“Here you leave today and enter the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.” Since 1955, those words have welcomed guests into Disneyland, and their spirit pervades Disney theme parks across the globe. Filled with artistry, history, and memories, each of them is, in some ways, alive, with its own unique personality.
At Park Lore, I’ve been working on a very, very niche personal art project that I’m excited to finally share: a look at the histories and personalities of the theme parks we love… as told by their pathways. Made possible by the support of Park Lore members, each of the hand-drawn illustrations you’ll find below is part mathematical model, part artistic abstraction; colorful lines that would be meaningless to most, but that can be mapped with memories for some! I sure hope they connect with you and inspire you to see each park’s story in a new light…
There’s nothing quite as distinctly Disney as the “Disneyland-style” theme park. Since Walt’s original magic kingdom opened in 1955, the tenets of a “Castle Park” have been written and rewritten, from Anaheim to Orlando; Tokyo to Paris; Hong Kong to Shanghai.
Here at Park Lore, we explored that evolution in our must-read Park Paths Special Feature, seeing how the histories and personalities of each park can be read in its pathways. That’s probably as close as we can get to comparing the more qualitative aspects of each “Castle Park” – their malleability and rigidity; their revelatory spaces and discovered ones; their naivete and certainty.
Image: Disney
So today, we wanted to compare those six sister parks more quantitatively. Luckily, our By-The-Numbers miniseries in Park Lore’s Extras Collection gives us a perfect place to start: their rides (note that as in that feature, we mean ride – not attractions, shows, walkthroughs, etc. which would be far too subjective and cumbersome to include as you’ll see below…).
After many, many, many drafts and attempts to get it just right, we’ve assembled a one-of-a-kind, six-way Venn diagram to see both the shared rides and – just as interestingly – the rides exclusive to one “Castle Park” versus its sisters. We’ll reveal each park’s exclusives one by one below, but if you’re as fascinated by this “Comparing Kingdoms” graphic as we are, you can purchase poster and canvas prints (or tees to give people behind you in line something to study) at Park Lore’s Shop.
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!
In July 2011, it ended. Adapting the final novel in rags-to-riches author J. K. Rowling’s young adult fantasy book series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 marked the eighth and final entry in the film series that had defined pop culture for a generation. For a full decade, fans had aged alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson, starring as the heroic trio in the once-in-a-century, intergenerational story; a world that captivated Millennials, then grew up with them; a pop culture phenomenon to rival Star Wars. And now, it was over.
Sure, the $8 billion box office revenue of the Potter films were really just a portion of the “Wizarding World” franchise’s $33 billion in earnings since The Philosopher’s Stone‘s publication in 1997 (with the remaining billions earned by books, merchandise, video games, home video, and of course, theme parks)… But even so, the end of the film series serving as the Wizarding World’s cinematic tentpole would inevitably signal the end of a previously-assured billion dollar box office every other year or so, serving as a definitive finish to a finite franchise.
… Or would it? In 2013 – just two years after the $1.3 billion-earning send-off to Potter – J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. announced that they’d begun pre-production on a new film that would expand the Wizarding World as never before – set decades before and far from the events of Harry Potter.
Image: Pottermore
You have to remember that when Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them was announced, fans knew only that the film would follow the exploits of wizard explorer and “magi-zoologist” Newt Scamander on his international adventures that would eventually lead him to write the textbook of the same name that would one day end up on Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s Hogwarts school supply lists. The idea of a subtle connection to Potter lore opening up an entirely new corner of the Wizarding World was spectacular. And at least on paper, so were the storytelling opportunities.
Set in the 1920s and ’30s, images were conjured in fans’ minds of the Wizarding World’s Indiana Jones; an explorer and adventurer, braving ancient temples and magical jungles in search of the rarest, wildest, and most dangerous of the Wizarding World’s creatures; a fun, colorful, adventurous, pulpy, and low-stakes exploration of a corner of the Wizarding World we’d never seen. It stood to reason that the globetrotting exploits of Scamander and his research into fantastic creatures could even become a standalone franchise in its own right – a potential made all the more real when it was announced in 2014 that before the film had even gone into production, Fantastic Beasts had been pre-approved for three films set in – but exploring a vastly different corner of – Harry Potter’s world.
Sounds fun, right? Then, the troubles began.
Fantastic Beasts…
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them made its debut in 2016. To be sure, the film earned positive reviews and earned a high-respectable $800 million. But at least for many, it wasn’t really what they’d expected.
Image: Warner Bros.
For better or worse, the Fantastic Beasts series follows Newt Scamander – not a rugged, Oscar Isaacs-type, Indiana Jones-esque explorer, but a timid, buttoned-up, and introverted worker for the Ministry of Magic played by the soft-spoken Eddie Redmayne, wrapped in a perpetual peacoat. His adventures take place not in exotic jungles or Forbidden Forests, but in New York City of 1926, where an enchanted suitcase of iridescent, unusual, CGI, Rowling-invented creatures (a divergence from the classic unicorns, dragons, mermaids, centaurs, and spiders of the Harry Potter world) accidentally, anti-climactically opens.
Scamander allies with Tina Goldstein (a former Auror caught in the bureaucracy of the Magical Congress of the United States, or MACUSA) as well as a “No-Maj” (apparently, the American equivalent to the British “Muggle”) New Yorker named Jacob Kowalski. From there… well… let’s ask: do you remember the plot of Magical Creatures and Where To Find Them?
Image: Warner Bros.
We’ll give you a hint: it involves an anti-witchcraft legion of puritans who live in a ramshackle old schoolhouse weirdly set in the middle of Manhattan, whose adopted child Credence (Ezra Miller, in the actor’s second high-profile Warner Bros. franchise after playing DC’s The Flash) has so much repressed magical potential, it turns into a violent force called an Obscurus. MACUSA weirdly sentences Newt and Tina to death because a creature killed a senator, but they escape. Also, there’s a detective played by Collin Farrel who’s actually using a Polyjuice Potion (hey, I remember those!) to disguise that he’s not Collin Farrel, he’s Johnny Depp, playing the “Voldemort” of early 20th-century Wizarding World, Gellart Grindelwald, who was remembered as a long-dead bad guy and one-time Dumbledore foe by Harry Potter’s time.
Look, Fantastic Beasts didn’t have an easy job to begin with in expanding the Wizarding World. It’s okay that the movie was (as reviews put it) “bogged down by exposition” or a bit of a “slog,” having to introduce so much new world-building and a whole new cast of characters. It’s also okay – bold, even – that Fantastic Beasts was willing to leave Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, and other iconic locales behind.
Image: Warner Bros.
And even if viewers can get the strict sense that Rowling doesn’t know much about New York City, American government, or America’s home-grown concepts of magic and magical creatures, a New York City of the 1920s is a clever, intriguing setting no one would’ve expected from the Wizarding World’s next era.
Sure, Fantastic Beasts is a little color-drained, and pretty CGI-heavy, and a little too in-the-weeds with world-building. But the 2016 film was a sizable hit for Warner Bros., earning $814 million across its theatrical run and scoring a respectable 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. While that ranked it below any mainline Harry Potter film, it was a substantial showing for a spin-off film so narratively distant from the Potter line – for all intents and purposes, a legitimate “original” story.
Then, it started to crumble…
… and How To Lose Them
Even if fans largely enjoyedFantastic Beasts, it’s probably fair to say that its reception had something in common with Avatar. That is: it was received well, made good money, and then sort of… disappeared. Fantastic Beasts never quite picked up that “water cooler” buzz, and it just didn’t seem to leave many footprints in pop culture. (If we hadn’t told you that the film’s “Ron and Hermione” equivalent were named Jacob and Tina, would you have remembered?) Fantastic Beats didn’t introduce any “theme park-able” settings, snacks, or souvenirs… no memorable characters or quotes… and frankly, not even any iconic, recognizable, or fantastic creatures.
It didn’t necessarily feel that Fantastic Beasts screamed out for two follow up films. Which made it even stranger that in the months leading up to the films release, Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling revised their promise, proclaiming that Newt’s adventures would now span a five film franchise. That made Fantastic Beasts similar to Avatar into another way: it left industry commentators wondering who, exactly, was clamoring for more.
Obviously, the second Avatar film proved naysayers wrong. The second Fantastic Beasts, though…? Well…
“With every success the company has had since Steve [Jobs]’s death, there’s always a moment in the midst of my excitement when I think, I wish Steve could be here for this. It’s impossible not to have the conversation with him in my head that I wish I could be having in real life. More than that, I believe that if Steve were still alive, we would have combined our companies, or at least discussed the possibility very seriously.”
Those words were written by Disney’s then-exiting CEO Bob Iger in his 2019 memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime. A reflection on Iger’s once-unthinkable proposal to rebuild Disney’s then-burned bridge to Pixar by purchasing the still-young animation studio outright, Iger discusses his deep friendship with Apple / Pixar founder Steve Jobs, how much Disney learned from Pixar’s culture and creativity, and – most importantly – how, to Iger’s thinking, Disney and Apple might’ve merged if Steve Jobs hadn’t died in 2011.
“Armchair Imagineering.” For Disney Parks fans, it’s a skill that’s learned early, and practiced often. Almost inescapably, theme park aficionados can’t help but to imagine what could be; what we think should be; what we would do if we were given creative control of a theme park we love and an unlimited budget to make it happen.
If you’ve been around Park Lore for long, you might have already stumbled on my hand-illustrated, ideal build-outs of Disney California Adventure, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Universal’s Islands of Adventure. It takes dozens of hours over the course of months to draft out these imaginary redesigns, so it’s probably no surprise that those park build-outs are some of the projects here at Park Lore that I’m most proud of, and reader comments, private emails, and shares on social media regarding them are some of the kindest, most creative, and most thoughtful feedback I ever receive.
So I guess all of that fueled me enough to finally do something I never thought I would: to tackle a “Castle Park.” And not just any Castle Park…
Don’t believe us? Just flashback to summer 2013 and you’d find yourself in a very different Orlando… There, you’d marvel at the brand new MagicBand, daydreaming about Disney’s promises of how it’ll eventually personalize the Parks to you; you’d fill your day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios with The Great Movie Ride and The Backstage Studio Tour, wondering what Disney might do with its brand new, $8 billion acquisitions of Marvel and Lucasfilm.
If you visited Orlando in summer 2013, you’d wander through Camp Minnie-Mickey at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, wondering why – three years after announcing it – Disney hadn’t begun construction on its land themed to James Cameron’s Avatar. You had never heard the song “Let It Go,” much less imagined that the upcoming movie Frozen might replace EPCOT’s Maelstrom. And you’d be far too busy with the #LimitedTimeMagic campaign to wonder what Disney would do for its 100th Anniversary a decade later.
Oh, and in 2013, it’s likely that you’d callously spit in the eye of Disney’s generous gifts of Magical Express, FastPass, Extra Magic Hours, and resort transportation to book yourself an Uber to that other theme park resort up the road… After all, Universal Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter isn’t just the talk of the town; it’s the project around which the whole themed entertainment industry has reoriented itself. The age of the “Living Land” has arrived… And as a construction site at Universal Studios Florida begins to take the shape of Diagon Alley, the battle for Orlando doesn’t seem as clear-cut as it once did… “Could the momentum finally be behind Universal and not Disney?”
“I am a big believer in tradition,” Disney’s then-CEO Bob Iger toldThe Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “This just seemed like one of those traditions that if we changed it the empire wasn’t going to crumble.”
As with most of Disney’s most controversial changes, it was a subtly worded post on the Disney Parks Blog that made the announcement: when Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened at Disneyland Park in May 2019, one of its in-universe food and drink stops adding to its “Living Land” status would be Oga’s Cantina – an alien-run watering hole servicing pilots, bounty hunters, smugglers, and galactic travelers with “choices for kids and libations for adults.”
Fans knew exactly what that meant. For the first time in its sixty-year history, alcohol would be available to the public at Disneyland. True to form, that ruffled a few fans’ feathers. Of course, the ban on booze at Disneyland and its “castle park” siblings isn’t quite as cut and “dry” as generalizations would have you believe… And the story of drinking at Disney Parks is far from finished… Let’s dive in…
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!
It’s not every day that we see a major, innovative, and immersive new theme park open in the United States. That makes sense. For at least the last few decades, the American theme park market has left behind a “growth” phase and settled into a “maturing” phase. Like a sponge that can’t hold even one more drop of water, many analysts see the theme park landscape of North America as “full.” (For example, 2025’s Epic Universe will be the first major, destination park in the country since 2001’s California Adventure.)
But elsewhere, it’s a very different story. Across the world, brand new parks – many designed and built by the best in the business, rooted right here in America – are opening to brand new audiences. Today, we want to highlight one and the industry shifts that brought it to life. Join us as we set the stage for Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi and highlight some of the incredible attractions in this 21st century park!
It was January 2018 when Busch Gardens Williamsburg announced that unbeknownst to fans, they’d already taken their last ride on the park’s Lost Legend: Curse of DarKastle. Originally opened in 2005, DarKastle had done the unthinkable by porting the still-coveted ride system of Universal’s The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man to a regional, seasonal park. Punching well above its weight, Busch Gardens’ DarKastle was a cult classic fusion of mythology and technology, introducing a completely original story, characters, music, and world in a ride that was funny and frightening; action-packed and adventurous.
So when Busch Gardens re-opened for the spring season in 2018, seeing the gilded German palace on the edge of Oktoberfest roped off with its marquee removed was a heart-breaker. Even seeing the dark ride’s showbuilding hollowed out in favor of seasonal haunted houses and Santa Claus meet-and-greets felt like a gross underutilization of prime real estate… and a tragic abandonment of a genuinely-cool, original IP.
Image: SeaWorld Parks
Five years later, DARKOASTER was meant to change that. A return of a climate-controlled, indoor, “dark ride” style experience (in a park whose dark ride count has fallen from 2 to 0 in the last half-decade), DarKoaster is also intended to serve as a sort of “spiritual sequel” to the iconic dark ride that preceded it. Does it all come together? Well… (Naturally, spoilers for DarKoaster will be out in the light, so read on at your own risk!)
Who doesn’t love a dark ride? One of the longest-enduring and most beloved amusements on Earth, dark rides have existed since before the electric lightbulbs. From humble origins as darkened, waterwheel-powered “Tunnels of Love” and “River Caves,” dark rides have become some of the most technological storytelling tools in theme parks’ arsenals – from ghost blasting to soaring with superheroes…
But have you ever wondered who’s making the magic? Welcome to the Industry of Imagination, a new series in which we’ll peel back the curtains to explore some of the real organizations who design, develop, fabricate, and install the rides we know and love.
Image: Sally
One of the more enduring, widespread, and successful design firms in the industry today is known by a single name: Sally Dark Rides. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, Sally has spent nearly five decades creating dozens of dark rides found across the globe. From boardwalk, blacklight ultra-classics to innovative, interactive, tech-driven trackless rides, chances are that you’ve seen a Sally creation firsthand… maybe without even knowing it.
