Walt Disney World Archives

October 29, 2024November 1, 2024

Real, Ancient, and Imagined: An Armchair Imagineered Blue-Sky Build-Out of Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Well everyone, here we are again – and this time, at Disney’s Animal Kingdom!

By nature of reading this, you’re probably not new to Park Lore. But just in case, I’ll briefly explain. Park Lore is all about seeing the theme parks we know through new and different lenses. Since I started organizing my years of piecemeal freelance work in 2020, I’ve amassed a collection of totally ad-free, in-depth histories of beloved theme park attractions, never-built lands, closed classics, and more, increasingly interspersed with niche theme park art projects, over a hundred hand-drawn ride layouts, and a real favorite of mine – “armchair Imagineered” theme park build-outs.

Hopefully you’ve already journeyed with me through my lovingly “reimagined,” multiversal variants of Disney California Adventure, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Universal Islands of Adventure. But for so many reasons, each of those was really just a practice round for tackling a very, very big one – a “Blue Sky” refresh of Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

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October 9, 2024October 9, 2024

Inside Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser – Where Guests REALLY Spent Their Two Days on the Secretive Halcyon

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser was supposed to be unlike anything Disney Imagineers had ever designed before. Not a hotel, but a totally immersive, two night Star Wars adventure. It was a bold, ambitious plan that most Disney fans seemed to think was at least a clever experiment… until they discovered the price. Just before the Starcruiser opened, our friends at Theme…

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.

If you choose to join Park Lore’s community of 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.

August 16, 2024August 27, 2024

Universal’s Momentum Stalls, EPCOT Rebuilds, and Other Surprising Findings from 2023 Theme Park Attendance

It’s one of the most anticipated data drops in all of theme park nerd-dom… Every year, the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) partners with a consulting firm called AECOM to compile an annual report on the ups and downs of theme parks, waterparks, museums, and other “thematic” experiences from the year prior. (If you haven’t yet, check out our coverage of the significant takeaways from the 2022 Report here.)

This year’s result – the 2023 Global Attractions Attendance Report – is a fascinating document that theme park fans should dive into in depth. It’s filled with the highs and lows, global contexts, and stories that permeated theme park news in the year prior. But most importantly… it also contains a ranking and roll-up of the year’s theme park attendance.

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June 27, 2024June 27, 2024

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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May 21, 2024June 18, 2024

Secrets of the Swan and Dolphin: Surprising Stories from Walt Disney World’s Most Mythologized Hotels

Some Walt Disney World hotels make you feel like you’re down in ole’ New Orleans strolling through bayous and mansions. Some take you to the grand seaside Victorian hotels of yesteryear. Some place you in the Caribbean for a sun-drenched vacation in a colorful village. But only one of Walt Disney World’s hotels is a post-modern abstraction; a geometric icon of architecture and a divisive remnant of ’90s design somehow elevated to timelessness.

Say what you will about The Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin, but these two unusual sister resorts set around Crescent Lake near EPCOT are captivating; interesting; different. Today, we’re taking a look at the Origin, Architecture, Legends, and Story behind the Swan and Dolphin. Hopefully by the end, whether you love or hate these two-of-a-kind resorts, you’ll appreciate that Walt Disney World could use a little more of their kind of boldness today…

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May 15, 2024May 15, 2024

Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary Forgot to Celebrate Disney World. Here’s Why… And What To Do Next Time.

NOTE: This feature is intended as a bit of a time capsule, written during and about Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary celebration from the perspective of the time when it occurred (in 2020 and 2021). Rather than updating it to change verb tenses and remove assumptions, it’s being preserved in its original state.

Walt Disney World has history. A lot of it. Of course, that’s what living fifty years will do for you!

Walt Disney World started big, and it’s gotten bigger. Over the course of its first five decades, the “Vacation Kingdom of the World” has grown from a ‘70s leisure resort anchored by a “Disneyland East” into a pop culture icon surpassing its older sister. Walt Disney World is practically ingrained in the DNA of the Western World. It’s as American as apple pie; as “middle class” as home ownership; as much a rite of passage as a driver’s license.

This article and hundreds more are available for 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 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.

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February 4, 2024June 14, 2024

Park Paths: The Histories and Personalities of Disney & Universal Theme Parks As Seen from a New Perspective

“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…

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November 30, 2023November 30, 2023

The 25 Most Incredible Theme Park Animatronics on Earth

It wasn’t too long ago that a theme park attraction was lifeless without Audio-Animatronics. In fact, the number and complexity of these robotic animated figures was often proportional to a ride’s budget and success! Put simply: if you wanted to blow audiences away, animatronics figures were the way to do it.

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October 28, 2023December 30, 2023

Reimagining Magic Kingdom: An Armchair-Imagineered Blue Sky Build-Out of Walt Disney World’s Iconic Theme Park

“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…

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July 27, 2023July 27, 2023

The Tipsiest Place on Earth: The “Tradition” of Walt’s Dry Disneyland & How Alcohol Leaked into the Magic Kingdoms

“I am a big believer in tradition,” Disney’s then-CEO Bob Iger told The 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…

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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