A friend living in Austin recently mentioned that Disney has purchase a lot of acreage to the (IIRC) southeast of Austin/northwest of Houston. Another friend who used to live in that area said that for years she heard rumors that Disney was going to buy up all the extra land and open…something.
Well, apparently, the land has been purchased, as the first friend now sees property signs with the Disney logo on it. My mother, who works for Disney and loves it has heard nothing at all, but if Disney were to open something in Texas, she would transfer in a heartbeat.
Okay, but that’s talking about San Antonio, and the area there, where I lived for nearly twenty years growing up and never heard any rumors.
I’m talking about roughly 100 miles northwest of Houston, where a friend has seen property that changed hands from some other commercial company to Disney. Not enough for a theme park, but possibly enough for some other business venture.
Have you seen the signs? If they were actually Disney signs, chances are there’d be SOME mention SOMEWHERE, but I couldn’t find a thing other than the aforementioned rumors. My guess is that the signs have a logo SIMILAR to that of Disney’s…either that or someone’s playing a practical joke to fuel the rumors.
I live in the area in question and I have not seen any signs with the Disney logo. In my town, such a thing would be HUGE news. I first heard rumors about Disney building out this way several years ago. I spoke to a friend, who is the mayor of a nearby city, and he says that it’s a long-running rumor.
The way I heard the rumor was that Disney insists on a ten-lane freeway running to their properties. Therefore, the Katy Freeway (I-10 West) has been extensively upgraded. The Katy has undergone (and is undergoing) an enormous makeover that has made a very large freeway even larger. However, no Disney park.
I don’t want to give away my exact location, but I am well within the area between Austin and Houston and a Disney attraction around here would be noticed. I have friends in the local real estate business and they haven’t heard of anything.
If there were a mouse in the house, I feel certain that my town would have a bit of buzz about it. Beyond the odd rumor, especially regarding Katy Freeway, there is nothing.
Disney would utterly transform the area. I am curious what the people of Anaheim and Orlando think of what Disney has done to their once small towns. Some of the urban sprawl would have come anyway, but do they have regrets about the mouse running loose?
Just for the record, there is no ten lane freeway (or roadway of any kind) running to Walt Disney World (the one in Orlando). There are a couple of eight-lane sections of I-4, but not ten (except a section of about 1000 feet around 17-92, which is at least six exits away).
As to the second question, people here complain about tourists constantly, but aside from those who work in agriculture or aerospace, without Disney they wouldn’t be here anyway.
I have not seen the signs. A friend of mine, whom I have known for twenty-one years, saw them while she was on the road for work. Her job requires her to put in hundreds of miles of travel every month. She would know the difference between the Disney logo and a spoof. If it’s a practical joke, then it’s one with a lot of prep work to it.
I don’t believe it’s a theme park. I’m wondering if it’s maybe a smaller-ish resort or possibly one of Disney’s side businesses. There’s an animation studio in Florida that isn’t connected to Disney World.
If Disney is doing something, they are in the bare beginning stages of development, having just purchased land. It would, of course, be years before anything was there. But there’s a difference between a couple of years until a business park or an outlet store is opened and the five to ten years needed to get a resort going.
The only Walt Disney Animation studio in Lake Buena Vista was the one at the Disney-MGM Studios from 1989 - 2003. The closure was widely seen as the end of traditional animation at Disney. As of right now, all Walt Disney animation is done in Burbank
Their other major resort business in the Disney Vacation Club, but San Antonio would be a very strange place for a timeshare.
Would you be able to find out exactly where those signs are? I would like to see them and I do quite a bit of driving around the countryside in this area.
I still think that a major Disney attraction anywhere in Texas would get big press all over the place. It’s not like Disney isn’t good with publicity. The amount of land required for a theme park would be huge. Someone would notice such a large, contiguous purchase.
I’m not trying to be argumentative; this just seems highly unlikely to me.
Quite honestly, few people that currently live and work in Central Florida were here pre- Disney. It was Orange and farm land. I recall when I moved here in 1986 that being a native Floridian was a BIG deal because there were so few of them.
Not only that, but the off-Disneyworld DVC resports have not been particularly successful (at least relative to the on-property ones) and I don’t see Disney building one in an area like the one under discussion.
Periodically, rumors sweep Missouri that Disney is ‘buying a lot of land’ to build a theme park in the state. When I was in college circa 1985, the rumors centered on the Southeast Missouri area near Sikeston. There were tales of mysterious land purchases, etc etc.
Most recently the Disney name was linked to some developer purchasing land in the Joplin and Branson areas, supposedly for a new theme park there. This turned out not to be true, though it did make the papers at the time. Article HERE.
A few years back, Disney was buying up property in the Florida panhandle, and it was rumored that they were planning to do residential development there, along the lines of the Disney-developed Celebration, Florida. If true, maybe they are planning similar developments in Texas?
For years I’ve heard rumors that Disney is buying the land that hosts the Texas Renaissance Faire and is going to put in a new theme park. This is roughly northwest of Houston. So far I’ve not seen any proof, the RenFaire is going like gangbusters, and I’ve not seen any signs of Disney starting construction.
It seems Disney is constantly exploring new places/ideas for parks. In 1993 Disney was looking into making a theme park called Disney’s America in Virginia. Didn’t work out though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney’s_America
The only Walt Disney Animation studio in Lake Buena Vista was the one at the Disney-MGM Studios from 1989 - 2003. The closure was widely seen as the end of traditional animation at Disney. As of right now, all Walt Disney animation is done in Burbank