All the question, of course, is why? From what i've been told it seems that they've realized they may need more time to build the whole thing - park and resorts. Which brings another "why?" question...to which i don't have the answer! Apparently until now they were not late in the works, so there may be different answers to this. However - and this is my own speculation - i wonder if it doesn't have something to see with the land itself. We know that since last year dozens of workers have "prepared" the land of the SDL site but what might be important to remember is what was there before the works began.
And, as you can see on pictures by Stefan Zwanzger - the Theme Park Guy - on his site - and on the picture above - shot before the works began, what was there were rice fields. And so what, you ask? Well, in case you don't know, rice fields are bathing in water, lot of water. Sure, the whole site had been landfilled since then, but may be the ground is not dry enough yet. Not to mention that the water table, under, may be quite high, too.
It's very important that the land will be really dry before they begin to build on it and it's something that WDI Imagineers are really taking care of. Why? Because - and it's not known - problems happened at Tokyo Disneyland some years after TDL opening, precisely because the land was not enough dry. Some buildings began to had some cracks, etc... as the ground had moved because it was not really really totally dry when they've built on it. When they've built Hong Kong Disneyland, which like TDL is built on a land which was the sea before, the Imagineers didn't forgot the TDL problem and waited enough time to have a perfect dry ground. Sure, the SDL choosen site was not the sea previously but all the water of the previous rice fields may be didn't helped. Again, this is my own speculation, so it might be another reason that we may never know.
Edited: The hurricane season is not only "open" in Americas but also in China Seas as Shanghaî is facing right now a typhoon - as you can read HERE - and the season just began. Typhoons generally bring heavy rains and possible flood which certainly will not help to make SDL land more dry!
Talking about Shanghaî Disneyland, Luke from Luke and the temple of fun website did something amazing. Remember last week the SDL hotels plans that were officially released? Well, for the second hotel, the one supposed to have a Toy Story theme we had this plan:
And then, two days later, Attractions Magazine found some new 3D renderings showing the different floors...
That was even better but Luke decided to recreate a real full 3D model that you can see below, based on the layout of the two original plans and his own interpretation. Of course, as he says "the accuracy of the model is not guaranteed" and chances are that it will not look like this. The reason why he chooses the blue, red and yellow colors is because these are the colors used in the Toy Story logo. As you can see below, like this it looks a bit like a big LEGO and considering that it should be a Toy Story themed hotel may be, finally, it will really look more or less like this at the end! there is many more pictures of Luke 3D model on his site, on every angle so jump to Luke and the temple of fun to see more!
Pictures: copyright Disney, Theme Park Guy, Luke and the temple of fun
