13. Hong Kong Disneyland (2005)
The third of three late-Eisner-era parks that turned out to be major fixer-uppers, Hong Kong Disneyland opened in 2005. The park famously displayed nearly zero ambition, existing as a sort of poor man’s Anaheim Disneyland. The park opened with Main Street, U.S.A., Adventureland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland. Notably, though, the park had very, very few rides. Of those it did feature, none (zero!) were unique or one-of-a-kind, and only two (Space Mountain and Jungle Cruise) could even remotely be considered “E-Tickets” or anchor attractions.
Really think about this: Hong Kong Disneyland had no Pirates of the Caribbean; no “it’s a small world”; no Peter Pan’s Flight; no Haunted Mansion; no Big Thunder Mountain. There was no Riverboat, no Splash Mountain, no Peoplemover, no Snow White’s Scary Adventures… The park had just two dark rides (The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters) and again, no single attraction that would warrant a trip for even the most devoted Disney Parks fan.
As with California Adventure and Walt Disney Studios, it’s taken decades to get Hong Kong Disneyland to a place of sustainability and interest. That largely began with the then-unprecedented notion of adding three mini-lands outside of the park’s railroad, creating a sort of “outer loop” around the Rivers of America. Those lands – Toy Story Land, Grizzly Gulch, and Mystic Point did help put the park on the map, primarily thanks to the Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor – a dark ride held up as among the best on Earth.
But especially as the relatively-nearby Shanghai Disneyland prepared to open, Hong Kong officials basically came to Disney and said, “You’re not done yet. Keep building.” The results have included a brand new castle, a World of Frozen (including both the standard boat ride and a one-of-a-kind family coaster), and a sort of Marvel mini-land within the park’s Tomorrowland. Right now, it’s made up of an Iron Man simulator and an Ant-Man shooting dark ride (actually having replaced the Buzz Lightyear one), but at the 2024 D23 Expo, we learned that the park’s next Marvel addition will be a Spider-Man themed ride using the “DCA Tower of Terror” ride system. Once that’s complete, it’s likely that the Marvel space will break-off from Tomorrowland and create a Marvel Avengers Campus of its own, but Disney hasn’t made that explicit yet.
14. Universal Studios Singapore (2010)
Like Hong Kong Disneyland, Universal Studios Singapore represents Universal’s flirtation with access to emerging, boundless customer bases in Asia. (And like Hong Kong Disneyland, Universal Studios Singapore would be followed up by a much more serious presence in mainland China a decade later.)
Still, Universal Studios Singapore is unique is that it was the first Universal Studios park to open after Islands of Adventure – when Universal clearly figured out that it could create legitimate theme parks and not just studio parks. The result is that though the park has the “Studios” name, it uses the “Islands” layout of themed lands situated around a lagoon. However, unlike Islands of Adventure, this park swapped the literary ethos for the more overt “movies” connection that a first park needs.
So actually, guests entered Universal Studios Singapore through Hollywood, and then New York. But quickly, those “real” locales gave way to Islands-style cinematic spaces. You can see that Universal was still a little gun-shy about overt IP lands and was kinda sorta trying to keep the spaces broad… But each is clearly centered on one or two key, timely, blockbuster IPs: Sci-Fi City (a mash-up of Transformers and Battlestar Galactica), Ancient Egypt (wholly devoted to Universal’s 1999 version of The Mummy), The Lost World (mostly Jurassic Park, but also containing Universal’s favorite stunt show, Waterworld), Shrek‘s Far Far Away, and Madagascar (themed to the DreamWorks Animation franchise launched in 2008).
Of course, the issue with building permanent lands themed to movies is that unless you’re very strategic and think very long term, movies eventually fall out of the public consciousness. Such was the case when, ten years out from its premier, Madagascar kinda proved not to be a franchise that would stick around. In 2025, it officially made way for… Minion Land. And that’s not all! Apparently believing you can never have too many clones of a good thing, Universal will also gift the compact park a Super Nintendo World… but construction doesn’t appear to have started and the only timeline Universal has provided is that it would open there “after” it opens in Orlando.
15. Shanghai Disneyland (2016)
Meant to be a magnum opus for CEO Bob Iger, Shanghai Disneyland was clearly conceived at a golden moment in capitalist America’s relationship with mainland China. Actually, Iger worked for years to build in-roads in China, strategically taking advantage of a rarely, cautiously-permissive government open to screening Disney films and allowing Disney English language-learning centers to cater an emerging middle class. A changing economic landscape in China had given Chinese citizens the same kind of newfound spending money and leisure time Americans had discovered in a post-war 1950s – and suddenly, Disney found itself with 1.4 billion potential new customers…
Smartly (and no doubt trying to avoid another Hong Kong Disneyland situation), the park’s majority owners (the state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group Co. Ltd.) had some essential requirements, including that their Disneyland be rethought from the ground up. The result is that the layout of Shanghai Disneyland barely even maps onto the traditional “hub-and-spokes” layout of every other “Castle Park,” and nearly all of Shanghai’s rides are completely original or at least one-of-a-kind in their execution.
So Shanghai Disneyland does have a Fantasyland and Tomorrowland (though they mirror their sisters in name only). Beyond that, if you’re looking for analogs, the park swaps Adventureland for an original space called Adventure Isle, and you could maybe imagine the Pirates of the Caribbean themed Treasure Cove as a swap for Frontierland. The park also experimented with an 11-acre land-sized hub called the Gardens of Imagination – a traditional Chinese garden space that caters to the country’s aging population and contains the vaunted Carousel and Dumbo that literally no Castle Park can be without.
Given that the Chinese would have little romance about a turn-of-the-century midwestern American town, even Main Street was cut, replaced by Mickey Ave. – a sort of amalgamation of Main Street, Buena Vista Street, Hollywood Blvd, and Toontown, where all the stops are owned by Disney characters (again, a smart way to introduce the characters to a pop culture landscape where, say, “Chip and Dale” have very little relevance).
As part of a relatively quick build-up of the park’s capacity, a Toy Story Land opened just two years later, in 2018. In 2023, the park opened its first serious expansion – Zootopia – themed to the 2016 Disney Animation Studios film that did exceptionally well in China. The 2024 D23 Expo’s slew of Marvel attractions (two for California Adventure, one for Hong Kong) included the first permanent Marvel presence in Shanghai, too: a Spider-Man-themed multi-launch family coaster that’s likely to spur the creation of an Avengers Campus for the park, even if the formal land hasn’t yet been announced.
16. Universal Studios Beijing (2021)
Though Disney cornered the market on the cosmopolitan Shanghai and Hong Kong markets, Universal squeezed its presence into China’s capital, Beijing. Though Beijing is certainly a tourist Mecca, it’s also a whole lot more traditional and political than Shanghai, making it a bit of an odd fit. Also dimming Universal’s mainland China debut is the park’s planned opening in (wait for it) 2020. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the park’s debut to September 2021, and China’s controversial “Zero COVID” policies pretty much slammed the door on tourism or recreation anyway, leaving the park to open with a bit of a thud.
But frankly, that kind of makes sense. Whereas Disney took its Chinese debut as a chance to totally rethink the formula and create a park of one-of-a-kind, must-see attractions, Universal’s plan was exactly the opposite: to create a park serving as a “best of” sampler platter of all the attractions and environments they’d built elsewhere with only a few new concepts.
Now cementing that “Universal Studios” branded parks will basically use the Islands of Adventure layout but substitute in flavor-of-the-week movie lands, the park is essentially a copy-paste of “Islands” that then makes equivalent swaps. For example, instead of Port of Entry, you enter through Hollywood. Where you’d expect Marvel Super Hero Island, you’ll instead find Transformers MetroBase with 1:1 ride swaps (the Storm spinner becomes a Bumblebee spinner; the Incredible Hulk Coaster is recreated bolt-for-bolt, but as Decepticoaster, and The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man makes an even swap for its SCOOP sister, Transformers: The Ride).
Instead of Toon Lagoon, the park has an indoor Kung-Fu Panda Land of Awesomeness. Instead of the classic Jurassic Park, Beijing has the much more modern Jurassic World: Isla Nublar. Where you’d expect Seuss Landing is the requisite Minion Land. And then, right in its usual spot is The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade. There’s also Waterworld – here expanded from just a stunt-show to a bit of a mini-land, which is hilarious when you consider that between Hollywood, Singapore, and Shanghai, exponentially more people have seen the Waterworld stunt show than have seen the 1995 box office bomb movie it’s based on.
Given its rocky start in the pandemic, it’s no surprise that the park hasn’t added any attractions or lands in its first five years, and at least as of now, isn’t hinting at doing so anytime soon. But hey, if Universal wanted to open a park that basically said, “Here’s our introduction to China by way of simply showcasing the best of what we’ve done across the world,” that’s exactly what they got!
17. Universal Epic Universe (2025)
It’s been 24 years since Disney or Universal opened a new theme park in the United States… until now. Universal’s third theme park in Central Florida is theoretically meant to change everything, officially upgrading Universal Orlando to the multi-day, multi-park resort that it’s always dreamed of being. Yes, if Universal has its way, its three-park-collection will make their urban resort a destination in its own right, not just an add-on to a Disney World vacation. And clearly, they’re coming out swinging.
Universal Epic Universe is home to five “worlds,” all contained within a frame story that begins with the park’s icon, the Chronos tower. A sort of celestial loom drawing on and weaving together the energies of the universe, the Chronos’ pulsing power, spinning medallions, and rotating hourglasses are meant to power similar portals throughout the park, each carrying guests into far-off worlds plucked from movies, video games, and the imagination. It’s a bold and interesting framework for what logistically amounts to the first U.S. park built after The Wizarding World model of “Living Lands” changed the industry.
The Chronos deposits guests in Celestial Park – a gargantuan central “Hub” that promised to “put the park back in theme park.” Bookended by statues of Luna (goddess of the moon) and Helios (god of the sun), Celestial Park is something of an elemental garden from which every other portal diverges.
There’s the much-anticipated Orlando debut of Super Nintendo World (with both its Mario World and Donkey Kong Country sub-sections), and a bold and brash Dark Universe (centered on Universal’s home-grown, classic creature feature monsters from the ’30s and ’40s, like Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and The Mummy). You’ll also find The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic, which, through the unexpected floppage of the Fantastic Beasts film series, will mostly function as a showcase of the French Wizarding World where guests can “live their own Wizarding World adventure.” And then, a sprawling How To Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk, themed to DreamWorks Animation’s renowned and adventurous franchise.
Universal promises that this is just the start of Epic Universe, and that they have already drafted plans for the next expansions to all of their Orlando parks. Here’s hoping, because fans are already dreaming big about filling Epic’s expansion pads with Pokémon, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Lord of the Rings, and Wicked… And hey, “as long as there’s imagination left in the world,” expect this land lineup to just be the start. What will Epic Universe’s ‘landline’ look like in 2050? We’ll find out…