Here at Park Lore, we’re all about seeing the parks we love differently. One of the lenses we’ve used is our “By The Numbers” mini-series, with each entry offering a unique lens for comparing the incomparable Disney and Universal Parks around the globe! From the number of rides to the number of surviving “Opening Day Originals” and the number of certifiable E-Tickets, these just-for-fun comparisons offer new ways to discuss the industry. Today, we’ll add another: the number of dark rides each park offers.
Counting a park’s dark rides isn’t easy, and it isn’t objective. Traditionally, a “dark ride” is a genre of amusement park ride wherein riders travel through indoor, painted or projected, theatrically-lit scenes. But in the 21st century, it’s a lot more complicated than that… So before we can count, we need to establish a definition…
What is a dark ride?
Depending on your definition, dark rides can be traditional (like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride) or technological (like Dinosaur); they can be slow (like Haunted Mansion) or thrilling (like Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey). Dark rides can be interactive and screen-based (like Toy Story Midway Mania), or immersive and physical (like Rise of the Resistance) …or simulators (like Soarin’) …or walkthroughs (like Poseidon’s Fury) …or water rides (like Na’vi River Journey) …or roller coasters (like Revenge of the Mummy)! A dark ride doesn’t need to be dark (think “small world”) and arguably, it doesn’t even necessarily need to be indoors (after all, couldn’t Jungle Cruise be considered an “outdoor dark ride”?)!
Of course, we need to settle on a definition for our purposes today, so we’ll start with our list of each park’s rides meaning no walkthroughs, films, or non-ride “attractions” – a guest has to actually be moved by a ride system. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll also say no simulators (where you’re merely shuffled around in place) – though like walkthroughs, you might personally consider them a sub-genre of dark ride, and that would be fine! We’ll also require that indoor, theatrically-lit scenes that establish a sense of place or storytelling must be a more-than-incidental part of the experience. (Feel free to invent your own definition and recalculate!)
Got it? Then place your bets as to which parks will come out on top as we explore another new way of seeing how our favorite parks compare by the numbers…
15. Disney’s Animal Kingdom
- Dinosaur
- Na’vi River Journey
In what may be a surprise, it’s Disney’s Animal Kingdom that lands in last place on our list, with just two dark rides. What’s perhaps even more surprising is that for the park’s first twenty years, its only dark ride was the terrifying Dinosaur (originally, Countdown to Extinction). We set off into the full story of one of Disney World’s scariest rides in our Modern Marvels: DINOSAUR feature, but the pulse-pounding, off-roading ride through a steaming prehistoric jungle filled with loud, angry, hungry dinosaurs has never exactly been a family favorite…
Blacklight Award: The arrival of NA’VI RIVER JOURNEY in 2017 as part of Pandora: The World of AVATAR represented a much-needed reprieve. The slow moving boat ride through the glowing, bioluminescent Valley of Mo’ara is a rare breed indeed – a ride where nothing “goes horribly wrong”! The tranquil, reflective journey is a great “Pandora 101” primer, providing glimpses into the otherworldly flora and fauna of the distant moon, and the lives of the indigenous Na’vi people who connect with it.
After weaving layers of rainforest soundscapes into a musical tapestry, the ride concludes with an encounter with one of the Best Audio-Animatronics on Earth – the Na’vi Shaman of Songs, who orchestrates the living world around her in a symphony of sights and sounds. The colorful, thoughtful, and emotionally captivating ride suffers from just two things: it’s way too short, and – related – its line is way too long.
14. Walt Disney Studios Park
- Crush’s Coaster
- Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy
- Spider-Man WEB Adventure
- The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
Not yet counted: Unnamed Frozen ride (TBD)
Perhaps the park you’d expect to be in last place (it usually is, after all), the Declassified Disaster: Walt Disney Studios Paris at last bucks the trend. After being the smallest Disney park with the least rides at opening (just three) and the lowest E-Ticket count, it has at last been elevated to next-to-last position in our Dark Ride Count! Of course, when the park opened in 2002, it had none (a rare distinction), with each of its current three having been a metaphorical Band-Aid meant to bolster the very broken park.
CRUSH’S COASTER meets our definition thanks to an opening act of simple dark ride scenes, all encountered before it devolves into a “cute but dumb” spinning family coaster in a darkened soundstage. Likewise, THE TWILIGHT ZONE TOWER OF TERROR meets our requirements because a more-than-incidental part of the experience is far more than a drop ride, with riders ascending to two floors of the haunted Hollywood Tower Hotel to relive its history.
Blacklight Award: Listen – we dedicated an entire REMY’S RATATOUILLE ADVENTURE feature to Walt Disney Studios’ pivotal dark ride not because it’s an infallible masterpiece of Imagineering (it isn’t) but because it represented exactly what the French park needed: a new footing. Ratatouille is a trackless dark ride “shrinks” guests to the size of a rat, then sends them scurrying along the rooftops of Paris and through the kitchen of Gusteau’s restaurant. It’s a fun, frenzied family dark ride, sure…
But more to the point, it’s a pivotal addition in the park’s story, at last shifting from its piecemeal, “Studio”-stylized solutions into bringing to life idealized, romanticized lands with immersive, Disney-quality rides. That’ll continue with a multi-phase expansion bringing versions of existing Avengers, Frozen, and Star Wars mini-lands to the Parisian park. But for now, there’s no question that Ratatouille was the show of faith Walt Disney Studios needed.
13. Hong Kong Disneyland
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Nano Battle
- “it’s a small world”
- Mystic Manor
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Not yet counted: Frozen Ever After (2022), Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleighs (2022)
It’s probably no coincidence that Walt Disney Studios is followed on this list by another low-budget park built just a few years after… Hong Kong Disneyland was pretty quickly identified as the third strike in then-CEO Michael Eisner’s infamous era of under-built, underfunded theme parks.
Almost unbelievably, when the park opened, it had just two dark rides – the omni-present Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, and just one Fantasyland dark ride: THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH. That’s right – a Disneyland without a Pirates, Haunted Mansion, “small world,” Snow White, or even a Peter Pan’s Flight.
Hong Kong Disneyland has required hundreds of millions of dollars in investment to become even a modest little Disney Park. In its first decade alone, that included adding “IT’S A SMALL WORLD,” Autopia, and an unprecedented expansion pack that brought three new mini-lands to the park over three years.
The investment has continued more recently with a striking second wave of additions, including an under-construction Frozen land (which will bring two dark rides) and a mini-Marvel land with the Iron Man Experience simulator (not included here) and the pretty cringey ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: NANO BATTLE! built on the bones of Buzz (above). Still, make no mistake: for the foreseeable future, there’s one dark ride that makes Hong Kong Disneyland a bucket list destination for Imagineering fans…
Blacklight Award: Opened in 2013 as the culmination of the park’s first mega-expansion, Mystic Point is a mini-land bringing to life the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea where the elusive retired Lord Henry Mystic – longtime member of S.E.A. – has built an eclectic Victorian residence filled with oddities. We explored every room of MYSTIC MANOR in an in-depth Imagineering entry, but this mystical, musical spiritual sequel to the Haunted Mansion instantly became the must-see masterpiece of modern Imagineering.