Sneak Peek – Special Features Archives

June 14, 2026June 20, 2026

Did Busch Gardens Williamsburg Just Make Verbolten… Worse?

Change sucks. That feeling is existential, isn’t it? It’s true across time, across space, and across fandoms. Nostalgia isn’t just natural; it’s a component of well-being. We all experience a sentimental longing for the past; a wistful affection for “the good ole days” over the here-and-now; an unshakable belief in a self-told story of the ways things were.

It’s uniquely human to envision that when you were at your prime, the world was, too. There are countless psychological theories to explain why we experience nostalgia, but the way it manifests is fairly straightforward: in a nutshell, we’re happy for Hilary Duff and her new album, but when we go to the concert, we want to hear “Come Clean.”

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May 18, 2026May 18, 2026

The Waiting Game: A Brief History of Queueing and The Many Lives of Lines at Disney Parks

What’s as classically-Disney as Mickey Mouse, Dole Whips, and spinning tea cups, but never shown on a Disney Parks commercial? Waiting in line.

From day one, waiting has been an essential (and for many, frustratingly memorable) component of any visit to Disneyland or Walt Disney World. And for nearly seventy years, generations of Disney’s engineers, experience designers, show writers, and executives have been trying to make guests’ waits shorter, more entertaining, more interactive, and – to the point of today’s tale – more managable.

In the great balance of guest experience, operations, and per capita spending, FastPass, FastPass+, Disney Genie+, and Lightning Lane have all taken swings at solving Disney’s supply-and-demand capacity dilemma. But altogether, Disney’s quest for the perfect virtual queue may still be ongoing, and the journey from standard queues to Genie+ is a wild ride in its own right… Today, we’ll dig into the history of waiting and explore how Disney’s 21st century solutions have created as many problems as they’ve solved.

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March 12, 2026March 17, 2026

Disney Story Realms, Part II: The Continued Journey Through a Reimagined Disney Adventure World at Disneyland Paris

In the time-honored tradition of me yapping too much about theme parks, we find ourselves here – in a “Part II” of our walk through a transformed Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris. As you hopefully noticed, Park Lore is 100% ad-free and powered by supporting Members, not pageviews. So I promise, the inconvenience of clicking to a second feature is merely because these Build-Outs are too image-heavy to be contained in one article.

If you haven’t already, I recommend starting your tour in Part I, which covered the basics about the park and the first half of its themed lands. But so far, by simply removing pesky little irritations like budget, time, and corporate constraints, we have reestablished Disneyland Paris’ second gate as Disney Story Realms – a park that both celebrates fantastic worlds born of books and arranges those worlds as a timeline of Disney’s adaptations of them.

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March 8, 2026March 19, 2026

Stories Untold: An Armchair-Imagineered Build-Out Reimagining of Disney Adventure World at Disneyland Paris

“Once upon a time…” It’s likely that since you’re reading this, you know something about what I do here on Park Lore. But just in case you need caught up, it all started with over a hundred wildly in-depth histories I’ve written about legendary lost attractions, never-built theme park concepts, famously-failed rides, and the modern marvels of themed entertainment design.

That “Legend Library” is still the foundation of this site. But in the years since, I’ve tried to work toward something bigger – offering ways to see the parks we love through new lenses. That mission has created over a hundred hand-drawn ride layouts, data visualization projects, and hundreds of stories written just for those who support this ad-free, quality-over-quantity theme park storytelling site for even $2/month.

Now at last we get to return to a genre here on Park Lore that I love most: full-scale theme park Build-Outs. Many of us grew up doodling our ideas for what we we do to our favorite parks given unlimited time and money, but I always have to shout out S. W. Wilson of Ideal Build-Out, whose work inspired me to take this mix of art and science seriously. Maybe you’ve even checked out my Build-Outs of California Adventure, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Islands of Adventure, and Epic Universe – a growing collection of multiversal variants that I love very deeply…

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November 2, 2025November 2, 2025

The “Zootopia” Paradox – Why A Disney Movie Filled with Animals Doesn’t Belong at Disney’s Animal Kingdom

For even the most tuned-in Imagineering aficionado, Shanghai Disneyland tends to feel really, really far away. At least until “Disney Abu Dhabi” manifests, Shanghai Disneyland is probably the farthest of Disney’s six global resorts both geographically and figuratively for most of us. Many readers here (inherently, a very deep Disney Parks fan, I think) probably have the quiet sense that they’re unlikely to ever actually visit Shanghai Disneyland in their lifetimes.

So for the really casual Disney Parks fan, it’s probably fair to say that the goings-on of Shanghai Disneyland are something akin to “palace intrigue;” things that they might see on YouTube, but not necessarily attractions they ever expect to see up close and with their own eyes. In fact, as the E-Ticket wonders of Shanghai Disneyland made their way online, the median response to each basically amounted to: “Bring that to Disney World!”

And to be fair, the benefits of Shanghai’s innovation have already manifested in Disney’s U.S. parks in big and small ways – not the least of which being the cloning of the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run in Florida, and the alleged adaptation of the park’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure ride system for an upcoming AVATAR attraction at Disney California Adventure.

But despite its compelling glimpse into what a post-Wizarding-World Disney Park’s land lineup can look like it just may be that Shanghai’s most talked-about addition is the 2023 opening of the land of “Zootopia”… Sure, this “Living Land” based on the 2016 film is a perfectly lovely project worth examination in its own right, but what’s made Zootopia a major talking point for fans is whether or not this land should come stateside… and if so, whether or not the park that seems its most obvious home might just be the worst place to bring Zootopia to life… Let’s dig into the paradox…

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July 1, 2025May 28, 2026

Expanding Epic Universe, Part I: An Armchair-Imagineered Build-Out of Universal Orlando’s Cosmic Theme Park

As if foretold by the stars, it has arrived… the first major theme park in the U.S. in nearly a quarter of a century is here. Universal Epic Universe is meant to be the park that finally shifts the gravity in Central Florida for good, establishing Universal’s now three-park, eleven-hotel property as more than a side trip from Disney World, but a destination in its own right. Epic Universe brings with it big brands, big attractions, and a 21st century mindset that has otherwise come to Disney and Universal as piecemeal, land-sized expansions; never as an all-at-once new gate with the all the ambition and audacity of a greenfield project.

But now, it exists. And that’s the first step to get where we theme park fans really want to end up: “armchair Imagineering.” It’s a time honored tradition to basically throw away the rules, budgets, and realities that confine the actual park and begin to imagine what you’d do if you were in charge. And with a fresh park to play with, we have quite a bit of room to work our way toward a full, imagined “build-out” of what Epic Universe could be…

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July 1, 2025May 28, 2026

Expanding Epic Universe, Part II: An Armchair-Imagineered Build-Out of Universal Orlando’s Cosmic Theme Park

Welcome back! As you probably know, my Build-Out of Epic Universe became so outsized and image-heavy that it attempts to add to it crashed my website. So for the first time ever, I am proud to present… Expanding Epic Universe, Part II!

If you haven’t already, I recommend that before you dig into this half of the Build-Out, you start with Part I. That’s where we examine some of the foundational considerations that shape this imaginary, multiversal variant of the park, then lay out plans for imaginary expansions of Celestial Park, Super Nintendo World, and a first from-scratch world.

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May 10, 2025September 17, 2025

Disney Abu Dhabi Is Coming (Apparently). Here’s a Primer on the Long Road to a Disneyland of the Middle East.

Like most Millennial theme park enthusiasts worth their salt, I cut my teeth for park operations in the industry in that most common of test beds: Roller Coaster Tycoon on a Windows 95 desktop computer while Windows Media Player repeated Michelle Branch’s The Spirit Room in the background.

If you were unlucky enough to miss this essential era of theme park fandom, Roller Coaster Tycoon presented you with a number of “scenarios” you could choose from – Forest Frontiers (a wooded landscape with a small on-property pond); Evergreen Gardens (a compact property that asked you to build-out a sort of fine British botanical gardens); Millennium Mines (a tricky one, requiring you to make use of a sort of depressed quarry of rock).

The scenario you chose was fundamental. After all, each came with only a few kinds of rides already available, costs to “research” new rides, and strict budget to build with. And though you could add trees or remove them; terraform to carve out canyons or fill waterways; build bridges or tunnels, every click of the mouse wheel resulted in a red, negative dollar amount rising from your action. A player could (and in my case, often did) go bankrupt in service of trying to create something astounding if you failed to balance the realities of attendance; the costs to the consumer; and the tastes of a computerized audience. For many of us who’ve now graduated into armchair Imagineering, Roller Coaster Tycoon taught us the most frustrating and basic rule of making a theme park: ultimately, you have to be realistic…

… Unless you were smart like me. Then you knew that there was really only one level of Roller Coaster Tycoon you ever really needed to play. Arid Heights. If you were unfortunate enough to have missed the “Loopy Landscapes” expansion pack, you might not know the glory of Arid Heights.

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March 28, 2025February 3, 2026

Landlines: A Timeline of Disney and Universal Parks’ Evolutions As Told By The “Lands” They Contain

Telling the story of Disney and Universal’s theme parks isn’t easy. Some of these are parks have lifetimes now measured in decades, generations, or human lifespans. Like people, their stories are full of growth, change, “phases,” mistakes, reversals, triumphs – and often, core pieces of their identities that tend to stick around for their whole lives even as they change and arrange around them.

Over the years, I’ve tried to create unusual new “lenses” to see these parks – from the “personalities” told by their pathways to their ride count relationships; diagrams of how their ride lineups compare to unexpected timelines; leaps into “armchair Imagineered” futures, to hand-illustrated layouts of their rides. Each only captures a small piece of the real story of how these parks evolve over their lifetimes. Today, I want to introduce another.

I call these diagrams LANDLINES – timelines of the lands that have come and gone from each of these parks. My hope is that these “zoomed out” views of the spaces inside of these parks will provide yet another lens to tell their stories; ways for even us diehard fans to somehow see the parks a little differently. I hope you enjoy.

This in-depth article is just one entry in Park Lore’s one-of-a-kind Special Features collection, where we explore the threads that connect between rides, parks, and pop culture! From Imagineering’s secret Society of Explorers and Adventurers, to the history of Chuck E. Cheese; from Disney and Universal’s AVENGERS: “Custody War” to the two-part tale of animation’s rebirth in the generation-defining ’90s Disney Renaissance!

Special Features are typically available exclusively for those who support this evolving theme park history project with a monthly Membership. It’s been unlocked for a limited time, but if you enjoy what you read, consider becoming a Park Lore Member for as little as $2 / month!

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March 3, 2025June 19, 2026

In Memoriam: An Ode to Theme Park Tourist and a Recommitment to Park Lore’s Origin in Optimism

When I turned 19 in April 2010, Facebook was still a relatively new, fresh, young place where we were cringe-uploading entire “albums” of nights captured on digital cameras; the iPhone had only just become ubiquitous by way of the iPhone 4; Jim and Pam were newlyweds; we were still at the dawn of Barack Obama’s eight year presidency; the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was still behind walls; and the MagicBand was merely a very expensive concept that wouldn’t be secured around a guest’s wrist for three years.

Put another way, 2010 might as well have been a century ago. And there I was, in college, when I was offered what felt like the opportunity of a lifetime. I can’t recall specifically why or how Nick Sim invited me to contribute to his brand new website, Theme Park Tourist, but I can tell you that I was sure it was a scam. Why would someone PayPal me actual, American currency for writing about theme parks? But the check cleared, as it were, and I was off and running.