In 1955 Walt Disney created Disneyland, a unique park with a story telling aspect. one of the most unique things Walt brought to life was the hub and spoke design. It’s said he wanted just one way into each land and one way out so people wouldn’t get lost, well we all know that didn’t last more than a handful of years at Disneyland but the hub and spoke concept has been the base design for all Magic Kingdom parks built to date. As the MK style parks started to grow so did expansions on the design, Tokyo Disneyland added the first “secondary walkways” helping you cut to Adventureland and Tomorrowland from Main St. USA and Disneyland Paris took one of the biggest leaps in adding the arcade walk-thrus along the back of the shops on Main St USA there to help with the traffic flow.
In the past 2 decades, fireworks displays in the parks have moved from something you just stopped and watched to something people camp out for which has caused the folks in the Parks to have to reevaluate “guest control.” Disneyland has moved to the roundabout traffic pattern for their hub which works as well as possible with the smaller space, but WDW was designed to be “bigger and better” with bridges spanning out from the hub to each of the lands and lush gardens…but not a lot of extra room for what would come some 30 years later in the form of firework extravaganzas!
Over the past few months frequent visitors to the Magic Kingdom starting seeing planters that have been around for decades disappearing and marker flags showing up in the grass areas around the hub. Those along with rumors of a Paris arcade walkway being talked about started adding up to the hopes of big things coming in the future. Well those big things weren’t in the form of a show or new fireworks as of yet, but Disneyparks.com did share with us the exciting news of a expanded hub to be complete in 2015.
Just a day after the news broke you can see not only green boxes have gone up, work on electric and water pipes, but the moat was drained, and the Swan Boat dock is closed off and soon to be removed. While this is just the first day of work and it may seem like it shouldn’t take a year to complete, remember they are about to expand over some of the waterways and have to level out a lot of the areas to accommodate the new expanded hub.
