Why There Should be a Third Disney Theme Park Resort in the USA

Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort keep raising their prices.

People keep showing up.

"Supply and demand" means that The Walt Disney Company can keep raising prices. And they will. Even with slightly lower attendance (due to caps and requiring reservations) than their peak, they are making more money due to things like "Lightning Lane."

Making more money while having to serve fewer customers sounds great.

But there's a catch.

The fewer children, especially ages about six or seven through twelve, who have memorable visits or vacations to a Disney theme park or theme park resort, the fewer adults, including parents and grandparents, there will be in the future who have a special place in their heart for these venues, or the Disney name in general. 

These trips cost a lot of money. A lot. It's a hassle for parents. A significant motivator for the parents and grandparents of today to spend that money and go through that effort is that they remember visits from their childhood.

This is why it would benefit The Walt Disney Company to build a third theme park resort in the USA. It will allow more people to visit a Disney theme park, form those special memories, and grow up to be "Disney adults," or, at least, adults who want to take their own children to a Disney park, on a Disney cruise, buy Disney merchandise, and consume Disney media. 

The USA is overdue for a third Disney theme park resort. The original Disneyland opened in 1955. Walt Disney World opened in 1971. The population of the USA has grown significantly since then, and while the original Anaheim location now has a second park and Walt Disney World has four (plus two water parks), that's not enough. There needs to be a third Disney "castle park" in the USA. China got two in relatively recently history.  Japan got one in in 1983 (albeit financed, owned, and operated by another company), and France got one in 1992.

A new development in the USA would make money. So why hasn't it happened? Because it takes billions of dollars and a lot of work. Getting suitable land, getting the necessary approvals, getting participants, financing the project, designing and engineering,  building, then staffing and operating such a massive venue takes a lot of work. Like so much of corporate America, the people making these decisions don't expect to be in the same position in five years. They think there is a good chance they'll be working for another company in five years. So why would they care that fifteen or twenty years from now fewer people will feel motivated to go to a Disney theme park? In the mean time, they can keep raising prices at the existing venues. Even new capital investments at the existing locations are easier than building a whole new resort. 

I wish The Walt Disney Company would go ahead and do it. The existing venues only have so much capacity, and that itself is limiting how many children get to visit, and the rising prices because of that limited supply is further limiting how many children get to visit, and thus reducing the future adults who'll have an emotional, sentimental, nostalgic connection to a Disney theme park visit.

I could write extensively on what this Third American Disney Resort should look like, but I'm not going to do that in this post, other than to say yes, it should be a "castle park." Those are the most popular. Disneyland Park gets more people than its companion park, Disney California Adventure, and the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World gets more people than visit the other three theme parks there. However, what a new "castle park" actually looks like can end up being very different the the first two the Company ever built. In addition, I'd think it would be a good idea for the Company to have another location for animals than "just" their Animal Kingdom park at Walt Disney World. 

Taking available land, population, business climate, and weather into consideration, along with where Disneyland and Walt Disney World are, I'd think the best location would be somewhere in Texas.

Even if the project were undertaken now, it would be many years before it would open.

So get on it, Disney!