By The Numbers: The Surprising Number of E-Ticket Attractions at Each Disney Park

8. Disney California Adventure

1. Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!
2. Incredicoaster
3. Radiator Springs Racers
4. Soarin’ Around the World
5. Toy Story Midway Mania
6. WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure

Not yet considered: Unnamed Avengers attraction (2025?)

Fittingly, after Epcot, there’s no Disney Park on Earth to have been reimagined as wholly as Disney California Adventure. Opened in 2001 to dismal reviews, the under-built and underfunded park was creatively starved, lacked noteworthy attractions, and had practically zero Disney characters. In a special two-part insider feature, we first examined the park’s pitiful premiere, then its $2 billion transformation. Along the way, it gained an identity (and arguably lost it again just as fast en route to becoming Disneyland’s home for Pixar and Marvel). Either way, it’s relatively low number of E-Tickets shows that it’ll take more than the Avengers Campus to keep California Adventure a fitting complement to Disneyland.

E-TICKET AWARD: Back in 2001, the park’s singular standout ride was the Lost Legend: Soarin’ Over California – the literal birthplace of the Soarin’ rides around the world. But part of the park’s 5-year reimagining brought the Modern Marvel: Radiator Springs Racers – a lightning fast, larger-than-life race through the desert buttes of the Cadillac Range.

THE WEAK LINK: In 2018, the park’s Victorian-themed Paradise Pier got an IP wrap of its own, becoming the strange Pixar Pier of mis-matched modern movie references. The land’s classic-looking coaster, formerly California Screamin’, was “reimagined” to include characters from The Incredibles. Unfortunately, they’re mostly static mannequins. The Incredicoaster is really no better than its bare-steel predecessor and, if anything, misses the mark by aspiring to more but failing to achieve it.

7. Shanghai Disneyland

1. Peter Pan Flight
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure
3. Roaring Rapids
4. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
5. Soaring Over The Horizon
6. TRON: Lightcycle Power Run
7. Zootopia: Hot Pursuit

The opening of Shanghai Disneyland in 2016 was seen as a watershed moment in the legacy of CEO Bob Iger. A long time coming, Disney’s flag planted in mainland China expanded the brand to an untapped – but enormous – market. Majority owned by the Chinese government, the resort was required to feature new rides and not classics, necessitating Imagineers return to the Disneyland formula and make some of the first major tweaks ever. The result is a park where even “copies” are reimagined with new show technologies, and where most E-Tickets are original.

E-TICKET AWARD: In Shanghai, it must be Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure. Among the short-list pantheon of Disney’s best modern dark rides, this new take on the Pirates formula is more reinvention than evolution. Multi-directional boats float through multimedia scenes that reflect a scale never seen before. The epic attraction is world class in every way.

THE WEAK LINK: It would be easy to list Peter Pan’s Flight or Seven Dwarfs Mine Train here, given that they’re not exclusive to the park. However, we’ll controversially consider Roaring Rapids as the weak link among E-Tickets. Disney’s other two rapids rides (California’s Grizzly River Run and Animal Kingdom’s Kali River Rapids) didn’t even make it to their respective park’s E-Ticket lists, as both as somewhat dull, meandering rides that lack animatronics or stories. But that might be preferable to Roaring Rapids, which promises – but fails to deliver – a compelling and adventurous story. Instead, it floats through barren river channels en route to an ending encounter with a very big Audio-Animatronic beast.

6. Disneyland Paris

1. Big Thunder Mountain
2. Peter Pan’s Flight
3. Phantom Manor
4. Pirates of the Caribbean
5. Star Tours – The Adventures Continue
6. Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain: Rebel Mission

Though Disneyland Paris is often derided as the industry-changing park that caused decades of cop-outs, closures, and cancellations, the park itself is among Disney’s most beautiful. Somehow, it successfully merges the charm and intimacy of Disneyland with the scale and magnificence of Magic Kingdom. And while most of its E-Tickets are not from scratch, many were redesigned and reimagined to fit the more detail-oriented European park. Unfortunately, the biggest victim of Disneyland Paris’ downfall might’ve been Disneyland Paris itself, which has been trapped in a state of suspended animation since the mid-’90s with any available resources poured into Walt Disney Studios instead.

E-TICKET AWARD: The one-two punch of the park’s two mountains can’t be beat. First, Big Thunder Mountain (in its world’s-best version) is wrapped into an epic Western story, connected to the Modern Marvel: Phantom Manor. Meanwhile, the park’s reimagined Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre á la Lune stripped the peak of its white, Space Age styling and instead was a launched, inverting coaster through the plot of a Jules Verne novel… until its inevitable Star Wars overlay today. That said, it still provides a one-of-a-kind, epic, and sought-after ride experience.

5. Disney’s Hollywood Studios

1. Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
2. Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
3. Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster
4. Star Tours – The Adventures Continue
5. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
6. Toy Story Midway Mania
7. Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

While Disney’s Hollywood Studios has the fewest rides of any Walt Disney World park, we’ll say this for the movie park: seven of its nine rides are undisputed E-Tickets. Maybe that’s why, opposite Epcot, Imagineering fans comically call Hollywood Studios “the worst park with the best rides.” Perhaps because the park has been subject to criticism since its opening as an intentional “half day” destination, it’s been fully loaded with anchor attractions, one after another, up to the opening of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

E-TICKET AWARD: Bar none, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance reigns. In fact, we argue that this brand new trackless dark ride isn’t just an E-Ticket; it’s an Ultra-E-Ticket. Utilizing three ride systems and a scale never before attempted in a theme park, the ride is absolutely among the most astounding things Imagineering has ever created. Period.

THE WEAK LINK: Conversely, fans are largely ambivalent about the other ride in Galaxy’s Edge. Smugglers Run positions guests behind the controls of the Millennium Falcon for a smuggling mission. Because the ride is clearly, intentionally positioned as “second fiddle” to the unmatchable Rise, some folks describe it as a mere “D-Ticket” aside. But whether you love or hate the divisive attraction, you can’t argue that it features a wildly interesting ride system, unprecedented technology, and one-of-a-kind ride experience. In other words, by most any metric, Smugglers Run is an E-Ticket. Whether its a good one or not is the million dollar question that everyone seems to have an opinion on. 

4. Tokyo DisneySea

1. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2. Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull
3. Journey to the Center of the Earth
4. Nemo & Friends SeaRider
5. Raging Spirits
6. Soaring: Fantastic Flight
7. Tower of Terror
8. Toy Story Midway Mania

Not yet considered: Rapunzel’s Lantern Festival, Peter Pan’s Never Land Adventure, Anna and Elsa’s Frozen Journey (2024)

Tokyo DisneySea is a bucket list destination for thousands of Imagineering fans across the globe. The incredible park opened in 2001 at an estimated cost of over $3 billion – about five times the cost of Disney’s California Adventure the same year. It’s also celebrated as the origin of a new concept: the park as the E-Ticket. Put another way, you could spend the entire day at DisneySea, ride nothing, and still feel you’d had an outstanding experience. But of course, that doesn’t mean the park doesn’t offer incredible, original attractions.

E-TICKET AWARD: Though the park famously offers two incredible dark rides connected as part of the spectacular mythology of S.E.A. – The Society of Explorers and Adventurers, the park’s anchor is easy to identify. Located inside the rumbling, 189-foot-tall Mount Prometheus volcano resides the Modern Marvel: Journey to the Center of the Earth – one of two Jules Verne literary adventure attractions at the park, and offerings one of the most amazing Audio-Animatronics on Earth.

THE WEAK LINK: Technically, probably Raging Spirits (a better-dressed clone of Disneyland Paris’ Temple of Peril.) But in this park’s stellar lineup, the weak link is more of a mis-matched link: Nemo & Friends: SeaRider, an uncharacteristically-cartoon takeover of an opening day simulator called StormRider. It’s not that StormRider was a great attraction, nor that SeaRider is a bad one… far from it! It’s that it’s oddly out-of-place in the otherwise grounded, literary park. Of course, the upcoming debut of a brand new (and enormous, Pandora-scaled) Fantasy Springs land means characters are no longer verboten at the park, so perhaps we’re being too harsh.

Ah, but as expected, we’ve come down to just three parks: the three original “castle” parks in Anaheim, Orlando, and Tokyo – the 2nd, 1st, and 3rd most visited theme parks on Earth, respectively. What order do you expect they’ll be in when it comes to E-Ticket counts?