Modern civilization has never seen an event quite like the COVID-19 pandemic, tearing through the world during winter and spring of 2020. For the first time in history, every single Disney Park on Earth is completely and totally closed in a desperate bid to reduce the transmission of a highly-contagious virus for which no vaccine has been developed. Even as humanity inches toward a life after COVID-19, on our horizon today is a world entirely unlike that which we left behind; one where major changes are in store for theme parks.
Now, to be clear, we don’t yet know what effect the COVID-19 pandemic and the extended closure of every Disney Park on Earth will have on parks’ eventual operations; frankly, the solution to the Walt Disney Company and Comcast’s staggering financial losses will be complex and multi-faceted, likely taking place largely away from the view of customers. Cost-cutting in the theme parks is merely one potential tool that could take many forms itself! We’re certain: the fallout of COVID-19 will not be one ride closing at each theme park to save on operations and payroll. Far, far from it.
But it did make us wonder – if Disney and Universal Parks HAD to cut one ride from each park’s lineup, which would we choose to sacrifice? If each park re-opened with one ride having suddenly disappeared, which would you approve of losing? Now since it would be too easy to doom a show, walkthrough, or exhibit, we’ll keep ourselves honest by only selecting from bona-fide rides, as defined and listed in our must-read Ride-Count Countdown. In other words, choosing only from attractions where guests take a seat and move. See if you agree with our candidates for removal…
1. Disneyland
While Disneyland in California surprisingly features more rides than any other Disney Park on Earth, it also has a lot to lose. A staggering number of the park’s rides are honest-to-goodness Opening Day “Originals,” which means their DNA was shaped by Walt himself. Meanwhile, many of the park’s newer attractions are major anchors (and trust us, the tiny little park offers more certifiable E-Tickets that you might expect).
If leaders decreed that one of the park’s hefty ride count needed to disappear to save on maintenance and staffing, the choice would be tough. Frankly, axing Davy Crockett’s Explorer Canoes feels like a cop-out given that most other Disneyland-style parks got rid of their versions of the guest-powered, cast-heavy attraction long ago. But given the life and energy this (sometimes seasonal) attraction gives to the Rivers of America, we’d prefer to keep it and celebrate it as one of those “special” hidden gems Disneyland tends to keep around.
VOTED OUT OF DISNEYLAND: We have to vote off the Storybook Land Canal Boats. Almost dating to opening day, this tranquil cruise past miniatures of famous settings from Disney stories is a charming, spectacular hidden gem in its own right. But it’s also incredibly low capacity and requires heavy staffing thanks to live on-ride narrators (two issues solved in Disneyland Paris’ version of the ride). But even more, it takes up a very key piece of valuable real estate that serves as one of the park’s primary expansion pads… So its short-term loss now could actually open a great door in the future.
2. Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom’s ride lineup is basically “Castle Park 101.” It’s got a very strong collection of classics that have become the blueprint for every other castle park going forward. Though it has (spoiler alert!) fewer rides and fewer E-Tickets than Disneyland, that makes choosing a single sacrifice even harder. After all, every ride in the park’s lineup feels “essential” in its own way… except for one.
VOTED OUT OF MAGIC KINGDOM: Frankly, we wouldn’t just vote Magic Carpets of Aladdin out of the park; we’d chuck it into the volcano ourselves. And sure, we understand – this aerial carousel was clearly added because Disney’s evaluation suggested there was need for it given the immense popularity of Dumbo and the Astro Orbitor. But of those, Dumbo is original and iconic while Astro Orbitor add the unique twist of spiraling high above Tomorrowland.
While we’re all for Aladdin representation in the parks, The Flying Carpets of Aladdin breaks up the otherwise beautiful and romantic Adventureland with a random technicolor carnival ride and haphazardly jams an Arabian market backdrop into the Polynesian courtyard that once was. It’s like putting a Toy Story-themed tilt-a-whirl in Frontierland! What’s more, the Flying Carpets were made even more redundant by the doubling of Dumbo in New Fantasyland, bringing Magic Kingdom’s spinner count to four.
3. Epcot
As we move into Walt Disney World’s other theme parks, choosing a single sacrifice becomes tougher if only because subsequent parks have fewer rides to choose from. In fairness, Epcot is sometimes lovingly derided as the “best park with the worst rides” at Disney World. If you’ve read through any number of our Future-World-centered Lost Legends, you know why. Today, the park is mostly made up of ‘80s rides with character overlays and brainless thrill rides. In other words, we couldn’t sacrifice one of Epcot’s famous, epic dark rides if we wanted to – they’re (almost) all gone anyway!
Out of the eleven rides Epcot hosts, some of the best “contenders” to be booted are probably the Omnimover inside of The Seas and Living With the Land inside of the Land… but getting rid of either would eliminate much-needed family potential at the park and squash some of the few call-backs to Epcot’s intellectual origin.So we can’t in good conscience recommend closing either.
VOTED OUT OF EPCOT: So, though we hate to do it, we’d have to vote out Journey into Imagination with Figment. It’s no surprise to Imagineering fans that the attraction – once the Lost Legend: Journey into Imagination – has been in a depressing state since 2001 (when the lovable original character Figment was added back in after a cataclysmic reimagining two years prior). While the ride’s closure would probably add even more confusion as to why Figment is all over Epcot, it might also pave the way for a true reimagining – strangely, one of the few things not confirmed for Epcot’s upcoming multi-year transformation!
4. Disney’s Hollywood Studios
There was a time when Disney fans accused Hollywood Studios of being Disney World’s resident “half-day” park – one of the cruelest things you can label a theme park! In just the last few years alone, the tables have turned tremendously. Today, the park offers 9 rides, and frankly, we’d classify all but one as E-Tickets! So while Hollywood Studios may still have fewer rides than most Disney theme parks, it probably has the highest E-Ticket ratio.
VOTED OUT OF HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS: That makes this fairly easy. In theory, we’d vote out the one ride that isn’t an anchor attraction: Alien Swirling Saucers. The turntable-based family flat ride has become the “new Dumbo,” appearing across Disney Parks with different character overlays each time. And while the chaotic, whipping ride is fun, it’s also relatively simple – a “lightly dressed” amusement park ride.
But that’s why this decision is actually complicated… As our in-depth look into the disaster of FastPass+ shows, a park cannot have only anchor attractions. So while Alien Swirling Saucers would have to be our sacrifice, the truth is that Hollywood Studios needs more “B-Ticket” and “C-Ticket” rides to balance crowds, provide experiences for families, and relieve pressure, not fewer. As much as fans deride Toy Story Land for being “cheap and cheerful,” it could probably actually use more lightly-themed carnival rides to bump the park’s capacity higher.
So we’ll put this one to you… What would your candidate for removal from Hollywood Studios be? If removing Alien Swirling Saucers would be a hit to the park’s family-friendly capacity, then which of its 9 anchor attractions would you be willing to part with? Let us know in the comments below… but our journey isn’t over yet.
Because speaking of “studio” parks…
5. Universal Studios Florida
Like Disney’s Orlando “studio” park, Universal’s has been undergoing a continuous transformation over the decades meant to downplay its bland, beige, “backlot” style of seeing behind the scenes in favor of stepping into hot intellectual properties.The resulting immersive worlds resulting from it – Diagon Alley and Springfield, U.S.A. – are impressive additions (even if they’re reminders of the park’s worrying turnover rate, having killed the Lost Legends: JAWS and Back to the Future – The Ride respectively).
Lucky for us in our sacrificial-decision-making, Universal Studios Florida also has some staggering flaws: chiefly, its overreliance on screens, and its desperate attempts to incorporate flavor-of-the-week properties regardless of their longevity. The result is that the park seems to design rides to last seasons, not decades, and the quickly aging pop culture innuendos and film references aren’t exactly evergreen…
VOTED OUT OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS FLORIDA: In this case, there’s actually two rides we’re equally eager to get rid of. A few years ago, rumors began to swirl that Universal was planning to build hang-gliding simulator across the sights, sounds, and smells of New York City – an east-coast ode to Soarin’ Over California with Universal’s patented mix of actually-impressive and tongue-in-cheek. You can even imagine it with Tina Fey at the helm, creating a musical, comical, 30 Rock-flavored tour of the city perfect for the New York land of the park… But then, it was announced as Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon, the resort’s umpteenth “jostled in a box with 3D glasses” simulator through overtly CG environments and dated humor.
It could only be upstaged (or, downstaged?) by Fast & Furious: Supercharged, potentially the worst Disney or Universal attraction in operation in the U.S. today. As if the 360-degree projection tunnel experience and its laughable animation and dialogue wasn’t cringe-worthy enough as the “grand finale” of Universal Studios Hollywood’s Studio Tour, it was exported to Orlando as a standalone attraction that’s literally abysmal. Frankly, the resort would do well to get rid of both; they’d save operating costs and save their reputation.
6. Disney’s Animal Kingdom
In some ways, Disney’s Animal Kingdom may be the toughest choice of all… after all, while it’s tied with Hollywood Studios among U.S. Disney and Universal parks for “fewest rides,” it definitely has fewer anchors… and thus, most candidates for sacrifice. Frankly, the all-too-easy choice would be to wipe out one of the rides in Disney’s most misunderstood land – the Declassified Disaster: Chester & Hester’s Dino-Rama. But as that in-depth entry proves, there is more than meets the eye to the roadside-attraction-inside-Animal-Kingdom. Besides, its two attractions – yet-another-Dumbo-spin-off called Triceratop Spin and the bare steel wild mouse roller coaster Primeval Whirl – add much-needed family capacity to the park.
You might even offer that shuttering Kali River Rapids in the park’s Asia would be a possibility given that it’s largely hidden from guest view, not-quite-an-anchor-attraction, and that Disney never did seem to figure out how to make such spinning rapids rides merge with their signature storytelling (see also, California Adventure and Shanghai Disneyland).
VOTED OUT OF ANIMAL KINGDOM: Luckily, we might have an ace in the hole. A strange outlier at Disney’s Animal Kingdom has always been the Wildlife Express – a train that departs from the picturesque Harambe… and proceeds to immediately “break” the illusion of the park by expressly touring through the real animal housing facilities behind Kilimanjaro Safaris. The train’s destination is also odd…
The “function” of the Wildlife Express is merely to ferry guests to Rafiki’s Planet Watch, the park’s version of a hands-on Metro Park visitors’ center drenched in ’90s design and flat character cut-outs. A mini science-museum, Planet Watch gives guests the chance to see the park’s veterinarians in action, offers a hands-on petting zoo, and (new in 2019) offers the “Animation Experience” to learn to draw characters. It’s a temporary-feeling experience that’s not really worth the time and energy needed to reach it, so flipping the switch on the Wildlife Express tackles two problems at once.
7. Universal’s Islands of Adventure
Altogether, Islands of Adventure has a fairly strong ride lineup, and a very nice balance of attractions for the whole family. Frankly, it’s tough to pick a single ride to sacrifice that doesn’t feel needed in the park for balance, kinetics, or narrative. For example, Seuss Landing needs each family attraction it offers (and honestly, probably one or two more); rides like Storm Force Acceleration (a spinning tea-cup ride), the High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride (a Peoplemover-style scenic attraction) or the Flight of the Hippogriff family coaster seem like easy choices, but all three were added to the park after opening because they were so desperately needed by families.
The water rides of Toon Lagoon admittedly also made our list of Endangered Attractions That Might Not Survive the 2020s, but merely because Universal’s recent IP acquisitions may prove a better use for the space, not because we’d willingly sacrifice them. In other words, it’s tough to pinpoint a single attraction we’d be okay with Islands of Adventure losing…
VOTED OUT OF ISLANDS OF ADVENTURE: Though we may have some real problems with a number of the park’s individual pieces (chiefly, Cat in the Hat, Jurassic Park River Adventure, and Reign of Kong, which all need some significant updates), the ride we’d get rid of is probably Pteranodon Flyers – a largely failed experiment in equipping the park with ultra-low-capacity ride that’s just not appropriate for a global destination park.
8. Disney California Adventure
Disney California Adventure is obviously a park defined by transformation. As longtime readers know, we dug into the theme park’s disastrous opening and billion-dollar rebirth in-depth, watching as its ride count and storytelling expanded and contracted over its two-decade life. Today, that growth continues (albeit axing California in favor of Marvel and Pixar), turning Disney California Adventure into one of the most unusual and interesting Disney Parks on Earth. From the 1920s Buena Vista Street to the jewel-tone Victorian turrets of Pixar Pier, the park offers more rides than Epcot, Hollywood Studios, or Animal Kingdom, even if it’s propped up by a number of carnival rides.
VOTED OUT OF CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE: If one, single ride at Disney California Adventure needed to close, we’d probably cast our ballot for Goofy’s Sky School – the Californian cousin to Animal Kingdom’s Primeval Whirl. When the park opened, the bare steel carnival coaster was hideously themed as an advertisement for sponsor Alamo car rentals, disguised behind a giant cartoon foldout map of Mulholland Drive. At least the park’s rebirth saw it redecorated to a vintage Goofy short. But still, this ride isn’t fit for a Disney Park, or for the Victorian-flavored Paradise Gardens leisure park land it calls home.
Voted out?
Do we think Disney Parks will weather the storm of COVID-19 by simply closing one attraction in each park? Of course not. As The Walt Disney Company seeks to recoup tens of billions of dollars it’s estimated to lose across its portfolio, changes within the theme parks will be but one potential solution… and they’re absolutely unlikely to be as simple as what we’ve shown here. Instead, this is merely a way to imagine the unspeakable ramifications of the 2020 pandemic through a somewhat lighthearted lens… Would you be for or against these particular rides closing with COVID-19 as the “excuse?” Which attractions would you happily have removed during the closures? Let us know in the comments below!
