Did Disney Hide Tomorrowland’s Future in a Hotel Tower?

The Disney Dish with Jim Hill

Len Testa and Jim Hill analyze newly released concept art for Monstropolis and Lakeshore Lodge, discussing architectural details and potential attraction tech. They explore

Key takeaways

• New Monstropolis concept art reveals a Globe Theater facade and Harryhausen's interior, with visual cues strongly suggesting a return to 3D attraction technology.
• Lakeshore Lodge lobby features complex suspended wooden beams and glass, while the Branch and Bush Lounge highlights lily pad-inspired overhead lighting.

Main topics

• Monstropolis concept art and attraction technology
• Lakeshore Lodge resort details and design

Notable quotes

"When you say that discounting a price Disney knows most people won't pay is too sneaky, right? I have to ask, what's that level of optimism feel like?"

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable insights into upcoming Disney park updates,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome back to another edition of the Disney Dish podcast with Jim Hill. It's me, Len Testa, and this is our show for the week of Schmerzday, October 5th, 2026. On the show today, news, surveys. patents, and your listener questions. Then in our main segment, Jim gives us the history of the villas at Disney's Grand Californian Resort. Let's get started by bringing in the man whose friends are in love with American girls. It's Mr. Jim Hale. Jim, how's it going? Oh, it's going well, Len, but with that reference, of course, that's the song stylings of Speaker 2 (0:28) Harry Styles. Yes. It's just wild for me to think that not all that long ago, he was just one of the guys in One Direction. Yeah, Speaker 1 (0:36) 1D, yeah. There Speaker 2 (0:37) we go. A member of that group from 2010 to 2017. 2016, then One Direction goes on an indefinite... Hiatus. Yeah. Speaker 1 (0:44) There we go. We're going to get back together. The ones that are left, we know it. Speaker 2 (0:48) Okay. I firmly believe this, Speaker 1 (0:50) yeah. Speaker 2 (0:50) That was January of 2016, Len. We're a decade out at this point, okay? Let Speaker 1 (0:56) me remind you that David Lee Roth left Van Halen in 1984 and returned in 2007. Okay. Speaker 2 (1:04) Some of us have more faith in these things, I guess. All right. For Speaker 1 (1:07) things like this, it's not faith. It's irrational belief, but it's the thing that sustains you. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 2 (1:15) Well, and Len, you know, I think, I don't know if we've talked, I know we've talked about this on air or off air, but you recently went to, well, Harry Styles is doing a residency at Madison Square Garden, right? That's right. I took Speaker 1 (1:31) Hannah, it's the first time I've ever been to Madison Square Garden. We took Hannah and did a show at the end of August. I actually got a Harry Styles outfit. Like, I got high-waisted, pleated. wide leg pants. I bought a shirt. I had a colorful scarf. Yeah, I Speaker 2 (1:49) did the whole thing for hairstyles, yeah. Now, speaking of outfits, Harry Styles fans make a point of trying to buy tickets to the performances he does around Halloween because that's when he holds Harryween? Harryween, yeah. It's worth it alone, folks, to Google Mr. Stiles' outfits for Harry Ween. In fact, for 2021, and by the way, Len, he was also performing in Madison Square Garden back then. But Harry actually came on stage dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. And that outfit, by the way, included a blue gingham dress. And a pair of ruby slippers. So what I love about that to bring this story full circle is during that concert, he wasn't just performing American Girls. He was actually portraying one. So, you know, you gotta love the commitment. The commitment to the song, exactly. Speaker 1 (2:45) There we go. More to the point, it also sounds like a hell of a show. Oh, it's amazing. He's doing, I think, what, it's two months, more than two months. I think the last show, yeah, the last show was Halloween, I believe. Yeah. Speaker 2 (2:56) Yeah, 30 performances in residency at Madison Square Garden. I want to say it's every Wednesday, then Friday and Saturday from late August to, as Len just mentioned, right at Halloween. It ends on the 31st. Speaker 1 (3:12) And tickets are impossible to get. Like, every night is sold out. I checked for like one day next week and there's four tickets available for all of Madison Square Garden. Yeah, it's amazing, but it's a great show. By Speaker 2 (3:21) the way, at Madison Square Garden, he's performing in front of 19,500 people every night. Speaker 1 (3:29) Every night, yeah. The other great thing in seeing him was, so it's a predominantly female audience, Speaker 2 (3:34) which Speaker 1 (3:35) means... You can walk into the men's bathroom and there's no, like, there are still paper towels at the end of the evening. It still looks spotless because there's like three guys there and we're not making a mess. Speaker 2 (3:45) It's amazing. Beautiful. Speaker 1 (3:47) I Speaker 2 (3:47) love that. I haven't seen this since I Speaker 1 (3:49) went to a Lana Del Rey concert. It was amazing. Okay. And Jim, speaking of thanks, let's give thanks to everyone who subscribes to the show over at patreon.com slash gmail media, including Meg Riga, Robert Gormley, Chris Van Buskirk, Susan DiIorio, Melissa Biskupic, and Justin Hermanek. Jim, these are the Imagineers working on two new features for the Magic of Disney animation. In one, all the kids who've just drawn characters with Olaf will be led into a dark... cramped, un-air-conditioned room to critique the other kids' drawings. And in another experience, some child artists will advocate for better working conditions while cast members will act as union busters. Look for these additions to debut as Pete's Silly Sweatshop later this year. True story. Wow. Speaker 2 (4:36) That's a deep Disney history-related cut. Right there. Speaker 1 (4:41) I Speaker 2 (4:41) was going Speaker 1 (4:41) to go with Pete's silly sweat box, but then it just expanded. It kept going. Yes. There we go. Great fun. All right, folks. On to the news. The Disney edition news is sponsored by beer guest vacations.com from our friends at DVC rental store.com. Jim, we said on last week's show that sales for Jollywood nights were ahead of last year's pace. And this week we saw the first Mickey's very merry Christmas party sell out for November 24th. So if you're thinking about visiting Walt Disney World later this year, now is the time to book. Visit BeOurGuestVacations.com to get started right away. All right, Jim, in terms of news, Disney's released new concept art for the Glob Theater coming to Monstropolis in late... Our friends at WWMagic have the concept art and I've included it in the show notes. Jim, what do you make of this? Well, you know, what's intriguing to Speaker 2 (5:25) me is, I mean, all of us are familiar with the physical plant of this building from many times we went into Muppet Vision 3D. So this looks like they took it Speaker 1 (5:37) back to the studs and then built out. Right, it does. So that was my first question, is the lobby area that we're looking at in this concept art, the same pre-show area that was used for Muppet Vision. I want to Speaker 2 (5:49) say yes. I do. Yeah, I think so. Because there have been a couple of photographs of the team in the building. And my God, I mean, they did. It's a brand new facility in there. To be honest, kind of startling. I thought they would just work backwards from the notion of, okay, new 3D film going into this space. Kind of do what they did when they changed over. For example, when they went from the Magic Journeys to Captain EO to Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Each case, it's like, we stuck with the same building, but we added a new effect. And then we did lasers. And then when we went to Honey, I Shrunk With... We made the floor move. But this Speaker 1 (6:37) is impressive. It is. It looks really, really good. The theater entrance is on the right. So in the same style as the old Muppet Vision pre-show. But the back center of the room is now the concession stand. And Jim, I don't think we're going to be able to buy actual food and drink in here because Disney doesn't want that into the theater. people will spill things. But I can't wait to see what sort of candy ideas they come up with for Monstropolis. That's going to be very, very funny. Speaker 2 (7:07) No, no, no, absolutely. It kind of reminds me of, well, remember when we went out to the West Coast and visited, they had just gotten Disneyland's version of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway up and running. Right, yeah. And how in the middle of that queue, they also had a concession stand of sorts. And it was lovely detailing, but again, the problem with the American general public is, oh, look, all of the stuff I can pull and prod at. You know, even we were only in there a week, 10 days after it opened. There were already things that had been sort of loved to death, so to speak. Exactly. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:51) People have tried to embrace it and take it home with them as well. There Speaker 2 (7:54) we go. There we go. Speaker 1 (7:55) They were honoring the creativity, sometimes with crowbars. Speaker 2 (7:59) So I guess what we're saying is we need to get into the glob theater during previews to see what the Imagineers intended and Speaker 1 (8:07) what survives. Exactly. The next piece of concept art that Disney released shows the theater stage, the theater facade. the interior of Harryhausen's and the entrance to Monstropolis. What do you make of these, Jim? Let's go through them one by one. What about the stage itself? That looks like Muppet Vision. Speaker 2 (8:24) Yeah, yeah. I guess for me, I want to now know, because there have been... There have been advances in 3D technology. I mean, for example, if you go over to Universal and watch how they do, for example, in the queue for Escape from Gringotts, when you get to meet the Weasley son with the goblin, I mean, that's actually done... with a tilted piece of mylar as opposed to a standard screen. So for me, again, it's questions about, okay, what's the tech this time around? Speaker 1 (9:04) Right, Jim. And the thing I want to point out here too is you're saying it's 3D. Have we officially heard it's 3D? Ooh, that is an excellent point. And the reason why I mentioned that is if you look in the upper left-hand corner of the concept art, there appears to be a laughter container. flying out from the screen which would imply 3d effects so if disney hasn't said it yet they're heavily suggesting it in just this one piece of concept art well yeah that's Speaker 2 (9:34) sorry that i went with the visual cues here coupled with the fact of course that previously this had been a theater that played 3d but at the same time you're not wrong to point that out because think about You know, we've just had over at Epcot, Remy's Ratatouille Adventure. Speaker 1 (9:52) Right, go from 3D to 2D, which is why I bring up the point. Like, this is going to be a step in the other direction. And it's difficult for me to figure out the criteria that Disney's using to say this is going to be a 3D attraction and this is 2D. Speaker 2 (10:09) Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:11) Okay. Interesting questions. Okay. Fantastic. Also, Jim, it looks like some exhibits from Anaheim's recent D23 conference have made their way east and are on display in one man's dream. And I included a photo of this from our friends at WDW Magic. Jim, we saw these characters like the bunny with three ears, the squirrel with three tails, and the two-headed pigeon. We saw these. in D23, in the Horizons exhibit when you and I were there, right? It looks like they've made their way east. We did. Yeah, and these look fantastic, by the way. Also Speaker 2 (10:43) want to remind folks that it was, well, hell, it was this week, 25 years ago, that the 100 Years of Magic, and that was the original name of Walt Disney Presents, opened up at Disney's Hollywood Studios. This was the project. that Mr. Shule ran hurt on. I was talking with him off air about we should have him on to talk about, you know, pulling together all of the stuff that's in this thing because it comes from all corners of the Disney company, you know, stuff in the archive and recent films. So there's got to be a story. Walking by Speaker 1 (11:20) people's desks and asking them where they got that particular piece of memorabilia and not asking any further questions. There we go. There we go. Exactly. It makes total sense. Yeah, I would love to do that. That's a great idea. Let's have it. have Jim on and we'll talk about that. Okay. All right. Two other bits of news. The first one is JetBlue has been added to Disney's resort luggage service in Walt Disney World. It's fantastic for everyone going out of Terminal 5 and JFK. Okay. And then Disney's released more Lakeshore Lodge concept art. One, Jim, shows the lobby, and I've included the concept art in the show notes. What do you make of that, Jim? This is by far the widest angle version of the lobby we've ever seen. It looks great. It does. It does. And remember... Speaker 2 (12:01) What were we calling this earlier on? Disney's Holiday Inn or something to that effect? Yeah, no. We were wrong. Okay. Okay. Speaker 1 (12:12) They've gone the other way, folks. Yeah, it looks amazing. I'm looking at the roof line, which is using a bunch of suspended wooden beams in very complex shapes to come up with that roof line. And I'm thinking, how many architect tiers? were shed to make that feasible because that looks really really complicated okay it looks fantastic i mean the amount of light in this the amount of glass is oh no no i Speaker 2 (12:41) absolutely i i do want to circle back to an earlier conversation that i want to say we had on the show when chrissy came on And you two were chatting about Lakeshore Lodge and whether or not you were going to be there for the official opening because it was pricey, right? Yeah, it's very expensive, yeah. Have you guys made a decision yet? No, yeah. We're still, Speaker 1 (13:05) maybe we have a couple days to figure it out. So we'll see, yeah. Okay. The other piece of concept art that was released, Jim, was for the Branch and Bush Lounge. And this looks like a standard Disney lounge where the