It’s the middle of August but the DLP Report team is not on holiday. We’re excited to take you inside the upcoming Lion King themed land at Disneyland Paris, now in the initial phases of construction. Through Disney’s filings, let’s take a closure look at “Project Sun”!
The Land
The Lion King themed land will fit closely next to Avengers Campus with its main entrance directly on Adventure Bay. While it’s billed as a land, the show stopper will be the Lion King Attraction.
In this 3D rendering (which – disclaimer – only shows the bare minimum to get the construction approved), we can see the break between the Adventure Bay pavers and the “earthy” Lion King Land grounds.
As you can see in the blueprints above, the show building will be absolutely massive. With a 13,755m2 total size and 11,143m2 of gross floor space (including the queue and the shop), this will be the biggest show building at the Resort and will take about half the pad allocated to the project.
From entering the land, it looks like the Imagineers will go for a slower reveal to minimize the impact of the massive building.
The land will also feature some amenities: a quick service restaurant, restrooms, meet and greet locations.
Zooming out to the entirety of Disney Adventure World, it’s clear that while the land is a good size, there’s still room for almost two more next to it before we reach World Of Frozen! In all likeliness, Disney may (one day?) fit one more land in this expansion pad but it’s good to know the space is being used sparingly to maximize expansion options.
Lion King Attraction & Shop
With such a massive show building, there’s going to be a lot of theming and covering – go away green for the entire back metallic facade, metal wire rock work in beige color of course, beige painted concrete and artificial plants that will ensure the show building looks the same year-long. Artificial thatched roofs will be used for the lower parts like the entrance and outdoor queue. The building will also feature an opening for the drop.
From the Guest facing areas, rendering show the extent of the rock work and the design of the entrance.
The 299m2 shop, which will most likely be the Attraction’s exit, looks fully integrated into this side of the rock work.
Taking about the drop, while the blueprints released don’t show the details of the Attraction’s layout, they do show the water flume drop.
Plans also reveal that the Attraction will have a dual load system which should make it very high capacity overall. Overall the show building will be 23 meters tall, with Pride Rock towering at a whopping 37 meters!
Amenities
The Lion King themed land will feature a new 63m2 quick service restaurant with a covered terrace.
The huge terrace will bring the total size of the F&B area to 307m2. Hopefully the food options will be interesting – but not holding my breath.
What would be a mini land without restrooms? Even with these simple 3D renderings it looks like these will be well themed.
They’ll also include a family room.
What’s Next
As part of the filing, Disney included this photo of the expansion pad.
Quite a bit has happened since then, including some land clearing and height measurement.
In another backstage area, this structure is being built to test the drop that will be featured on the Attraction.
And if you’d like to explore photos and an exclusive interactive 3D rendering of the Lion King themed land model – that was only exhibited last year at D23, check out our special feature RIGHT HERE
