Today, i found in my Disney "archives" a press kit that was sent to me in 1996 by the Disneyland press office. It's a presentation of the "future" Disneyland Resort and what was going to be, some years later, Disney's California Adventure.
Everything is there, the Entrance, the Animation building, Soarin', the Grizzly raft ride, the Grand Californian hotel, etc...but if we have a close look to the renderings, nothing look like what we know. It's a Disney's California Adventure that never was!
Let's have a look first at the rendering on the cover of this six-pages brochure. It is supposed to be the entrance of the park. The monorail is still passing through, but no Golden Gate, etc...And this giant golden spire was supposed to be the icon of the park, just like Sleeping Beauty castle can be for Disneyland.
Now, if this giant spire looks familiar to you, dear readers, it's normal. You just saw it four days ago in my Westcot article - see the Westcot rendering below - and this spire was probably one of the rare reminiscence of the Westcot project in this early DCA concept-art.
But all is not lost in this "entrance" rendering. If we have a look at this picture of the model of DCA future new entrance, we can see that, here too, there is some reminiscence of this first DCA entrance concept-art. But the giant spire has disappeared forever.
The next page of the brochure was introducing the new Disneyland Resort, and i suggest you to double-click on the image to read the text.
As we are going to see, the next page is very interesting, too...
The Art of animation building looks totally different than the one we know...
And it's the same for the Soarin building, very different, too.
Even more interesting are these two renderings. Not only the Grizzly rafts don't look like the one show here, but we are still waiting for an "abc" attraction!
The master plan on the next page may look familiar...
But if you have a close look to the DCA section, you will notice that big changes were done in the final version, beginning by the water canals...
Next page is interesting, too. The buildings on the rendering with the monorail were never built, and even the Grand Californian hotel had a different architecture.
The last page who show the redesign of Walnut Street and Katella Blvd is may be the most accurate with the final result, though...
We know the rest of the story, and how DCA finally had a totally different look, but i thought it was interesting to share with you this first vision of the park. We are now all waiting for the third "vision", and hopefully, this time, it will be the right one!
Artwork and brochure: copyright Disney
