Category: Extras

During the ’90s, one of the most enduring battles of all time was waged right before our eyes: the Coaster Wars. As ride manufacturers and the most daring theme park operators raced to build taller, faster, and more extreme rides, thrill-seekers found themselves surrounded in new record-breakers year after year. With unthinkable innovations, new ride technologies, and cutting edge coasters debuting, it seemed that the Coaster Wars Crown could be anyone’s…

Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.



This article and hundreds more are available for Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members who help support this ad-free, clickbait-free, quality-over-quantity collection with a monthly membership. Park Lore Members can access more than a hundred Member-exclusive articles, unlock rare concept art and construction photos in every story, stream audio across the site, tune into podcast exclusives, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail!

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members, you’ll instantly unlock this story (and of course, a lot more). You can learn more about joining and supporting Park Lore (and browse all the available Extras and Special Features) in the “Memberships & Perks” menu above. If you can’t afford a Pass, please contact us; we’ll make some magic happen.


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When Universal Epic Universe opens by Summer 2025, the first fans through the turnstiles will sure have a lot of bucket list items to check off. Without a doubt, many will race to Super Nintendo World – the next “Living Land” in Disney and Universal’s back-and-forth theme park battles. Fans of the classics might make a beeline to the Dark Universe – a village populated by Universal’s monsters of the ’30s and ’40s. Families will no doubt race to the Isle of Berk to learn how to train a dragon. Potterheads will instead head for Place Cachée – a 1920s Paris drawn from the Wizarding World.

But like Islands of Adventure before it, the immersive worlds of Epic Universe will also be accentuated by something a little louder: a cutting edge, iconic set of roller coasters. While Universal has barely acknowledged that Epic Universe is happening at all, they haven’t been able to hide their newest thrill ride – a pair of intertwined racing coasters that will dominate the new park’s celestial hub.

Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.



This article and hundreds more are available for Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members who help support this ad-free, clickbait-free, quality-over-quantity collection with a monthly membership. Park Lore Members can access more than a hundred Member-exclusive articles, unlock rare concept art and construction photos in every story, stream audio across the site, tune into podcast exclusives, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail!

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members, you’ll instantly unlock this story (and of course, a lot more). You can learn more about joining and supporting Park Lore (and browse all the available Extras and Special Features) in the “Memberships & Perks” menu above. If you can’t afford a Pass, please contact us; we’ll make some magic happen.


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Five years. 1,875 days. That’s how much time will have passed between the first signs of construction for TRON Lightcycle Run on February 14, 2018 and its official opening on April 4, 2023.

For those of us who’ve seen TRON’s construction start and stop, ebb and flow, speed up and slow down, every day of the last five years has felt something like a big joke with us as the punchline… Why can’t Disney just open its cloned copy of an already existing off-the-shelf roller coaster in a box? It’s understandable to feel that TRON Lightcycle Run represents an agonizing new low when it comes to the time it takes to build a theme park attraction.

Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.



This article and hundreds more are available for Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members who help support this ad-free, clickbait-free, quality-over-quantity collection with a monthly membership. Park Lore Members can access more than a hundred Member-exclusive articles, unlock rare concept art and construction photos in every story, stream audio across the site, tune into podcast exclusives, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail!

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members, you’ll instantly unlock this story (and of course, a lot more). You can learn more about joining and supporting Park Lore (and browse all the available Extras and Special Features) in the “Memberships & Perks” menu above. If you can’t afford a Pass, please contact us; we’ll make some magic happen.


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With iridescent platinum decor dripped across Disneyland, the Disney100 celebration has officially launched. Commemorating “100 Years of Wonder” (since the 1923 founding of The Walt Disney Studios), Disney100 is something more than another entry in Disney’s tradition of annual theme park campaigns; it’s a company-wide initiative meant to reflect on Disney’s past and re-orient it toward a new tomorrow.

Of course, born in the era of recently-former CEO Bob Chapek’s franchise-focused era when the synergy flywheel spun, it’s worth stepping back from the modern, mega-sized standard of the Walt Disney Company and remembering how it all started.

Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.



This article and hundreds more are available for Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members who help support this ad-free, clickbait-free, quality-over-quantity collection with a monthly membership. Park Lore Members can access more than a hundred Member-exclusive articles, unlock rare concept art and construction photos in every story, stream audio across the site, tune into podcast exclusives, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail!

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members, you’ll instantly unlock this story (and of course, a lot more). You can learn more about joining and supporting Park Lore (and browse all the available Extras and Special Features) in the “Memberships & Perks” menu above. If you can’t afford a Pass, please contact us; we’ll make some magic happen.


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Walt Disney might not have expected it himself, but today, more than 50 years after Disneyland opened its first one, roller coasters have become integral elements of every single Disney Park on Earth. Seriously, some of the most iconic, beloved, and classic rides at Disney’s theme parks are – fundamentally – thrill rides.

Between its dozen theme parks, Disney operates a substantial collection of coasters – 34 in all. Today, we wanted to dip our toes into the world of Disney Parks’ roller coaster by quizzing you on fifteen of them. For each of the selected coasters below, we’ll show their layout (hand-drawn by me, complete with the direction of train travel), then provide three hints… When you think you know, check out the “Answer” for each one.

Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.



This article and hundreds more are available for Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members who help support this ad-free, clickbait-free, quality-over-quantity collection with a monthly membership. Park Lore Members can access more than a hundred Member-exclusive articles, unlock rare concept art and construction photos in every story, stream audio across the site, tune into podcast exclusives, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail!

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members, you’ll instantly unlock this story (and of course, a lot more). You can learn more about joining and supporting Park Lore (and browse all the available Extras and Special Features) in the “Memberships & Perks” menu above. If you can’t afford a Pass, please contact us; we’ll make some magic happen.


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For decades, few rivalries could top that of the battle for the “Coaster Capital of the World” crown. Seriously, in the ’90s and 2000s – with the Coaster Wars raging and park operators at their hungriest for new thrills – it was anyone’s guess which park would tout having the most roller coasters on Earth any given season. That record was batted back and forth between Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks, each racing to build taller, faster, steeper, and – most importantly today – more roller coasters.

Now that the chaos of the Coaster Wars have largely subsided, it’s probably a good time to pause and look at the industry today. Which parks actually ended up with the biggest coaster counts? You may be surprised… 

Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.



This article and hundreds more are available for Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members who help support this ad-free, clickbait-free, quality-over-quantity collection with a monthly membership. Park Lore Members can access more than a hundred Member-exclusive articles, unlock rare concept art and construction photos in every story, stream audio across the site, tune into podcast exclusives, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail!

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members, you’ll instantly unlock this story (and of course, a lot more). You can learn more about joining and supporting Park Lore (and browse all the available Extras and Special Features) in the “Memberships & Perks” menu above. If you can’t afford a Pass, please contact us; we’ll make some magic happen.


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Today, the top three most-visited theme parks on Earth are all “Disneylands.” Just about every park built “A.D.” (that is, After Disneyland) borrow in one form or another from its model, layout, or attractions. So it’s easy to forget that once upon a time, Disneyland was a risk… one that industry experts were certain was doomed to fail.

Our friends at The Park Database compiled a very interesting list of quotes from Walt’s very own 1950s competitors shared at a Buzz Price focus group. In retrospect, obviously, these amusement park operators’ ideas about what would and wouldn’t work about Disneyland are downright hilarious… but they’re also very telling.

Stories in the Extra Features and Special Features collections of Park Lore are all about connections – they’re the threads that interlace between the Lost Legends, Declassified Disasters, Modern Marvels, and Possibilitylands you’ll find in our Main Collections. In other words, these features are for people who really want to dig deep.



This article and hundreds more are available for Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members who help support this ad-free, clickbait-free, quality-over-quantity collection with a monthly membership. Park Lore Members can access more than a hundred Member-exclusive articles, unlock rare concept art and construction photos in every story, stream audio across the site, tune into podcast exclusives, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail!

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Members, you’ll instantly unlock this story (and of course, a lot more). You can learn more about joining and supporting Park Lore (and browse all the available Extras and Special Features) in the “Memberships & Perks” menu above. If you can’t afford a Pass, please contact us; we’ll make some magic happen.


Log In ​or Join Now