Theme parks are living creatures. Sure, they grow and change and “will never be complete…” But even more, they’re made of complex systems and elements all working together so effortlessly, you may not even realize they’re working at all. Berms act as skin, insulating parks from the sights of the outside world; intuitive layouts are a skeleton, giving the park structure; pathways act as veins and arteries, pulsing guests instead of blood; restrooms are… Well…
The point is, when it comes to the heart, lungs, and brain of theme parks, the analogy is simple: rides! And don’t misunderstand: the best theme parks are all about balance, featuring meet-and-greets, restaurants, shows, walkthroughs, scenery, and interactive experiences that make a day feel complete and worthwhile… But as part of Park Lore’s Extras Collection, our “By The Numbers” mini-series is all about seeing parks differently – by the raw numbers behind them… for example, the number of certifiable E-Tickets at each, the number of dark rides at each park, or the number of Opening Day Original attractions each park has left.
So today – just for fun! – we want to take a look at Disney and Universal’s parks by the numbers. Exactly how many rides does each of these parks really have?
For the sake of comparing apples to apples, we need to set a definition for what we mean by “ride.” So for our purposes, we’ll define a ride as a specific subset of attraction wherein a guest is moved by an external ride system. That means that even though they might be listed on a map, our count will not include shows, walkthroughs, and other non-ride “attractions” (like the Enchanted Tiki Room, Journey of Water, the Boudin Bakery Tour, Enchanted Tales with Belle, etc.) which are wonderful, lovely, essential things – but pretty agreeably, not rides. With that decided, let’s start with our low scorers…
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19. Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Ride Count: 8
Not yet counted: Unnamed Indiana Jones ride; unnamed Encanto ride; unnamed Carousel
When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, it represented a new era of themed entertainment design. Defined by its accuracy and realism, Animal Kingdom invited exploration into African towhns, Asian jungles, archaeological digs, and artisan villages. It was culturally vibrant, artistically authentic, and a stunning creative triumph of 21st century Imagineering. Early marketing for the park was meant to convey that it was “Nahtazū,” but for all the buzz around a fourth theme park, what Animal Kingdom didn’t have was rides.
When the park opened, it featured only four – two of which (the Discovery River Boats and Wildlife Express) merely provided transportation across the massive park! As you’d expect, dining, exploration, and yes, animals, were the bread-and-butter of the park. But those expecting a traditional Disney Parks attraction lineup found just two rides – the downright terrifying Lost Legend: Countdown to Extinction and the headlining Kilimanjaro Safaris. (Kali River Rapids joined as a third in 1999.)
Disney was slow to combat the park’s “half-day” reputation. A family-focused expansion 2002 saw a family spinner and the (now-defunct) Primeval Whirl carnival coaster added to controversial Dino-Rama. Then, in 2006, the Modern Marvel: Expedition Everest debuted, at least giving the park four “E-Tickets.”
And there it stayed until 2017, when Pandora: The World of Avatar opened, adding two substiantial rides. Avatar Flight of Passage is the park’s unequivocal headliner, while the tranquil Na’vi River Journey is a peaceful tour through the bioluminescent jungles of the distant moon… and thus, the park’s first family dark ride, nearly two decades after opening!
What’s next? Despite reaching a peak of nine rides post-Pandora, the park’s ride count slipped back by one in 2020 when Disney announced that Dinoland’s Primeval Whirl spinning carnival coaster was officially extinct. The troublesome (and not terribly beloved) coaster’s closure clearly marked a turning point in the park’s story given that Dinoland as a whole just hasn’t gelled.
After a false start “Blue Sky” ideation session at the 2022 D23 Expo that suggested threatened that Zootopia and Moana would replace Dinoland, a change in leadership at Imagineering saw Dinoland’s future reoriented. As re-confirmed at the 2024 D23 Expo, Dinoland will become Tropical Americas, incarnate as the pan-American village of Pueblo Esperanza. A better fit alongside the park’s existing Africa and Asia, the new land will broadly represent a real town square of Central and South American architecture, dining, and cuisine.
It’ll also feature three new rides. First, the soon-to-be Lost Legend: Dinosaur will embrace the longtime fan trivia that its layout is nearly identical to Disneyland’s 1995 E-Ticket, becoming an all-new entry in the Indiana Jones Adventure series. Dinoland’s Dumbo-style TriceraTop Spin will go extinct in favor of a new carousel of “wood-carved” Disney and Pixar animals. And finally, the abandoned Dino-Rama carnival will make way for a new dark ride based on Disney’s 2021 film Encanto. When it’s all said and done, though, Animal Kingdom will only be restored to the nine rides it had in 2019 since the three rides of Tropical America will simply refill the slots of Dinoland’s three.
18. Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Ride Count: 9
When Michael Eisner commissioned the Disney-MGM Studios as a rebuttal to Universal Studios’ plans for Orlando, the movie-themed park was based around two halves, each with a single substantial ride. The park’s front half would be a celebration of the Golden Age of Hollywood, marked by the Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride. The back half would be a real, working movie studio with a multi-hour, multi-modal tour through real production facilities. Of course, serious filmmaking never came to Florida, leaving the Declassified Disaster: The Backstage Studio Tour as the park’s only other ride.
Still immensely popular with guests, the Disney-MGM Studios needed rapid expansion to keep capacity in line with attendance. As a result, big name attractions like Star Tours, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and Toy Story Mania came online, creating a park with a relatively low ride count, but where nearly every ride is an E-Ticket.
By the middle of the 2010s, the renamed Disney’s Hollywood Studios was clearly at a crossroads. In 2013, then-CEO Bob Iger accidentally alluded to the park gaining a new identity that would downplay its outdated “studio” foundation in favor of immersive, cinematic “Living Lands.” The first, Toy Story Land, opened in 2018, adding a family flat ride and a family roller coaster.
The following year, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened as the keystone of the park’s pivot. Set in an original world designed by Imagineers and defined by a massive, interconnected mythology, the land’s two standouts are certainly Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Imagineering’s modern magnum opus, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Soon after, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened in the park’s Chinese Theater, replacing the Great Movie Ride and cementing the park’s modern direction.
Hollywood Studios is still a wildly uneven park – something its pathways can’t conceal. Given its age , it also has surprisingly few overall rides (though, again, nearly all are headliners). But at least now, few would call it the “half-day park” it once was.
What’s next? At least fifteen years ago – in the early days of theme park message boards, when the looming Wizarding World sent Imagineers scrambling for their own IP-based “Living Lands,” rumors consistently suggested that both the Disney-MGM Studios and Disney California Adventure were set to receive “Monstropolis” expansions, bringing 2001’s Monsters Inc. to the parks.
Both installations were rumored to be anchored by suspended family coasters through the film’s iconic “Door Warehouse.” But no announcement was ever made, and no dirt ever moved. That is, until the 2024 D23 Expo. Even though fans hadn’t expected much to be announced for the studio park given its substantial investment in the last decade, it turns out that a Monstropolis is indeed real, and will be anchored by the suspended coaster that fans had largely written off as forum fodder a decade ago.
It’s a great concept, and a much-needed family ride for the park. But given D23’s celebratory nature, what we don’t know is what – if anything – the Monsters Inc. project will replace. If it (mercifully) replaces the “Star Wars Launch Bay” exhibit or (unspeakably) takes the place of MuppetVision, it would be a +1 to the park’s ride count. But if another ride has to close to make way for it, that would mean no change to the park’s overall count at all.
17. Disney Adventure World
Ride Count: 11
When Walt Disney Studios Park opened next to Disneyland Paris in 2002, the second gate represented a staggering new low for Disney, even in an era infamous for its cost-cutting, cancellations, and closures. We took a walk through the creatively-starved park in its own must-read Declassified Disasters: Walt Disney Studios Park feature, but in short, the outright embarrassing offering contained only three rides: a clone of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, an Aladdin-themed Dumbo spinner, and a Studio Backlot Tour that didn’t even bother pretending there was a real studio backlot to tour.
Pretty continuous additions have been made to the park – albeit, often in low-cost, “cheap and cheerful” additions like a Toy Story Land of off-the-shelf carnival rides, a spinning Cars flat ride, a Finding Nemo-themed indoor wild mouse coaster, a Cars re-theme of the barely-worth-keeping studio tour, and – most notably – a copy of California Adventure’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. So though Walt Disney Studios has more rides than Animal Kingdom, the scope and quality of those rides, on average, is much lower.
The pièce de résistance arrived in 2014 when the Modern Marvel: Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy at last began to shift the park from its dated “Studio” aesthetic to something more fitting for a Disney Park by way of a lovingly-crafted Parisian mini-land with no soundstages in sight.
In February 2018, Disney CEO Bob Iger and French President Emmanuel Macron jointly revealed a €2 billion reimagining for the languishing second gate. The multi-phase expansion would expand the park’s footprint drastically, creating a new central lagoon with a handful of mini-lands sprinkled around it…
In 2022, the first phase – a modified version of Disneyland’s Avengers Campus – made its debut, retrofitting the existing Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster into an Iron Man ride and adding a copy of California’s web-slinging Spider-Man ride (a net +1 to the park’s ride count).
What’s next? Currently under construction is a version of Arendelle: The World of Frozen that – for all the pomp and circumstance – will add just one ride: a near-copy of Frozen Ever After from EPCOT, and not until 2026. The opening of that anchor project will also officially see the “Walt Disney Studios Park” name booted in favor of the broader “Disney Adventure World,” with renamed lands and reorganized priorities for the studio remnants.
As part of the Adventure World initiative, the park will also introduce a Tangled-themed teacup style ride will take its place along the park’s new lagoon. Plus, at the D23 Expo in 2024, a third parcel around the park’s new “Adventure Bay” was filled in by the announcement of a Lion King mini-land anchored by a flume ride through the Pride Lands. It’ll be a nice new ride, but it remains a little depressing that the park’s multi-billion-dollar rebirth will actually amount to just three genuinely new rides – Web Slingers, Frozen Ever After, and a single genuinely-exclusive Lion King ride.