Like most of us who doodle theme park concepts in our spare time, I’ve sketched out ideas for Animal Kingdom for a very long time. (To give you a sense, I once planned out a version of the park that would turn Dinoland into South America, and then return dinosaurs to the park in a new land based around the upcoming Pixar release The Good Dinosaur, which, was obviously going to be a huge hit.)
Anyway, the final land in this build-out of Animal Kingdom is one I’ve sort of quietly thought would be a nice fit for the park for a very long time, even if it’s maybe a little weird at first glance. Just bear with me…
GRAVITY FALLS
Background
Created by Alex Hirsch for Disney Channel, Gravity Falls may be one of the most passionately-beloved animated series of all time despite having run for only two seasons. I’ll tell you right now that I am not part of its fandom (I’ve only ever seen a few episodes – sorry) so it’s not like I’m selfishly trying to wedge it in here just because I love it. Actually, I think this land is the perfect final piece for Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
In the show, Gravity Falls is the name of an unusual town in the pines of Oregon where – in the great tradition of monster-of-the-week episodic television – strange occurrences aren’t so strange. The series centers on 12-year old twins Dipper and Mabel Pines who are sent to spend the summer with their great-uncle – “Grunkle Stan” – who’s the proprietor of a tourist trap in the forests outside of town called the Mystery Shack.
Naturally, what follows is a weekly foray into sometimes-classic, sometimes-invented legends, myths, supernatural happenings, and cryptozoological creatures. Across its 40 episodes, the show builds into a serialized adventure that leaps between dimensions, but I think the real value here is to do just what Pandora and “a bug’s land” do, which is to require nothing of us in terms of homework, pre-reading, or recognition of the IP. Instead, what we can pull from Gravity Falls is its spirit of humor and joy, its unique and colorful stylization, its incredibly compelling setting, and its focus on a different sub-genre of imagined animals: cryptids.
I want to immediately say that this, I think, is very different from the other imagined creatures we’ve seen in Mythica, which I’d call “literary” or “mythological” – the European dragons, unicorns, fairies, griffins, et al. In Gravity Falls, we’re dealing with tall tales; folklore; the Americana inherent in stories of Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, the Mothman, and more.
By the way, I think that if we had the space, we could imagine a Gravity Falls land on the scale of Cars Land – enveloped by the geologically perplexing mountains that wrap around the town, and with cross streets filled with the town’s tourist shops, diners, and sites of oddities. Like Cars Land’s Radiator Springs, I think the physical town of Gravity Falls could very well rise above the source material and become a very iconic, memorable theme park space even for those without any knowledge of the IP.
But given the limited space we have to work with, I chose to “zoom in” on the pine forests around the Mystery Shack and instead envision this land around the shack and an annual “Cryptid Carnival” put on by the residents of town.
To be sure, a huge inspiration here was my “local” real world equivalent: Santa Cruz, California’s legendary Mystery Spot. You can’t drive in California without seeing the iconic and outrageous yellow bumper sticker on at least a few cars. Arriving to the space is like the culmination of a long teasing relationship.
Mystery Spot recalls an era of Americana; of family road trips where the route is dictated by billboards; of oversold roadside attractions with big promises. Like other “Confusion Hill” attractions, Mystery Spot is just this silly, gotta-see-it, over-the-top little tourist trap set right down in the redwood forests. The kind of place you want to bring your friends without telling them what it is. The schtick is the point. It’s on-the-nose, over-the-top, and intentionally-humorous in its approach to the supernatural.
Put another way, Mystery Spot (and its kin) inspired Gravity Falls, which in turn we can make into a real, physical place in Animal Kingdom that draws from that same spirit of Americana and the call of the unknown and the supernatural that you’ve gotta see to believe… even if, by design, the theme park version will be contrived and commercial in a very different way than the organic tourist traps that started the whole cycle. But the connection is there, and I think it would read even to those who have zero exposure to Gravity Falls as an IP.
What I especially like about it is that in bringing Gravity Falls to Animal Kingdom, we sort of accidentally reincarnate Dinoland – but, I think, in a way that’s a little more on-the-nose and won’t go over so many heads…
Both lands are centered on the theme of pop culture and how we, as people, make animals that no one has ever seen with their own eyes real. Both lands give “North America” a piece of Animal Kingdom’s pie but without the standard zoo animal set – deer, bears, wolves, otters, etc. And both serve as excuses for theme park necessities (like off-the-shelf flat rides, carnival games, and snack stands) by being centered on fairs. In all three regards – pop culture, celebrating unseen animals of North America, and being a carnival – I only think that Gravity Falls lends itself more effortlessly by nature of that relationship between pop culture, roadside attractions, and the supernatural. So here’s what I came up with.
Build-Out
With the precious little space we have left here – wedged between Mythica and the remains of Rafiki’s Planet Watch (which I’ve converted into backstage space), resides Gravity Falls.
This is quite a transition, of course, from the enchanted forests of a European legend to the pine forests of Oregon. I envision guests stepping through a tree tunnel to make that jump. On the other side, we’d immediately find ourselves on the winding roads toward Gravity Falls in the style of the historic Burma Shave signs, inviting us to the Mystery Shack’s Annual Mystery Fair.
Arriving at a clearing in the pines, we’d find ourselves among the strung lights and banners of the fair. I planned a number of stylized flat rides here in the understory of the pines – CYCLOPTOPUS SPIN (with a fiberglass, one-eyed octopus in the center of a spinner – a spoof of Universal’s Kang & Kodos’ Hurl & Twirl) and PTERODACTYL PTERROR! (a classic yo-yo swing with stylized pteranodons circling overhead) to establish the stylized, animated fair atmosphere.
I have to tell you, my favorite must be PLAIDYPUS PATROL. This is inspired by the most ridiculous and adorable ride to have ever existed – Bert & Ernie’s Loch Adventure at Busch Gardens Williamsburg (video above). It’s a Zamperla “Kiddie Flume” that doesn’t even have a drop (though Zamperla does offer models with a two or three foot lift and drop, which I bet is even cuter.)
On the Busch Gardens version, two kids at a time just load into a little stylized Loch Ness Monster and drift around an oval-shaped course, under fountains, past little flat cut-outs of sheep. It’s almost laughably simple, which is its appeal. So as part of the carnival in Gravity Falls, I envisioned a slightly-extended version that would give the same adorableness while also being a little higher capacity. I think that this far into the land, people would “get the joke” and embrace such a silly, simple ride as part of the “fair” aesthetic, especially if kids are searching for the elusive “plaidypus” (plaid-patterned platypuses, as fiberglass figures) “camouflaged” along the route.
Beyond is the iconic WHEEL OF MYSTERY – a small, 35-foot tall kiddie Ferris wheel with a light-up question mark in its center. This core of the land also contains a number of ramshackle structures housing CRYPTID CARNIVAL GAMES – like Ring-the-Leprecorn-Horn, Bigfoot Basket Bounce, or Pick-a-Plaidypus. Together, these four rides and the games, all beneath strung-up lights and banners – very directly convey the nature of this space: a roadside fair appealing to would-be creature-seekers like us.
The place we can find them is on the road. Again embracing that core tenant of the American roadside attraction, we have to take to the back roads on DIPPER & MABEL’S MYSTERY TOUR. I very much envision this as an “Autopia” for Animal Kingdom, letting little ones behind the wheel – in this case, of one of Grunkle Stan’s “Mystery Carts.”
On board, families can set off on their own personal “Safari” through the pines, with location-triggered radio calls from Dipper and Mabel, activating in-cart screens to help identify the cryptids who’ve been drawn out for the Fair. I thought that this no-height-requirement ride would be a fantastic way to cram a lot of creature sighting into a single ride-through. I also really fell in love with the idea of the carts being equipped with in-cab flashlights that could be used to totally transform the ride at night, and certainly to create some cool moments during the indoor scenes it passes through.
Just past the center of the Fair would be the iconic GREASY’S DINER, having been hauled right into the woods for the carnival and serving as the land’s quick service eatery. I also equipped the giant log facade with a space for a SPIRITS UNKNOWN BAR, because I thought the Pacific Northwest really called for a cool redwood patio with criss-crossing strands of lights overhead… Feels like a nice retreat for adults.
Of course, the land’s E-Ticket is reserved for the Mystery Shack itself…
Here, I planned for the land’s anchor attraction to be GRAVITY FALLS: STRANGE DIMENSIONS. Initially, I had the ride inside the landmark Mystery Shack subtitled “The Great Gobblewonker Adventure,” centered on a quest for the show’s Loch Ness-style sea serpent. But I think this is the place where we can foist a little more lore onto guests, using the queue (through the Mystery Shack) and preshows to introduce the journals from the show, as well as introducing Dipper and Mabel and Grunkle Stan more formally as Audio Animatronics.
And at that point, rather than centering on a single creature that makes a one-episode appearance and certainly doesn’t feel “cumulative” for the IP, we might as well go a little wilder. Though the TV series begins as a “monster-of-the-week” episodic show, it’s all in service of laying breadcrumbs toward some big storylines at the end. While I really don’t think we ought to go all the way to “Weirdmageddon” and demons and Bill Cipher (think of Grandma!) we can certainly use this ride to investigate some of the bigger, stranger lore behind the series and its creatures.
That’s what inspired the idea behind the Strange Dimensions ride. At its core, I wanted this ride to use the “SCOOP” ride system (first used on Universal’s Modern Marvel: Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, but that we’ve now seen Disney’s version on both DisneySea’s Peter Pan ride and California Adventure’s Avengers ride). Unfortunately, the concept I initially proposed doesn’t actually gel with the series’ mythology. (Thank you MaverickNerd in the comments below!) It goes to show that I shouldn’t dabble in IPs I don’t fully understand. So I’ll just say that you might be able to do a lot better than I at figuring out how to make this an E-Ticket dark ride that feels cumulative, dizzying, daring, and surprising for the IP – if so, put it in the comments!
Finally, I added something I always try to incorporate into parks: a vast, explorable, interactive area for families. GNOME FOREST ADVENTURE is a self-contained playground of interconnected watchtowers, prophetic ruins, climbing nets, glowing caves, hop-across streams, mossy tree slides, climbing walls, zip-lines, and interactive runes. Similar in spirit to California Adventure’s Redwood Creek Challenge Trail or an at-its-prime Tom Sawyer Island, this space is one where a family can spend an hour or more just burning steam and exploring together.
My hope was that Gravity Falls would bring a sort of levity, humor, and cartoon stylization to Animal Kingdom, recreating the pop culture nonsense and tourist trap comedy that Dinoland was meant to embody but didn’t always accurately convey. I thought this space would also us to touch on gnomes, Bigfoot, sea monsters, and more in a way that addresses their inherent pulpiness and never once feels the need to make them scary, spiritual, or self-serious (which, of course, is the treatment we give the more classical, literary creatures found in Mythica). I really do think this can serve as something of a “Toontown” for Animal Kingdom, and introduce this very strong cast of characters and its compelling setting to a vastly larger audience.
Anyway, with Gravity Falls having been explored, our route home is ours to choose. Sure we could walk. But we could also travel via the WILDLIFE EXPRESS back to Africa or take the Discovery River Ferry from Mythica back to Discovery Island – two options that both serve to save our feet as we return from this most far-flung part of the now-even-larger park.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom – Closing Thoughts
So here it is. My completed “Blue Sky build-out” of Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
If there’s anything I’ve learned through this process, it’s that Animal Kingdom is already such a wonderful park. That’s why the first half of this write-up largely consisted of me saying, “Yep, looks good!” Sure, I tried to wedge in new experiences and new attractions, but it’s all grafted onto a park that’s already so full and so “complete” in and of itself. The expansions that the park has already undergone – Pandora, the new districts in Harambe, Everest, and now the Tropical Americas – are all (in my opinion) really well done.
So while I tried to round a few edges and add reasonable growth where I could in the existing park, this build-out really ended up being about that Blue Sky expansion space and – more than any other park I’ve tinkered with – guest movement. I don’t take lightly that this park would be a behemoth to get around. But in keeping with the park’s tempo, even this vastly-expanded version of Animal Kingdom would “only” have about 25 rides – about as many as DisneySea.
That’s a huge increase from the 9 it’ll have when the Tropical Americas are done, but I think this is a perfect ride capacity for this park. This version of Animal Kingdom loses just one ride (Kali River Rapids) and gains some excellent new headliners (Dragon’s Tower, Mo’ara Valley Expedition, Voyage of the Hours, Gobblewonker Adventure), a noble spread of family-focused flat rides (four in Gravity Falls, four in a bug’s land, one in Mythica, and one in Pandora), and a much-needed “middle tier” (Firefall, Flik’s Clover Coaster, Quest for the Unicorn, Dipper & Mabel’s Mystery Tour, Swan Lake, Gnome Forest) that modern Disney seems to feel isn’t worth their effort.
I’ll be honest – sometimes I leave these build-outs going, “Meh, I’m gonna return to this one when I get a chance and make some changes.” But I’ll tell you: I really, really like this Animal Kingdom. I’m weirdly proud of it, and (like I felt after my build-out of Islands of Adventure) kinda bummed it’s not real. This whole thing might make Joe Rohde shudder. But I can leave this project feeling like I balanced those factors we talked about on page one, and that this is a park that remains fundamentally itself – thoughtful, reflective, “original,” and rooted in reality – just with a little more “Disney.”
So I guess that’s the end of this one. If you made it this far, I’m speechless. (The site estimates a 101 minute read time, so don’t think I don’t know what a gift your attention was!) As I’m sure you noticed, not one ad interrupted your reading! That means I made zero dollars and zero cents from ad revenue for this project – which is the way I like it. No ads, no clickbait, and no pressure to release “quantity-over-quality” content. So if you enjoyed this project, I hope you’ll consider joining Park Lore for just $2 a month or more. This entire website is the work of one person, so every Member makes me literally cry happy tears.
In the meantime, let me know your thoughts on this build-out of Disney’s Animal Kingdom in the comments below. Then, check out my build-outs of Islands of Adventure, Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, Disney California Adventure, or Epic Universe. We’ll see you next time.
Having recently watched Hoppers, one of the first things I thought coming out of it is how incredible a fit it is for Animal Kingdom! Unlike movies such as Zootopia, it really fits the themes of the park, with our connection with animals and nature being one of its main themes. I think a Hoppers show would be perfect in the Tree Of Life theater, much better than the awful Zootopia show that’s in the theater now. The story for the attraction can be set up so easily as well, as it could be about Mabel and the scientists she’s working with showcasing a new Hoppers program to guests that gets them up and close with the animals! Putting Hoppers here could even work for Disney as a brand builder, since the movie is looking to be a genuine box office success! It is insane how perfect Hoppers and Animal Kingdom fit together, it almost feel purposeful!
I just wanna say I love this Animal Kingdom build-out, especially the Gravity Falls area. Including it was a brilliant idea! I’m just bummed there’s a lack of extinct animals in your version of the park.
I totally agree! When I sketched out the first ideas that would evolve into this Build-Out more than a decade ago, I thought Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (which wasn’t out yet) might be a good way to do that. That tells you how long these ideas sort of lingered before I had Park Lore to put them down on paper. In retrospect, even if The Good Dinosaur had been a success, putting it here would’ve done the thing we try to avoid with Animal Kingdom, which is assuming that just because a movie has animals, it’s about animals.
The other obvious problem is that Universal owns Jurassic Park and leverages it heavily in their parks right up the road. Jurassic Park brings dinosaurs to our world in a way that’s very smart and perfect for a theme park. Sure it was meant to be a sort of dystopian sci-fi story about the hubris of man, but ultimately the setting of a theme park filled with dinosaurs still lets us adore and revere them as animals. It works really well. It gives Universal de facto “ownership” over the T. rex, and the Velociraptor, and “dinosaurs getting loose.” And it puts Disney on its back foot. Sort of like if Universal decided they wanted to start a line of animated Princesses. Like, sure, I guess you can try… but you’re never, ever going to supplant the pop culture image of that genre that’s held by your competitor.
If Jurassic Park brings dinosaurs to our world, then the logical inverse is that we visit theirs. The “problem” there has always been “theme-park-ability” – like, but where are the restrooms? The restaurants? How do you sell retail in a world that exists 65 million years before humans? I think you could do it by embracing the Dino Institute frame story… Perhaps you enter the land through a Chronotech portal that bridges us back in time to a dino-reserve operated by the Dino Institute. That would give us our needed infrastructure – restroom pods, and a futurustic pop-up canteen for Dino Institute researchers, and the frame story we need to have “rides” and “laboratories.” The problem is that even though that’s the inverse of Jurassic Park, I’m not sure it would read much different. It would still fundamentally be a dinosaur theme park.
Which is why it’s so brilliant that Dinoland U.S.A. avoided the trope altogether and found another way to explore how we as humans adore and revere dinosaurs, you know? Animal Kingdom is ultimately a park about us. That’s why it was such a smart idea to have a Dinoland so uniquely about something grounded (the absurdity of giant reptiles once being the dominant life on Earth, and now being plush animals and pajama sets and cartoons)… So even if that was lost on a lot of people (which, don’t get me wrong, is ultimately the fault of storytellers whose theme was obviously not conveyed or not connected to audiences), it was such a good idea that it’s hard to decide how else Disney can “own” dinosaurs with Jurassic Park a few miles away at Universal.
Thanks for checking this out!
The original concept for The Good Dinosaur posited that the creatures never went extinct, and lived alongside humans in a more egalitarian society.
That could be an interesting approach to bring prehistoric creatures to the park.
It’s an interesting idea! My only “worry” about that is the “dinosaurs & humans coexisting” thing, specifically as it relates to Animal Kingdom. Joe Rohde has talked about how when you visit Animal Kingdom, you are in a story, but not a fantasy. Even Pandora uses the fantastic to examine the real, with messages about biodiversity, indigenous people, keystone species, etc. So while I think there’s a compelling case for The Good Dinosaur’s sort of multiversal setup of “What if the meteor didn’t hit?”, I think there’s also a delicacy in putting that sort of thing in a park people do associate with real information. A YouGov poll a decade ago found that more than 40% of Americans think dinosaurs and humans coexisted (and unfortunately I’d wager that number has increased since! 🙃). Does Disney have a moral obligation to use its pop culture powers to develop a scientifically literate society? Probably, no… but it’s still something that’s probably worth considering specifically in Animal Kingdom! haha.
Brilliant, but I really do think that prehistoric animals deserve some real representation in a park like Animal Kingdom, though I wouldn’t change anything about this fantastic build-out.
Is there nowhere you could ‘squeeze in’ an expansion land for some of the most beloved creatures of all-time?
These are all fantastic and so well-crafted! Any plans for an Epcot one? Excited to see what you would concoct up
Hi Matt! Thanks for checking this out! An EPCOT build-out is probably my most-requested on social media! I have avoided it because I don’t think an EPCOT build-out meshes with my style, which is basically an overhead map. The “pavilion” situation makes it hard to do EPCOT that way, because the physical buildings maybe wouldn’t change? So it would just be the existing park but labeled differently? I don’t know…
I have been quietly working on something else, which is a sort of new age, next generation, what-if-a-park-like-EPCOT-were-built-today concept… so keep an eye out for that! Until then, thank you so much for reading!
I love these arm-chair imagineering posts, but I have what might possibly be a dumb question: How do you make the custom maps you have here? And do you have any tips and tricks for making your own? I’ve always wanted to design my own theme park like this but I don’t really know where to start!
Not a dumb question at all. I hand-drawn these on an iPad using the Procreate program and an Apple Pencil. I usually start by drawing on top of the existing park. I then do a lot of work to make sure things are at least reasonably scaled by looking back and forth at existing parks or showbuildings and using a 1:1 scale. And of course, contextualizing all of that in new layouts and pathways and backstage access. None of it is scientific or real (this isn’t actually my day job and I don’t know what I’m doing!) but it’s fun and, again, at least “reasonable” in terms of access roads, cast infrastructure, etc. It takes weeks to make one, but you can see an example of the process in this video here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qub3MDdxvao&t=1848s
Hey Brian, I have a suggestion. Can you please do another version of Animal Kingdom Armchair Imagineering, this time with a Lion King land and Dinosaur staying, and also an original park for Walt Disney World with lands based on Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, The Great Mouse Detective, Zootopia, Beauty and The Beast, Moana and Emperor’s New Groove / Atlantis The Lost Empire please?
Also, I love this idea you’ve done!!! It is brilliant!!!
Thanks for checking this out, and for these suggestions! For me, I wouldn’t probably come up with another version of Animal Kingdom for a few reasons. One is that I want to basically have one build-out of each park as my sort of definitive “version.” I just wouldn’t want to have two or three or four versions of each park. And I wouldn’t include a Lion King land in Animal Kingdom if I were given creative control because ultimately, Lion King has the same problem as Zootopia – it has animals, but it’s not about animals. It’s a parable for human experiences that’s no more about animals than Frozen would be if Anna and Elsa were designed as arctic foxes instead of humans. To my thinking, Lion King is used perfectly in the park as it is in Africa… as an excuse to celebrate African arts and storytelling. It becomes diegetic in that the people of Harambe are celebrating the story of the Lion King, which makes sense in the context of Animal Kingdom whereas a land of cartoon animals would not.
Your ideas for a new park sound really cool, and very specific! I did come up with a concept park I called Disney’s Fantastic Worlds you might enjoy. As for this specific arrangement of IP, I totally encourage you to sketch it out and see what you can come up with! Hope you do, and share it if you do!
I think if the pandora improvements, the Bugs land, and the riverboats/nighttime show happened, it would already be “complete” even before the fantasia gardens or other more blue sky stuff. Chester and Hester sought to “add capacity” but did so in a cheap way. Bugs land, if in right context, could be lower cost and add a ton of children’s capacity. Animal Kingdom doesn’t have a shortage of E tickets. It has a shortage of smaller, low-to-no wait experiences.
Can you next one be universal?
Amazing gravity falls but you should have added bill in the park
He’s there on the map, just like other creatures. 😉 He can visited in stone down a little discrete wooded trail.
I noticed that the rides for your buildout of Tropical America are the same as the rides you made for your build-out of Hollywood Studios. I think you should replace the ones in your build-out in Hollywood Studios with a Monsters, Inc. land instead.
Yep, you’re right! I designed that build-out of Hollywood Studios long before these changes to Animal Kingdom were greenlit, so it’s sort of wild that I got the mix of Indiana Jones and Encanto “right” – just at the wrong park. Haha! I think you’ll see me sweep back through that Hollywood Studios build-out eventually and do some reorganizing. I was never 100% happy with the flow that inserted an Incredibles land right between a 1930s Hollywood and a 1930s Walt Disney Studios… something seemed off about that flow, so maybe this is a chance to fix it.
Once again, you absolutely blew this out of the water! I love the Mythica, Gravity Falls, and Bugs Land combo, and the map is inspiring as always. A bit funny of a recurring joke though, is it just me or has every single buildout you’ve made (except HS) specifically include an Aquatopia-inspired ride, with the word “Skimmers” in it? Definitely enamored with the word lol
Additionally, aside from Ideal Buildout you might want to check out a few other amazing armchair Imagineering projects/blogs on the web for inspiration (if you haven’t already!) – this includes Imagineerland, DisneySky (Complete and Restored), and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Season 8: Magic Journeys (one of many armchair Imagineering competitions). They’re all worth checking out!
I would recommend a Lion King land for Animal Kingdom. In my opinion, it really fits the theme
I think Lion King is present in Animal Kingdom in the best way it could be – drawing on its music that draws upon the “Circle of Life,” wrapped in a show that’s “decorated” with the artistry and culture of African artisans. Otherwise, I think the high bar to entry that “guards” Animal Kingdom would prevent Lion King from being included as a land or a dark ride.
Lion King is obviously a fantastic film, but I think it’s really not so different than Zootopia in that is has animals, but is not about animals. The characters could just as easily have been designed to look like humans, telling a “coming of age” story about a young boy who loses his family and is set loose in the world to find his way. The fact that its characters are stylized as lions adds a lot to the film, but it doesn’t actually make it have anything to do Animal Kingdom’s big idea – “the untradeable value of nature.” Joe Rohde’s thinking is that the park’s Africa is primarily concerned with resources – how the people of Harambe think industriously to make the most of what they have, and that they have decided to value the rhino over the horn. That’s big, deep stuff that’s dealing with human’s relationship with nature. Even though there are animals in it, The Lion King isn’t about that.
Thanks for checking this out!
As a huge theme park fan and a massive Gravity Falls fan, I adore the Gravity Falls land you made for the park! However, there are a few lore notes that I have to give about Strange Dimensions ride. Firstly, the strange creatures didn’t come from the portal. They were always in Gravity Falls, even before the portal was built, and were all at Gravity Falls because of the Law Of Weirdness Magnetism. Secondly, the portal was first built in order to get Bill Cipher and his pals to our dimension so he can start Weirdmageddon. So basically, if we reopen the portal in this ride, if this ride follows canon we should be starting the apocalypse!
THANK YOU! Like I said, this is not an IP I’m super familiar with! I have changed around the description into something more generic… but please feel free to let me know what the ride’s story should be and I’ll update it! Hahaha!
I asked the Gravity Falls subreddit on what a potential story for a Gravity Falls ride could be and they mainly said either a tour of the shack or a ride based on Weirdmageddon. Honestly, I don’t love either of those ideas. A simple tour of the shack is too quaint and small scaled for the type of E-Ticket you’re proposing here. I have always thought that a tour of the shack could be the queue of the ride, as you see the fake creatures made as the shack’s attractions while on the line, with an animatronic Stan or Soos (similar to the animatronic Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story Mania) presenting the the shack’s “wonders.” As for the idea for a ride that takes place during Weirdmageddon, I find it hard to make it work as part of the land’s timeline. There was no fair at all when Weirdmageddon started and Dipper and Mabel canonically don’t return to the shack until three days after Weirdmageddon started. Plus, we have to spoil the ending of the Weirdmageddon arc in order for the ride to have a satisfying ending. (To be fair, we pretty much have to spoil the existence of a certain character that the show keeps as a mystery for most of the show anyways, since I kinda feel like the land should take place in the summer after Dipper and Mabel’s original summer, and you can’t really do that without having that character appear.) However, I have come up with an idea that I think can work. In the Gravity Falls graphic novel Lost Legends, it is revealed that there are rifts that have opened in Gravity Falls after Weirdmageddon ended, rifts that can travel to other dimensions when someone goes inside of it. While we see the Pines fix and close one of these rifts in the graphic novel, it has not been confirmed that they closed all of the rifts, or that rifts have stopped appearing, so we can work with that. The Pines family can introduce themselves to the guests in the pre-show, and then in that pre-show we can have a character (probably Soos or Waddles) get sucked into a rift. Now we have to join the Pines and go into the rift and through the multiverse in order to save them. When it comes to what universes we go to however, I’m kinda stumped. I feel like the universes they go to have to be both relevant to the show and relevant to the themes of Animal Kingdom. I assume that most of these universes will be made just for the attraction, as the actual show never really goes dimension hopping itself, instead bringing characters from other dimensions such as Bill into our world. And even dimensions mentioned in supplemental material like the books are more sci-fi like worlds that don’t fit in Animal Kingdom at all. I had the idea of maybe crossing over with the shows Amphibia and The Owl House, shows that have basically acted as Gravity Falls’ spiritual successors, traveling to their dimensions Jimmy Neutron: Nicktoon Blast style, since I feel like those worlds fit Animal Kingdom quite well, but those shows are even more niche than Gravity Falls, making it kind of a hard sell. However, I do know that I want the last dimension they enter to be a parallel universe where the Pines family lost against Bill into Weirdmageddon. The new Gravity Falls book called The Book Of Bill confirmed that there are parallel universes that exist where the Pines family lost, so it’s a way we can have the incredibly popular and iconic Bill Cipher in the ride and go through Weirdmageddon without breaking canon! Of course, we end the ride with them barely escaping Bill, returning to their home dimension, closing the rift, and congratulating us on a job well done! My ride idea isn’t perfect, and we still need to figure out what will be the other dimensions that the characters will go through, but I feel like I have found a way to preserve your idea of traveling the multiverse with the Gravity Falls cast, without breaking the lore and canon this time!
By the way, if you want to see what other people answered on my post about what a Gravity Falls ride should be like, here’s the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gravityfalls/comments/1gi5341/if_gravity_falls_had_a_land_in_disney_world_how/
My personal idea for a Gravity Falls ride is a “Mystery Tour” similar to the one stated in the post above with a new E-ticket focus. The idea is that Stan is testing out a new automated golf-cart mystery tour (so he doesn’t have to drive people around/pay anyone to drive people around) that will go through setup portions of the surrounding forest with cheap attractions and replicas. Soos is remotely controlling the test carts that you ride on (after going through the queue that is the Mystery Shack itself) and you load up “outside” at night for the tour. The tour goes pretty well and is “boring” until Dipper and Mabel appear over the radio and tell Soos that the tour doesn’t show anything real and to let the passengers go to some real interesting (yet safe) areas where we can find things. Unfortunately, one monster from the show (you can probably pick which one but maybe something like the Gobblewonker or bring back the dinosaurs) is a lot more dangerous than expected as you go on a high speed chase through the forest before outmaneuvering with Soos’s help allowing you to get back to the Shack.