They are supposedly claiming on Facebook the new, natural setting is not the Blue World projects even thought the press release sure sounds like what the new homes would be like. So, they want to distance themselves from that project name due to the fight over it in SoCal.
Here is a picture I believe of what the footprint of San Diego would have been.
We know know that the stadiums will be obsolete and unneeded going forward so that seems to suggest the elimination of new tanks and more of just modifing existing tanks with little actual expansion of of over all surface water. All the new features will be added to mostly the existing tanks as they remove to the stadiums. So this will likely see a net decrease in added space for the whales over the Blue World proposals. It also frees up space for other structures associated with the Orcas or just new attractions or other uses.
This is as much a cost cutting thing as it is by supposedly doing the right thing. The improvements to the Orca areas just went down in costs and size compared to what the Blue World projects were going to run and so will production costs associated with the show.