12. Universal Studios Florida
Ride Count: 14
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: Kongfrontation, JAWS, T2 3-D, Back 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.
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.
11. Universal Studios Singapore
Ride count: 16
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.
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 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.
What’s next? In a surprise announcement in 2019, Universal and Resorts World Sentosa agreed to an unexpected expansion of the landlocked park that will provide it with a Super Nintendo World of its own, plus replacing the Madagascar-themed land with a Despicable Me one. (Further evidence that swapping Islands’ timeless stories for timely movies carries risks and inevitable replacements, which are much harder to do in built-out, immersive parks than “studio” ones.)
10. Shanghai Disneyland
Ride Count: 18
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.
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.
9. Universal Islands of Adventure
Ride Count: 18
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.
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)…