The Season for Rumors

Update: For archival purposes — Please note the following post was made as an April Fools Joke.

Following up on some of the rumors I’ve been posting lately, I have the biggest one yet just for today. I have heard from multiple sources that Walt Disney World President Meg Crofton will shortly be announcing that Disney has already broken ground on a fifth gate. Keeping with the resort’s desire to have guests spend all their vacation on Disney Property, this new park will target SeaWorld’s visitor base.

The new park will be called ‘DisneySeas’, and will be based largely on the Tokyo DisneySea park, but this time with a healthy dose of marine life shows. There are already big water tanks backstage at Disney’s Animal Kingdom where Disney is training dolphins, killer whales, and other marine life for the Disney quality shows that will become the focus for the new park.

The Fifth Gate location will be on the 120 acres directly adjacent to the Magic Kingdom and across the Lagoon from Wilderness Lodge. The recent construction at the Contemporary is to help handle the expected increased hotel capacity the new resort will bring. The location also takes advantage of the monorail line. Construction on a new monorail station right overhead the existing bus station has already begun. A people mover will carry guests from the station to the DisneySeas entrance. The current parking lots will be slowly converted to multi-story garages with moving walkways similar to Universal Orlando. Capacity will be approximately double the current parking lots, with space left over for expanded ticket book and transportation center (with shops and dining).

A few guests have emailed me and reported seeing ‘sight-line’ balloons rising from the area adjacent to the Magic Kingdom recently. This also confirms the rumor, so Disney must have decided the time was right to make the announcement.

Expect this new park to open exactly three years from now on April 1st, 2010.