‘sexy,’ parking has been a game of kick the can for the last several leadership teams.
Some of the blame with the Eastern Gateway Project’s delay lies with Disney officials. They had over a decade to get this built, and could have been proactive when the political climate was right to get the project done. More recently, they’ve also failed to revise their plans to address concerns of local businesses and elected officials. They’ve had zero sense of urgency with regard to a project that urgently needs to begin construction.
Blame also lies with Anaheim. Both the City Council and Mayor have recently become openly adversarial to Disney. One City Council member recently was quoted as saying,“we’ve invested in the children of tourists, it’s time to invest in the children of Anaheim.”
Never mind the fact that Anaheim has an annual $80 million tax surplus due to the Anaheim Resort District, which helps fund programs that can benefit actual residents. It’s much easier to use the city’s largest source of tax revenue as a scapegoat for problems the city faces. While the City of Anaheim has been overly Disney-friendly for a while, the recent sea change is an overreaction to that, and will have its own negative, long-term impacts.
I felt like this was worth sharing in full for a few reasons. First, because the last paragraph turned out to be incredibly prescient about the long-term consequences of Anaheim taking Disneyland for granted.
Now in fairness, I had no way of knowing that a pandemic would keep the parks closed for a year and bring this into sharp focus–I was thinking a mild recession–but those negative impacts were definitely brought to bear not long after. Even before the pandemic, elected leaders in Anaheim felt this when Disney flexed its muscle to get the company’s preferred candidates elected to city government.
Second and more significantly, because this situation exists again where the President of Disneyland is very clearly a stepping-stone position. This time, my view is that it’s exceedingly likely that Josh D’Amaro ascends to the CEO seat and Thomas Mazloum becomes the new head of Disney Experiences. Because of this, it would be very easy to put it on the backburner in favor of more immediate and noteworthy wins.
However, I would also hazard a guess that the difference this time is that D’Amaro has already telegraphed this to Mazloum, with the latter having a mandate to push through this infrastructure project and get the ball rolling on Disneyland expansion as soon as possible. Since he has under 2 years in the role, he needs to make an impact as quickly as possible, setting up the next President of Disneyland for success. And nothing lays the groundwork for that like the Eastern Gateway.
One thing that I think is interesting is how plans for the Eastern Gateway have evolved over time. As noted above, the master plan that encompassed this was first adopted back in 1993, back when the second gate was to be WESTCOT and PeopleMovers were planned to transport guests from the parking structures to the Esplanade.
Suffice to say, not everything detailed in that master plan ended up becoming reality. It’s nevertheless a bit surprising that so much of the more recent plans mirror those from 1993–just look at the below graphic from then:
I’m really glad that the Eastern Gateway project is finally being built. By the time the Avengers Campus, Coco, and Pandora – World of Avatar expansions are completed, it’ll be desperately needed. Infrastructure obviously is not as “sexy” of an investment as attractions, but if you’ve ever driven to Disneyland on a busy day, you know that the parking situation is disjointed–and that’s putting it charitably.
Disneyland estimates that 70% of its guests arrive via I-5, and I’d guess that a little under half of those are taking I-5 north (with the rest coming southbound from Los Angeles) so this ramp will be convenient for that segment of Disneyland visitors. I really cannot overemphasize this–but as someone who drives northbound on I-5 to access Disneyland, the Eastern Gateway and its new ramp will shave ~10 minutes off our commute time to the parks at minimum.
Anaheim has transformed dramatically in even just the last 15 years, and many of the hotels along Harbor have improved significantly with it (Anaheim’s revitalization extends far beyond Disneyland). Irrespective of that, the Harbor Boulevard entrance is the worst “approach” to any Disney theme park worldwide. Controlling the guest experience from the point of parking until the point of departure presents an opportunity for Disney.
I really hope Disney avails itself of this opportunity, creating a welcoming arrival experience with striking visuals and nice little touches–a sense of place befitting of Disneyland. They’ve done a great job in both Hong Kong and Shanghai with making its public spaces open and inviting, and those same principles could be applied in California.
The Eastern Gateway doesn’t need to be some grandiose spectacle of theming–it just needs to be a precursor of the fun to come. Building anticipation, instead of the dread of delays with parking and going through security. I’m really looking forward to the Eastern Gateway–I just wish it were beginning construction in a few months, as opposed to in Fall 2026. That’s a long time to wait for a much-needed new arrival experience!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think about the Eastern Gateway finally being built at Disneyland Resort? Excited and optimistic about this news? Think this lays the groundwork for the Pandora and Coco expansion plans? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!