By The Numbers: The Surprising Number of E-Ticket Attractions at Each Disney Park

They are the Holy Grail of theme park attractions – astounding, breathtaking, spectacular rides both classic and modern. When you imagine the most amazing experiences at Disney and Universal parks, it’s probably E-Ticket attractions you picture: the coveted, beloved, fan-favorite, larger-than-life masterpiece rides that command spectacular crowds and engage generations. 

Here at Park Lore, we took a global tour of Disney and Universal parks in our Ride Count Countdown to explore the number of rides each park – and ultimately, resort – offered (with some major surprises along the way). We’ve also explored the parks “By the Numbers” with specific counts of how many dark rides and Opening Day Originals each park offers! But how would our rankings change if we instead looked only at the so-called “E-Ticket” headliners?

Today, we’ll count down from the parks with the fewest anchor attractions to those with the most to explore how these headlining rides make (or sometimes, break) a park’s reputation and tourism. But first, we need to set a definition for ourselves. So… 

What is an E-Ticket?

When Disneyland opened in 1955, admission was $1.00.

But wait – that dollar entry fee was exactly that: admission only. If you cared to experience any of the rides or attractions within, that would cost you. Like many amusement parks of the era, each of Disneyland’s rides carried its own admission fee, albeit paid through the exchange of a “ticket.” For opening year audiences, a “ticket book” would cost an additional $2.25 – about $22 today. Within, guests would receive eight vouchers: a mix of A-, B- and C-tickets, with C-tickets necessary for the most impressive attractions, like Jungle Cruise).

The very next year, the elusive D-Ticket was introduced, with Jungle Cruise promoted to the new, higher-cost, lower-availability designation.

Then, in 1959, it happened. In a massive expansion advertised and televised as a Grand Re-Opening of Disneyland, Walt introduced the world to three attractions so grand, there was simply no way around it: a new ticket was needed. Those three Tomorrowland anchors – Matterhorn Bobsleds, the Monorail, and Submarine Voyage – were the first three “E-Tickets,” requiring the most expensive and elite ride ticket yet (with the Jungle Cruise yet again promoted alongside them to become an E-Ticket itself).

In 1982, individual ride tickets were retired entirely in favor of the pay-one-price admission arrangement we know now. And therein lies the challenge. How do we know if something would require an “E-Ticket” today? For the purposes of deciding how many anchor attractions each park has, we’ll need to set up a definition of what being an E-Ticket today means! While we’ll have to be at least a little subjective in our evaluation, we’ll think of it as an E-Ticket needing to have at least two of these three qualifiers:

• A novel and extraordinary ride system
• An ambitious and spectacular scale
• An exceptionally renowned, historic, or sought-after experience

With those loose qualifications, let the tour begin…

13. Disney’s Animal Kingdom

1. AVATAR Flight of Passage
2. Expedition Everest
3. Kilimanjaro Safaris

Not yet considered: Unnamed Indiana Jones attraction, unnamed Encanto attraction

When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, it offered just four rides – including two whose primary purpose was transportation across the enormous park. In the quarter century since, you could argue that not much has changed. By the numbers, Animal Kingdom has the fewest rides of any Disney or Universal theme park (and even the ongoing transformation of Dinoland to Tropical Americas makes that even worse, temporarily removing the three rides Dinoland featured at its height).

Only one of those rides would’ve been considered an E-Ticket. That was the Lost Legend: DINOSAUR, which is becoming an Indiana Jones Adventure. (Dinosaur already had a layout nearly identical to the Indiana Jones rides in California and Japan.) The other major addition coming from the Tropical Americas project – an Encanto dark ride – will technically just restore the park’s ride count to the peak it reached between 2017 and 2020 when the Primeval Whirl coaster was operating… but it’ll add an E-Ticket, and a dark ride… very good things for Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Typically, we’ll try to identify what of each park’s E-Ticket lineup we’d consider the starring “E-Ticket Award” and which is the “Weak Link”… but given that Animal Kingdom has only three E-Tickets for now, that’s not really a fair distinction. All three of the park’s E-Tickets are very, very good, coveted rides. And interestingly, each is an Animal Kingdom exclusive. So it’s not really fair to stack them against each other when opinions here would be highly subjective.

But it probably is worth calling out the astounding scale of each. The Modern Marvel: Expedition Everest is, of course, one of the most sought after “Disney Mountains” on Earth. Kilimanjaro Safaris is a single ride the size of the entire Magic Kingdom park, populated by hundreds of living animals. And of course, Pandora’s Avatar Flight of Passage is an astounding mix of thrills and beauty – a one-of-a-kind simulator ride that’s known to leave riders a little misty from the emotional experience of discovering Pandora.

12. Disney Adventure World

1. Avengers Assemble: Flight Force
2. Frozen Ever After
3. Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy
4. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

Not yet considered: Unnamed Lion King attraction

Disney would no doubt prefer that we not remind you that Disney Adventure World at Disneyland Paris is the Declassified Disaster: Walt Disney Studios wearing a supersaturated Technicolor trench coat. But as that in-depth story of the French resort’s beleaguered second gate makes clear, even a new name and logo can’t quite cover up that this park is… well… imperfect.

Disney Adventure World wants badly to do what Universal Epic Universe does – thrusting us into “Living Lands” based on high-demand properties – but has to make it work in a former studio-stylized park that (even after a €2 billion “reimagining”) is pretty clearly still the “worst” Disney Park on Earth. Arguably, its E-Ticket collection isn’t terrible… but there’s little here that’s one-of-a-kind or jaw-dropping, so it seems unlikely that even a reborn “Adventure World” will become a must-visit international destination park.

E-TICKET AWARD: The first step in the park’s pivot away from barren backlot, the Modern Marvel: Ratatouille – L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy fused Disney’s renowned trackless ride tech with multimedia screens. The end result is a ride that doesn’t quite live up to the hopes fans had. If it weren’t for its technological trappings, Ratatouille’s ride experience is probably more of a D-Ticket than a true, headlining E-Ticket. But in Walt Disney Studios’ sparse lineup, it’s a welcome ride, and probably remains a truer, anchoring headliner than either of the Avengers Campus attractions.

WEAK LINK: There are two rides to consider here. Whereas California’s Avengers Campus “absorbed” the park’s Tower of Terror, France’s version of the Marvel-themed land glommed onto the park’s Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. The resulting Avengers Assemble: Flight Force is… how do we say this? Kinda bad. Axing the music (and lighting that made this Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster unique), Flight Force becomes a sort of muddled, screen-based dash through the stars – and thereby does poorly what the resort’s legendary Space Mountain does much better.

The other weird E-Ticket in the collection is the park’s Frozen ride. Actually, the “Disney Adventure World” name became official on the day that the park’s World of Frozen opened. And yes, the land is quite nice, lovely, and detailed in a way the old Walt Disney Studios would never have been. But it’s putting a whole lot of pressure on a clone of Frozen Ever After – yes, the same “meh” Frozen boat ride that opened at EPCOT more than a decade earlier – to suddenly become the E-Ticket anchor of this park… (That’s why my Build-Out goes a whole other way…)

11. Hong Kong Disneyland

1. Big Grizzly Mountain
2. Frozen Ever After
3. Iron Man Experience
4. Mystic Manor
5. Space Mountain

Not yet considered: Unnamed Spider-Man attraction

Hong Kong Disneyland opened in 2005, and was the last entry in an early-2000s class of underbuilt parks that included Walt Disney Studios. When it opened, the park was almost laughably small, borrowing from Disneyland in most every area (including a carbon copy of the itty bitty castle) except one: ride count. Hong Kong Disneyland opened with no Pirates. No “small world.” No Peter Pan’s Flight. No Big Thunder Mountain. No Haunted Mansion…

A multi-year expansion opened three mini-lands (Toy Story Land and two Hong Kong exclusives – Grizzly Gulch and Mystic Point). A second wave of expansion then brought in a “Stark Expo” mini-land, an expanded castle, and the first-to-open World of Frozen (which, like France’s, sort of embarrassingly features Frozen Ever After, which at least here is diluted by other unique and worthwhile E-Tickets).

E-TICKET AWARD: This one’s easy. It must be the Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor. Set in the expanded “mythology” of Disney’s S.E.A. – The Society of Explorers and Adventurers, this epic dark ride doesn’t just introduce some of the coolest characters created just for Disney Parks; it’s also a astounding “spiritual sequel” to the Haunted Mansion and one of the world’s best trackless dark rides, sending guests on a spectacular adventure through a museum collection brought to life.

THE WEAK LINK: Among its standout E-Tickets, the weakest link has to be Space Mountain if only because it’s the least ambitious. A carbon copy of Disneyland’s (which was rebuilt the same year, 2005, for the Anaheim park’s 50th anniversary), the ride is spectacular fun… but ultimately, Hong Kong Disneyland has enough exclusive E-Tickets to make this one the weak link in the lineup.

10. EPCOT

1. Frozen Ever After
2. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind
3. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
4. Soarin’
5. Test Track Presented by Chevrolet

Since 1982, there doesn’t seem to be a single year that Epcot has been at rest. From its origins as a grand, intellectual, ambitious, permanent World’s Fair showcasing the wonders of human innovation and industry, the park has grown and shrunk in fits and starts to its current form. Today, it’s a mish-mash of brainy concepts, brainless thrills, character invasions, and attempts to downplay (then later, exaggerate) its very-’80s origins. The latest round of reimagining at least positions the park to have an identity once again, even if it lacks the cohesion and intentionality of old.

Just glancing at EPCOT’s E-Ticket list is a good indicator of the park’s identity… or lack thereof. A mix of Disney + Pixar + Marvel that would fit as well in Hollywood Studios or Magic Kingdom, only Test Track hints at the park’s technological, industrial, semi-scientific origins.

E-TICKET AWARD: Though fans will forever discuss its place in EPCOT’s ever-evolving contexts, there’s no doubt that the park’s now-signature experience must be Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – the long-awaited and much-debated replacement for the Lost Legend: Universe of Energy. As in their rock ‘n’ roll takeover of California Adventure’s Lost Legend: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Marvel’s “irreverent” superhero team doesn’t bother making too much of an effort to conform to the standards of EPCOT. But also like their West Coast ride, you can’t really argue with the results: an insanely fun, musical, spinning family coaster that includes a backwards launch to the Big Bang.

THE WEAK LINK: Unfortunately, EPCOT has several “weak links” among its uneven lineup, including Mission: SPACE, the so-bad-it’s-good Gran Fiesta Tour, and the unfortunate Journey into Imagination With Figment. Of the E-Tickets, though, the weak link would have to be Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. Though we dedicated a whole feature to the ride – and though its headlining family capacity is much-needed – there’s no doubt that the ride feels little regressive for a 2021 addition, especially compared to the much more modern trackless dark rides at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.