Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Did Walt Disney Imagineering planned to build an Epcot center AND a monorail at Disneyland Paris ?



If you ask almost anybody working at DLP, they will probaly tell you that, no, the addition of a monorail or an Epcot theme park was never planned for the Disney Paris resort. Never.

Hmmm...may be, but every DLP fan knows that the land for a third theme park exist in front of the Newport Bay and Sequoia Lodge Hotels. In the last 15 years, nothing was built on it, and nothing will be, except, precisely, a third theme park or, eventually, the famous "Lava Lagoon" water park.

Except, that ONE rendering exist, a very rare one, in fact the only one that i ever saw showing both a monorail AND an Epcot "Spaceship Earth" icon.



If you look well at the artwork, you will see the facade of the Newport Bay Hotel, and in the background the one of the Disneyland Paris Hotel. But the silver silhouette of the Epcot icon is located exactly in that piece of land i was talking about, in front of the Newport Bay.

So, may be DLP will never have for real an Epcot theme park, and even more certainly no monorail, but one thing is sure: somebody at WDI, many years ago, did think about it.

Artwork: copyright Disney Enterprises Inc

I want to thank the excellent Webcot web site who gently provided me the artwork.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

The contract with the French Government states that Epcot and the Lava Lagoon Water Park should be finished before 1017 (9 years from now). So Disney has no other choice other than builing the EPCOT as soon as possible.

Alain Littaye said...

I am not sure that the contract with the french government specify that it must be an Epcot theme park. I think that the contract talk about a third theme park, but not an "Epcot" park.

Anonymous said...

there is an other artwork on wich we can see an another place for a 3rd theme parc and wath looks like a monorail line...

Anonymous said...

here it is :



http://img526.imageshack.us/my.php?image=thirdgatejs6.jpg

Anonymous said...

Google Maps often shows stuff that isn't there yet...

If you look at this picture:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=48.839992,2.822864&spn=0.006539,0.019312&t=h&z=16

That's the exit on the A4 which leads directly to the park.

You can see that there are some new exits planned to a road to nowhere, called "Route Rurale", precisely there were the "3rd gate" in the picture above is supposed to be.

So, what could this be?

1) Some mystical Google Error?Vvery unlikely.
2) A new access road connecting to the N36 and beyond? Unfortunately, this seems the most likely, since there seems to be no connection between the A4 to Paris and this new "Route Rurale".
3) Some new developments like new partner hotels, etc.?
4) What we all would hope: A high capacity access road to a large parking structure for a real 3rd gate?