July 23, 2026
Disneyland Resort (Anaheim, CA) has started physical work on DisneylandForward, the expansion plan Anaheim’s city council approved in May 2024. The first project is not a ride. Disney will build a parking structure and transportation hub with “approximately 6,000 parking spaces” on the east side of the resort, on a portion of what was the Manchester cast member parking lot, with the multi-year construction officially “slated to begin in fall of 2026.” The site work in front of it is already underway.
What Moved This Summer
The visible sequence started in June. Disney’s demolition permit for the Team Disney Anaheim East administrative building, a 70,732-square-foot office structure on the future construction footprint, worked through Anaheim’s permitting process this spring and into June. The Manchester cast member lot closed at the end of June. By late July, fencing and site preparation along South Manchester Avenue were being reported by Mickey Visit, and a resort official confirmed to the outlet that the resort is making ongoing adjustments to backstage facilities and cast member parking to prepare for construction.
Permit filings reported in December describe the structure itself: roughly 3.2 million square feet across eight levels. Beyond the parking count, Disney’s plans for the site include shuttle and rideshare areas, security screening, dedicated access from Disney Way, and a pedestrian bridge over Harbor Boulevard leading to what the company calls an “all-new esplanade arrival experience.”
Why the Front Door Comes First
Starting a $1.9 billion expansion with a parking garage is less strange than it reads. The resort’s What’s Next page calls the arrival project “the first step” of the next construction phase, “creating the infrastructure necessary to prepare for future growth.” The practical read: new arrival capacity goes up east of the resort before Disney reworks how guests enter today. The buildout Anaheim approved runs through a development agreement that commits Disney to invest at least $1.9 billion in the resort within 10 years, with the agreement contemplating up to $2.5 billion. Disney’s obligations to the city include roughly $85 million in street, transportation, and sewer commitments, plus $30 million for affordable housing and $8 million for parks, per the city’s project fact sheet. The California governor’s office projected more than 7,800 jobs over four years from the construction when the plan won initial approval.
The headline attractions are moving on their own tracks at Disney California Adventure:
- Avengers Campus. Two new attractions, Avengers Infinity Defense and Stark Flight Lab, will “double the size of Avengers Campus.” Disney says construction has begun.
- Coco. A new attraction themed to Pixar’s “Coco” is planned near Paradise Gardens Park and Pixar Pier, with backstage construction that Disney said was set to begin in fall 2025.
- Avatar. An experience drawing from the “Avatar” films is planned for the current Hollywood Backlot area and remains, in Disney’s words, “still in the early stages of development.” Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!, originally announced to close in early 2026 for the project, will instead stay open into 2027 after Disney rearranged construction plans to keep more attractions available for young guests.
The Same Calendar Math, West Coast Edition
The pattern will look familiar to anyone tracking Walt Disney World, where the Carousel of Progress overhaul sits inside a Magic Kingdom construction year with the payoff stacked into 2027 and beyond. Disneyland is now running the same play. As we noted in Is Summer the New Shoulder Season, 2026’s domestic summer arrived with almost nothing new in it, and the capital pipeline explains why: the industry’s biggest operators are spending this year building rather than opening.
The difference in Anaheim is momentum. Disneyland crossed one billion guests during its 70th anniversary, and the resort enters its buildout with attendance strength rather than a gap to fill. The next several years in Anaheim will be measured in permits, steel, and a new front door on Harbor Boulevard before any of the IP lands open theirs. For a resort that last opened a new land with Avengers Campus in 2021, the interesting part is no longer whether Disney will build. It is watching the order in which the pieces land.
