The kingdom that never was.

[OkBuddy 586]

You all know the place known as Animal Kingdom. Some of you know that the upcoming Avatar land will replace the area of Camp Minnie-Mickey. BUT, there was an area that was supposed to be in Animal Kingdom that never quite left the concept art stage. It was going to be a kingdom of its own. What was this land called? Beastly Kingdom. A land of mythical creatures from unicorns to dragons and even trolls. It was a place were people could have an amazing experience with the creatures of the make believe. 

Why didn't this land get built? No need for looking this up, I'll tell you all the fascinating tale of Beastly Kingdom. But first...  

 

What did the land look like? 

 

 Some of you may be asking, what would this place look like? Well, it would look as diverse as the Magic Kingdom itself. Here's an image of the mythical wonderland: 

 

Now, some of you might have your mouths dropped at the moment, but this is just a brief description of the land. Here's a more specific example of what the place looked like if you walked into the place: 

 

Guests would walk through a bridge from Discovery Island (The place were the Tree of life stands) which would lead to where Camp Minnie-Mickey stands today. The charred armor of unsuccessful knights who have dared to enter would have bordered the path, also with broken swords and crumpled lances. The dragon rock (The teaser of the land built by Imagineers which still holds today) would have instead given a glimpse at a realistic, fire-breathing dragon.(This would be a replica of the same dragon under the Disneyland Paris castle) The boat ride that originally flowed down the river would have caught a glimpse of a kraken, bubbling from beneath the water, and a unicorn drinking the water. 

Now Disney really wanted to go public on Beastly Kingdom. There was even a description of the park released during the preparation of the park's opening:

 

 

Beastly Kingdom is the realm of make believe animals, animals that don't really exist, out of legends, out of fairy tales, out of storybooks. Like our legends and fair tales about imaginary animals, this land is divided into realms of good and realms of evil.

The evil side is dominated by DRAGON'S TOWER, a burned, wrecked castle inhabited by a greedy, fire breathing dragon. He hordes a fabulous treasure in his tower chamber. The castle is also inhabited by bats who speak to us from their upside down perches. The bats have a plan. They enlist our help trying to rob the dragon and fly us off on a wild chase. At last, we meet the fire-breathing dragon himself and barely escape un-barbecued.

The good side of this land is ruled by QUEST OF THE UNICORN. An adventure which sends us through a maze of medieval mythological creatures to seek the hidden grotto where the unicorn lives. There is also FANTASIA GARDENS. A gentle musical boat ride through the animals from Disney's animated classic, 'Fantasia.' Both the crocodiles and hippos from 'Dance of the Hours' and the Pegasus, fauns and centaurs from Beethoven's 'Pastoral' are found here 

 

Why wasn't this area built? 

Now that you read this, I bet you have this exact question in your mind: Why the heck wasn't this park built?! Due to the higher-than-expected costs of maintaining the real animals at Asia and Africa, there was only enough room in the budget to choose between a Dinosaur land and a Mythical land. Disney decided to go with dinosaurs, mainly because of an upcoming CG movie with the same topic, and Michael Eisner's idea of a cross-promotion he wanted to employ. 

 

Beastly Kingdom went to a second-phase project, designed to get an extra kick of Animal Kingdom after the first few years since the opening. Actually, guests took a survey and said that they really wanted to "come face to face with unicorns and dragons". It was one of the only reasons why the entire idea of Animal Kingdom got out of the drawing board. 

 

However, Asia wouldn't be ready for the park's opening day. So Michael Eisner had a plan to make a cheap, temporally opened land which was Camp Minnie-Mickey. They didn't have enough money to pull of any major attractions though. 

 

Unfortunately, surveys that were done after the park's opening showed that attendence numbers weren't enough to justify the cost. So Camp Minnie-Mickey was permanent, until now. 

 

Legacy of the land 

 Was this huge project forgotten? Of course not! The idea of imaginary creatures lead up to the popular roller coaster known as Expedition Everest in Asia. 

 

Some of the ideas of Beastly Kingdom were used in Non-Disney property! After the Animal Kingdom project was finished, many Imagineers who worked on the park were hired by Universal to create Islands of Adventure. Many of the concepts at Beastly Kingdom were used for the Lost continent.  

 

So, would you like to see this land come back to life? Post your opinion below.

 

[Veylon 255]

Beastly land sounds like it would be pretty cool. But I can see that they'd want to tie a new park in with the new movie they were making. Fantasia didn't exactly do all that well and is kind of unfortunately forgotten. Disney doesn't really have a straight-up action fantasy franchise they could connect to a new Beastly Kingdom. Maybe they should make one.

 

But they're building an Avatar land? Didn't everyone forget about that movie already, too? (Aside: I checked the Wikipedia entry for the thing. Pandora is described as an exoplanetary moon, a term which is inherently contradictory. Is there any worldbuilding aspect of this movie that wasn't screwed up in some bizarre way?) Apparently they're throwing half a billion dollars at this thing anyway. Ugh.