Abandoned - Disney's America

what's up guys my name is Jake welcome to abandoned episode 18 this is the show where we talk about some of the coolest abandoned places in the world so the Walt Disney Company has always had ideas that just haven't followed through these were big projects that just never saw the light of day a few examples could be port Disney where the Queen Mary is currently docked or the riverfront square planned to be in st. Louis but there's always been one planned theme park that was super close to actually becoming reality and that's Disney's America so the park was planned on a very key point in Disney's history and it was developed by Disney's then CEO Michael Eisner in order to tell the story we need to go back a bit after Walt Disney died in 1966 the company had been declining in most aspects many actually don't know that the Disney Company was in real risk of being broken up and sold off to other companies so the Disney Company brought in an outsider to lead the CEO of Paramount Pictures Michael Eisner love him or hate him he kinda did save the entire company so when Michael came in the door he announced a huge revamp of well actually the entire company so they began to pump out classic movies such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid in the late 80s Michael also began to expand the company with film sub situating Wood pictures with arachnophobia being one of the first non family-friendly films the company had distributed Eisner also purchased ABC and ESPN during this time as for the parks Michael had a pretty ambitious idea as to what he wanted to do he wanted to rapidly expand all of Disney's theme parks see Eisner was kind of a competitive guy and there's actually even stories of Michael allegedly driving over to where Universal Studios Florida was being built and just standing outside the fence and just looking at the construction of the so Michael wanted to expand the parks which meant the construction of brand-new parks so with all the announcements of the new attractions in the American parks Eisner announced Euro Disney Resort a park to be placed in Paris and obviously now this park is called Disneyland Paris so as Euro Disney Resort opened in 1992 the Disney Company announced something brand-new that no one really saw coming in November of 1993 the Walt Disney Company announced they would be building a theme park in Virginia called Disney's America the idea for this actually came from the impending failure of Euro Disney Resort around two years before the parks opening Eisner knew the park would open with huge amounts of debt so the idea began to be passed around instead of building this huge Disneyland Resort they just built a smaller regional park in the United States one of the largest tourist heavy cities in the country is Washington DC early into the planning of this it really was just a small idea they had what they later learned was that the company Exxon had a massive chunk of land in Virginia and was planning to build a subdivision on it the only thing was that the housing market completely collapsed this caused Disney and especially Michael Eisner to become very interested in this land the idea for the park was actually very different from what they had done in the past so with the announcement of the park details came out publicly and honestly the park sounds pretty cool now I won't go over everything but I will highlight some of the coolest things now with this park unlike others it wouldn't start on a Main Street guests would enter at something called crossroads USA which would be set at the years 1800 1850 it would start this way so as you travel through the park you would be traveling through key parts of American history which is stupidly clever now one of the most interesting things to me as the themed facade buildings down the streets would have shops and such on the first floor on the second and third floor would actually be filled with hotel rooms which really is different and would allow guests to actually stay inside the park like most Disney parks it would feature several distinct themed areas these would all build off of Crossroads USA one of these being a full-size recreation of a civil war fort that would feature a 360 circle vision inside adjacent to the area would feature an authentic battlefield in which reenactments of the Civil War would actually take place others included a classic American theme park and something called victory field a full recreation of a world war 2 airfield complete with full-scale war era aircrafts and hangars this area would also feature a simulator like ride that would take guests on American military flight this ride actually later on became Sauron at Epcot California venture and Disneyland Shanghai and eventually Disney Sea in 2019 the park would also housed several sound stages and studios with the idea of holding Presidential Debates in them which is a really intriguing idea see Michael was really passionate about the idea behind this park the mindset was that since the park was so close to Washington DC it would act as a tourist hub guests would spend two or three nights at the resort and then take a Disney bus down to the actual real tourist destinations in DC the resort was also set to have a 27 hole golf course 300 campsites and a Downtown Disney like area the only planned hotel to be built on the site was a civil war-era Lodge similar to Walt Disney World wilderness lodge so with Michael and the company looking forward to this interesting and unique Park what happened well actually people didn't take it too well specifically people who live in Virginia actually lots of people in the area began to show great opposition to the plan park with people and worried that the resort would ruin the local environment the claim was that the Disney park would bring in heavy traffic and urbanize the entire area others claimed that the park would pull revenue away from other nonprofit tourist attractions the planned site was also only a few miles away from a National Battlefield Park where over 300,000 soldiers died and of course people had problems with this the backlash didn't stop here though in spring of 1994 award-winning historian David McCullough formed a group directly to oppose the project more criticism came in to even opposing the name Disney and chosen for the park claiming that Disney was trying to corporatize the country as thousands of people came out to protest the park it was time for Disney and especially Michael Eisner to reevaluate their decision so while looking over the facts with all the public opposition the eight month operating schedule and the legitimate finances they made the decision to instead focus 100% on history they'd redevelop the park into something different what they came up with was Disney's American celebration this version would focus more on the fun aspects of America rather than the actual history now not too much is known about this version however it would feature more of the entertainment side of America such as Coney Island and a full-size recreation of New York's of its field the new idea for the company only lasted six weeks when Michael Eisner finally decided to give up on the Virginia Park so on September 28 1994 Michael Eisner officially announced the Disney Company would be abandoning its plans to build a park in Virginia however Michael did say a good idea like this will never die see the thing was Disney was canceling a lot of the projects they had previously announced in the early 90s Disney's America was just one of them this site is in the process of turning into Sunset Boulevard the legendary Hollywood theater district will feature the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Rock you thirteen stories straight down through the fifth dimension right into your own episode of The Twilight Zone across the lot you'll be able to take a wild trip on the toontown transit a runaway bus that hurtles through the cartoon streets of toontown over at Epcot Center the Imagineers are hard at work on a space pavilion for and a new Russia pavilion for World Showcase plus a thrilling ride through Mount Fuji at the Japan showcase in the early 90s Eisner wanted Disneyland to become more of a resort destination and in order to do that they would need to begin seriously looking into building a second theme park the idea they came up with was Westcott now Westcott deserves its own separate episode but to put it shortly it was Disney's version of Epcot on the west coast and hence the name Westcott okay you get it the park itself looked absolutely incredible however with its three billion dollar price tag the project was scrapped four years after was announced so with Disney still looking to build a second theme park in California Disney's America was given some life again when nearby Knott's Berry Farms went up for sale one of the key drawings for the company was that the park had a full-size recreation of Independence Hall so the idea was that Disney would buy this park and turn it into what Disney's America could have been however the Knotts family didn't feel too keen on the idea of Disney coming in and changing huge portions of the park this along with other problems with distance killed Disney's America for good actually after Knotts declined Disney's offer they got into some really bad financial situations and actually had to sell the park to Cedar Fair we all know how I feel about Cedar Fair so later on in 1998 it was announced that Disney finally decided on what they should do with Disney Land ii park and what we got well was the lackluster Disney's California Adventure however in 2009 Disney actually bought a 15 acre parcel of land in the National Harbor this morning news of a big economic boost it looks like Disney is coming to the Washington area the Walt Disney Company just bought 15 acres of land at the National Harbor but we do know that Disney has purchased this parcel of land we're standing on here at the National Harbor and they do plan to build the National Harbor on the banks of the Potomac River in Prince George's County has six hotels a convention center plenty of shops and restaurants and now developers are hoping to offer a new Disney Resort Hotel this will not be a theme park we want to be clear about that but a standalone Hotel Resort Disney purchased this 15 acre parcel for 11 million dollars spokesmen say they have a lot to consider in coming months and years before designing exactly when they're going to break ground but we're told that both Prince George's County and developers here at the National Harbor have been working on this deal for years and are very excited about the purchase Disney says that whatever they built here it will definitely leave the Disney footprint in the Washington area the idea was to build a 500 room dvc Resort and reuse the bus idea we talked about earlier from Disney's America however Disney became worried about the project and developers moved on without Disney so of course it never happened so what happened to the land and all the concepts Disney had for the park well as for the land in Virginia it was sold to a residential building company and built a large Golf Course community it really would be cool living there just knowing what could have been on that land plus the houses are nice I'm expensive but pretty nice as for the right concepts like I said before the Soron attraction is now being used in three Disney parks another attraction that was reused is the Lewis and Clark expedition a raft like ride that later on became grizzly River Run which can be found in Disney's California Adventure so it's kind of hard to say what will actually happen with this idea Michael Eisner was replaced by Disney's new and current CEO Bob Iger in 2005 so it's kind of hard to say if the persistence of Disney's America theme park is still with the company however like most imagine or say a good idea never dies and Disney's America is currently shelved so when Disney is ready to build a third North American theme park there's a good chance it might be Disney's American anyway guys my name is Jake follow us on Instagram Twitter and snapchat and thank you very much for you

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 2,051,701

Rating: 4.8855648 out of 5

Keywords: Abanadoned, Target, Disney, Disney Park, Abandoned Disney, River Country, Disneys America, America, Virginia, Washington, Abandoned by Disney, michael eisner, Disney creepy, history, abandoned concept, concept, scrapped, abandoned theme park, abandoned attraction, abandoned disney park, urbex, exploring, bright sun films, theme park, california, Walt Disney, Disney World, Walt Disney World, creepy abandoned story, disney theme park abandoned, old theme park, Disney's American theme park

Id: M6MlVDBSmR8

Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/i_Hate_us]

i actually thought they did build the park and stopped halfway and now they're going to explore the abandoned site.

[u/shutitmate]

The commentary is almost an exact word for word reading of the relevant Wikipedia pages

[u/mrchlee]

The irony of the protests about the park bringing a ton of traffic to Virginia is that, NoVa is a damn parking lot. Even on weekends there is somehow still traffic. Fuck NoVa

[u/appleflaxen]

is a building that's never built really "abandoned"? title should be "cancelled".

[u/STRIKA47]

Awe man I live in Gainesville, the area is really nice now but when this was planned the area was practically nothing. A steel mill and a few restaurants, of course that steel mill is gone now and there is a lot of development happening in the area. It would be interesting to see how this area would've turned out had the park been built. Property here would probably be just as expensive as it is now, if you've seen the house prices out here even a townhouse can run you 500k. But overall very interesting to hear what could have been in the area where I happen to live now.

[u/DeeDeeInDC]

This guy has a good series, but he's such a spaz. Half of his vids are unwatchable because he refuses to write a script or get someone to edit his script. The videos look clean but his narration is ruined by odd choice of word placement, most noticeably too many similar words back to back. In this vid he says the word "company" like eight times in 14 seconds. He just keeps saying it like he has no other way to get around it. From there he says "parks" over and over again. Just bad writing.

[u/stravant]

Sounds a lot like Fort Edmonton Park.

[u/[deleted]]

These videos are so much better now that he can form a coherent sentence

[u/[deleted]]

Have a Google for Freedomland, USA which I had the opportunity to visit in 1962.