Is Disney making a mistake with their major Magic Kingdom expansion?

The news for Magic Kingdom fans has been good this week. Disney hinted to a major expansion coming to the park.

Disney will be investing something like $60 billion into their parks and part of that investment is rumored to be a major expansion to the oldest Disney World park in Florida. Magic Kingdom.

First, before we get to whether or not this is a mistake, let's look at what we are talking about. The expansion plans seem to point toward changes located behind and to the north of Frontierland. There has been speculation that this area, directly behind Thunder Mountain Railroad, could become a villain's land or maybe something like an ENCANTO-themed world or COCO.

We know that it appears Animal Kingdom will get a refit in what is now the Dinosaurland area and that area is rumored to be an ENCANTO theme as Disney seems to be heading toward a South American-type change. That would rule out an additional area in M.K. serving as that land.

The question is this, is Disney making a mistake in developing the land behind M.K. now as opposed to, yep you guessed it, a 5th gate?

The amount of money that Disney is going to spend on land development alone will be high. The timeframe to get that part of the park operational will take years. So why not just build a new park entirely? Universal Studios is building EPIC Universe and that should be completed in less than three years.

Disney has property that could be developed into a new themed park. In fact, there are plenty of areas near the ESPN Wide World of Sports property...yes, I have said it before, I'm all for them tearing down that area entirely.

If Disney were to put more effort into getting a new park into the area, they would keep pace with Universal and expand their brand. What concerns me is a new addition to M.K. would increase crowd attendance at an already typically crowded park.

It will be interesting to see what Disney does over the next ten years but I'm not sure expanding one park is the key to keeping pace in the Orlando theme park market.