A Fresh Look at Port Disney

In an attempt to get the City of Anaheim to make concessions for their desired expansion of the Disneyland Resort, the suits at The Walt Disney Company pitted the city in direct competition to neighboring Long Beach.
 

An ambitious plan.

A lively waterfront.

The proposed project, Port Disney, would include the Queen Mary, new resort hotels, a series of waterside shops and dining, and the centerpiece crowd drawing Disney Sea theme park. 

The elegance of California Disney style.

The Grand Entry would form the gateway to all of the attractions set along that beautiful Southern California marina. Having seen the site several times over the decades, I can tell you that Anaheim had quite a competitor on its hands!

Tokyo here we come!

If you've been watching Disney+ and you're a fan of those world famous theme parks, you've no doubt been following their wonderful The Imagineering Story. In the most recent episode, Hits and Misses, folks in the know are pretty candid about the divisions within Imagineering and how some were working on the clumsy and inexpensive California Adventure 1.0 - a replacement for the much more expensive and Disney quality WESTCOT- while others were blessed with the opportunity to design a modern masterpiece, Tokyo Disnesea. 

Oh what could have been!

As we know, Anaheim ponied up the cash, and Disney pulled a big time bait and switch. Giving their host city California Adventure in place of WESTCOT was a mistake of epic proportions! (Check out this mega-post with some pretty rare concept art.) The end result of it all being a theme park that was very embarrassing and the brunt of well-deserved jokes, city government than was more than angry, and most importantly to The Walt Disney Company, storehouses of lost cash and a very badly bruised reputation. And having to reinvent the second Anaheim park at an expense that could have been avoided had they done it right the first time.

The Disney Sea concept made it in revised form to all the way to Japan. With the wisdom and financial backing of the Oriental Land Company, Tokyo Disneysea became the gold standard of Disney theme parks, holding a crown that seemingly cannot be taken. Not by California, not by Florida, and not by the overseas parks.

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Want to read more about what was ultimately planned for Long Beach? Thanks to my friends at WDWMagic, you can go here and read the preliminary master plan, where you'll find the images of the project. If you want an insider's view of it all, Alain Littaye from Disney and More pointed me to this incredible post from Progress City. What a find! Hadn't seen that...

(Art and images copyright The Walt Disney Company.)