By The Numbers: The Definitive Ride-Count Countdown of Disney & Universal’s Parks’ Lineups

12. Universal Studios Singapore

Image: Resorts World Sentosa

Ride count: 14

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  1. Accelerator
  2. Battlestar Galactica: CYLON
  3. Battlestar Galactica: HUMAN
  4. Canopy Flyer
  5. Dino-Soarin’
  6. Enchanted Airways
  7. Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure
  8. Magic Potion Spin
  9. Puss in Boots’ Giant Journey
  10. Revenge of the Mummy
  11. Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase
  12. Shrek 4-D Adventure
  13. Transformers The Ride: The Ultimate 3D Battle
  14. Treasure Hunters

Not yet counted: Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, Silly Swirly, Buggie Boogie

The most easily overlooked of Universal’s parks is also one of its most unique. Universal Studios Singapore opened in 2010 – Universal’s first post-Islands-of-Adventure park. Not coincidentally, the park uses the “Islands” layout of lands situated around a lagoon… but it uses the “Studios” mindset, populating those “islands” not with timeless, literary stories, but with “set” style recreations of real cities intermingling with lands based on hit Universal and DreamWorks movies.

Image: Universal / RWS

So while your adventure begins on the streets of a film-ready Hollywood, circumnavigating the lagoon, you’ll pass through Sci-Fi City (themed to Battlestar Galactica and Transformers), Ancient Egypt (an entire themed land dedicated 1999’s The Mummy and featuring one of our Seven Ancient Wonders of the Theme Park World), The Lost World (Jurassic Park and Waterworld), Far Far Away (modeled after the fairytale kingdom from Shrek) and – formerly – a land themed to Dreamworks’ Madagascar.

It’s an interesting “multiverse” reflection of what Islands of Adventure might’ve looked like if it was built even five years later, when basing lands on timeless, intergenerational, licensed comics, picture books, novels, and myths would’ve seemed an outrageous choice over proven, IP-based, blockbuster movie-themed lands.

Image: Universal / Illumination

What’s next? We see the downfall of building permanent lands based on flavor-of-the-week movies in the 2022 closure of the park’s Madagascar. It turned out that the 2005 film didn’t have the staying power or franchisability to survive the rise of the Minions. In 2005, the park’s Madagascar land will come out from behind construction walls as Minion Land. Its boat-based dark ride will have been excised in favor of Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem; its carousel will make an even swap for “Buggie Boogies,” and a new Silly Swirly spinner will officially lift the park’s ride count by one.

11. Universal Studios Florida

Image: Universal

Ride Count: 14

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  1. Despicable Me Minion Mayhem
  2. E.T. Adventure
  3. Fast and Furious – Supercharged
  4. Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts
  5. Hogwarts Express
  6. Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit
  7. Illumination’s Villain Con Minion Blast
  8. Kang and Kodos’ Twirl ‘n’ Hurl
  9. MEN IN BLACK Alien Attack
  10. Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon
  11. Revenge of the Mummy
  12. The Simpson’s Ride
  13. TRANSFORMERS: The Ride – 3D
  14. Trollercoaster

Universal Studios Florida opened in 1990 – the peak of the “studio park” era. But since its Walt Disney World competitor had stolen Universal’s tried-and-true Hollywood M.O. of being an actual studio with a behind-the-scenes tour as the park’s main draw, Universal’s plans for Florida diverged. Instead, Universal essentially split the components of its Studio Tour into standalone rides.

Unfortunately for the nostalgic, Universal spent much of the 2000s purging its Studio park of throwback films, closing that original class of Lost Legends: KongfrontationJAWST2 3-DBack to the Future: The Ride, and Earthquake one by one, ushering in a new class of rides based on… well… whatever’s hot at the time.

Some – like Revenge of the Mummy and The Simpsons Ride – have pretty good staying power, even outlasting the classics they replaced. Others – like Fast & Furious: Supercharged and Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon – feel designed to be disposable, easily swapped out as new stars emerge, and unlikely to survive the decade.

Image: Park Lore

There’s really no question that the park’s most sought-after experience is its exclusive second half of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley – which contains both the Escape from Gringotts E-Ticket and the unique Hogwarts Express – to our count, the only ride on Earth that travels between two separately-gated theme parks. (And certainly on our list, the only ride that adds to two park’s ride counts, with each one-way trip offering a different show experience.)

In summer 2024, the parks’ long-stagnant kids’ area (which languished for decades with Woody Woodpecker, Curious George, and Fievel as its character anchors) got a refresh by way of DreamWorks Animation. That restored the land’s only ride – formerly, Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster – to the park’s ride count as the Trolls-stylized Trollercoaster.

What’s next? Unknown.

10. Shanghai Disneyland

Image: Disney

Ride Count: 18

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  1. Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue
  2. Dumbo The Flying Elephant
  3. Explorer Canoes
  4. Fantasia Carousel
  5. Hunny Pot Spin
  6. Jet Packs
  7. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
  8. Peter Pan’s Flight
  9. Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure
  10. Rex’s Racers
  11. Roaring Rapids
  12. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
  13. Slinky Dog Spin
  14. Soaring Over The Horizons
  15. TRON: Light Cycle Power Run
  16. Voyage to the Crystal Grotto
  17. Woody’s Round-Up
  18. Zootopia: Hot Pursuit

Not yet counted: Unnamed Spider-Man roller coaster

Disney’s sixth Disneyland-style park opened in 2016. Unlike its sisters, though, the mainland Chinese park ignored, then rewrote the “rules” of Disney’s “Castle Parks.” Unbelievably, Shanghai Disneyland did away with tropes like Adventureland, Frontierland, and Main Street entirely, shuffled the park’s tried-and-true layout, and dispensed with many standard rides in favor of new-age technological anchors.

So even if the park only opened with 13 rides, it’s worth noting that each was unique, if not in concept than in execution. A stylistically-boosted Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue, an epic-sized Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure, and the long-rumored Soaring Over the Horizon all premiered at the park. Space Mountain was entirely replaced with the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run; the enormous Storybook Castle became home to a dark ride called Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, and the Adventureland replacement features a rapids ride through the towering Mount Apu Taku rather than a Jungle Cruise.

Image: Disney

2018’s Toy Story Land – the park’s first expansion – added a net three rides to Shanghai’s count (but, like all Toy Story Lands, the rides are “cheap and cheerful,” adding simple family flat ride capacity rather than anything revolutionary or headlining).

Instead, it was 2023’s Zootopia that served as the park’s real indicator of its continued growth… and its continued divergence from the high bar of timelessness that usually governs “Castle Parks.” The first theme park build centered on the 2016 animated film (which performed exceptionally well in China) includes just one ride – the E-Ticket trackless Zootopia: Hot Pursuit – but shows that Disney’s investment in the park won’t necessarily cool just because the company’s larger relationship with China has. It also means that though Shanghai Disneyland still contains the fewest rides of any “Castle Park,” it has an impressively high ratio of E-Tickets.

What’s next? Leaked construction permits in early 2024 suggested that Shanghai Disneyland was looking to add a substantial roller coaster to its lineup, wedged on a small expansion pad between Zootopia and the park’s Fantasyland. Rumors suggested that the ride would be themed to Spider-Man, serving as a first Marvel attraction for the Chinese park. That rumor was confirmed at the 2024 D23 Expo.

Thanks to the leaked plans and new official confirmations, we know quite a lot about the ride, which is likely to launch guests into a family-friendly race around a W.E.B. engineering complex as Spider-Man helps guests escape from a “something goes horribly wrong” experiment. We don’t yet know when official construction will begin or when the ride will open, but when it does, it’ll continue Shanghai’s streak of one-of-a-kind rides.

9. Universal Islands of Adventure

Image: Universal

Ride Count: 18

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  1. The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man
  2. Caro-Seuss-el
  3. The Cat in the Hat
  4. Doctor Doom’s Fearfall
  5. Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls
  6. Flight of the Hippogriff
  7. Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure
  8. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey
  9. The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride
  10. Hogwarts Express
  11. The Incredible Hulk Coaster
  12. Jurassic Park River Adventure
  13. Jurassic World VelociCoaster
  14. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
  15. Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges
  16. Pteranodon Flyers
  17. Skull Island: Reign of Kong
  18. Storm Force Accelatron

In 1999, Universal’s gutsy attempt to take on Disney produced Universal’s Islands of Adventure, a mythic park dispensing entirely with “behind-the-scenes” and movies in favor of timeless, literary stories from the worlds of Dr. Seuss, Marvel comics, Jay Ward’s Sunday funnies, Jurassic Park, and ancient myths and legends. It offered a world class collection of new-age thrills, from the Incredible Hulk Coaster to Jurassic Park River Adventure, Cat in the Hat, Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls, and the king of all Modern Marvels: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man.

Naturally, the opening of the original Wizarding World of Harry Potter (featuring Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Flight of the Hippogriff, and a repurposed Dragon Challenge) in 2010 really put the park on most vacationers’ maps. In 2016, the park opened the would-be follow-up to next door Universal Studios’ Lost Legend: Kongfrontation, and while Skull Island: Reign of Kong may have been met with lukewarm reception, at least it showed Comcast’s continued commitment to investing big in the resort.

Image: Universal

In 2017, Universal shocked fans with the announcement that the two intertwined B&M coasters of Dragon Challenge would close, making way for 2019’s Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure – a headlining family coaster of spectacular scale and detail. The very next year, the astonishing Jurassic World VelociCoaster arrived, changing the park’s skyline forever. The two rides together net to no-change in the ride count after the loss of Dragon Challenge, but frankly, the one-two punch of Hagrid’s and VelociCoaster make Islands of Adventure a world class thrill destination like never before.

What’s next? There are at least at few other place in the park we hope we’ll see movement someday, to say nothing of our dreamy, Blue Sky build-out of the park… Right now, though, there are only light rumors of what the future might hold for Islands of Adventure. Our friends at Park Stop have a strong feeling that The Legend of Zelda is en route to replace the park’s Lost Continent (a land whose last attraction – the Lost Legend: Poseidon’s Fury – closed in 2023)…

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