DisneySea was inspired by IOA

[johare]

Glad I wasn't the one to post this first, but after thinking about it and looking at the pictures I agree.

http://www.disboards.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=79706

 

[toefungus]

I think that DisneySea will be a better park than IoA. It looks a lot better themed, and there's a lot more detail at DisneySea. I really like IoA, but DisneySea looks to be better...

 

[hopemax]

Johare,

Did you know that Disney Sea was supposed to built in Long Beach, and Disney was in discussions with LB to build the park in the early 90's?

Did you know that there is a picture of a Tokyo Disney Sea model which appeared in the Imagineering book published in 1996?

On the Hidden Mickey's site someone posted preliminary plans for Disney Sea in Dec 1995.

The plans for Disney Sea have been around for awhile, I think. However IOA was built by a bunch of former WDI people and Jim Hill wrote an article about how IOA designers "borrowed" from plans for Beastly Kingdom so I wouldn't be surprised if there was other "borrowing" going on as well.

 

[Another Voice]

DisneySea was supposed to have been the centerpiece of the Port Disney project in Long Beach, California. It was designed long before Universal even built their studio in Florida. I think this is going to be another Internet rumor that sticks around (like the monorail in the Swan & Dolphin or how Eisner came up with the idea to make the ‘Tower of Terror’ a real hotel).

The areas within the current DisneySea are based on concepts for the Long Beach park or on concepts developed for the other Disney parks. The Little Mermaids Kingdom was supposed to have been added to both The Magic Kingdom and Disneyland during the nineties. The Mira Costa Hotel was supposed to have been built on the shores the Seven Seas Lagoon near the TTC (by the way, both this hotel and the Portifino Resort at Universal are based on the same town in Italy). Mysterious Island traces it roots back to Disneyland’s Discovery Bay and further development for Long Beach. The Port Discovery area bears a strong resemblance to the Tomorrowland 2055 that was planned for Disneyland. The Arabian coast came from Adventureland at Euro Disney (including the Sindbad attraction). And the Columbia ocean liner “docked” at DisneySea is a version of the Queen Mary that started the whole Port Disney project to begin with. There were many other plans for DisneySea Long Beach that didn’t make it into DisneySea Tokyo.

The only thing missing from DisneySea is Eisner’s bloody giant Ferris Wheel. I guess that proves the Oriental Land Company has some smarts after all.

 

[larworth]

History clearly shows the Disney plans were gathering dust long before the IOA design team came along.

I didn't read into these comments that people were claiming Disney actually stole from IOA, only that there are some interesting similarities between TDS and parts of IOA. I guess if the legand is true that former WDI staff borrowed concepts from BK to build Dueling Dragons, than it is possible they could have also borrowed on concepts they had seen (or maybe even worked on) from plans for the various incarnations of DisneySeas.

I assume that WDI departs have strong non-disclosure clauses they must sign. However, when it comes to recreating a mood, atmosphere, theme it would be hard not to draw on your past exposures and would seem easy to design something that while very similar, was not a legal transgression.

 

[wdwguide]

You mean IoA was based on DisneySea? DisneySea is a concept that dates back to the 80s.