Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the “wildest ride in the wilderness,” sits at one edge of Disney World’s Magic Kingdom park, the most visited theme park in the world.
But park visitors can one day expect to see much more beyond that wilderness at the iconic park in Central Florida – something more ambitious than just a ride overhaul or a retheming.
“It’s probably the largest expansion ever at Magic Kingdom,” Michael Hundgen, Walt Disney World site portfolio executive, said Tuesday during a rare media event previewing new Disney attraction designs and technology at its Walt Disney Imagineering facility in California.
He said the expansion will be about the size of Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, which occupies about 14 acres. A Disney team is currently on research trips and going through concept design for this expansion area.
Hundgen did not say what themes or stories would exist there – or when this project would be completed.
Disney’s 10-year investment plan
The Magic Kingdom expansion is one part of a $60 billion investment Disney has said it’s planning for its parks, cruises and experiences over the next decade.
To show how the investment could be used, Disney invited CNN, along with a group of about a dozen other media outlets, on Tuesday to see projects in the works at Walt Disney Imagineering, including new technology in the research and development phase.
Disney CEO Bob Iger, who returned to his role in November 2022 only two and a half years after leaving the company, said Tuesday: “As I looked at the returns on the invested capital that we made in this business over the 15 years prior to my coming back, it was extraordinarily compelling. We should allocate in a direction where we had great returns.”
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