2. Epcot
Location: Walt Disney World
Size: 166
“Disney trivia” tends to say that EPCOT at Walt Disney World is an astounding 300 acres. That’s true… if you count the entire theme park, its backstage support facilities, Cast parking, and its gargantuan blacktop parking lot. But of course, that’s not the calculation we’re going for, so understanding EPCOT’s true size is a little more nuanced.
We can start with this: the lagoon encircled by the park’s World Showcase is itself about 40 acres. (That means that the original Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris could fit inside of it.) The journey around that lagoon is famously a 1.3 mile hike that might leave you wondering if upgrading to premium parking was really worth it. So clearly, this is going to be a large park no matter how you slice it.
But the actual acreage of the park that a guest can see, access, or enjoy is smaller at about 166 acres. That’s still huge – larger than any Castle Park. But it’s not so much bigger as to make EPCOT inaccessible or out of sorts.
1. Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Location: Walt Disney World
Size: 170 acres
You’ve probably heard another “Disney Legend” – that Animal Kingdom is 580 acres – “the largest theme park on Earth.” But that statistic is compiled by including not just the park proper, but its extensive behind-the-scenes facilities, its substantial undeveloped (and maybe undevelopable) expansion pads, its elaborate entry sequence (including a Rainforest Cafe), its surrounding retention ponds, and its enormous blacktop parking lot. So you could maybe argue that nearly 600 acres have been set aside for Disney’s Animal Kingdom, but the story of the park’s size is far less straightforward.
For example, the “park proper” – that is, the space guests can walk around and the showbuildings that serve its rides and attractions – is actually very standardly-sized at nearly 85 acres. That actually puts it on the smaller side when it comes to Disney theme parks. (Only Adventure World, Hong Kong Disneyland, and California Adventure are smaller, and yes, Hollywood Studios has more acreage than the core of Disney’s Animal Kingdom.)
But wait… Animal Kingdom’s walkable area famously does feel larger than other parks! There are probably many reasons for that, including that the park emphasizes exploration (meaning instead of being neatly deposited at each E-Ticket’s entrance by a clear midway as at Magic Kingdom, you have to actually hunt a little to find each land’s headliner). Animal Kingdom also emphasizes wide vista and long shot views that other parks don’t, meaning you can see a thing far off and need to work a little to get to it. And of course, the park’s greenery might help keep it cooler, but that’s offset by the added humidity, which makes Animal Kingdom famously a beast to enjoy in Florida’s warmer months.
It’s also probably true that because one of the things known and shared about Animal Kingdom is how huge it is, guests enter with a placebo in the system and have their biases confirmed. But the facts are the facts – this is not a park five times the size of Magic Kingdom, so please don’t leave grandma at home for that reason alone.
That said, significant variables can ratchet up the on-paper size very quickly. For example, Animal Kingdom’s headlining attraction is Kilimanjaro Safaris – a fairly authentic, educational, off-roading animal-spotting safari through real habitats that are home to more than 30 species. That single attraction and its adjacent backstage support facilities occupies a further 85 acres, so including Kilimanjaro Safaris (which is fair because we’ve included ride footprints in every other map) brings the park’s total to about 170 acres.
One last variable is that the park includes the “Wildlife Express Train” – a steam engine line that shuttles guests from the park’s Africa to the remote “Planet Watch” – a sort of ’90s science center on the outskirts of the developed park. Accessible only by that train, Planet Watch and the Wildlife Express’s route occupy about 24 acres themselves (albeit, again, only a small part of that would be “on foot”).
So any way you slice it, Animal Kingdom is really a park that covers about 200 acres max, but only half of that would ever be experienced on foot. In other words, it, too, fits neatly into that same size category that nearly all Disney Parks do!