A lot of new theme parks are in the works across the U.S.
©American Heartland
Universal is adding a new park, Epic Universe, to its Universal Orlando resort, while the company is also planning a new theme park experience for Texas. Well, ANOTHER new theme park is also on the way, and it’s being created by former Disney Imagineers.
The theme park is called American Heartland and it’s a $2 billion theme park and resort project located in northeast Oklahoma. The resort will span 1,000 acres, and it will include a 125-acre theme park about the size of Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, as well as a large RV park with cabins, a dinner theatre, an amphitheater, a swimming pool, a clubhouse, and more. There will even be a water park.
©American Heartland
Perhaps what really makes this theme park a game-changer, though, is that several former Disney Imagineers are on the park’s development team.
©American Heartland
The theme park will feature six lands themed to Americana: Liberty Village, Great Plains, Bayou Bay, Bit Timber Falls, Stony Point Harbor, and Electropolis. There will be rides, live entertainment, family attractions, waterways, as well as restaurants.
©American Heartland
“American Heartland Theme Park and Resort is a more than $2 billion entertainment destination development in northeast Oklahoma, just west of Grand Lake on Route 66. The development will be built in phases starting with a large-scale RV park with cabins, a film and television studio and a world-class theme park and resort. The American Heartland Theme Park will offer a visitor experience rivaling the world’s top resort destinations,” writes Founder & Chief Creative Officer Gene Bicknell on American Heartland’s website.
©American Heartland
Liberty Village will even have a site a lot of Disney World fans might find familiar: there will be a Liberty Belle in the heart of Town Square. This reminds us a lot of Liberty Square in Magic Kingdom!
©American Heartland
The RV park area is expected to open as early as 2025, with the America Heartland Theme Park opening sometime in 2026. So mark those calendars because there will soon be a NEW theme park to enjoy right in the middle of America’s Heartland.
We’ll keep an eye out for more news about this theme park, as well as Disney parks, so stay tuned to DFB for more.
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I’ll see it; I’ll believe it! We have seen this kind of stuff before. All the hype turns to crap! There was a proposed park in Broken Arrow, OK that had all the hype and with the help of narrow minded people, it fizzled! I hope it doesn’t turn out the same
Disney may have created an expensive problem for itself. It used to be the Mecca for creative engineers. But with how Imagineering has been treated recently (forcing older imagineers out, stopping ongoing projects and R&D) and the ensuing exodus of talented creatives with very specific and highly valuable info for it’s competitors, we are now seeing real theme park competition emerge, first at Universal, and now other places, like this example. Will this one succeed? Just like starting a restaurant, the odds are very risky. Seems like pretty thin theming (not very transformative/transportive …why not visit the real places?), kinda like a world’s fair scale state fair. But it seems like a similar market to Dollywood, and that’s pretty successful (though with a much more specific focus). And I can see the draw of a World Showcase style pan-American dining/music/festival experience, so who knows? All I know is if it is successful, Disney has no one to blame but itself for the new competition. The life’s blood of great theme parks is continual creative innovation. There is only so much profit that can be made with cutbacks and nickel and diming customers before guests start choosing other options.
Really not interested in Disney anymore. Too many rediculous changes and sky high prices. Walt would turn over in his grave if he knew what they have done to his Dream!
How exciting! I can’t wait !!
So close to where I live now in Kansas!
#TheTravelingViolinist
I think it’s ironically funny when you realize that some (if not all) of these Imagineers were the ones responsible for the destruction of Edutainment at WDW, and creating the atrocities that have replaced them.
I am ready to be there…. Keep the info coming, this is a great idea…I love it…
Maybe Disney should have tried to hold onto those imagineers to help improving Disney parks to keep attendance up. 2025 is going to be a tough one with the new park opening in Universal studios
I’d love to see this fully develop!
If they have the budget they are talking about and much more (two billion is not much these days), I think it can work. Disney and Universal have unlimited deep pockets, so this new park may not be able to match what the big two have. The other thing is that they let the former imagineers do what they do best and not hold them back with their imagination and creativity.
Being that it is called “American Heartland”, it sounds too conservitive and may limit the former Disney imagineers from being more creative and letting loose and end up with a sterile generic boring theme park that caters to the more conservative crowd. If that happens, I don’t think it will last very long or ever match Disney or Universal.
The irony would be that it fails and goes bankrupt that Disney would then comes in and buy them out. Then Disney would have the foundation for another Disney park that is already there and ready to expand and make much better. I believe Walt wanted a park in the mid-west at one time, so this would fulfill that idea for Disney if that happened.
It should be interesting to see how they plan on dealing with the weather. It does snow although it is measured in inches and not feet. There are also tornadoes in the area but not since 2012. Tulsa International is the closest major airport in the area. Highway 69 is the main artery through Vinita, Oklahoma.
I hope all of these old imaginers bring back Walt’s vision of WDW was initially and takes the place of the completely woke environment at WDW. I hope it works but don’t doubt that many people will try and sabotage it.
The Three Ponies RV Park and Campground is planned to have 750 RV sites and 300 cabins, covering 320 acres. Depending on the amenities and the price, this alone could be popular with Grand Lake being nearby. The theme park addition, if done well, would be a great addition to this part of the country. Even though it has a lot of former Disney employees, it sounds more like Dollywood, which is exciting.
no thanks.
Brilliant idea.
I feel like this will be the “alternative” or rival for those who boycott Disney World. We’ll see, I guess. An interesting fact is that it’s being built not far from a community called Disney—no relation, though.
I don’t see how this is viable. Northern Oklahoma has very few people visiting or living nearby. Most of these things, including a Bayou theme area and a Liberty Bell replica, already exist in the Disney parks. In fact there aLao already a Liberty Bell in the middle of Philadelphia!
Only thing I have to say about American Heartland I
is…..TORNADOS! Wtf.
I hope it is cheaper than the Disnry parks
The question is… Who on Earth is paying for this?!
I sure hope it isn’t my bank…. the location is — to put it mildly — dubious — for a $2B investment.
The closest major cities are Dallas, St Louis, and Kansas City, and it’s not close to any of them.
Great Idea, Supper Location, does
This Park have an Icon that will part of the Parks overall identity ?
Real shame Disney lost the 15 ex
Employees, they in total had right
At 400 years with Disney, That’s a lot of lost experience by Disney.
Good Luck with Park, just try to get repeat business, and above all
Make it family friendly.
There are a couple of things that strike me about the article. The first is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about any specific attractions. This makes me wonder if it’s going to consist largely of off-the-shelf rides with a minimal overlay. Also, the budget seems to support that. Most of Disney’s new E-tickets run multiple hundreds of millions–2 billion for an entire theme park isn’t really that much these days. Also, the lack of any hotels whatsoever seems to place this in a different category than Disney or Universal’s parks. Somehow, despite the participation of some former Disney imagineers, this doesn’t sound like it’s really in the same league as Disney’s parks. Perhaps more along the lines of Dollywood, Knott’s or Cedar Rapids?
No thank you…not interested and certainly not going to vacation in Oklahoma. But it may draw people from the Midwest who cannot or will not travel to Florida or California.
Sounds far too white bread for my taste. It makes WDW sound downright cosmopolitan!;-))
Well, Richard Mercer both Tulsa (its metro areas) and OKC (its metro areas) have more than 2 million residents. OKC was the 10th fastest growing city of 2022. Plus this location is approximately equal distance from all the “major”
Cities you noted. Those cities have Six Flags parks & no wants to go to those. I’ll try it for sure.
I find it disgusting that you never publish my comments.
Hi. I went back through the message archives and input your email address to see which comments have not been approved and we have approved every single comment you have left on our blog since September 13, 2021.
They are always flagged and then they disappear. And I purposely go back and check because I noticed a pattern.
Can you tell me what they say when they’re flagged? Otherwise the comments come to me and I approve them one at a time because I have to make sure there are no swear words and that they are appropriate for a wide audience (non-inflammatory, non-bullying, false information, etc.) and I’m not seeing that any of your comments were unapproved or deleted and I’m able to see back quite far. If you’re getting a message that we are not aware of, we can look into that.
The best thing is to wait and see if it does get built . Then praise or criticism will be based on content, style, theming…you know..facts, not conjecture. We need more fact based dialogue in America.
I can’t imagine it being anything spectacular. A 2 billion budget is very much. Disneyland Resort has a budget of 2.5 billion, and that is just for an expansion, not a whole new park. So I don’t see this new park being very impressive. It seems more like a low-budget Disney wanna-be instead.
I wish them the very best about their venture n that and really hope it come s true Disney has gone crazy with the prices of going there my husband and me have been annual Passholders for over at least 30 years and Disney has done us Passholders dirty we have spent a lot of money staying on property and buying n the gift shops as many of the annuals have done and now they have the nerve to think that we annuals do not come tribute to their bottom dollar we live out of state and have been there over 100 times and yes that is the truth we have gone at least times a year and that doesn’t include when we started going there when it was only the magic kingdom and they want us to make reservations to get n the parks so we r done with Disney and will not ever come back again they Disney Mind taking the money from us all those years and they will get no more and yes my husband and me r angry they r so greedy and r busy destroying Walt Disneys dream as soon as someone says I don’t like that then they change an attraction and those’d people probably won’t b back and have nothing better than to find something wrong and looking to c whet they can find Something wrong and we r SICK 🤢 of it they have taken out too many attractions and ruined it