I haven’t done any technical calculations. On a quick glance I’d say all of this parking is about half the size of the park itself. Very little parking inside the main park boundaries, which is mostly for service vehicles (these spaces aren’t highlighted).
Just something I was curious about, it’s wild how much we accommodate, and how much space we waste, for cars.
Edit: not shown is the large lot southeast of the park. It is about three times the size of the lot to the southwest. There are other lots further outside the picture that add additional parking space not shown. Thanks to RvTV95XBeo for pointing this out.
That is huge but if I’m being honest I thought it would be bigger.
A real eye opener here is that Disneyland is only around 2000 feet, or 6 and a half average-ish city blocks, wide. But it feels much larger because all the paths are deliberately designed to be meandering and there’s no way to just walk straight across it.
The design of Disneyland is astonishing to be fair, how everything is cleverly hidden away, all the forced perspective and general systems in place.
That’s just EPCOT you’re measuring. Hollywood Studios is also in this image, but there is also Magic Kingdom (classic Disney with the castle), Animal Kingdom, Typhoon Lagoon, and Blizzard Beach.
It is. The largest lot is cut off this map, to the southeast of the park.
It’s impressive how much “public” transit they have in place for getting people into and out of the park (almost as if spending some money on public transit pays massive dividends). Even then, they still have to put people’s cars somewhere.
Disney World in Florida goes to greater lengths obscuring and spreading out how much parking fills up the park. It’s design is also a lot less confined by urban boundaries than Disneyland.
You missed the biggest lot - Toy Story Lot, Southeast of the park
Also, the employee parking garage (just south of your northern-most lot), and the employee parking lot across Ball Road (north off the map). Gotta zoom out to even see it all.
You’re right, including that lot would have been a considerable difference in overall parking capacity. Even with the lots highlighted there’s still a tremendous amount of pavement.
Remember, we’re in the Itchy lot.
I’m surprised they don’t build structures over the parking lots. Or are these all multi-story parking structures already?
Top left by the Rise of the Resistance ride is a massive multistory parking structure where most guests park and ride a short tram to the apron between Disneyland and California Adventure.
Much of the ground level only parking lots are for employee parking or simply overflow on peak days.
we need a shuttle from disneyland to the anahiem HSR station when it’s built
Parking Land could be it’s own theme park.
Disney and rocky mountain national Park both have they same feel to me when you drive up. The widest road you’ve ever seen leading to a toll booth and a parking lot. It just makes you wonder if there might be a more efficient way to move people.
Most of the guests are coming from outside the city/state. Unless we built a national high speed railway, I don’t see how this could be avoided.
Shuttle/train from the airport? Doesn’t seem too difficult to solve honestly.
Flying commercial has a larger carbon footprint than just driving a car.
Anyone coming from out of country is probably flying, which is a significant amount. Anyone coming from the eastern half of the continent is probably too.
A quick check found some (admittedly dubious) stats claiming 71% of visitors are from in-country, presumably meaning 29% are not. Can’t really be bothered to check further.
You’re forgetting to account for the other parts of the vacation experience. Hotels, restaurants, and other tourist attractions. While you can probably fulfill this with various forms of public transit, a lot of this would require undoing decades of car centric city design. From the perspective of a park, parking lots are a much simpler (though unpleasant) solution.
Fair point. But I still think that would be doable. Might take some time. Odious as parking lots are, they aren’t the worst aspect of cars on cities, so I don’t mind if we wait to eliminate them until other alternatives are present.
Why not build hotels at the park? Then all you need is the Disney line from the airport.
Not sure if this was a satirical comment, but there are hotels at the park.
By the time they do this say to LAX, we will all be dead…purple line extension that goes barely 10 miles started back in 2017 and its still going today 2023…thats like a year per mile if they trying to get it done by 2026 olympics…
But you’re forgetting that this would be a private company not a government. Disney doesn’t have to answer to voters and other corporate interests. They just convince their board of directors it’s a good idea then the checks are written and mickey construction gets to work.
I dont think even they are powerful enough to extend the local train all the way to the airport…but i could be wrong as a private company is trying to build a high speed line from vegas to socal…
You’re missing 2 more lots!
On the opposite side of the Harbor and Ball Rd. intersection there’s another parking lot. This is “Ball Lot” and is used by employees. Employees need a shuttle to get to work.
Further down Katella, across the street from the convention center, there’s Toy Story/“K Lot”, which is a combination parking lot for guests and more employee parking. This is the largest parking lot of them all, taking up an entire city block.
The lot you’ve marked across from House of Blues is indeed a Disney lot but it is rarely used. Additionally, the “lot” you’ve marked inside California Adventure isn’t a “real” parking lot - just a place for storage of maintenance trucks and stuff that rarely leaves the bounds of the park. If you’re counting those, there’s a lot more area you should count (all of the outside of Indiana Jones/Haunted Mansion, everything from the backside of Space Mountain to Main Street). There’s also a parking garage just below the spot you’ve marked in Team Disney Anaheim - that gray structure to the south of the parking lot is a parking garage for corporate folks that have their office behind the park.
(I used to work at Disneyland.)
Make an update post including the southern parking lots. Include The convention center since it’s on the same vicinity.
One thing that I’m waiting to see happen is a mass transit line from Disneyland to ARTIC, especially when ARTIC gets connected to California’s High Speed Rail.
It probably won’t without a push from someone, but the region seems ready for a line from Disneyland through the Anaheim Convention Center, ARTIC, and up to the stadiums.
