The best theme park attraction of all time. What would it take to earn the title?
In its more-than-six-decade history dating to Disneyland’s 1955 opening, the modern art of Imagineering has developed in fits and starts, yielding hundreds and hundreds of noteworthy and nostalgic rides across modern theme parks. For that reason, we won’t even dare attempt to pit Walt’s golden age classics against today’s multimedia E-Tickets, or to foolishly compare incomparable experiences.
But it did get us to thinking… In those eras of growth and transformation in the industry, which ride is the best representative of every decade from the 1950s to the 2020s? For each, what’s the single most iconic, memorable, and beloved attraction that also definitively speaks to the state of themed design? Today, we’ll walk down the timeline from the 1950s through today. For each decade, we’ll list our own personal nominees before bestowing the decade’s “best attraction” award.
Agree? Disagree? What did we miss? Let us know in the comments below if you think we got these Rewind Awards right on or not…
How could it be possible to choose just one attraction created during the early years of Disney Parks? Back then, Disneyland was all there was; a single theme park still presided over by Walt Disney himself, and every attraction therein was an experiment. Disney’s designers were literally making up the rules as they went, creating precedents observed to this day like Main Streets, hubs, castles, the DISNEYLAND RAILROAD, and more.
In fact, we recently took a look at the surprisingly robust collection of Opening Day “Original” rides still operating at each Disney Park, with Disneyland’s ranging from the relatively simple, classic, blacklight cutouts of Fantasyland’s dark rides (like SNOW WHITE’S SCARY ADVENTURES, MR. TOAD’S WILD RIDE, and, later, ALICE IN WONDERLAND) to the groundbreaking and showshopping JUNGLE CRUISE – all worthy nominees.
Before the decade was out, Disney Parks history was changed with the debut of the E-Ticket, producing MATTERHORN BOBSLEDS, SUBMARINE VOYAGE, and the DISNEYLAND MONORAIL, each a contender for the best ride of the ‘50s. Though those three showstoppers ended the ‘50s with a bang (and a hint of what was to come the next decade), we have to select for our 1950s champion a ride that’s both representative of the era and a treasured classic.
THE BEST RIDE OF THE 1950s: It has to be PETER PAN’S FLIGHT. An absolutely evergreen, timelessly beloved Fantasyland original, Peter Pan’s Flight has been copied to almost every Disney “castle park” on Earth. The suspended dark ride effortlessly carries guests over a miniature, moonlit London and straight on till morning, poetically soaring around fantasy scenes inspired by the 1953 film.
Things get significantly harder in the 1960s given that it may very well represent the classic height of Imagineering. I mean, the decade started off with 1960’s MINE TRAIN THROUGH NATURE’S WONDERLAND, a Marc Davis-produced Old West alternative to the Jungle Cruise. We can also count among the decade’s triumphs the debut of Audio-Animatronics in THE ENCHANTED TIKI ROOM. Soon after, Disney’s designers headed East to the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, creating generation-defining attractions like Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and “IT’S A SMALL WORLD,” in the running for the decade’s most well-known classic.
After their return from New York, designers got to work on two of the most beloved lands Disney’s ever designed. For the mid-century masterpiece New Tomorrowland, they created Walt’s “world on the move” brought to life by ADVENTURE THRU INNER SPACE, CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS, and THE PEOPLEMOVER.
Meanwhile, just across the park, New Orleans Square was taking shape, including the two attractions that would be Walt’s living legacy. To that end, the HAUNTED MANSION is essentially a masterwork showcasing all of the advancements Imagineering made in the 1960s, from Audio Animatronics to the Omnimover; a rich, decadent, and theatrical production that will forever stand the test of time as an icon of Disney design and storytelling. But it’s not our choice for the best of the 1960s… That honor must go to its neighbor.
THE BEST ATTRACTION OF THE 1960s: No question here: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Often called Walt’s “magnum opus” (despite the fact that he passed away before its completion), Pirates is a larger-than-life tour de force in the Disney Parks playbook. Often imitated but never duplicated, Disneyland’s ride is the pinnacle of Imagineering’s 1960s heights; a masterpiece whose DNA was formed by Walt and his original cast of designers. Its Audio Animatronics, ride system, music, costuming, set design, and experience are all top notch, and even fifty years later, it’s often regarded as the best classic dark ride on Earth, period.
The 1970s are often recalled as a dark time for Disney. Without Walt’s visionary leadership and with the list of projects he’d begun being checked off one-by-one, there was debate about how to continue. With failing finances at the box office, the company’s future looked increasingly dim. So once Magic Kingdom was finished (albeit introducing a few standout attractions exclusive to the resort, like the COUNTRY BEAR JAMBOREE, IF YOU HAD WINGS, THE MAIN STREET ELECTRICAL PARADE, and the beloved 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA), Imagineering’s ambitions were downsized.
The 1970s are often remembered for being an era of relatively inexpensive thrill rides meant to compete with the growing market of seasonal amusement parks opening across the United States. The perfect example of this phenomenon are the plans for the never-built Possibilitylands: Discovery Bay and Western River Expedition, grand, cinematic, and ambitious ‘60s-style additions that, by the decade’s end, had both been whittled down to BIG THUNDER MOUNTAIN RAILROAD. Sure, the runaway mine train roller coaster is itself a fan-favorite, but it clearly represents the preferred direction for the era.
THE BEST ATTRACTION OF THE 1970s: In that way, there’s no better attraction that speaks to the highs and lows of the 1970s like SPACE MOUNTAIN. The interstellar roller coaster earned its own, in-depth feature here precisely because it stands as an ultra-simple yet evergreen emblem of mid-century design. Space Mountain shaped and was shaped by the Space Age and an optimistic, geometric future that never came to be, and remains an icon of Disney Parks the world over, earning its own in-depth Modern Marvels: Space Mountain Imagineering insider feature.
The 1980s may be one of the most divisive eras in Disney history… which makes perfect sense given that it was a decade of extremes.
The first half of the ‘80s saw the opening of EPCOT Center, a sort of “Hail Mary” attempt to right the sinking studio by trying something enormously different. And boy, was it different. The park’s celebrated Future World offered a lineup of science-and-industry centered pavilions, each offering attractions matching the magnitude of SPACESHIP EARTH.
Each was focused on telling the stories of humanity through the lens of its industrious concept… and each has since earned its own in-depth Imagineering entry here. UNIVERSE OF ENERGY, WORLD OF MOTION, JOURNEY INTO IMAGINATION, and THE LIVING SEAS were intellectual, informative, forward-thinking dark rides through time, returning to the long-lost scale of the ‘60s while entirely redefining Disney Parks for a new generation.
In 1984, Disney time resets to the year 0 AE – After Eisner. With a goal to completely reenergize Disney Parks (particularly around modern intellectual property), Eisner’s half of the decade is marked by a very different approach to Imagineering, including the infusion of pop culture (see CAPTAIN EO), big-budget thrills (SPLASH MOUNTAIN), and a flair for the cinematic (the opening of the Disney-MGM Studios and THE GREAT MOVIE RIDE) – any of those three could stand among the most representative Disney attraction of the ’80s in its own way.
In other words, though many additions in the ‘80s were surprisingly big budget and epically-scaled, there’s a duality to them. Which leaves us no choice but to nominate two to share the trophy for this decade.
THE BEST ATTRACTION(S) OF THE 1980s:In one corner, we can’t help but hand the award to HORIZONS – an attraction that perfectly summarizes the brains and beauty of EPCOT Center and the early ‘80s at Disney. The “thesis” of EPCOT Center’s Future World, Horizons didn’t focus on a single topic of industry like its sisters. Instead, this capstone pavilion brought them together to present a picture of American life in the 21st century. Massively scaled, this “spiritual sequel” to Walt Disney’s favorite attraction was both a look at the future and a throwback to the grand, Animatronic-packed dark rides of old, returning Disney Imagineering to the formula it knew so well.
Yet on the other hand, we have an attraction that pushed Disney forward: STAR TOURS. There’s no denying that this cutting-edge simulator is peak-’80s in that it perfectly exemplified and birthed Michael Eisner’s “Ride the Movies” era to come while simultaneously kicking off the Age of the Simulator that continues unto today. And of course, the idea of stepping into pop culture settings and stories were merely beginning… Read on as we explore the definitive one best ride of the ’90s, 2000s, 2010s… and 2020s…
The era begins in earnest with the arrival of a competitor, expanding our view: Universal’s entrance into the theme park wars.
When Universal Studios Florida opened in 1990, it debuted some true contenders like KONGFRONTATION, JAWS, and BACK TO THE FUTURE – THE RIDE. Meanwhile, Universal’s original Hollywood property welcomed JURASSIC PARK: THE RIDE to its Lower Lot, beginning its evolution from movie studio to modern theme park. Honestly, any of the four Universal “creature feature” attraction might’ve actually been a top-tier finalist in the ‘80s… they’d just face much tougher competition in the ’90s.
For example, the view expands yet again with the 1992 opening of Disneyland Paris, equipped with its own brilliant reinventions of classics, like PHANTOM MANOR and SPACE MOUNTAIN – DE LA TERRE Á LUNE. Those clever new-age classics are still celebrated as risky-but-rewarding creative exercises perfectly encapsulating the scale (and budget) of the early ’90s.
But to take a real look at the 1990s is to examine the height of that “Ride the Movies” era Eisner started and its shining accomplishments before the ill-fated Disney Decade brought it all crashing down into a series of cop-outs, cancellations, and closures.
Born of the same groundbreaking (and controversial) partnership with George Lucas that spawned Star Tours, Eisner’s no-holds-barred pop-culture push of the ’90s created one of the greatest modern dark rides on Earth – INDIANA JONES ADVENTURE: TEMPLE OF THE FORBIDDEN EYE. This unimaginably-scaled attraction continued the infusion of popular characters from outside Disney’s catalogue of classics, while introducing unthinkable dark ride technology and some of the most sensational storytelling Imagineering has ever accomplished.
Likewise, George Lucas’s name was incorporated into the sci-fi inspired New Tomorrowland that squeaked by in Magic Kingdom, anchored by THE EXTRATERRORESTRIAL ALIEN ENCOUNTER, one of Imagineering’s most unique experimental attractions from the era. A Monorail ride south, the cutting edge TEST TRACK did for Epcot was Star Tours had done for Disney Parks as a whole – rewriting the foundations of Future World and setting the stage for the semi-scientific thrill rides that would follow.
Despite the divisive “Pixarification” of Tomorrowland and Future World that followed and the ‘90s’ signature invasion of characters into Disney Parks, it ended with a bang thanks to Animal Kingdom, which produced KILIMANJARO SAFARIS; a “reinvention” of Disney Imagineering as out-of-the-box as Horizons had been in the ‘80s. If you can’t tell, the ‘90s altogether created many of the world’s most ambitious and cinematic attractions, making this decade difficult to award… but we know what we have to do.
THE BEST ATTRACTION OF THE 1990s: Despite Indiana Jones Adventure being a true contender and the race being neck-and-neck, the overall icon of the ‘90s and the best example of the “Ride the Movies” era is THE TWILIGHT ZONE TOWER OF TERROR. Using most every trick developed in the decades before, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror represents the absolute pinnacle of the ’90s; a cinematic thrill ride packed with more detail and storytelling than a single ride-through can uncover.
In the U.S., the early 2000s was an era of extremes. Still reeling from the financial failures of Disneyland Paris (and the decade-long wave of cop-outs, cancellations, and closures it caused, including the abandonment of the Possibilityland: WESTCOT) Disney’s moves in the decade are more remembered for what didn’t work than what did. In fact, many of our in-depth Declassified Disaster entries revolve around short-term solutions like underbuilt parks, abandoned concepts, and short-sighted character overlays.
To that end, three of the most significant projects to debut in this decade are the last three theme parks rush-ordered by Eisner’s regime before he left Disney – Disney California Adventure, Walt Disney Studios, and Hong Kong Disneyland – which, between them, offered just one attraction noteworthy enough to be in the running: SOARIN’ OVER CALIFORNIA. As a revolutionary rewrite of what a “simulator” could be, this hang-gliding tour of the Golden State stands among the decade’s most prolific.
Other standouts from the decade in Disney Parks include EXPEDITION EVEREST – which remains one of the most spectacular Disney experiences out there (and, funny enough, is the most recent IP-free major attraction added to Walt Disney World…) – and TOY STORY MIDWAY MANIA, an interactive midway game ride-through that’s proven unexpectedly evergreen at Disney California Adventure, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Tokyo DisneySea.
Outside of those limited U.S. hits, several of the best rides of the 2000s undoubtedly come from Tokyo Disney Resort – wholly owned and operated by the Oriental Land Company (and thus, not subject to the strangling budget cuts of the Walt Disney Company). At Tokyo Disneyland, POOH’S HUNNY HUNT premiered the trackless dark ride technology fans know and love today; its sister park, Tokyo DisneySea, opened in 2001, bringing with it JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH – a ride renowned the world over, and certainly a top condender for the decade’s defining attraction.
While Journey may be its magnum opus, DisneySea also features a few other candidates, including its own INDIANA JONES ADVENTURE: TEMPLE OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, a new-age, practically-perfect 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, and the one-of-a-kind, Twilight Zone-free, S.E.A.-flavored TOWER OF TERROR – each among the decade’s best rides.
Back stateside, Universal Studios Florida was well underway replacing those contenders for best-ride-of-the-’90s with hotter, more current intellectual properties for the 2000s. The “flavor of the week” chase has since become a distinctly-Universal strategy (and has arguably been picked up by Disney, too) but it at least yielded a decade-defining ride for the resort: REVENGE OF THE MUMMY.
Speaking of Universal, there’s a dark horse to consider in our look at the best attractions from the 2000s: Universal’s Islands of Adventure. Though this theme park opened in summer 1999, most industry fans agree that it’s a product of 21st century design and technology; a first step into the New Millennium, and a taste-maker for everything that’s come since. To that end, should its Opening Day “Originals” fall into the running?
THE BEST ATTRACTION OF THE 2000s: Controversially, we’d argue that the best representation of the 2000s might actually be THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF SPIDER-MAN. A definitive shaper of most every Disney or Universal E-Ticket that’s come since, Spider-Man represented the fusion of a dark ride and a simulator, building off of Indy’s legacy. But the inclusion of screens made Spider-Man something very entirely different. Both Disney and Universal recognized Spider-Man as the new “one to beat,” and spent the 2000s building up their responses to the comic book escapade… Which brings us to…
If Spider-Man challenged Orlando’s parks to innovate and prepare for a renewed war between Disney and Universal, the products of that war began to emerge right away. Just five months into the decade, Universal debuted the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
Fast-forward to Disney’s first rebuttal (Cars Land featuring RADIATOR SPRINGS RACERS), ellicting Universal’s response (Diagon Alley, with HARRY POTTER AND THE ESCAPE FROM GRINGOTTS), earning Disney’s counter strike (Pandora – The World of Avatar offering AVATAR FLIGHT OF PASSAGE), plus the declaration of IP war that is the Avengers Campus (anchored in 2017 by Disney’s best impression of a Universal ride, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY – MISSION: BREAKOUT!).
Catching on yet? Yes, the 2010s were marked not just by rides, but by lands. An intentional push to create IP-based worlds with expanded mythologies (and “in-universe” dining) has become the de facto product of Imagineering, and increasingly it seems unlike any U.S. attraction will ever again open without a pre-existing, big-budget blockbuster brand behind it (and a healthy merchandising connection).
Overseas, the 2010s also saw the opening of Shanghai Disneyland, offering at least two stand-out originals: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: BATTLE FOR SUNKEN TREASURE (a larger-than-life, complete reimagining of a Pirates ride, based on the Johnny Depp film series) and TRON LIGHTCYCLE POWER RUN.
Meanwhile, billions were spent retroactively rebuilding those three disastrous low-budget parks from the early 2000s. While Disney California Adventure recieved the exceptional Cars Land, Hong Kong Disneyland’s debuted the sensational, S.E.A.-infused MYSTIC MANOR (one of the decade’s few IP-free attractions); and Walt Disney Studios in Paris kicked off its long-needed expansion with REMY’S RATATOUILLE ADVENTURE.
The decade closed out in a most apt way: a battle between HAGRID’S MAGICAL CREATURES MOTORBIKE ADVENTURE and MILLENNIUM FALCON: SMUGGLERS RUN – a biblical showdown between Universal and Disney’s respective elite tier IPs in a race to win fans’ hearts… and dollars. The 2010s started with two titans in a stalemate… and seemingly ended that way, as well, albeit with some unprecedented investment in the years between.
THE BEST ATTRACTION OF THE 2010s: Here’s where things get tricky. The “best” attraction of the 2010s is largely a matter of taste. Depending on your preferred ride style (and brand allegiance), the anchor attractions of Harry Potter, Cars, AVATAR, or even TRON Lightcycle Power Run, Mission: Breakout! or Smugglers Run might be your own personal pick. If you’re more of an Imagineering afficiando, you might hand the award to Mystic Manor.
In keeping with our attempt to select the best attraction to represent the decade’s direction, we have to give Universal its second win with HARRY POTTER AND THE FORBIDDEN JOURNEY. Using a still-exclusive ride technology that even exiting guests describe as inexplicable, it thrusts guests into the Wizarding World in a heart-pounding, mile-a-minute extravaganza. Though it’s a storytelling mess, the ride became a must-see Mecca for fans across the globe and literally created this era’s unprecedented style.
Though we’re merely a few months into this new decade, we may already have a winner. Even though Florida’s STAR WARS: RISE OF THE RESISTANCE opened with three weeks to spare in 2019, it’s only right to do what we did with Spider-Man and to draw that ride into the 2020 sphere; the definitive start of a new decade of attractions as much as it’s the capstone of the last.
To that end, Rise of the Resistance feels unbeatable; a generation-defining dark ride on par with Indiana Jones Adventure, Tower of Terror, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, and then some. That said, neither the IP-focused era nor Disney and Universal’s blockbuster back-and-forth battle show any signs of slowing… As we look ahead, monumental original E-Tickets themed to Frozen, Tangled, Mario, Peter Pan, Donkey Kong, and Marvel’s The Avengers are confirmed, and by the end of the decade, we’ll no doubt have plenty more, too.
So will STAR WARS: RISE OF THE RESISTANCE keep its crown? In 2030, when we look back on this decade of Imagineering, will we see that no ride stood a chance against Rise? Or will it be remembered as merely the start of a decade of record-breaking attractions, ushering in a new era? Does MICKEY & MINNIE’S RUNAWAY RAILWAY give this generation-defining attraction a run for its money? Will a promised Avengers attraction at Disney California Adventure match its scope and scale? A ride in Universal’s Super Nintendo World or Epic Universe? Is a yet-unannounced project in Florida, California, or somewhere else entirely capable of overshadowing Rise by the decade’s end?
We hope to see you back here in ten years to find out…
