From the moment Michael Eisner became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 1984, plans for expansion at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World were on the forefront of his mind and in 1991 Eisner’s original plans for the expansion of the Disney empire in Anaheim included a version of Orlando’s EPCOT called WestCOT.
In 1991, Disney announced plans to build WestCOT on the site of Disneyland’s parking lot. It was themed around a Utopian vision of the future, similar to EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World, and would be the first Disney theme park to contain hotels within the park.
WestCOT was a planned second theme park for the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was essentially a replica of EPCOT Center at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and was dedicated to the celebration of human achievement, namely technological innovation and international culture. The park was represented by SpaceStation Earth, a larger version of the geodesic sphere Spaceship Earth featured at EPCOT Center.
The project would have been made up of two parts: Future World and a kind of World Showcase area. Future would still be a place for guests to get hands on with science, but the World Showcase would be a little different. Instead of being divided into individual countries, the area would be split into different regions like the The Americas, Europe, Asia and others. Rides included a James Bond-esque chase on a train, a trip through an Egyptian palace and a Native American Spirit Lodge.
In the 1990s, The Walt Disney Company decided to expand the original Disneyland Park into a multi-park, multi-resort business model with WestCOT intended to be the centerpiece. A ton of fanfare came with the new projects announcement and the mere thought of it had Disneyland fans waiting with bated breath, but the project had more than a few hurdles.
The biggest challenge was the budget. WestCOT project was projected to cost an estimated $3.1 billion which was a lot back then, even for Disney. The company wasn’t able to find any funding from outside sources and the price tag was a large part of the decision not to move forward with the project.
The project was scrapped in 1995, but Disney would still be moving forward with plans for a second theme park in Anaheim, however; and after a three-day summit in Colorado the plans for what would truly come next were born. The planned site for WestCOT would later house what would become the resort’s second theme park, Disney’s California Adventure Park, which opened in 2001.