From Disney's press release:
Ballast Point pairs award-winning beers with an extensive menu of Southern California cuisine—salads, small plates, flatbreads and entrees featuring local, sustainable and seasonal ingredients. In addition to Ballast Point’s iconic beers, including its flagship Sculpin IPA, the location will serve exclusive, limited-edition beers available only at Downtown Disney.
Ballast Point will go in next to the upcoming Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer in the space that has housed Build-A-Bear and Ridemakerz. The two restaurants effectively will replace the dining capacity that Downtown Disney will be losing when ESPN Zone and Rainforest Cafe close to make way for Disneyland's fourth on-site hotel. That construction will begin later this year.
Disney also will increase dining capacity in Downtown Disney with an expansion of Naples Ristorante e Pizzeria, which has been expanding its outdoor seating area. A new outdoor bar is going in, as well as additional wood-fired ovens to increase the popular restaurant's pizza-baking capacity. Naples is run by Patina Restaurant Group, which also operates Via Napoli at Epcot, as well as the majority of restaurants in Disneyland's Downtown Disney.
In addition to these changes, Splitsville Luxury Lanes is opening its first west-coast location next week on the site formerly occupied by House of Blues.
As for entertainment within the district, Disney recently opened its Star Wars virtual reality experience, Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire by ILMxLAB and The VOID in a former retail space across the Uva Bar plaza from the incoming restaurants. On the retail end, World of Disney is getting a refurb, and Disney is opening a Disney Home store, featuring seasonal collections of Disney-themed and inspired home goods, in the former D-Street location. Disney Home opens next month.
Disney also has tightened parking restrictions for its Downtown Disney lot, limiting extended free parking only to those who spend at least $20 in the district or who get a validation from a table service restaurant or the movie theater.
Eventually, a new four-star hotel will occupy the space west of the monorail station in Downtown Disney, taking out those theaters, one of the district's two Starbucks, Rainforest Cafe, ESPN Zone, and Earl of Sandwich. Disney will begin construction later this winter on a new parking structure on the current Pinocchio lot, to make up for the expected loss of parking capacity due to the new hotel and its construction.
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