In plans filed with the South Florida Water Management District this week (Application #160506-11, if you want to look it up), Reedy Creek detailed the new interchange, which would be located southeast of the studios theme park.
The plans also would affect the interchange at Osceola Parkway and World Drive, too. The current entrance to Disney's Hollywood Studios from World Drive would go away under the proposed plan. Instead, drivers northbound on World Drive would exit to eastbound Osceola Parkway, from which they would take a flyover at Victory Way that would lead them northbound into the new entrance for the park. A new bridge would carry Osceola Parkway over Victory Way. There also would be access lanes into the new entrance from drivers heading westbound on Osceola Parkway, presumably from Interstate 4.
Disney's Hollywood Studios' new access road points toward the east side of the current parking lot, on the far side from the park's entrance. The newly submitted plans do not connect the proposed interchange with the DHS parking lot, leaving the flyover road to dead end in the wooded area to the east of the parking lot. However, written notes in the submitted plans do confirm that there will be a proposed new entrance into Disney's Hollywood Studios, leading one to assume that those plans will be filed at a later date.
The proposed changes to the Osceola/World Drive interchange do include a small access road to the current Studio Drive that visitors now take into the parking lot, however, its small size suggests that this might become a backstage road rather than a public entrance to the parking lot. If Disney were to move or reduce the size of Studio Drive, that would allow Disney to expand the footprint of the park in the area where Star Wars Land is under construction.
The scale of the proposed plans should allow Disney to support a greater volume of cars entering and exiting the Studios, though it remains to be seen how Disney will accommodate them — either through an expansion of the current surface parking lot, the construction of a parking garage, or maybe even both.
In addition, Disney also has filed plans for changes to the intersection of Vista Boulevard and World Drive, north of the Magic Kingdom parking entrance plaza.
The plans appear to include a new flyover lane for buses and other vehicles continuing north on World Drive without entering the Transportation and Ticket Center parking lot. There also would be a flyover lane for traffic driving southbound on World Drive. Currently, all southbound traffic on World Drive north of the parking entrance plaza exits onto Vista Blvd, heading toward Fort Wilderness and Golden Oak. The only way now to access southbound World Drive beyond the entrance plaza is to circle around the TTC parking lot to access World Drive from the west, past the Car Care Center.
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I guess SWL will be a 2021 opening. They first have to fix the River of Light that probably will open 6 month later. Then they find that stuff in Avatar land is not working and need to fix that. probably Disney Spring will need fixes and the run of the mill rides for Toystory land will be to complicated for them and will need more work. SWL it's not tied in with any SW movie so no need to hurry, you won't recognise the location anyway. Big SW fan but don't care about Disney's SWL because of that.
Does that mean they'll have to build an entirely new parking lot?
This is certainly true. I was at WDW this past week and leaving Disney's Hollywood Studios after the fireworks was a miserable experience. It took about 20 minutes for the Disney bus I was on to get out of the parking lot.
As I understand it, the current vehicle entrance/exit off of E Buena Vista Drive would remain. However, it would be restricted to buses. So, this sort of infrastructure improvement will certainly improve the guest experience.
In that area, you are completely done if you get in the wrong lane at the wrong time. I've found the only way to get around that hellhole of Swan/Dolphin/Caribbean Beach is to stay in the left lane and cut people off...LOL. And don't even get me started on the random exits from that first parking garage at Disney Springs. I've parked there 4 times and never had the same exit twice. One time in the dark with pouring down rain and no lighting on the roadway. I found myself over by Caribbean Beach before I could figure out where I was and felt very sorry for the hapless tourists around me trying to figure out where they were.
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