If you’re planning to visit any of the top 10 theme parks in the United States (that is, any of Disney or Universal’s), there’s one reality you’re definitely going to have to face: waiting.
The good news is, Disney and Universal have spent decades and decades studying the art of the queue, and have developed some tried-and-true methods for entertaining guests during the inevitable boredom of waiting. Highly themed queues has been part of their strategies since the ’80s, spectacularly spreading the storytelling out to absorb guests from the start: touring through the haunted remains of the Hollywood Tower Hotel; slinking through the back alleys of Toontown en route to Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin; descending through security posts deep inside Gringotts…
While many Disney and Universal queues are themed, significantly fewer can truly be said to be interactive – that is, to offer things for guests to actually do. Especially in the 2010s, Disney made an intentional mission of retrofitting ride queues with “interactive” elements like embedded activities, props, and even video games. Arguably, that method has been left in the past in favor of smartphone experiences, immersive detail, and virtual queueing! But take a look at the ways these 10 attractions give guests something “to do.” Which improve their respective waits? Which don’t?
10. The Haunted Mansion
Image: Disney
Location: Magic Kingdom
To do: Pay your respects… at a graveyard playground
Perhaps the most controversial queue on the list is that of the legendary Haunted Mansion at Magic Kingdom. The opening day attraction (based on the 1969 original at Disneyland) has always skillfully balanced fright and fun in an artful and timeless blend of the very different styles of two key Imagineers. And even though Haunted Mansion was the first major project without substantial direction from Walt himself, it’s been studied in-depth as a masterclass of Imagineering in its Golden Age. And that makes any change or adjustment to its “spirit” highly controversial…
As such, the new interactive queue added to the Mansion in 2011 was the subject of much condemnation from fans. It’s easy to see why; the optional “graveyard” fork in the path leads to a courtyard of squirting tombstones, bubbles, and musical graves packed with “fan service” references. It’s an odd aside for such a storied, historic, and somber attraction, turning the once-tense wait for the foyer doors to open into a giggling, splashing scene of sneeze sound effects and surprise props. Altogether, it’s a “cute but dumb” addition that doesn’t seem to enhance the attraction’s operations or story, even if it’s a valiant effort to expand the Mansion’s mythos and add a sense of (misplaced) whimsy.
9. Dumbo The Flying Elephant
Image: Disney
Location: Magic Kingdom
To do: Play!
A much-needed product of Magic Kingdom’s New Fantasyland was a new take on Dumbo the Flying Elephant. Given that the miniscule spinner is one of the most iconic rides at Walt Disney World, its painfully low capacity created lengthy waits and unhappy guests.
As part of New Fantasyland, Dumbo was doubled. Two new “dueling” spinners took their place in the vintage Storybook Circus mini-land, set in front of a circus big top tent. But the most unusual thing is what that tent contains… As part of a first-of-its-kind queue, guests take a buzzer (like you might have while waiting at a restaurant) and head into the big top, which contains a Dumbo-themed playground: climbing nets, towers, slides…! When the buzzer buzzes, it’s time to fly. And that’s a clever way to literally play-while-you-wait.
8. Manta
Image: SeaWorld Parks
Location: SeaWorld Orlando
To do: Take in the beauty of real sea life
In a world before Blackfish, SeaWorld Orlando was on the rise as a real contender in Central Florida, looking to compete with the thrills of Universal. 2009’s Manta was a brilliant way to do it. The graceful, soaring, B&M flying roller coaster is meant to give guests the unimaginable experience of gliding effortlessly through the sea like a manta ray (but with more G-force), ending with an iconic wing-tip splashdown in the park’s entry pool.
Rather than a standard back-and-forth stanchion queue you might expect from a 140-foot-tall steel roller coaster, the ride’s queue doubles as the park’s manta ray aquarium. Passing through submerged, rocky caverns, waiting guests are literally surrounded in rays that glide around them, including a main tank with over 300 rays. It’s a brilliant way to turn one of the park’s starring thrill rides into a two-for-one deal. And of course, a secondary path through the aquarium allows guests to see the beauty of the rays without the 60 mile per hour coaster at the end.
7. Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid
Image: Christian Lambert, Flickr (license)
Location: Magic Kingdom
To do: Sort the treasures
Disney’s first dark ride based on The Little Mermaid debuted at Disney California Adventure in 2011, where it’s placed (appropriately!) in sandstone-and-teal 1910s-stylized aquarium gazing across Paradise Bay. The version earmarked for Magic Kingdom’s Wizarding-World-influenced New Fantasyland would need reskinned, and the results are beautiful. Eric’s seaside castle is is set back into a grassy hillside with eroded, sunset-hued rock and thundering waterfalls all around. Likewise, the ride’s queue is a snaking pathway back through those windswept grottos, connecting to the interior of Eric’s castle.
Along the way, guests pass by a treasure trove of shipwrecked remains, including three opportunities to play a game. In three windows, guests will find interactive scavenger hunts facilitated by little blue hermit crabs. Brought to life via the Pepper’s ghost effect, the grabs bring out refuse they’ve found while sorting through the tempest-tossed human stuff. When they bring something that doesn’t match, all you have to do is point at it and the crabs will take it away. It’s a quick experience perfect for a fast-moving Omnimover queue, which makes us grateful that it was included at all when it could’ve easily been left out.
Altogether, the scavenger hunt is simple and skippable enough, but ends with a Magic Kingdom exclusive: an Audio-Animatronic of Scuttle interacting with the crabs. (And as you know, we love Animatronics in ride queues.)
6. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Image: Disney
Location: Magic Kingdom
To do: Mining games and props
When the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train debuted in 2014 as the final phased opening of Magic Kingdom’s New Fantasyland, insiders knew to expect waits for the family coaster to balloon. What they might not have considered is that five years later, the ride still commands hour-long waits on even moderately busy days. Luckily, the ride’s queue was designed with games in mind.
The queue includes a water harp, where placing your hand beneath a carved woodland animal nozzle releases a glassy stream of water and an accompanying musical note. Further on, by spinning gem-filled barrels, guests can turn the swirling, crystal-like refraction patterns on the ceiling into images of the dwarves and (if all seven are spinning at once!) briefly make Snow White herself appear. A 15-foot interactive table allowed guests to drag-and-drop gems from a digital water trough, but was discontinued in 2018.
5. Peter Pan’s Flight
Image: Disney
Location: Magic Kingdom
To do: Experiment with shadows
The idea of making queues interactive by scattering embedded physical games and props throughout seems to have begun in earnest with 2010’s Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh queue upgrade. Then came the Haunted Mansion; video games in the queues of Space Mountain and Soarin’; interactive elements added to Big Thunder Mountain’s line in 2013, and the 2014 opening of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. But the big finale of the relatively short-lived initiative was Peter Pan’s Flight, the ultra-popular Fantasyland dark ride.
Thanks to the opening of the Tangled-themed restrooms (cue fans’ snickering), the former restrooms in Fantasyland were cleared out and reconfigured as a much-needed extended, indoor queue for Peter Pan’s Flight. Taking the opportunity to plus the experience, Imagineers practically turned the ride’s queue into a walkthrough attraction unto itself, leading guests into the Darling family home. In the nursury, Tinker Belle causes mischief in brief mini-shows, and guests can watch butterflies land on their shadows and play bells using only their silhouette.
Despite being one of the last game-based interactive queues added, Peter Pan’s Flight probably gets more right than any of its predecessors by keeping guests moving and providing subtle but spectacular experiences rather than more obvious games.
4. Skull Island: Reign of Kong
Image: Universal
Location: Universal’s Islands of Adventure
To do: Scream
Back when Universal Studios Florida opened in 1990, its camera-ready New York area was headlined by the Lost Legend: Kongfrontation. On board, guests were caught up in an evacuation of New York during Kong’s legendary, cinematic rampage, with aerial trams carrying guests through the wreckage left in the ape’s wake. Naturally, the ride featured two face-to-face encounters with the massive, raging ape and his legendary banana breath, making it one of the signature rides from Universal. It closed in 2002 to be replaced by the Modern Marvel: Revenge of the Mummy.
Universal seemed to have regretted the loss enough to warrant a comeback. In 2016, Skull Island: Reign of Kong opened not at the Studio park, but its more mythological neighbor, Islands of Adventure. Fittingly, rather than dropping Kong back into our world, we’re marrooned in his: the otherworldly and sinister Skull Island, inhabited by gigantic insects, dinosaurs, killer worms, and more. That’s why the ride’s queue sends us into the tombs and temples of the island’s hostile natives, including awesome animatronics, jump scares, and even live actors. In fact, Skull Island’s queue was developed alongside the team behind Universal’s world-class Halloween Horror Nights, meaning the queue is essentially a haunted house unto itself!
3. TEST TRACK
Image: Disney
Location: Epcot
To do: Design a car
When the original Lost Legend: TEST TRACK opened in 1999, the premise was simple: you were stepping into a General Motors proving grounds / vehicle test facility to become a test dummy and go along for the ride while a car was put through the paces. Fittingly, the queue was a sort of kinetic museum of safety features in an industrial warehouse of traffic cones, reflector lights, warning stripes, and more.
After just twelve years, Test Track underwent a surprising redesign that edited the ride from the ground up. Now a sleek, glowing, streamlined showcase of Chevrolet’s most ethereal prototype vehicles, the queue does something spectacular: it invites guests to design their own custom cars and put them to the test. Guests end up in the Chevrolet Design Studio, each person paired with a computer and tasked with doing just what real engineers do: balance Capability, Efficiency, Responseness, and Power. They start with a line to determine their car’s shape, then add and subtract features as desired. With a tap of the MagicBand or park ticket, their custom car goes along for the ride.
Now, the ride through the day-glo, TRON-inspired “SimTrack” isn’t just a wild test of vehicle features: it’s an experiment with the engineering design process all based on the concept vehicle guests themselves create in the queue.
2. Race Through New York
Image: Universal Orlando
Location: Universal Studios Florida
To do: Pandas, postcards, and phone charging
Waiting isn’t supposed to be the highlight of an attraction, yet that seems to be case with Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon. The simulator through New York and beyond will probably go down in history as the straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back, tipping the scales of fans’ patience and officially making most of Universal’s rides amount of being shaken in front of a screen, and most of that majority requiring 3-D glasses. Put another way, Race Through New York has been (pardon the pun) universally panned.
Image: Universal Orlando
One bright spot? The ride’s queue. Here, Universal opted to reinvent the experience of waiting. First, guests choose a return time (a la pick-your-own FastPass). But upon returning, they don’t enter a queue. Instead, they step into NBC Studios and are handed a colored card (one of the six colors in NBC’s peacock logo) and invited to a second-story lounge. Here, there’s live queue entertainment (including a meet-and-greet with Hashtag the Panda and The Ragtime Gals barbershop quartet live on stage), plus a mini-museum of Tonight Show props and costumes, desks to send interactive greeting cards, and couches outfitted with all the phone-charging access you’ll ever need.
When the lights inside change to match the color on your card, it’s time to make your way to the next room for the pre-show… But, you might prefer to keep hanging out instead. (A similar set-up is in use at Universal’s next installation, the equally-panned Fast & Furious: Supercharged, allowing guests to mill about in a garage of Fast & Furious cars.) Even if Race Through New York isn’t exactly a keeper, could this format be the future of “interactivity” in ride queues?
1. Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye
Image: Disney
Location: Disneyland
To do: Decode the legend
When Disneyland opened in 1955, its ride queues were standard chain stanchions sending people through back-and-forth through a sea of waiting guests. In the 1960s, queues began to evolve, acting as prologues to the settings and scenes within (think of Adventure Thru Inner Space or the Haunted Mansion). But it was during Michael Eisner’s cinematic era that queue became part of the ride… From The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror to Splash Mountain, suddenly queues were a place for guests to take their first steps into the story…
Image: Disney
And there’s perhaps no original story as creative as that behind the Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure. Having traveled to the misty jungles of Southeast Asia lured by the 1930s media’s sensationalized coverage, guests step into the role of would-be explorers – the nouveau riche of Europe – descending on the newly discovered Temple of the Forbidden Eye. From its cracked exterior along the misty rivers of the Jungle Cruise, guests descend into a quarter-mile long hike through collapsed tunnels, bat caves, and antechambers. Sure, Imagineers scattered booby traps and interactive props throughout this queue… but at the end of the day, the queue is good for so much more…
Famously, it’s packed with ancient Maraglyphs – the lost language of this region – telling the legend of the lost god Mara and his promises of ancient gifts (either earthly treasure, future sight, or eternal life) to any who venture to the heart of the temple. But a more chilling tale is told by the countless depictions of Mara throughout via carving, statue, and painting that show the god with his eyes closed or covered, hinting at the dark fate that befalls any who look into his eyes… Imagineers brilliant turned the ride’s sticking point (a long wait in a queue that has to stretch to a showbuilding outside the park) into its most masterful element: a chance to let guests literally descend into the story and pull as much exposition as they can.
