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Disney Unveils 'Avatar' 'Indiana Jones,' 'Encanto' and 'Monsters, Inc' Attractions

FILE PHOTO: Beauty and the Beast Castle, in a new area set to open to public on September 28, is seen during a press preview at Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, east of Tokyo, Japan, September 25, 2020. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Beauty and the Beast Castle, in a new area set to open to public on September 28, is seen during a press preview at Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, east of Tokyo, Japan, September 25, 2020. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
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Disney Unveils 'Avatar' 'Indiana Jones,' 'Encanto' and 'Monsters, Inc' Attractions

FILE PHOTO: Beauty and the Beast Castle, in a new area set to open to public on September 28, is seen during a press preview at Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, east of Tokyo, Japan, September 25, 2020. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Beauty and the Beast Castle, in a new area set to open to public on September 28, is seen during a press preview at Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, east of Tokyo, Japan, September 25, 2020. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo

Walt Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D'Amaro laid out an ambitious growth plan for the company’s theme parks on Saturday at the D23 fan convention, announcing plans for four new cruise ships and details about six new themed lands.

Forthcoming plans include a new Disney villains land at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, a doubling of the size of the Avengers Campus at the Disney California Adventure Park in Anaheim, California, and details about its partnership with Fortnite creator Epic Games.

“This, for us, is an unprecedented era of growth,” Reuters quoted D'Amaro as saying.

The two new attractions at its Marvel-themed Avengers Campus at California Adventure will be Avengers: Infinity Defense and the Stark Flight Lab, the company said.

California Adventure will also add a new 'Avatar' experience at the California Adventure, based on the second film in the science fiction franchise, “Avatar: The Way of Water", it said.

To commemorate the 70th anniversary next year of the Disneyland park in Anaheim, a show based on the life of Walt Disney featuring an audio-animatronic figure of the company's founder will be opened.

Disney also unveiled two attractions for the new Tropical Americas expansion coming to Disney's Animal Kingdom park in Orlando, Florida. One follows Indiana Jones on an exploration of a Mayan temple. Another is inspired by the Disney animated film “Encanto” and follows the character Antonio on the day he received his magical gift. Tropical Americas is set to open in 2027.
Actor Billy Crystal took the stage to announce an area at Disney's Hollywood Studios dedicated to the Pixar film, “Monsters, Inc”. The area, known as a land in Disney theme park parlance, will feature a suspended roller coaster designed to simulate zooming through the door vault at the Laugh Factory, just like characters Mike and Sulley in the film.
Pixar’s “Cars” film franchise also comes to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, in a re-imagined area of Frontierland, with two new attractions planned. One will take guests on an off-road thrill ride into the wilderness beyond the film’s fictional Radiator Springs setting. Construction is scheduled to begin early next year.
The fan favorite announcement, based on the audience reaction, was D'Amaro's statement Disney will create a new area devoted to Disney's villains at the Magic Kingdom, with two attractions, dining and shopping.
These announcements reveal how the company will begin $60 billion in capital investments, nearly doubling spending over the next decade to improve attractions at its 12 parks and increase cruise line capacity.
"Everything that we’re going to share with you tonight is in active development," D'Amaro said. "This means that plans are drawn. This means that dirt is moving. I just want to be clear with all the fans out there. This isn’t blue sky."
CRUISE FLEET EXPANDS
Disney also said it will add four cruise ships to its growing fleet, capitalizing on an industry that has been enjoying a rebound from the global shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company currently has five cruise ships in operation, and previously announced four others, including one Tokyo-based vessel and another that will set sail from Singapore in 2025. These new vessels will start operating between 2027 and 2031.
D’Amaro was joined onstage by the company’s creative leads to discuss Disney’s collaboration with video-game maker Epic Games. The company invested $1.5 billion in Epic earlier this year, giving Disney an equity stake in the creator of Fortnite and Unreal Engine.
Disney announced new characters and stories are coming to the online game, including Disney villains as well as characters from the Pixar superhero film, “The Incredibles,” and the Disney+ series “The Mandalorian” about a lone bounty hunter from the Star Wars universe.
Disney's parks have become a reliable profit engine, helping cushion the impact of declines in traditional television and losses in its video streaming business, which last quarter turned a profit.
The experiences unit, which includes parks, cruise ships and consumer products, contributed 60% of the company's operating profit in the most recent quarter - up from 30% just a decade ago.

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Scientists Propose Warming Up Mars by Using Heat-trapping 'Glitter'

This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout
This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout
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Scientists Propose Warming Up Mars by Using Heat-trapping 'Glitter'

This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout
This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout

The idea of transforming Mars into a world more hospitable to human habitation is a regular feature of science fiction. But could this be done in real life?
Scientists are now proposing a new approach to warm up Earth's planetary neighbor by pumping engineered particles -similar in size to commercially available glitter and made of iron or aluminum - into the atmosphere as aerosols to trap escaping heat and scatter sunlight toward the Martian surface. The idea would be to augment the natural greenhouse effect on Mars to raise its surface temperature by roughly 50 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius) over a span of a decade.
This alone would not make Mars habitable for people, but the scientists who developed the proposal see it as a potentially doable initial step.
"Terraforming refers to modifying a planet's environment to make it more Earth-like. For Mars, warming the planet is a necessary, but insufficient, first step. Previous concepts have focused on releasing greenhouse gases, but these require large amounts of resources that are scarce on Mars," said University of Chicago planetary scientist Edwin Kite, who helped lead the study published this week in the journal Science Advances.

"The key elements of our paper are a novel proposal to use engineered nanoparticles to warm Mars' atmosphere, and climate modeling that suggests this approach could be much more efficient than previous concepts. This is important because it presents a potentially more feasible method for modifying Mars' climate, which could inform future Mars exploration strategies," Kite added.

NASA has sent robotic rovers to explore the Martian surface and the InSight Lander to study the planet's interior. The US space agency's Artemis program aims to put astronauts in the coming years on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 in preparation for potential future human missions to Mars.

There are numerous challenges to human settlements on Mars: lack of breathable oxygen, harmful ultraviolet radiation due to its thin atmosphere, salty soil hostile to growing crops, dust storms that sometimes cover much of the planet and more. But its frigid temperatures are a serious impediment.

"We propose to show that the idea of warming Mars isn't impossible. We hope that our finding encourages the broader scientific community, and the public, to explore this intriguing idea," said study lead author Samaneh Ansari, a doctoral student in the electrical and computer engineering department at Northwestern University in Illinois.
The median Martian surface temperature is about minus-85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-65 degrees Celsius). With its tenuous atmosphere, solar heat on the Martian surface readily escapes into space. The proposal would aim to allow liquid water to exist on the surface of Mars, which has water in the form of ice at its polar regions and its subsurface.
The scientists proposed continuously releasing tiny rod-shaped particles - nanorods - into the atmosphere at a rate of about eight gallons (30 liters) per second for years.
"The idea is to either ship the material or better yet, ship the manufacturing tool and make the nanorods on the planet since iron and aluminum are abundant on the surface of Mars," Ansari said.

The researchers are mindful of the possibility of unintended consequences in terraforming another world for humankind's benefit. Scientists, for instance, are eager to learn whether Mars has harbored life in the past - or perhaps currently, in the form of subsurface microbes.
"Although nanoparticles could warm Mars, both the benefits and potential costs of this course of action are currently uncertain. For example, in the unlikely event that Mars' soil contains irremediable compounds toxic to all Earth-derived life, then the benefit of warming Mars is nil," Kite said.
"On the other hand, if a photosynthetic biosphere can be established on the surface of Mars, that might increase the solar system's capacity for human flourishing," Kite added. "On the costs side, if Mars has extant life, then study of that life could have great benefits that warrant robust protections for its habitat."