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…
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.
If you’ve already scoured Park Lore’s Extra Features collection, you may have stumbled on our list of the Best Rides of the Century (So Far) – a just-for-fun, totally-opinionated countdown of Imagineering’s greatest achievements of the millennium. But… not every ride can be a classic. If you’ve read any entries in our in-depth Declassified Disaster series, you know full well that the story of Disney Parks is one filled with collosal failures, unbelievable flops, and attractions that just turn out to be bad decisions born of a specific time, mindset, or leadership.
More often than not, the difference between a ride fans love and one they loathe is just what a ride replaced, what was lost from sketch to reality, or – worst of all – how it doesn’t live up to fans’ expectations. And frankly, there’s just something interesting about things going wrong… It’s interesting when an attraction fails to find the audience Disney’s designers had hoped… and often, how they own up to the mistake by updating, changing, replacing, or outright closing projects that don’t find their footing.
Today, we’ve collected seven of the “worst” Disney attractions of the century (so far) to share our thoughts on why these projects just didn’t land. Now, granted, this list is – by necessity – merely an opinion piece! And it’s so important to remember that each was worked on by highly-skilled artists, designers, and writers whose work we don’t discount… More to the point, whatever your least favorite ride might be, millions upon millions of people love it, care about it, and have spectacular memories on it. So take our opinions for a grain of salt, and share your own 21st century disaster condenters in the comments below or when you share this feature with friends and family!
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.
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.
Since 1955, one thing has set Disney Parks apart: immersion. Built by filmmakers, Disneyland did what no other amusement park had done before by daring to transport guests to new worlds, long-lost places, and long-since-passed times. From exotic jungle outposts to frontier towns at the edge of the American West; fantasy fairs and cities of the future; the Jazz era New Orleans and the enchanted forests of the Pacific Northwest…
And that was only the beginning. Last month, we walked through a special Countdown: The Most Immersive Themed Lands on Earth to see Disney and Universal’s most astounding attempts to carry guests away to new and exciting worlds – and to see the projects in the pipeline that just may change the industry once again. But today, we want to take a very different look by analyzing the seven least immersive lands at Disney Parks across the globe – lands that just don’t seem to “fit” with Disney’s normal way of doing things by failing to transport guests in immersive, cinematic ways.
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.
Discerning Disney Parks fans are known to critique and analyze all aspects of the parks they love: their style, their stories, their smarts… But what about their size? From miniscule to massive, Disney Parks come in all shapes and sizes… but does size matter?
On our cross-continental tour today, we’ll stop by each of the 12 Disney Parks on Earth to take their measurements. Sometimes, Disney’s official numbers don’t quite add up… That’s why we’ve used simple acreage calculator maps when we need to to get closer to the real figures about just how big (or not) these parks are. Our ultimate agreement? We measure the simplest shape of a park – including its showbuildings and behind-the-scenes facilities – but excluding parking lots and empty expansion pads (which you’d think Disney would exclude, too, but they don’t always).
“Here you leave today…” Since Disneyland opened in 1955, that simple invitation has served as a de facto design statement for Disney’s “castle parks” around the globe. From Orlando to Shanghai, each subsequent “Disneyland” has evolved to more fully immerse guests into romanticized versions of worlds “yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.” The foundational conceit? That guests will be transported to another time and place that can’t quite be found on a timeline or map. While they may resemble history, they’re enchanted; passed through an idealized lens.
Walking right down the middle of a glowing, incandescent, nostalgic Main Street, U.S.A.; torch-lit Adventurelands drawn from the pulpy exoticism of yore; futures that never were, but always will be in the collective consciousness. And through it all, you’ve likely had one persistent thought repeat again and again in your mind: “I only wish I could leave this fantasy nonsense behind and get back to reality.”
At least, that must’ve been what Disney’s executives imagined when they commissioned the construction of Disney’s most disastrous theme park ever; a park that dispensed entirely with immersion, fantasy, and romance in favor of blistering blacktop, metal lighting rigs, electrical poles, and big, boxy, beige soundstages. Less a celebration of Hollywood’s storied past and more a trip to an empty industrial backlot, Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris was nothing short of a box office bomb.
Though our Declassified Disasters series at Park Lore is filled with its fair share of failed rides, concepts, and even theme parks, there’s probably none that have been so spectacular, resounding, and complete a failure at the would-be second gate in France. Today, we’ll step through its agonizing Opening Day version, watch its slow “Band-Aiding,” and tackle the ultimate question: will Disney’s $3 billion investment in this park actually save it? Or will a new IP-focused mini-land model fail to fix its broken foundation?
And before we head off, remember that you can unlock rare concept art and audio streams in this story, access over 100 Extra Features, and recieve an annual Membership card and postcard art set in the mail by supporting this clickbait-free, in-depth, ad-free theme park storytelling site for as little as $2 / month! Become a Park Lore Member to join the story! Until then, let’s start at the beginning…
Opening credits
Image: Disney
In the early 1970s and early ’80s, the Walt Disney Company was struggling. In the 15 years since Walt’s 1966 death, the company had experienced a period of stagnation and – frankly – uncertainty. What was the Walt Disney Company without Walt Disney? Who would take the reins? Whose vision should the company follow? And indeed, the 1970s had been one of the bleakest times at the company. Hit films were becoming increasingly rare, animation was all but abandoned, Walt’s EPCOT city was canned, and the theme parks were being left behind as a rotating cast of internal executives tried (and inevitably failed) to match Walt’s vision and direction.
In 1984, Michael Eisner appeared with just the credentials to fix it all. Coming to Disney straight from a time as CEO of Paramount Pictures, Eisner was deeply embedded in the film industry and quickly set to work turning around Disney’s luck there. He kicked off a period of rebirth at Disney Animation so legendary, it earned its own in-depth Park Lore Special Feature: The Disney Renaissance. During that ’90s pop culture peak, Disney had hit after hit after hit at the box office from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Lion King to Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas. Likewise, his media industry savvy saw Disney acquire ESPN and ABC and forge a groundbreaking partnership with Pixar.
When it came time to address the shortcomings of Disney’s aging theme parks, Eisner had a cinematic plan there, too. His unique film-centered résumé gave him three controversial ideas for fixing Disney’sparks, each more unimaginable than the last. Eisner believed:
That Disney parks should be places where every member of the family – including thrill-seeking teenagers – would want to visit;
That to entice young people to visit, Disney parks should be hip, cool, cutting-edge places where guests could “ride the movies!”;
That – since Disney didn’t exactly have a modern catalogue of many movies worth seeing – those movies didn’t necessarily have to be Disney movies
Image: Lucasfilm / Paramount
While we traced all of Eisner’s eccentric and ambitious projects in our standalone “Ride the Movies” Special Feature, rest assured that fresh from his time at Paramount, Eisner had just the connections to breathe new life into Disney parks.
Indebted to Eisner for greenlighting Raiders of the Lost Ark at Paramount, George Lucas was eager to work with Disney and bring his growing catalogue along. Of course, audiences of the era couldn’t imagine that a Lost Legend: STAR TOURS (based on Star Wars, distributed by 20th Century Fox) and Indiana Jones (distributed by Paramount) could fit into Walt Disney’s magic kingdom, yet they appeared. So did the hip Videopolis dance club, Michael Jackson’s Lost Legend: Captain EO, and, later on, another Disney / Lucas Lost Legend: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter.
Image: Disney
Eisner was so invested in bringing movies to life at Disney parks, he believed that the film industry deserved its own dedicated pavilion at EPCOT Center, and tasked Disney Legend Marty Sklar with developing a movie-centered project. The resulting pavilion was intended to fit between The Land and Imagination in the park’s Future World, concealed behind a massive blue-sky backdrop. Inside, the pavilion’s star would’ve been (like most of EPCOT Center’s pavilion headliners) an all-encompassing dark ride – Great Moments at the Movies – which would transport guests through the most fabled scenes in cinema history.
Then, of course, rumors suggested that Universal Studios was interested in building a studio-themed attraction right in Disney’s backyard. Wouldn’t you know it? Eisner was seized by inspiration… Maybe this oversized dark ride deserved a place of prominence in an entirely new theme park dedicated to filmmaking…
Hollywood in Orlando
Image: Disney
When the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park opened on May 1, 1989, Michael Eisner’s dedication was a thoughtful one. He called for the park to be “dedicated to Hollywood – not a place on a map, but a state of mind that exists wherever people dream and wonder and imagine; a place where illusion and reality are fused by technological magic. We welcome you to a Hollywood that never was – and always will be.”
For all the pomp and circumstance, Walt Disney World’s third theme park was small. Very small. In its opening year, the pedestrian-accessible “theme park” proper was made up of only of modern day Hollywood Blvd. and Echo Lake (orange and light pink on the map above), and the park offered only two rides. Naturally, the first was the epic, EPCOT-esque Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride, housed in the elegant Chinese Theater recreation, towering at the end of an idealized golden age Hollywood Blvd.
Image: Disney
The second ride was the real showstopper – and frankly, the park’s main purpose: a multi-hour Backstage Studio Tour. Part walking tour, part tram tour, this truly gargantuan attraction (any area in deep pink or purple in the map above) would weave in and out of real working production facilities, soundstages, and demonstrations where actual television and film studios would operate.
Along the Studio Tour, guests would view pre- and post-production facilities, watch animators craft Disney’s next masterpiece, and even catch real filming in person! Eisner’s new park had gifted guests with a sought-after peek behind-the-scenes…
Image: Disney
So it should be no surprise that Eisner believed the Disney-MGM Studios concept was highly franchisable. In fact, while blacktop was still hardening on the tram tour’s route in Orlando, Disney began the process of drafting a whole new Disney-MGM Studios to join its in-development Euro Disney Resort… Read on…
The rat is out of the bag, and the characters have arrived. In 2020, Disney continued its multi-year transformation of Epcot with yet another anchor attraction: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. In this frantic new family ride, Disney promised that “guests will be able to shrink to Remy’s size and scurry to safety in a dazzling chase across a kitchen with the sights, sounds and smells of Gusteau’s legendary Parisian restaurant.”
But of course, as Imagineering fans know, this controversial Epcot adventure isn’t exactly an Orlando exclusive… In fact, the newest headlining attraction in Epcot’s France pavilion at World Showcase has been thrilling riders in the real France for years, where Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy literally helped save Disney’s most pathetic theme park…
“We had a very big investment in Europe, and it’s difficult to deal with. I don’t know whether a private company can ever spend this kind of money.”
These words, spoken by Disney’s then-CEO Michael Eisner to the LA Times in January 1994, signaled the beginning of the end. Euro Disneyland (now Disneyland Paris) had opened to a resounding financial thud in 1992; overbuilt and undervalued by locals, hemmoraging money and embroiled in cultural controversy. After a period of growth, innovation, and sincere progress at Disney Parks across the globe, the outright financial failure of the Parisian park shook Eisner to his core. From that moment on, he systematically downsized or outright dropped any large-scale expansions happening at Disney Parks.
Across the world, budgets were slashed, maintenance was cut, and Eisner surrounded himself with penny-pinching executives who shaped Disney Parks, presiding over what many argue is the worst period in the parks’ history.
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.
