The land that never was: a history on Disney's beastly kingdom
When deciding on their fourth theme park in Florida, Disney chose to devote it to the animals of the past, present, and fantasy. As the project progressed, it became clear the budget would not support all of the ambitious ideas. The park, Animal Kingdom, would need to keep the present day creatures, but a choice would need to be made between the other two sections. Michael Eisner, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company at the time, was convinced by the Imagineers working on Dinoland to build their section and move Beastly Kingdom to phase two based on the then upcoming movie Dinosaur having a planned released around the time of the park's opening. Since Beastly Kingdom was still planned for phase two, the park had reflections of this section and advertising contained elements as well. Unfortunately, phase two never came to fruition, but there still lies a story on the abandoned concept.
Beastly Kingdom had three planned attractions. The first was a labyrinth that held a unicorn animatronic in it's center. The next was a boat ride based on some of the segments from Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. The final attraction was supposed to be the sections E-ticket attraction. It was a coaster that went through a destroyed castle and past and animatronic dragon in its lair. The dragon seemed like the best selling point given the dragons of Disney, so this was the creature used in marketing, such as the McDonald's Happy Meal toy. Along with this, the dragon remains on the logo of the park as well as on one of the park entrances.
To preview the area, the attraction Discovery River Boats held a dragon shaped rock and a cave that was meant to have a head of a fire-breathing, animatronic dragon sticking out of it. Unfortunately, the budget that could have gone to the dragon went towards an animatronic of Aladar, the main character or the 2000 Dinosaur film. To add ambiance to the dragon cave, the remains of knights were placed near the entrance where fire would blow out of. Parents found this to be too dark for a family park, resulting in the removal of the knights.
The boats were removed after less than a year due to unpopularity and phase two was cancelled thanks to the parks failing attendance levels. The area that was to be Beastly Kingdom would remain as a character meet and greet place known as Camp Minnie-Mickey. All remnants of the dragon cave were taken over by nature and only a small amount of the dragon shaped rock is still visible. In 2017, the area planned for Beastly Kingdom was transformed into Pandora: the World of Avatar. While this is a very impressive area, it leaves some of those who followed Beastly Kingdom's history to wonder what could have been.
Some of the imagineers switched sides and started working for Universal, bringing with them their ideas for Beastly Kingdom. Some of these ideas were brought to life in Universal's Islands of Adventure such as the dragon coaster becoming the Dueling Dragons, later renamed Dragon Challenge during the Harry Potter retheming (removed to make room for Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure). Eisner visited Islands of Adventure to see if the new park would bring competition to Disney, and he admitted that he liked how they incorporated some of the ideas from Beastly Kingdom, being the moment he cancelled phase two.
While there remain remnants from this forgotten land, it is sad to say that no one will ever see what it could have become. Pandora is a highlight of Animal Kingdom and there are talks of replacing Dinoland with something else. Whatever may come to the future of the parks, I can only dream that somehow, someway, dragons will be involved.