Theme parks are living creatures. Sure, they grow and change and “will never be complete…” But even more, they’re made of complex systems and elements all working together so effortlessly, you may not even realize they’re working at all. Berms act as skin, insulating parks from the sights of the outside world; intuitive layouts are a skeleton, giving the park structure; pathways act as veins and arteries, pulsing guests instead of blood; restrooms are… Well…
The point is, when it comes to the heart, lungs, and brain of theme parks, the analogy is simple: rides! And don’t misunderstand: the best theme parks are all about balance, featuring meet-and-greets, restaurants, shows, walkthroughs, scenery, and interactive experiences that make a day feel complete and worthwhile… But as part of Park Lore’s Extras Collection, our “By The Numbers” mini-series is all about seeing parks differently – by the raw numbers behind them… for example, the number of certifiable E-Tickets at each, the number of dark rides at each park, or the number of Opening Day Original attractions each park has left.
So today – just for fun! – we want to take a look at Disney and Universal’s parks by the numbers. Exactly how many rides does each of these parks really have?
For the sake of comparing apples to apples, we need to set a definition for what we mean by “ride.” So for our purposes, we’ll define a ride as a specific subset of attraction wherein a guest is moved by an external ride system. That means that even though they might be listed on a map, our count will not include shows, walkthroughs, and other non-ride “attractions” (like the Enchanted Tiki Room, Journey of Water, the Boudin Bakery Tour, Enchanted Tales with Belle, etc.) which are wonderful, lovely, essential things – but pretty agreeably, not rides. With that decided, let’s start with our low scorers…
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19. Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Ride Count: 6
Not yet counted: Unnamed Indiana Jones ride; unnamed Encanto ride; unnamed carousel
When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, it represented a new era of themed entertainment design. Defined by its accuracy and realism, Animal Kingdom invited exploration into African towhns, Asian jungles, archaeological digs, and artisan villages. It was culturally vibrant, artistically authentic, and a stunning creative triumph of 21st century Imagineering. Early marketing for the park was meant to convey that it was “Nahtazū,” but for all the buzz around a fourth theme park, what Animal Kingdom didn’t have was rides.
When the park opened, it featured only four – two of which (the Discovery River Boats and Wildlife Express) merely provided transportation across the massive park! As you’d expect, dining, exploration, and yes, animals, were the bread-and-butter of the park. But those expecting a traditional Disney Parks attraction lineup found just two rides – the downright terrifying Lost Legend: Countdown to Extinction and the headlining Kilimanjaro Safaris. (Kali River Rapids joined as a third in 1999.)
Disney was slow to combat the park’s “half-day” reputation. A family-focused expansion 2002 saw a family spinner and the (now-defunct) Primeval Whirl carnival coaster added to controversial Dino-Rama. Then, in 2006, the Modern Marvel: Expedition Everest debuted, at least giving the park four “E-Tickets.”
And there it stayed until 2017, when Pandora: The World of Avatar opened, adding two substiantial rides. Avatar Flight of Passage is the park’s unequivocal headliner, while the tranquil Na’vi River Journey is a peaceful tour through the bioluminescent jungles of the distant moon… and thus, the park’s first family dark ride, nearly two decades after opening!
What’s next? Despite reaching a peak of nine rides post-Pandora, the park’s ride count slipped back by one in 2020 when Disney announced that Dinoland’s Primeval Whirl spinning carnival coaster was officially extinct. The troublesome (and not terribly beloved) coaster’s closure clearly marked a turning point in the park’s story given that Dinoland as a whole just hasn’t gelled.
After a false start “Blue Sky” ideation session at the 2022 D23 Expo that suggested threatened that Zootopia and Moana would replace Dinoland, a change in leadership at Imagineering saw Dinoland’s future reoriented. As re-confirmed at the 2024 D23 Expo, Dinoland will become Tropical Americas, incarnate as the pan-American village of Pueblo Esperanza. A better fit alongside the park’s existing Africa and Asia, the new land will broadly represent a real town square of Central and South American architecture, dining, and cuisine.
It’ll also feature three new rides. First, the soon-to-be Lost Legend: Dinosaur will embrace the longtime fan trivia that its layout is nearly identical to Disneyland’s 1995 E-Ticket, becoming an all-new entry in the Indiana Jones Adventure series. Dinoland’s Dumbo-style TriceraTop Spin will go extinct in favor of a new carousel of “wood-carved” Disney and Pixar animals. And finally, the abandoned Dino-Rama carnival will make way for a new dark ride based on Disney’s 2021 film Encanto. When it’s all said and done, though, Animal Kingdom will only be restored to the nine rides it had in 2019 since the three rides of Tropical America will simply refill the slots of Dinoland’s three.
18. Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Ride Count: 9
When Michael Eisner commissioned the Disney-MGM Studios as a rebuttal to Universal Studios’ plans for Orlando, the movie-themed park was based around two halves, each with a single substantial ride. The park’s front half would be a celebration of the Golden Age of Hollywood, marked by the Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride. The back half would be a real, working movie studio with a multi-hour, multi-modal tour through real production facilities. Of course, serious filmmaking never came to Florida, leaving the Declassified Disaster: The Backstage Studio Tour as the park’s only other ride.
Still immensely popular with guests, the Disney-MGM Studios needed rapid expansion to keep capacity in line with attendance. As a result, big name attractions like Star Tours, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and Toy Story Mania came online, creating a park with a relatively low ride count, but where nearly every ride is an E-Ticket.
By the middle of the 2010s, the renamed Disney’s Hollywood Studios was clearly at a crossroads. In 2013, then-CEO Bob Iger accidentally alluded to the park gaining a new identity that would downplay its outdated “studio” foundation in favor of immersive, cinematic “Living Lands.” The first, Toy Story Land, opened in 2018, adding a family flat ride and a family roller coaster.
The following year, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened as the keystone of the park’s pivot. Set in an original world designed by Imagineers and defined by a massive, interconnected mythology, the land’s two standouts are certainly Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Imagineering’s modern magnum opus, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Soon after, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened in the park’s Chinese Theater, replacing the Great Movie Ride and cementing the park’s modern direction.
Hollywood Studios is still a wildly uneven park – something its pathways can’t conceal. Given its age , it also has surprisingly few overall rides (though, again, nearly all are headliners). But at least now, few would call it the “half-day park” it once was.
What’s next? At least fifteen years ago – in the early days of theme park message boards, when the looming Wizarding World sent Imagineers scrambling for their own IP-based “Living Lands,” rumors consistently suggested that both the Disney-MGM Studios and Disney California Adventure were set to receive “Monstropolis” expansions, bringing 2001’s Monsters Inc. to the parks.
Both installations were rumored to be anchored by suspended family coasters through the film’s iconic “Door Warehouse.” But no announcement was ever made, and no dirt ever moved. That is, until the 2024 D23 Expo. Even though fans hadn’t expected much to be announced for the studio park given its substantial investment in the last decade, it turns out that a Monstropolis is indeed real, and will be anchored by a version of the suspended coaster that fans had largely written off as forum fodder a decade ago.
It’s a great concept, and a much-needed family ride for the park. But given D23’s celebratory nature, Disney quietly left out that the land will replace the beloved Muppet*Vision 3D – an announcement they only fessed up to in November 2024. The Muppets will instead jump across the park to take-over Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. When it’s all said and done, the new Monsters Inc. attraction will increase the park’s ride count by one… but at what cost?!
17. Universal Epic Universe
Ride Count: 11
For years, the detective work of Alicia Stella at Orlando Park Stop provided glimpses into the park that would be Universal Epic Universe accurate down to the last detail, double-confirmed by the aerial photography of theme park enigma Bioreconstruct. It wasn’t until January 2024 that Universal itself finally fessed up to the biggest and worst-kept of its worst-kept secrets: in 2025, we’ll see the park’s celestial portals powered on, whisking guests away into five fantastic worlds.
Epic Universe is officially made of five worlds – Celestial Park, Super Nintendo World, Dark Universe, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic, and How To Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk. Is it any surprise that Epic Universe is heralded as the next big thing? Indeed, it’s been cast as the project that might actually change the gravity in Orlando in Universal’s favor. Given that, it might be surprising to hear that it actually has fewer rides than even the smallest Universal park – the actual movie studio in Hollywood.
Still, no one can deny that Epic Universe came in swinging. To start, it features no less than five substantial E-Ticket attractions – four of which have never been seen before. More to the point, it’s the first U.S. Disney or Universal park designed after the original Wizarding World, meaning that Epic Universe promises an entire theme park of master-planned, cinematic “Living Lands” to rival Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley in immersion. And of course, the park is backed with gee whiz technologies and gotta-see-it appeal that Universal hopes will help this park steal a day away from Disney World’s low-ride-count gates.
Sure, the weight of three new hotels and an entire “South Complex” might be a lot to foist onto the shoulders of just 11 rides… but given rumors of “Phase II” expansions are already flying, Universal seems to think that this fantastic combination of IPs, stellar technology, and intergenerational, immersive worlds will cement their status as the risk-takers of the industry, and that the “gotta see it” draw of Epic Universe will resonate.
16. EPCOT
Ride Count: 12
EPCOT is unique among the theme parks on this list for the grand (and not-so-grand) transformative periods it’s undergone. Disney’s hopes of running an interactive, educational, immersive, permanent World’s Fair sponsored by corporations and anchored by monumental pavilions sharing knowledge and culture has… well… it’s seen its ups and downs.
It’s almost hard to believe that at EPCOT’s classic height of the late ’80s, its Future World realm was anchored by nine pavilions, each focused on an area of science and industry – energy, health, transportation, imagination, agriculture, oceans, communication, innovation, and humanity’s collective future. Thanks to a ’90s effort to increase the park’s cool factor, nearly all have been replaced… either by more modern, semi-scientific, technological thrill rides that are far more brawn than brains (rides like Soarin’, Test Track, and Mission: SPACE) or by piecemeal character injections into once-unified pavilions.
It wasn’t until 2019 that Disney finally announced what had long been dreamed of: a master-planned, all-at-once reimagining of the park.
Aesthetically, the new EPCOT will be sleek and modern, but will embrace the park’s inherent retro ’80s foundation (instead of trying to bury it like so many ’90s projects did). For example, the whole project is embodied by a neo-retro logo, and the return of unified pavilion iconography.
Substantially, the multi-phase reimagining will, of course, hinge on Disney intellectual properties (once forbidden from the park) as Ratatouille, Moana, Coco, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy superheroes make themselves as home. It’s part of the reason we spent a whole Special Feature wondering aloud if the age of the “Disney+ Park” means that no park really stands for anything uniquely its own, each merely a differently-decorated (but ultimately, interchangeable) place for Disney’s high-earning franchises to come to life.
In any case, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure added to the park’s ride count without any subtraction, while Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind restores the pavilion lost by the closing of Universe of Energy in 2017.
What’s next? Though EPCOT’s multi-billion-dollar, multi-year reimagining has seen seismic shifts to the park’s layout, aesthetic, and ride lineup, fans saw much more on the horizon. Disney had officially confirmed a Celebration pavilion and a Mary Poppins ride, and had heavily hinted at a re-theme of the ride in the Mexico pavilion (using Pixar’s Coco) and a long-awaited reimagining of the Imagination pavilion.
Much to fans’ surprise, though, Disney announced that when the “Celebration Gardens” opened in winter 2023, that was that, and the EPCOT transformation was officially deemed complete. So at least for now, it looks like EPCOT’s ride count is locked in for the foreseeable future, save for a third iteration of Test Track due in late 2025.