A whole land based on Star Wars brings with it a lot of hope for the magnificent things Disney can do. But it also inspires a few thoughts that are distinctly of the Dark Side. Here, we've collected a few fears that we just can't seem to shake that make us wonder if Star Wars is happening in the right time or place. Some of this may be harder to hear, but think about it... 

DARK SIDE #1: Disneyland cannot support the crowds Star Wars will draw.

Image: Ming-yen Hsu, Flickr (license)

If you’ve ever been to Disneyland Park, you’ve encountered one of its most unusual and divisive qualities: it’s small. Disneyland was built in 1955 for audiences of the era. Presumed by many to be a failure – even upon its opening – few could’ve predicted that Disneyland would become a staple of American pop culture. It’s a tiny park on a small plot of land, and given that it has more rides than any other Disney Park on Earth, things are tight.

Fans call it “quaint” while ride-or-die Walt Disney World fans call it “puny.” Either way, the paths of Disneyland are tight. They’re narrow. Those paths were not built to be inundated with strollers and ECVs and wheelchairs and the sheer number of people that come with being the second most visited theme park on Earth. There are well-known, crippling bottlenecks in Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland. Critter Country is a dead end. Fantasyland is a nightmare. On the (rare) days that crowds split more or less evenly between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, the difference between the parks is obvious. Like Magic Kingdom, California Adventure can soak up crowds in its wide pathways and open plazas and angled flow corridors perfectly blueprinted to disperse crowds and keep them moving – it’s the benefit of hindsight and master-planning: something Disneyland did not have.

Try entering Disneyland during Paint the Night, or exiting after Fantasmic but before fireworks. Main Street, U.S.A. can feel like absolute, literal gridlock (and Southern Californians know their gridlock) on summer weekends, much less on holidays when photographs of shoulder-to-shoulder people through every square foot of the park make the rounds on social media. On many holiday and summer weekends, part time Cast Members must park at the Anaheim Angels baseball stadium and be bussed into work so that guests can park in the Cast Member parking lots. That’s how under built Disneyland’s infrastructure is.

Image: Loren Javier, Flickr (license)

Here’s the point: It may very well be that Disneyland cannot accommodate the crowds that a Star Wars land will draw. Make no mistake: Disneyland will increase ticket prices big time and likely (and hopefully) eliminate all but the most expensive Annual Passes, but in the future even that has happened too slowly and gradually to make a dent in crushing crowd levels. The Annual Pass payment plan needs to disappear if Disney has any chance of controlling crowds post-Star-Wars. If Star Wars land opened today, Disneyland would physically not be able to handle the crowds. And while Star Wars might be a few years off, Disney so far has not indicated that they’re doing much to prepare for the inevitable blow of debilitating crowds.

Look at it this way: in 2009, Universal’s Islands of Adventure attracted an estimated 4.63 million visitors. The Wizarding World opened in 2010. The next year, 2011, that went up by 66% to 7.67 million. That’s a tremendous jump. Of course, Islands of Adventure wasn’t a very highly attended park to begin with, so many of those visitors were new.

Disneyland is starting with a much higher number – 16.77 million in 2014 – so a similar boost percentage-wise is unlikely. But if the Wizarding World attracted roughly 3 million more guests in 2011 than the same park without it in 2009, that might give us an idea of how many more guests could reasonably show up for a Star Wars land. And that would – frankly be too many for Disneyland to handle in terms of infrastructure alone.

While Disney’s Hollywood Studios has its own crowding issues (often redirecting traffic to Epcot for any special event happening at the park), at least that can easily fixed, and allegedly will be by time Star Wars land opens. But at Disneyland, the only solution might be to systematically rebuild the infrastructure by widening paths, building plazas, and giving the Hub a Magic Kingdom style makeover, all of which would devastate fans and remove much of the “charm” the park is known for. If that IS Disney’s plan, people will revolt. But they’d better start something soon if this tiny, already-packed park is to be ready for year after year of record crowds by the end of the decade.

DARK SIDE #2: The Star Wars land will be set on a completely original planet.

We’ve already applauded Disney’s choice to create a new, from-scratch planet for a Star Wars land to take place on. And we stick by the notion that’s smarter than trying to pick a single planet from the expansive universe to recreate to the exclusion of all the rest. (“Oh man, I don’t wanna see Coruscant, I wanted to see Tatooine!”) But now, we’ll play Devil’s advocate and explain how this can also be a tremendous drawback.

There’s a problem: Disney seems to yet again misjudge the appeal of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It’s not just that people love Harry Potter. They don’t just want to buy wands to exorbitant prices. They want to step into Ollivander’s in Diagon Alley! They want to buy Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, just like Harry and Ron and Hermione did! They want to inhabit the world they’ve seen in films. Imagine how Butterbeer would sell if it were sold from a generic cart in Universal Studio’s generic “studio” themed entry. It’s not the same.

Don’t misunderstand: Disney will have absolutely no trouble selling Lightsabers within this new Star Wars land. However, they mustn’t misunderstand that as akin to duplicating the Wizarding World model; it’s not. Gift shops in Star Wars land might be filled with Mattel Star Wars action figures and LEGO Star Wars sets, but that’s not the same as shopping in Hogsmeade. Disney’s only choice to really benefit from the Wizarding World model is to fabricate entire gift shops of “authentic” good that look and feel as if they could actually exist within the Star Wars universe. Disney CEO Bob Iger promised that things will be distinctly Wizarding-World-esque, saying that the land will be "occupied by many inhabitants; humanoids, aliens and droids… the attractions, the entertainment, everything we create will be part of our storytelling. Nothing will be out of character or stray from the mythology." That signals that there will be no LEGO sets. But if not that, then what WILL the gift shops sell? We'll see...

The same is true of food, by the way. The Wizarding World lore has its own must-tries (pumpkin juice, Butterbeer, Fortescue’s ice cream, etc.) that can reasonably be joined by the kinds of food and drink Harry and friends enjoy: fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, roasted potatoes, etc. (The land was applauded for keeping out Coca-Cola or other invasive brands – something creator J.K. Rowling insisted on. By the way, if you ask many fans, they expect that that’s probably another one of the reasons Disney’s deal to secure Potter fell through... Disney probably refused to keep Coca-Cola, generic "Disney Parks" shopping bags, and Muppets-As-Hogwarts-Characters merchandise out. Obviously they've learned their lesson and Iger has changed his tune now, promising this Star Wars land will be equally exclusive.)

For Star Wars, then, it’ll be Disney’s job to make us want to pay exorbitant prices for “Star Wars” food. The issue here is that, in all of Star Wars, food and drink are rarely mentioned or seen aside from Blue Milk, which is Disney’s only chance to have their own “Butterbeer,” and Blue Milk certainly doesn’t have a cult following to start with. 

One reason we have so little faith is that so far, Disney’s Star Wars themed food offerings for Season of the Force have been Darth Maul colored yogurt parfaits, waffles stamped with Darth Vader’s face, and “Dark Side” burgers with black buns. Put simply: Disney is going to need to invent wild, “alien” food that could reasonably exist in the Star Wars universe and that people want to try if they think they can crack the Wizarding World formula. Spicy chicken “Jedi sandwiches” won’t do. They don’t fit. Going back to Iger's comment on nothing straying from the mythology, that's a great thing to say. But if Star Wars land won't offer hamburgers (which it shouldn't) then what will they serve?

The concept art we've glimpsed of (what looks like) restaurants for Star Wars land give us hope that the experience will be appropriately "alien," but they have to follow through... No "Darth by Chocolate" pudding desserts. Fair enough?

DARK SIDE #3: A Star Wars land really doesn’t fit in Disneyland.

Here’s the kicker; the thing Disneyland fans almost unanimously feel: at the end of the day, Star Wars land doesn’t belong in Disneyland Park. When the park opened, it featured Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland – each based (roughly) on a genre of Americana and pop culture – American’s fascination with the exotic jungles in 1950, the legends of the old West, the promises of American industry, the storybook fables of Europe that we so admired. Sure, Critter Country and New Orleans Square joined, but they fit within the scheme of the park’s lands – historic, realistic, habitable worlds with a touch of romanticism and Americana to give them something a little more cinematic and idealized.

A Star Wars land is straight out of left field. Among the reverent, historic style lands rooted in Americana and nostalgia, the inclusion of a distant alien planet connected to a single 1970s film franchise is… wrong?

It’s not that Star Wars doesn’t deserve a land, because it does. It’s not that the Star Wars land that’s been announced doesn’t look great, because it does. It’s smart that the Star Wars land will take place on an original planet, and it’s good that Disney’s treating the mythos with reverence and respect by doing so. But it doesn’t change the fact that Star Wars would almost certainly do better in a third gate.

Fans imagine, after all, that whenever Disneyland gets around to adding a third theme park, it will likely follow the Islands of Adventure model, making use of the many properties Disney has acquired. Imagine if Islands of Adventure were re-cast as a Disney Park with themed “islands” around a lagoon: a Star Wars island; an Indiana Jones island; a Monstropolis island; a Marvel Super Hero Island; a Frozen island; an Aladdin island. Basically, that makes more sense than placing Star Wars (or Marvel or any of those intellectual properties for that matter) in either Disneyland or Disney California Adventure in any permanent way. But Disney’s not going to let Star Wars go to waste. But in their haste to use their new toy, it’s worth wondering if they’re acting too quickly and compromising Disneyland’s concept…

If we’re being very honest, Star Wars land probably should wait. It’s not like they’re short on time. The franchise premiered forty years ago, and likely has a nearly infinite number of films upcoming… So why rush now? Disneyland will get a third park eventually, and Star Wars will almost certainly fit better there than it does at Disneyland.

It does beg the question: if Disney announced out of the blue that Star Wars land would happen, but in a new third park, and that the land north of the Rivers of America would be used as originally intended – to build Discovery Bay – would anyone complain? To us, that seems like a  win-win, and a reasonable decision that would be cheered by all.

So what are your thoughts? Does a Star Wars land belong in Disneyland Park? Would you rather see it in California Adventure if it absolutely has to be built right now? Are you at all hesistant about the food and merchandise that will be offered, or will Disney get it right from the start? What else are you hopeful for, or fearful of, when you think of how Star Wars land could change everything at Disney Parks?