Unrealized Dreams Week: Disney’s Newport Unadventure

The Disney Vacation Club is Disney’s version of a timeshare program. It was started in Florida as a way for the company to quickly finance hotels after it realized that demand far outstripped its supply of rooms. In 2010, the Disney Vacation Club finally opened its first West Coast operation at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel.

Offering wondrous views of Disney California Adventure, the exclusive rooms were an instant hit with Disney guests, quickly selling out.

The hotel wing wasn’t originally supposed to be Disney Vacation Club’s first west coast location. In the mid 1990’s, Disney had announced that its first west coast DVC Hotel would be Disney’s Newport Coast Hotel, located on a scenic cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Newport Beach.

It would have been a marvelous property located just a few miles south of DISNEYLAND. Despite its planned proximity to DISNEYLAND, the company considered it to be a freestanding Resort, the third such resort built after Disney’s Vero Beach and Disney’s Hilton Head resorts. The two freestanding resorts proved to be difficult to sell. The company had to offer discounts and heavily promote the fact that ownership points purchased at the two locations could be used for stays at DISNEYLAND and Walt Disney World resorts. Despite Newport Beach’s nicer location and premium views, Disney grew skittish about opening up freestanding resorts. The Newport Beach property was sold to Marriott Hotels, who opened up Marriott’s Newport Coast Hotel.

Unrealized Dreams Week: Theme Park Thursdays

Over the years, Walt Disney and his imagineers have had many dreams. Most of those dreams never made the leap from drawing board to reality. Nowadays, DISNEYLAND typically tries to keep a lid on its future plans, though occasionally word of a future project slips out. By the time the park puts up a sign announcing a project inside the theme park, it is usually because the project has already been approved and broken ground. That wasn’t always the case.

Guests who purchased souvenir maps in the late 1950’s saw plans for “Liberty Street”, an entirely new land that would be built between Main Street and Tomorrowland. Of course, the project was never built for various reasons, but one could forgive Disney for inserting an unapproved future project on a souvenir map, right? Certainly they wouldn’t promote such a thing inside the park, right? Well they totally did.

Unrealized Dreams Week: Walt Wednesdays

The big project that excited Walt Disney the most in the mid-1960’s was his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow- EPCOT. EPCOT was not a theme park or a normal subdivision- it was supposed to be a real, living city. “Disneyland East”, as he called it, would be a copy of his original DISNEYLAND, used as a “weenie” to attract East Coast residents to Florida so that he could show them EPCOT.

Sadly, Mr. Disney’s EPCOT would never get built. His brother Roy was never a fan of the project and it was the first thing Roy canceled after Walt’s death. “Walt Disney World” would be built to Roy’s specifications, not Walt’s.

EPCOT would be forgotten by the company, but not the guests. Guests were constantly barraging guest services at Florida’s Magic Kingdom Park with complaints about the absence of EPCOT. Luckily for the company, people never really understood that EPCOT was supposed to be a real city, not a theme park. Company management told Imagineering to drop whatever it was doing and come up with something that could be passed off as “Epcot”. Eventually two separate theme park ideas- Future World and World Showcase were combined to create Epcot Center. Sadly, Walt Disney’s dream of EPCOT would never come to pass.

Unrealized Dreams Week: Toontown Tuesdays

Walt Disney Productions has always employed extremely creative people. Walt Disney used to let his animators and staff use company time to engage in their own creative pursuits. Even if they didn’t produce something that was used in a film, Walt felt that it would keep creativity flowing in his studio. Occasionally, it might lead to an actual project. One such brainstorming session led to possibly bringing Don Quixote to the big screen. The classic book, written by Cervantes, was seen as a perfect followup to Pinocchio.

While extensive character designs were drawn up and a script written, World War II intervened and the project was one of the casualties. It was brought back later in the early 1950’s, though it was envisioned as a smaller budgeted film with reduced animation. Even this project eventually got scrapped due to another project known as DISNEYLAND. Could a Disney version of Don Quixote ever make it to the big screen? The Little Mermaid, which was released in 1989 had originally been proposed in 1939- as a follow-up to Snow White.

Unrealized Dreams Week: Mickey Mondays

Walt Disney always had a soft spot for his greatest creation- Mickey Mouse. Many people who knew Mr. Disney personally have stated that Mickey’s boundless energy and positivity was definitely inherited from Walt himself. When Donald Duck began to steal Mickey’s thunder, Walt sought to find larger scale projects that he could use to reignite the mouse’s career. Various proposals came and went and even continued long after Walt passed away. After the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Walt Disney Company sought out projects that could further expose its classic characters to younger audiences in new projects. One such project was Swabbies.

Swabbies was supposed to feature Mickey, Donald and Goofy joining the Navy. An odd choice, considering that this was supposed to appeal to younger children. Our heroes go to basic training, working under an exasperated Pete. Along the way, they meet their female counterparts- Minnie, Daisy and Clarabelle. The film was supposed to end with a tense stand-off with the Beagle Boys, who would be portraying vaguely Russian characters. 

Production began in the late 1980’s with the film targeting a 1989 release. The film would not use the more advanced animation, so it was seen as being something that could get a fairly quick release. For various reasons it fell by the wayside and never got completed despite being fully recorded and storyboarded. The film’s production got so far along that it could probably still get an eventual release.