The best Disney Parks are timeless. Their names and logos? Not always.
Disney Parks are time capsules, carrying hundreds of years of history between them. Though they may feel like they’ve been around forever, each Disney theme park on Earth is really the product of the time it’s designed in. Colors, typefaces, and even names that makes sense one year may look outdated the next. From time to time, Disney recognizes that it’s time to update the branding of their parks, or even rename parks altogether.
For fans like us, that creates a visual timeline to look back on, seeing the ways Disney Parks have changed by looking at how their names and logos shift! Take a look at the six cases below where major reinventions and surprising name-changes have changed Disney Parks history.
1. EPCOT
Fans of Disney Parks are no strangers to change. Growth is simply a part of the parks’ DNA. You know the company line: “Disneyland will never be completed as long as there’s imagination left in the world.” There must be a particular amount of imagination concentrated on Epcot, as its changes have been profound. It’s well-known that Epcot started as Walt’s Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow – a living, breathing, functional city he hoped to build in Florida that would act as a blueprint for all global cities to follow.
Unused. Image: Disney
Likewise, it goes without saying that plans for Walt’s EPCOT were abandoned after his death, with Walt Disney World being anchored by a larger version of Disneyland instead. We also know that designers circled around to the concept of EPCOT when they designed the second theme park for the Florida property – EPCOT Center. There, they built a “permanent World’s Fair” with pavilions in Future World dedicated to areas of science and industry (with complementary financing corporate sponsors) and pavilions in World Showcase demonstrating the culture and cuisine of selected countries (with corporations from those countries footing the bill). The logos above are unused concepts Imagineers floated in how best to represent this progressive park.
Instead, they settled on this one:
The logo developed for EPCOT Center is sheer brilliance, demonstrating the interconnectedness of Future World’s pavilions and World Showcase’s; it hints at the larger, intellectual scope of the park with a stylized Spaceship Earth set inside of a star representing hope and, further, interlocking rings. EPCOT Center purposefully did away with fairytales, castles, princesses, and pirates, instead acting as an optimistic and grounded look at the 21st century.
In what may be one of the most impressive uses of iconography in any park, each of Future World’s pavilions was assigned a similarly circular logo meant to communicate its purpose in simple geometry.
Those logos – while retired in the ’90s when the park’s pavilions fell out-of-sync – were still used in merchandise and as “Easter eggs” in the pavilions they once represented.
In 1994, EPCOT Center’s name officially changed to sentence-case, Center-free Epcot ’94. Naturally, the following year its name became Epcot ’95. Then, in 1996, plain old Epcot finally stuck. Curiously, the logo during this short era seemingly became any chunky sans serif Microsoft WordArt text treatment of the word before settling on the wordmark below, as still seen on Epcot’s parking toll booth:
1996. Image: Disney
This is also when we see the fall of many of the park’s once-firm foundations. In fact, each and every one of Future World’s science-themed pavilions has at least one entry in our Lost Legends series, from The Living Seas to Horizons; The Land’s Kitchen Kabaret to Body Wars in Wonders of Life. In the span of two decades, the transportation pavilion has contained both World of Motion and the original Test Track, while Imagination has hosted both the beloved Journey into Imagination and the ride that some call Disney’s worst ever, Journey into YOUR Imagination.
It all started here in the mid-90s. Shortly thereafter, the park debuted its next logo and identity to shepherd in its era of characters and thrills:
This Epcot logo has the letters E, p, and t in Berling typeface with the o stylized as the park’s original icon and c stretched as if tracing the trajectory of an orbiting satellite, each colored purple, pink, orange, teal, and yellow. By the mid-2010s, many fans were calling for the retirement of this oversaturated ’90s logo thart seemed at odds with both Epcot’s past and its future. Boy were they on the right track…
At the semi-annual D23 convention in 2019, Epcot was the star. Or should we say, EPCOT? There, Disney finally fessed up to ambitious plans not only to bring the park into the 21st century, but do do it with Disney, Marvel, or Pixar characters just like we’d proposed. For Imagineering fans, the real win was the return and refinement of those original pavilion icons (again conceptually uniting the park’s pavilions in one cohesive style) and the debut of a new logo:
Look familiar? Yep, the new EPCOT logo is a modern refinement of the logo used from 1982 – 1995, keeping the throwback, iconic “E” and otherwise recreating the opening day look with a rounded and symmetrical typeface more tuned to modern taste. The C and O even echo an infinity symbol. Altogether, the new logo is a perfect mix of forward-thinking and reverently nostalgic, just like the park…
…and it even came with the return of matching pavilion icons, too!
2. Disneyland Paris
What do you call a European Disney resort? Euro Disney Resort, of course! Except…
When Euro Disney Resort opened in 1992, it had just a single theme park (Euro Disneyland) and an unprecented seven hotels to accompany it – far too many hotel rooms for the park’s draw, especially with most of the French press launching an assault on the park and calling it an invasion of American commercialism.
Overbuilt and bleeding money, Euro Disney Resort was enough of a failure to turn CEO Michael Eisner off from any large-scale projects, cancelling and closing rides across the globe. There were rumors Euro Disney might close altogether. But instead, Disney did some quick rebranding as Euro Disney Resort Paris.
Disney’s evaluation showed that while “resort” meant one thing in the U.S., Europeans associated the word “resort” with luxury beachside villas or mountaintop ski lodges… Obviously, neither was anywhere to be found in the remote, agricultural, pastoral Marne-la-Vallée village outside Paris. In June 1994, Euro Disney Resort was quietly renamed Euro Disneyland Paris with “Euro” being conspiculously small in the updated logo…
1994. Image: Disney
It was a short-term transitionary test to eventually tackle another sticking point: the word “Euro.” Michael Eisner owned up to the naming error, stating “As Americans, the word ‘Euro’ is believed to mean glamorous or exciting. For Europeans it turned out to be a term they associated with business, currency, and commerce.” Just four months after adding “Paris,” “Euro” was dropped and a new logo debuted:
1994 – 2002. Image: Disney
In October 1994, the resort was renamed Disneyland Paris while the theme park became Parc Disneyland. “Renaming the park ‘Disneyland Paris’ was a way of identifying it with one of the most romantic and exciting cities in the world,” Eisner said. In retrospect, the new logo retained the distinctly ’90s colors and shapes of the original, but succinctly identified the property accounting for European culture.
One of the unfortunate cop-outs that came from Eisner’s low-budget strategies post-Paris was a second theme park for the French resort. The subject of its own Declassified Disaster: Walt Disney Studios Park, the second gate was bad… really bad… Maybe the worst park Disney’s ever built. Now, Disneyland Paris contained both Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park, which meant it needed a new logo:
2002 – 2009. Image: Disney
At least axing the ’90s color palate, the updated Disneyland Resort Paris logo was meant to convey that there were now two theme parks to visit. It worked, but only until word spread that the new “studio” themed park was a bust. In 2009, Disney came to its senses and rebranded the resort once more in time for its 20th anniversary. Naturally, a cleaned up logo came along with the celebration:
2009 – Present. Image: Disney
Disneyland Paris‘ logo cleanly utilizes the corporate “Disney” script with a complementary “land.” (Each Disneyland across the globe uses a localized or otherwise specific typeface for “land.”) It’s clean, bright, simple, and communicates to Europeans the two most important things about the property: Disney and Paris. Voila. Check out the park and resort’s unbelievable twelve distinct logos in 25 years here.
3. Disney California Adventure
In the ’90s, Disney officially announced a second theme park coming to join the original Disneyland in California – the Possibilityland: WESTCOT. But when plans for a Westcot grew too ambitious in the wake of Disneyland Paris’ dismal opening, the massive expansion plans contracted and Disney’s California Adventure Park was selected instead as a way to convince tourists they could see all that California had to offer – beaches, mountains, wineries, and movie studios – without leaving Disney property. We took a walkthrough of the pathetic park in its own standalone feature, Declassified Disaster: California Adventure – a must-read for Disney Parks history fans.
2001 – 2010. Image: Disney
But born of distinctly ’90s style with severely limited budgets, minimal input from Imagineering, and a heavy emphasis on being “modern” and “edgy” with “MTV attitude,” the second park didn’t exactly land with Disneyland’s heavily local audience, meaning national marketing plans were scrapped and Disney’s California Adventure became a massive money pit for the resort. Rather than letting the park bleed for decades, CEO Bob Iger announced an ambitious five-year plan to take place between 2007 and 2012, stripping each of the park’s themed lands, removing the obnoxious attitude, and rebuilding the park in the style of Disneyland – historic themed lands carrying guests to idealized versions of Californian stories.
On May 27, 2010 – mid-way through the reconstruction – Disney made an unexpected announcement… Disney’s California Adventure was gaining a new name! … Kind of. The park would lose the possessive apostrophe-s in “Disney’s” (a move in line with the company’s modern branding style guide, i.e. “Disney Aladdin“). However, that was just the impetus to relaunch the park’s branding ahead of the completion of its five-year plan. What’s more, Disney California Adventure would also be accompanied by a new logo:
2010 – present. Image: Disney
While admittedly somewhat nondescript, the new logo somehow does manage to echo a sort of classic, timeless design (fitting the park’s Buena Vista Street and other lands themed to idealized Californian history) while also establishing a more playful, cartoon-ish vibe fit for additions like World of Color, Cars Land, and the Little Mermaid – Ariel’s Undersea Adventure that came with the 5-year rebuild. The new logo also omits Grizzly Peak, which had long-since been demoted as a park icon.
Even back at the time of the park’s 2012 re-opening, some fans argued that it ought to get a much more severe name change… you can see why. While the park’s billion-dollar refit built beautiful lands themed to Californian places, the rides in those lands were almost entirely themed to Monsters Inc., Toy Story, The Little Mermaid, and A Bug’s Life.
Arguably, that’s gotten even worse in the years since the remaining E-Tickets anchoring the Californian story – California Screamin’ and the Lost Legends: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Soarin’ Over California – have likewise been replaced by Pixar, Marvel, and a tour of worldwide landmarks rather than Californian ones. Will the invasion of intellectual properties eventually earn Disney California Adventure another new name and logo? Possibly… Until then, we’ll just have to get used to seeing Spider-Man, Mike and Sully, Woody and Buzz, and Elsa and Anna enjoying a getaway in the Golden State.
4. Disney Springs
1975 – 1977. Image: Disney
Though Walt’s E.P.C.O.T. was never built, a real community did become part of Walt Disney World. The tiny recreational village of Lake Buena Vista was designed as a residential community that would be connected to the larger Walt Disney World property with Peoplemovers and Monorails. While the transportation never arrived, the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village opened in 1975 on the shores of the same lake as a place for visitors to “The Vacation Kingdom of the World” to grab sundries, souvenirs, and snacks.
Located fairly far out on the underdeveloped east site of the resort, the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village was a little too remote to earn much foot traffic. So in 1977, it was expanded and rebranded as the Walt Disney World Village:
1977 – 1989. Image: Disney
In 1989, cinematic new CEO Michael Eisner decided to develop the property as a rival to Orlando’s famous Church Street Station – at the time, a collection of nightclubs. The Walt Disney World Village was renamed the Disney Village Marketplace, being joined by a new neighbor:
1989 – 2008. Image: Disney
Pleasure Island was literally an island connected to the Village Marketplace by bridges. The island contained bars, nightclubs, and restaurants meant to appeal to twenty-somethings in the Orlando area, drawing adults without kids into Walt Disney World. What’s more, the new addition united all of those bars, nightclubs, and restaurants into a giant, overarching continuity, connecting them in the cross-continental tale of S.E.A.: The Society of Explorers and Adventurers. To this day, one of those nightclubs – the Lost Legend: The Adventurers Club – remains one of the most beloved lost attractions ever to stand at Walt Disney World.
In 1997, the Village Marketplace and Pleasure Island were joined by a third area – the West Side – populated by oversized, neon ’90s attractions like Cirque du Soleil, a Virgin Megastore, and the so-bad-it’s-good Declassified Disaster: DisneyQuest. The three regions together were rebranded as a single complex, memorably renamed with a new logo:
1997 – 2015. Image: Disney
Downtown Disney went through a number of starts and stops in its growth, but was always comprised of those three areas: the Marketplace, Pleasure Island, and West Side… Until Pleasure Island closed in 2008. Disney officially announced plans to replace the clubs with a high-energy, kinetic, electric new zone called Hyperion Wharf, doubtlessly filled with restaurants and retailers rather than expensive-to-operate themed clubs and interactive experiences.
But Hyperion Wharf never came. Insiders say Disney was having trouble luring high-end retailers to the tired, ’90s Downtown Disney, and decided that a larger-scale rebrand was needed. In 2013, it was announced that the Downtown Disney logo and brand would be retired. The Marketplace and West Side would recieve aesthetic improvements; Pleasure Island would become an upscale village called “The Landing,” and a new “Town Center” would be built.
2016 – present. Image: Disney
Imagineers carefully crafted the new Disney Springs, centering the shopping district and its style around the story of a long-gestating Floridian village built around a natural waterway. (Art imitates life.) Disney Springs largely lost the kitschy 90’s gaudiness of Downtown Disney, and that’s on purpose. While fans of Downtown Disney’s roadside attraction postcard styling decry Disney Springs as nothing more than an expensive, elite, upscale outdoor shopping mall that you could find in any resort town, they fail to realize that that’s exactly what Disney was going for.
5. Disneyland
1955 – 2001. Image: Disney
Once upon a time, there was only Disneyland. From day one, Walt Disney’s original magic kingdom has been identified by instantly-recognizable Medieval lettering (albeit, with slight alterations over the years as it went from hand-drawn to trusted typeface). But even though this logo has more or less remained steady for more than 60 years, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t had some surprising swaps.
When Disney’s California Adventure opened in 2001, Disneyland was suddenly the name of an entertainment destination property and the name of one of the two theme parks on that property. So the original, 1955 theme park was officially renamed Disneyland Park, creating this new logo:
2001 – Present. Image: Disney
But what to do about the larger property it sat within? To celebrate the expansion and the opening of a second gate, Disney officially redesignated the new entertainment destination at the Disneyland Resort. Now, Disneyland Park was just one part of the Disneyland Resort.
However, that’s not quite the end of the story. Now “carried” into the 21st century by the hip, edgy, modern California Adventure, this new resort needed to distinguish itself from the “antique” Disneyland of yesteryear. That’s what created this logo:
2001 – 2005. Image: Disney
Now, Sleeping Beauty Castle would lose its center-stage placement and share the spotlight with the icon of the new park, Grizzly Peak, with a sun rising above it. A sleek Monorail is seen gliding through a new wordmark: the corporate typeface “Disney” and a sans serif “land.”
It turns out that the same intensely-loyal, generations-long visitors who didn’t care for Disney’s California Adventure also didn’t like the new logo. It was jarring to see the classic Disneyland type “replaced” (at least, on marketing materials and signage) with the corporate logo, expressly tying the home-grown park that Walt himself stepped in to the $50 billion international media conglomerate that had developed behind it in the decades since. Plus, it was quickly apparent that Disney’s California Adventure would not pull its weight in turning Disneyland into an international destination resort, so its inclusion in more than half of the resort’s logo didn’t compute. The result?
2005 – Present. Image: Disney
In 2005, an effort was made to swap the modern-made resort logo for a classic on all signage, marketing, and print pieces. Now, both Disneyland Park and Disneyland Resort share nearly-identical logos, differentiated only by the small modifier tailing at the bottom right corner. And for most fans, that means that all is right with the world… er… land.
6. Disney’s Hollywood Studios
1989 – 2008. Image: Disney
By now, you know that Disney has gone through some dark periods. One of the most prominent was in the decade after Walt’s death – the ’70s and early ’80s – when Disney just couldn’t seem to find a foothold at the box office. The arrival of Michael Eisner as CEO in 1984 was exactly the spark Disney needed, and the longtime film executives injected stardom, movies, and the properties people cared about today into Disney Parks across the globe. Eisner even commissioned the making of a whole theme park about the magic of moviemaking – The Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park.
Have you ever wondered, “Why MGM?” Though Eisner had plans to rejuvinate Disney’s live action and animation divisions (and he would succeed wildly in the 1990s – the “Disney Renaissance”), back in the ’80s things were still bleak. Disney was a tarnished brand that was no longer recognized or renowned for its moviemaking. But MGM had a rich history of producing Hollywood classics, with a much stronger brand than Disney. Thus, a contract was born (and one that MGM’s CEO allegedly heard about as it was being signed).
1989 – 2008. Image: Disney
For practically nothing, Disney gained the worldwide exclusive rights to theme parks using MGM’s brand, while simultaneously gaining access to the studios’ catalogue of classic films. The park was essentially divided into two halves, each anchored by a single ride: the front half as a celebration of the Golden Age of Hollywood featuring the headlining Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride, and a back-half comprised of real, functioning production facilities and led by the Declassified Disaster: The Backstage Studio Tour.
By the 2000s, things had changed. Thanks to Michael Eisner and his successor, Bob Iger, Disney was no longer a tired brand on the edge of collapse; it was a leading international media conglomerate with ABC, ESPN, The Muppets, and the revolutionary Pixar among its catalogue. MGM who? “MGM” began to disappear from merchandise that instead referred to the park as “Disney Studios.” In January 2008, Disney made it official. Overnight, signage was swapped and the park was renamed with a new logo.
2008 – 2019. Image: Disney
The park became Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The change didn’t go as far as many had hoped… A cavalcade of “studio”-themed parks by Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., and even MGM opened throughout the ’90s, and as new parks like Animal Kingdom and Islands of Adventure set a new standard, these “studio” parks of mish-mashed intellectual properties, industrial lighting rigs, beige soundstages, and concrete plazas looked like remnants of another time.
Finally, Disney did announce that Disney’s Hollywood Studios would soon level the empty production facilities and pointless “studio” tour that comprised its back half in favor of immersive, Wizarding-World-style lands allowing guests to step into Toy Story and Star Wars. The “studio” was dead. Would the studio name die, too? In a 2015 shareholder meeting, a six year old asked Bob Iger if the park’s name would change. The CEO replied that it would, only then recognizing that no announcement of the kind has been made. He quickly recovered: “We’ll announce that we’re changing the name, but we won’t announce what we’re changing it to. How’s that?”
In 2017, Disney polled guests with potential new names for the park, including Disney Beyond Park, Disney XL Park, Disney Hyperia Park, and the apparent frontrunner, Disney Cinemagine Park. Reaction online was swift and merciless… so much so that the Disney Parks Blog had to officially squash the rumors, confirming that “the Disney’s Hollywood Studios name will remain the same for the foreseeable future since we are immersing our guests in a place where imagined worlds of Hollywood unfold around them from movies and music, to television and theater.” Especially with the park being heavily promoted as the home of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, it would make little sense to change the park’s name just as visitors arrive looking “Disney’s Hollywood Studios.”
In May 2019 – during an extended celebration of the park’s 30th anniversary – Disney previewed a new logo and identity for the park. The logo is essentially just a text treatment with the “Disney’s” corporate mark and a sans-serif “Hollywood” containing three perfectly round, black in-filled Os and a small, trailing “Studios” tag. It’s no surprise that the new logo downplays “Studios” and emphasizes “Hollywood.” After all, Disney’s Hollywood Studios is still a park that celebrates movies, but not really how they’re made.
The only things that’s surprising about the logo is that Disney did not take the opportunity to drop the possessive-s (as has been their custom company-wide). Meanwhile, Star Wars‘ BB-8, Mickey (in the style of recent shorts and not the corporate character model), and Toy Story’s Woody are rotating character embellishments that might change seasonally or be swapped for promotional purposes, with the “character-free” version used in some print material and park signage.
