When is Walt Disney World going to get a fifth theme park?
It’s an innocent question asked so frequently that diehard Disney parks fans may respond only with an exasperated sigh. Followed, perhaps, by a well-practiced stump speech on why such an expansion doesn’t make sense.
On its face, the question is far from ridiculous. Disney World crowds keep getting bigger, Orlando keeps attracting more tourists and if Universal is building its third theme park, why shouldn’t Disney respond by adding another?
Disney World hasn’t added a new theme park since the 1998 opening of Animal Kingdom, but that may be the best illustration of why further expansion isn’t warranted.
According to Len Testa, founder and president of Touring Plans, a popular subscription service that performs statistical analysis on crowds at Disney parks, Animal Kingdom succeeded in getting Disney World guests to extend their on-site vacations.
But it also drew visitors away from the existing parks; Animal Kingdom welcomed around 8 million guests in its first full year of operation, Testa said, while the other parks saw attendance drops between 3 percent (Magic Kingdom) to 8 percent (Disney’s Hollywood Studios) that year.
“I don’t see a good reason for Disney building a fifth park,” Testa told Orlando Rising. “It’d cannibalize money and ideas from the other four parks. It’s just not going to happen.”
Hypothetically, if Disney opened a fifth park in Central Florida, Testa thinks the average length of an on-site stay may increase while attendance would again drop at the other parks. Even that level of success isn’t a given, because as Testa points out, Americans only have so many vacation days — and may not be willing to spend more of them at Disney.
Arguments in favor of a fifth park do get one detail right: Disney World has to expand to meet increasing demand. The massive amount of infrastructure needed to build another park, however, make it one of the slowest and most expensive solutions to Disney’s capacity issues.
“I don’t think Disney sees much value in building another park until they get all the other parks expanded in Florida,” Bill Zanetti, a founding member of the University of Central Florida’s Entertainment Management Advisory Board, told Orlando Rising. “The focus right now is clearly on Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot, with Magic Kingdom not far behind.”
Disney fan sites have said that the fifth park was coming before, such as when WDWNT reported in Oct. 2014 that the new park would be opening by 2021 near the Flamingo Crossings development.
Speculation ramped up again when Disney announced it would unveil a “secret project” at the 2019 D23 Expo during a one-hour presentation. Could this be the Mouse’s opportunity to steal Universal’s thunder and announce its next theme park?
But again, it was only wishful thinking. The secret reveal was only a documentary about Disney employees for Disney+ called “One Day at Disney.”
The truth is there’s little to support the idea that a fifth park is in the works — beyond fans’ assumption that Disney needs to unveil something big following the Epic Universe reveal.
If Disney does decide to expand in Central Florida, those plans are likely far off into the future — not something thrown together quickly for the sake of a quick public relations-driven bump.
“They will continue to advance their attendance and their guests’ experience through capital expenditures like Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge,” said Dennis Speigel, president of the consulting firm International Theme Park Services. “I can tell you that they’re already 10 years out in their capital planning for their attractions.”
This story is an updated version of one originally published in August 2019.