Theme parks are living creatures. Sure, they grow and change and “will never be complete…” But even more, they’re made of complex systems and elements all working together so effortlessly, you may not even realize they’re working at all. Berms act as skin, insulating parks from the sights of the outside world; intuitive layouts are a skeleton, giving the park structure; pathways act as veins and arteries, pulsing guests instead of blood; restrooms are… Well…
It’s the end of another year – and one unlike any other. A year ago today, we were stepping out of 2020 – a year defined by closures, cancellations, and cost-cutting that included Disney’s vow to axe $900 million in capital projects from its Parks, Experience, and Products division going forward. We made it through a year when construction stalled, projects slowed, tourism slammed to a halt, the rules of operations were rewritten, and it was entirely unclear what the future could hold for Disney and Universal Parks…
Now, standing at the start of 2022 and looking back on the ups and downs of 2021, there’s no doubt that industry-wide, we’ve just made it through 365 days of playing “catch-up”… Many of the rides that debuted in 2021 were initially planned for 2020, and likewise, many of 2021’s planned attractions will instead open in 2022! So today, let’s look back on 2021 with a time capsule review of the big attractions of the year… and the rides that missed their expected 2021 openings altogether…
Whether you like it or not, Disney and Universal Parks have evolved. Since at least the 1990s, theme parks M.O.s have been shifting from places to “Ride the Movies” aboard Modern Marvels: Star Tours, Indiana Jones Adventure, and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror to today’s immersive lands where you can “Live the Movies” by stepping into Hogsmeade, Pandora, Springfield, Radiator Springs, Batuu, or Avengers Campus.
Both Disney and Universal tend to be pretty picky about the films that are afforded permanent, expensive attractions inside their parks… No one wants a ride themed to a box office bomb, after all… However, just because you pick a good, revered, classic, or award-winning movie, you’re not guaranteed a good, revered, classic, or award-winning ride will come out the other end. Here’s our short collection of eight really good movies that somehow got lost in translation, turning into rides that just don’t live up to the film’s legacy.
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.
For fans of themed entertainment design, time might as well be measured in years A.P. – After Potter. After all, the 2010 opening of the Wizarding World’s first half (Hogsmeade at Universal’s Islands of Adventure) reset the rules of theme park expansions, officially replacing the era of the E-Ticket with the age of the “Living Land.” Thanks to the Wizarding World, guests didn’t just want to “ride the movies;” they wanted to shop where their favorite characters shop; to eat where they eat; to step where they step!
So when the Wizarding World’s second half (Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida) debuted in 2014, it brought with it the next leap for designers seeking “in-universe” souvenirs: the interactive Wand. Guests (literally) lined up to fork over Muggle dollars for wands capable of bringing Diagon Alley’s windows to life, quickly leading to the ret-conning of simpler effects back in the original Hogsmeade. Today, more than two dozen spells dot the two lands of the Wizarding World, but we’ve collected eight of our favorites… and two totally-unmarked secret spells you may not even have known exist…
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.
But for many Imagineering fans, there’s nothing quite like the classics… Even as projection, light, sound, animatronics, and – yes – screens become increasingly prevalent across Disney and Universal Parks, it’s still practical effects – real, tactile, in-your-face, and physical – that seem to leave us astounded. These are the big ones – the effects that are so mesmerizing, surprising, and astounding, even seasoned Imagineering fans may not have recognized the complexity required to make them work.
Today, we’ve collected just a handful of some of the physical effects we love… true, practical, in-your-face effects that leave guests recoiling, ducking, shrieking, or just staring in awe as no screen can. Note that these effects often serve as big moments in the rides they occupy, so expect spoilers! And for each, we’ll include a video that’s already fast-forwarded to the big moment so you can inspect these effects up close… Which had you fooled? Which are must-sees for leaving first-time guests with their jaws dropped? Which of the hundreds of screen-free physical effects do you love most?
The story of theme parks in the 21st century is about to be a weird one… We may only be 20% of the way through the first century of the 2000s, but we’ve already lived through some of the wildest swings of the pendulum in themed entertainment design ever. Theme parks began in a lowly position as the tail end of Eisner’s budget-conscious ’90s and early 2000s lead to an era of underbuilt, abandoned, and low-budget plans, made all the worse by the 2001 obliteration of tourism in the wake of September 11th and, further, the financial crisis of 2008. Budgets were slashed. Theme parks cancelled. Projects downsized.
Arguably, that trend was reversed only by the opening of the Wizarding World in 2009, propelling Universal (and by extension, Disney) into the modern age of “living lands,” big-budget investment, per-capita spending records, and theme parks as corporate revenue-generators… Who would’ve foreseen an era where E-Tickets weren’t enough? Where competitors battled over blockbuster IPs? Where guests would queue for hours not for rides, but for food and shops? Where Disney and Universal would drop a billion dollars on a single land? Of course, this golden age of investment is itself coming to an unceremonious end thanks to the catastrophic fallout of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the results of which will no doubt be felt in the parks for decades.
Image: Disney
So now, today, we find ourselves in an unusual position: half celebrational, half mournful, 2020 seems like a good time to look back at what may have represented the height of Imagineering; the pinnacle of theme park spending; the biggest $200 million E-Tickets we’ll see for a while. So today, let’s take a look at some of the best to come out of Disney (and Universal) Parks so far in the 21st century – that is, opening in the year 2000 or later. (So no, Indiana Jones Adventure, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror won’t be on this list… though you can read up on each in our Modern Marvels collection!)
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.
“Here you leave today and enter the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.” And while you’re in them, you’ve got to eat, right? From the very beginning, dining at Disney Parks has been more than just part of the experience; it’s been part of the story. When you eat hand-pulled taffy on Main Street, indulge in a Dole Whip beneath the torches of Adventureland, pop a beignet and mint julep on the wrought iron patios of New Orleans Square, or saddle up for some barbecue in Frontierland, you’re seeing Disney’s culinary imagination at work.
In many regards, considering dining as part of the story was fantastically realized in 1967, when Pirates of the Caribbean opened at Disneyland. There, as guests cast off from Lafitte’s Landing, they encounter one of the ride’s most ingenious moments. Drifting at first beneath the cloudless night sky and alongside firefly-lit marshes, guests suddenly find the swamp’s still waters illuminated by the reflection of paper lanterns strung up over the waterside patio of a stately, remote plantation house on the bayou’s edge. It’s alive with classy jazz music… and waterfront diners. But they aren’t Audio-Animatronics; the hustle and bustle of the ongoing evening dinner party is real thanks to diners at Disneyland’s most exclusive public restaurant, The Blue Bayou.
Image: Disney, by Herb Ryman
The Blue Bayou gave guests the opportunity to dine inside a ride. It wasn’t just novel; it was magical both for riders and diners. Arguably, Disney’s never topped that initial, perfect fusion of ride-and-restaurant (though both Paris and Shanghai’s Pirate rides have followed the formula). Hints of the concept have popped up, like in Magic Kingdom’s Village Haus (overlooking “it’s a small world’s” boarding) and, at Epcot, The Land’s Good Turn Restaurant (with views of Listen to the Land), the San Angel Inn (which closely mirrored the Blue Bayou but with Mexico’s El Rio Del Tiempo waterway), and The Seas’ Coral Reef Restaurant.
But the idea of truly placing a restaurant within (or at least, in proximity to) a ride hasn’t really happened in quite a while… Which is why we’ve cooked up some ideas for ride-restaurant pairs that would be amazing to dine in. Are these spatially possible? Practical? Of course not! Consider this more of a conceptually exercise than a concrete one. But if you can join us in temporarily forgetting space constraints, ignoring blueprints, and thinking Blue Sky, consider how great these dining experiences would be…
Lights, camera, action! In the modern history of Disney and Universal Parks, one thing is often said: good ideas never die. In fact, sometimes, ideas grow, evolve, and are reproduced across the country. Such is the case with the sixty-year tradition of taking pieces of Universal’s fabled Studio Tour in Hollywood and transforming them into full, standalone attractions in Florida.
In fact, some of the world’s most well-loved classics actually began in very different forms before being recreated on the East Coast in expanded, up-sized, and big-budget variations. If you didn’t already know it, you probably wouldn’t have realized from riding that these legendary attractions got their start in very different forms… So let’s examine three groups of attractions to see where this cross-country strategy has paid off… and where it hasn’t.
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.
Friends, family, we are gathered here today to close a chapter; to say our last goodbyes; to send a decade of attractions to the big theme park in the sky. In the 2010s, we bid adieu to no less than 20 once-ambitious attractions. Some went out in a blaze of glory; others, a wimpering spark of a doomed fire.
Yet for each of these 20 closed attractions – the good, bad, and downright ugly – their closures marked the end of memory-making for some. Indeed, your children or your grandchildren may never see these attractions in person, and unlike the 13 “Endangered” Rides We Worry May Not Survive the 2020s, for some of these attractions, their endings were a total shock. For others, that may be for the best… but in any case, here are our last goodbyes to 20 attractions we lost in the 2010s, in order of closure.
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.
Earlier this year, we gave you a challenge: to see if you could recognize and identify 16 Iconic Ride Dialogue Lines We Bet You Know By Heart… and whaddaya know? You did! From unforgettable safety spiels to bilingual announcements; classic narration to beloved pre-shows, it turned out that lots of Imagineering super-fans have tried-and-true lines down pat. Naturally,…
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.
