All About the Parks
I am a Park Nerd. That is all.
A work in progress…
| What | Description | Disneyland | DisneyWorld | Disneyland Paris | Hong Kong Disneyland | Shanghai Disneyland | Tokyo Disney Resort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mickey Shaped Sunglasses | Sunglasses - but, like, shaped like Mickey Mouse... I'm torn because on the one hand, these are cool and I want people to have them, but on the other hand, these are cool and I don't want EVERYONE to have them ;) |
Nope! | Nope! | Yass! DLP Just started carrying these! |
Nope! | Nope! | Yass - The originator! Of course. Who else? |
| Early Entry/Magic Hour | Disney Hotel guests are allowed into the park(s) a little earlier than everyone else - but only after their first night's stay! | Early Entry: Half an Hour at Certain Parks only on Certain Days - includes the "good nieghbor" hotels along the perimiter of the parks. When you buy tickets, you have to specify which park you're planning to visit on each day, so it's important to check which parks are offering early entry ahead of time. If you pick DCA as your first park and it's not an early entry day on that day, you won't get the benefit. score: * * |
Typically half an hour before the regular opening time for any of the 25 resorts plus the 7 other on-prem non-Disney hotels. score: * * * |
30 minutes early at both parks. Disneyland Hotel guests have their own special entrance to Disneyland park! score: * * * * |
For Hong Kong, early park entry is just another ticket type anyone can purchase as an add-on to their regular ticket. Hotels guests do get the benefit of a separate entrance though, so the line moves more quickly. score: * * |
Shanghai Disney's early entry benefit for hotel guests is 1 hour, which is the best of the bunch! You can get a lot done in an hour. score: * * * * * |
Happy Entry, as it's called is 15 minutes. It's basically a slight headstart in a flat out sprint to whatever the most popular attraction is. For Disneyland, that's Sleeping Beauty or (before it closed) Space Mountain. For Disneysea, unless you're staying at the Fantasy Springs hotel, which has its own entrance, everyone will sprint across the entire park to get to Fantasy Springs area as fast as they can. score: * |
| The Castle | A big ole castle right in the middle of the main park |  Sleeping Beauty Castle: The original and tied with Hong Kong as smallest. Houses a walkthrough with diorama scenes from the story. |
 Cinderella Castle: Second largest after Shanghai. Has "Cinderella's Royal Table" character dining right inside. |
 Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant (aka Sleeping Beauty Castle): Mid-size, very pretty with a nice Sleeping Beauty walkthrough exhibit and "La Tanière du Dragon" in the basement! |
 The Castle of Magical Dreams (fka Sleeping Beauty Castle). Re-dedicated to all the princesses in 2020. Small, but mighty with a gift shop and a character meet and greet area inside. |
 Enchanted Storybook Castle: Like everything in Shanghai Disney the castle is on a massive scale and mixes different styles together in a general "princess" theme. It has a restaurant (similar to Cinderella's Royal Table, a storybook walkthrough, and houses part of the Crystal Grotto boat ride. |
 Cinderella Castle: houses a large Cinderella walkthrough with photo ops where you can sit on a throne and snap a pic, or stand by the glass slipper and snap a pic... There's also a shop called The Glass Slipper selling glassware. Glassy! |
A Classic Carousel - you know, with the horses that go round and round... |
Walt dreamed up the idea for Disneyland during weekend visits with his daughters to the Griffith Park Merry Go Round, which is why nearly every main park has one! What you may not know is that in the two original parks, the carousels are actually refurbished carousels dating back about ~100 years, right around the time the Disney company was founded. |
 King Arthur Carrousel - built in 1922 in Ontario and refurbished in time for the opening of the park in 1955. (California Adventure also has Jessie's Critter Carousel - themed after Toy Story.) |
 Prince Charming Regal Carrousel - (the Carousel Formerly known as Cinderella's Golden Carousel) a Cinderella themed carousel built in 1918 and - you guessed it! - refurbished in time for the park opening in 1971. This one is the biggest one in all the parks. (No, the Carousel of Progress does not count as a carousel!) |
 Le Carousel de Lancelot - a Knights of the Round Table themed carousel. Purpose built for the Park in 1992. |
 Cinderella Carousel - I'll let you figure out the theme! Purpose built in 2005 |
 Fantasia Carousel - again, I'll let you guess what the theme is! And it was also purpose built for the opening of the park. |
 Castle Carousel - classic Cinderella theme. Built for the park opening in 1983. |
| Main Park Fireworks | The Big Nightime fireworks show at The Castle | ||||||
| Parades | Not all parades happen every day - or during every season - but there's always something going on (weather permitting). Every day is The Day they've been dreaming about, saving up for, and looking forward to so it's got to be spectacular - and it always is! It's one of the things I love about going to the parks. | ||||||
| Monorail! | The transportation of the Future! |
 Yes - a small loop that drops you off right in Tomorrowland, so it's a hybrid transport & park entrance. |
 Yes - takes you on a loop around the "monorail resorts" (Contempo, Poly, and Grand Flo), to the Transportation & Ticket Center (aka TTC) and to EPCOT. |
No | No | No |
 Yes - a big resort loop with 4 stops - Disneyland, DisneySea, Ikspiari (the shopping area) and Bayside/Fantasy Springs - and some nice Mickey theming. |
| A Big Ole Victorian Greenhouse or Stained Glass Pavillion (sometimes both!) | ... sometimes with character dining, often a buffet. |
 The Plaza Inn. A "Breakfast with Minnie" buffet character dining experience |
 Crystal Palace AND a Plaza Restaurant. Crystal Palace is a buffet where you can meet Winnie the Pooh and his friends. Plaza Restaurant is at the end of Main Street and has giant windows overlooking the hub.  |
 Plaza Gardens. Character dining (breakfast or dinner) with Mickey & Minnie plus a rotating roster of pals |
 The Plaza Inn: a Cantonese Restaurant in a Victorian Greenhouse setting. |
No. As ever, Shanghai does it their way with no Victorian Greenhouse IN the park - although Donald's Dine n Delights in Disneytown looks like what you'd build if Crystal Palace needed an escape pod...  |
 Crystal Palace: A Classic 3-domed Victorian conservatory with an expansive buffet AND a Plaza Pavillion, which looks almost identical to the Disneyland (CA) and Hong Kong versions, and is also a buffet. Only Crystal Palace has character dining though - and, like WDW, it's your pal Winnie the Pooh & friends.  |
| The Disneyland Hotel | Signature Hotel. Typically a delux 4 or 5 star hotel with fantasy theming - even in the most basic room. |  When Disneyland was being built, Retro Futurism was all the rage. Tthe result definitely skews Tomorrowland rather than Fantasyland. Compared to the others this one is... ecclectic. The rooms are actually really nice and would not look out of place in a fantasy-themed setting, but they don't really go with the architecture of the building itself. The pool is awesome (My little neice loves it - which means it gets a 10 out of 10 from me!). Official Rank: 4 Star. Have we stayed there: Yes. |
 Disneywolrd doesn't actually have a "Disneyland Hotel" - and I get why - but is has The Grand Floridian, which is the EXACT SAME THING only with a different name. Official ranking: 5 Star. Have we stayed there? Not yet - but I have 2 nights booked in January. |
 A 5 star pink princess fantasy with 5 "signature" suites themed after Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Tangled, and Frozen. It is next level. And it spans the entrance to the park. Official Rank: 5 Star. Have we stayed there: Yes. |
 This one has more in common with the Grand Flo than the Disneyland Paris version. It also has a hedge maze. Official Rank: 5 Star. Have we stayed there: Yes. |
 The interior is more fantasy-oriented than the exterior - especially the lobby, which has some nice sculptures and a lot of stained glass. It's a bit of a mish-mash. That's kind of the vibe at Shanghai Disney Resort. The rooms had remote control curtains, which I thought was cool. Official Rank: 5 star. Have we stayed there: Yes. |
 This one is based on Beauty & the Beast. Tokyo gets the assignment. Every time. Tokyo and Paris have the best Disneyland Hotel hotels. The lobbies, the twinkly music, the rooms... everything down to the faucets has been carefully considered. Official Rank: 5 Star. Have we stayed there: Yes. |
| Space Mountain | It's a rollercoaster in the dark. Fun story: when I was a kid, Space Mountain broke down when we were on it (at WDW) and they had to stop the ride! They (mostly!) look a bit like spikey space maringues. |
 Side-by-side vaguely rocket-themed car. The rollercoaster itself isn't super crazy. There are no inversions. It's fast, it's dark. There are lots of lights flashing at you - and the sound is piped right into the car. Around 2015 the ride got a Star Wars glow-up (along with the Paris and Hong Kong versions) and it has been that way ever since. This is why you'll see a lot of them being referred to as ahem Hyperspace Mountain. I can't really get behind that though. I prefer to think of Space Mountain as an oddball thing unto itself. Fun fact: the opening of the ride was attended by several real astronauts who must have thought, "What the f*ck it this sh*t?" That's certainly what I would have though had I been to actual space. |
 Major plot twist: Space Mountain at Walt Disney World was the original and was built in 1975, two years before the Disneyland version. The cars are single seater rockets in case you were wondering. |
 What appears to have happened is... they went for a Jules Verne vibe originally then did the Star Wars overlay along with everyone else. It's incredibly strange generally but even more so with this one because the exterior has such strong steam punk theming! It reminds me of that time on "Friends" when Rachel made a trifle that was also a shepherd's pie and somebody said it tasted like feet. |
 This one is based on the Disneyland version and, like the others, kept the Star Wars overlay. It has a slightly simpler, shorter pre-show walkthrough, though. Hot tip: don't ride this and then immediately hop on the Iron Man Experience (an Iron Man version of "Star Tours") unless you're into extreme nausea and don't mind missing the entire ride because you're busy staring at your own lap and trying not to vomit. And then you ask your teen to describe it and all they can muster is a "Yeah, it was cool." :( |
No (But TRON Lightcycle Run is supposed to make up for that.) |
 Tokyo is replacing the original, which was based on the Disneyland version, but has a lot in common with the WDW version so it kind of a hybrid (it's like they had a baby!), with a new version set to open in 2027 (see rendering below). We got to ride the orig one in 2023 and saw what was either the deconstruction of the old one or construction of the new on when we were there this past April.  |
 The Haunted Mansion |
 A dark ride where you board a "doom buggie" and visit a spooky, uh, haunted mansion with singing ghosts and all manner of lo-fi creepy goings on. The conceit is that there are 999 ghosts in the mansion, but there's "room for one more" wink wink! Fun fact: toward the end of the original ride, your buggie turns around, tilts backwards, and descends into a lively graveyard party scene. Little did I know, this is in fact you being pushed off the roof of the mansion to your death. Congratulations - you're the 1000th ghost! |
 The original! Located in the New Orleans Square area of the main park. It has everything. Creepy clocks, floating candles, the four ghost dudes singing the catchy song, Madam Leota telling your fortune, great wallpaper. I will say that I did not love the Nightmare Before Christmas holiday overlay - perhaps because I'm a Haunted Mansion purist. "Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it your imagination?" - so goes the Vincent Price style voice-over in the pre-show "stretching room." Disneyland is the only version of this ride where the room is actually an elevator that takes you down to the basement where the ride begins. In every other version, the ceiling just rises up to create the stretching effect. |
 Quite similar to the original Disneyland version, but with a few extra rooms - and a photopass opportunity, which is a nice touch! It lacks the famous Hatbox Ghost, though (but there is an entire giftshop just outside - Memento Mori). The exterior buildings themselves are quite different as well being located in different areas of the park. |
 Phantom Manor. In a macro sense, this is a Haunted Mansion ride, but in a micro sense it does its own thing. It does its own storytelling. The stretching room even has its own set of totally different - lenticular!! - pictures. Aside from the iconic "pepper's ghost" banquet hall scene, this one is wildly different than any of the others - it has an intentional Wild West theme based around some intentional storytelling and is considered to be the scariest version out of all 4 (I'm not counting Mystic Manor!) |
 Mystic Manor. Totally different in every way. Mystica Manor is not a haunted house. It's an enchanted mansion owned by Lord Henry Mystic and his monkey, Albert (I don't think Albert "owns" the mansion per se, but he lives there). Lord Henry is an explorer/archeologist (read: idle rich white dude who got even richer by stealing other people's stuff!) Albert does something cheeky at the start of the ride, the artifacts come to life, and chaos ensues. It's charming. |
No |  Almost identical to WDW in every way - except there's a bunch of giant animatronic spiders at one point that I could have done without. Because of the similarities, it's really cool to hear it all in Japanese (although Madame Leota still speaks her incantation in English). |
| Resorts Parks | The actual separate theme parks within the resort | two parks: the original Disneyland (opene d July 17, 1955), and Disney's California Adventure (February 8, 2001) | Magic Kingdom - October 1, 1971; River Country (w) - June 20, 1976 (closed November 2, 2001); EPCOT - October 1, 1982; Disney Hollywood Studios (nee MGM Studios) May 1, 1989; Typhoon Lagoon (w) - June 1, 1989; Blizzard Beach (w) - April 1, 1995; Animal Kingdom - April 22, 1998; | Disneyland Paris (nee Eurodisney) - April 12, 1992; Walt Disney Studios Park - March 16, 2002 | September 12, 2005 | June 16, 2016 | Disneyland - April 15, 1983; Disneysea - September 4, 2001 |