Which Disney Park Has Changed the Most?

Disney just released some Earrfel Tower merchandise, and I had the odd epiphany that many fans don’t even know what that is.

Park officials tore down the Earrfel Tower in early 2016, which means it’s been gone for almost eight years.

Unless you were keeping up with the parks before then, you likely don’t even know where this landmark was!

For those of us who remember the before times, that’s a remarkable fact.

The reality is that every Disney theme park evolves over time, but some bear little resemblance to their early days.

So, let’s rank the Disney parks based on how much each one has changed over the years.

6) Magic Kingdom

Let’s start with Magic Kingdom so that you’ll better appreciate the underlying thought process here.

Sure, Magic Kingdom just replaced Splash Mountain and Country Bear Jamboree with Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and Country Bear Musical Jamboree.

Also, TRON Lightcycle / Run is only about 20 months old, and it has fundamentally altered the visuals at Tomorrowland.

Even so, Magic Kingdom’s core hasn’t changed much since its 1971 debut.

As proof, let’s think about the various themed lands at the park. All six of the originals remain to this day.

Disney historians remember that Magic Kingdom added one, Mickey’s Toontown Fair.

Nobody remembers that now because Disney eventually reclaimed the space as part of New Fantasyland.

We call it Storybook Circus today. So, while the park has added countless attractions over the years, its core infrastructure remains.

That will change once the Beyond Big Thunder expansion debuts, but that’s probably four years from now.

Even then, this park will remain the most static of all.

5) Disneyland Park

Much of what I just said about Magic Kingdom fittingly applies to Disneyland Park as well.

Since these are Disney’s two most popular theme parks, management tries to leave them largely intact.

Still, Disneyland Park has undergone a few significant changes over the years.

Disney augmented the core group of themed lands here by introducing New Orleans Square, Bear Country, Mickey’s Toontown, and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

In 1972, Disney also opened Bear Country, which became Critter Country and eventually Bayou Country.

We can quibble over how significant some of these changes are, and I think we’d all agree that they augmented the park nicely.

So, the changes are quite welcome, but Disneyland Park has definitely evolved more over the years than Magic Kingdom

4) Disney’s Animal Kingdom

I could actually make the argument that Animal Kingdom has changed even less than Disneyland.

If we use themed lands and attractions as the measuring sticks for change, Animal Kingdom is definitely more static.

Even DINOSAUR was an opening day attraction, albeit with a different name, Countdown to Extinction.

Imagineers created a later value add with Expedition Everest, and most of the shows are new.

However, the overall landscape of this park is mostly the same as when it opened…with one exception.

There was an opening day themed “area” (not land) that Disney never planned. It was called Camp Mickey-Minnie.

If Disney released anything similar to it today, the company would get absolutely obliterated online.

Once the budget precluded Disney from building the promised Beastly Kingdom, park planners pivoted to a makeshift summer camp.

Let’s just say fans were nonplussed, but the decision ultimately led to one of the best two things at the park: Pandora – The World of Avatar.

Whether you prefer this place or Kilimanjaro Safaris is a personal preference, but these two things would be at the top of any composite list.

I view Animal Kingdom as having changed more than Disneyland because of Pandora.

The debut of that themed land fundamentally changed everything at Animal Kingdom.

Even the park’s traffic patterns have been dramatically altered by the existence of this gorgeous, thematic space.

Still, the core of Animal Kingdom has remained largely the same since the beginning.

So, I fully understand if you quibble with this ranking.

3) EPCOT

Here’s where the real debate begins. You can sincerely argue that half of Disney’s American theme parks have changed completely.

As you’re about to realize, ALL of them have veered dramatically from their original plans.

With EPCOT, I’m not even talking about the capitalist utopia that Walt Disney envisioned.

No, I’m contrasting modern EPCOT to the one from 1982. That place consisted of two themed lands.

While the World Showcase still exists, Disney has added multiple pavilions to it since 1982, thereby expanding the space.

Those changes are modest and don’t factor heavily into my thinking, though.

What’s dramatically different is the former Future World, which Imagineers grudgingly admitted they couldn’t keep correct.

Constantly predicting the world of tomorrow grows tiresome, and it’s expensive to change the park repeatedly.

Eventually, Disney just gave up, leading to the juxtaposition of a place named Future World becoming outdated.

So, now we have three themed lands where there used to be just one.

Thankfully, this subdivision improves the front of the park, but it’s definitely different from what Disney had intended.

2) Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Now, we have the two parks where Disney threw out the blueprint and started from scratch.

Hey, do you remember when Hollywood Studios was the park where you could ride the movies?

Universal Studios Florida used that slogan, but it was more closely associated with the creation of Hollywood Studios.

Disney wanted to create a theme park experience that made guests feel like they’d walked onto a movie studio’s campus.

In fact, Disney filmed programming here, and animators created entire films here, including Lilo & Stitch.

The problem was that this park always leaned heavily on shows and was short on rides. Tourists prefer rides or at least a nice mix.

Disney added and added, introducing new attractions like Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith, Toy Story Mania!, and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

Still, Hollywood Studios always felt incomplete, with fans deriding it as a “quarter-day” park.

That’s a play on the fact that some parks are so unfulfilling that you can do everything in half a day.

So, calling something a quarter-day park is particularly insulting.

Finally, Disney did something about it by creating Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land, which came after Toy Story Mania!

Even more dramatically, Disney replaced the signature attraction here, The Great Movie Ride, with Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

Someone who last visited Hollywood Studios in the middle of 2016 would barely even recognize it today.

Oh, and that’s the year Disney demolished the Earffel Tower! Yes, it was once the signature landmark at Hollywood Studios.

1)    Disney California Adventure

Finally, we have the park that most needed a change. So, it’s to Disney’s credit that this place looks nothing like it once did.

In case you haven’t heard, the opening year for Disney California Adventure (DCA) was pretty much the worst thing Disney ever experienced.

I’m including Disneyland Paris when I say that, and that’s a place that spent a decade fighting the perception that it was a “cultural Chernobyl.”

DCA was just a mess from day one. It tried to sell Disney fans on the idea that a California theme park should have a California theme.

Nobody wanted that, and it didn’t help matters that the attractions were notoriously cheap.

Then-CEO Michael Eisner slashed the budget multiple times, which led to carnival-esque rides that weren’t of Disney quality.

The supposed anchor attraction here, Superstar Limo, has gone down in Disney lore as one of the worst rides ever. It didn’t even last a year.

So, Disney rebooted…and rebooted again. And again. I’m not even joking.

The first serious attempt to reinvigorate the park was Cars Land, home to Radiator Springs Racers.

More than a decade later, it remains the most popular ride at the park.

Still, that wasn’t enough. So, Disney threw out several of DCA’s existing themed lands and replaced them with Neighborhoods.

DCA transformed into a place that was half-Marvel and half-Pixar, and everyone liked that better.

This is THE intellectual theme park among all Disney holdings, but it works. It was also a necessary overhaul.

Fans spoke loudly with their wallets, and they haaaaated DCA then. Now, it’s a fun place to hang out.

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