Hoosier, from what I've seen and heard from the Disney media I follow, most hardcore fans feel the same way.
Disney has been put on their heels by Universal Studios highly successful Harry Potter expansions and other new attractions. In their efforts to counter it, they struck a deal with James Cameron back in 2011 to bring his 2009 movie to the parks. Avatar came out in December 2009 and Avatar Land was announced in September 2011. Over that period, Avatar became the highest grossing film of all time. So to them, it made sense to strike a deal take away some of the buzz of Universal's Harry Potter expansion which had opened the previous year. Of course, even in 2011 it was clear that Avatar didn't have the staying power of the Harry Potter series or even Titanic or even many of the timeless movies Disney has made over the years. A lot of people saw it once and never thought about it again. There are sequels coming out around the time the land opens so Disney may win the timing after all, but for now, it doesn't look like a great match unless you consider other factors.
The pros to Avatar are that Pandora was a really cool world. And Disney is planning on incorporating that and using it as a way to do cool nighttime stuff at Animal Kingdom. The concepts look great. Disney's original plan for that area of the park was called "Beastly Kingdom" which was supposed to feature mythical animals. They ran out of money because they underestimated how much it would cost to take care of all those animals. That gets into a larger question of why Disney felt they needed to build a zoo, but whatever.
Disney's other counter to Harry Potter was New Fantasyland which is a fascinating story about bad timing. New Fantasyland features attractions based on movies released in 1937, 1941, 1989, and 1991. Not very new. And only one of the attractions is a unique attraction that wasn't elsewhere at Magic Kingdom or Disneyland. The Mine Train ride is the last thing debuting about 18 months after the rest. The original plan didn't have the Mine Train. It was pretty much all princess stuff. The story goes that the guy in charge of building New Fantasyland took his sons to his office to show off the plans and they immediately told him it was too girly. So they had to add in the Mine Train as something that wasn't princessy.
So Disney has spent the last 7 or so years trying to beat what Universal Studios did with Harry Potter. They bought the rights to theme around the highest grossing movie of all time at Animal Kingdom and built a new area of Magic Kingdom with old classics.
So let's look at the list of all-time highest grossing movies now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films#Highest-grossing_films
Three of the top 6 are Disney-owned and came out in the last 2 years. Avengers, Iron Man 3, and of course, Frozen. They didn't have a crystal ball, but they've got to be kicking themselves for shelling out cash to Cameron and wasting R&D time adapting his stuff that could have been spent preparing something for Frozen. They can't do anything with Avengers in Orlando, but they can in all the other parks, but they're playing catch up there.