Disney Parks are a wonderful place where you can experience Marvel and Star Wars and classic Disney animation in a single location. Could Kingdom Hearts ever be added to that list? Franchise executive producer Shinji Hashimoto would certainly like to see that happen. During the recent shareholders meeting for Square Enix the question was asked if, as part of the ongoing expansion that Disney Parks have been seeing over the years, a place for Kingdom Hearts might be found. According to Hashimoto...
Since Disney has an increasingly high regard for [Kingdom Hearts], I'd like to reach out to them and discuss this further. Sales inside Disneyland will certainly contribute to the growth of the customer base.
While not getting into specifics of what he would like to see, Shinji Hashimoto's comments (via Kingdom Hearts Insider) clearly understand that making the Kingdom Hearts brand a part of Disney Parks would only be a benefit to the name. People who aren't actually familiar with Kingdom Hearts could be exposed to it through the parks and might become fans. Clearly, the fact that these parks exist, and that millions visit them every year, is a huge opportunity that Kingdom Hearts has not been able to take full advantage of. Certainly, Kingdom Hearts has a stronger Disney connection than Avatar, and it has an entire land at a Disney Park, so the idea of Kingdom Hearts getting something isn't outside the realm of possibility.
While seeing Kingdom Hearts based theme park attractions is probably unlikely, the possibility for other tie-ins, like merchandise available in the gift shops or walk around characters from the games people could take pictures with could certainly be a possibility. Disney even made character costumes for the Kingdom Hearts versions of Donald and Goofy once upon a time, but they're rarely seen in public. Disney hasn't kept Kingdom Hearts entirely out of the parks in the past. Years ago when the first game in the series came out I remember a section of the Innoventions area at Disneyland that included several game consoles that were open for people to pick up and play the game.
Disney Parks have been going through a significant period of expansion, every park around the world seems to be making major additions or changes. This is dedicated to major global brands like Star Wars or Marvel in most cases, and as big as the Kingdom Hearts name is, it's certainly not on that level, but not everything in the Disney Parks has to be a multi-billion dollar franchise. Seeing some sort of attraction, especially at Tokyo Disneyland, wouldn't be the craziest thing the parks have done. If something like that did happen, it could also mean the possibility of Final Fantasy characters becoming part of the park, which would add yet another popular franchise that people could experience at Disneyland.
