Keep, Change, Close: Walt Disney World Dark Rides

What are some of the most iconic and beloved rides at Walt Disney World? It’s those classic Disney dark rides.

You know we love starting controversial convos with our installments of keep, change, and close. After all, it’s pretty fun to think about what Disney rides we want to keep as long as possible, change for the better, or close altogether. 

Remember, we don’t feel the same way as everyone! Maybe you love a ride we want to change, and that’s a-ok.  Maybe we love a ride that you think could use some work! Mileage varies on dark ride opinions, and we’re just sharing ours. (Share your opinions in the comments below!)

For our take this time though, we’re going to check out one dark ride for each category. And don’t worry, we’ve got our reasons.

Let’s see what we’d Keep, Change, or Close of the Disney World dark rides!

Keep

Haunted Mansion

Alright, we just can’t pass this one up. Haunted Mansion is perfect, and you can fight us on it. This spooky attraction is the ultimate Disney dark ride experience. You even voted it your favorite Disney World attraction out of all of them. Period!

It’s pretty hard to argue with that sort of accolade. But hey, AllEars readers know their stuff. Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion is a treat to ride. From the ballroom to the graveyard, to the hitchhiking ghosts; this attraction gets our seal of approval.

You can tell the ghost host we feel this way, too! Some of our favorite parts of this attraction include the flawless narration and the fact that it runs on an Omnimover track, keeping lines moving relatively quickly and giving it that iconic dark-ride flow.

Sure, have we wished to see a the Disneyland Haunted Mansion holiday overlay or Hatbox Ghost end up in the east coast Haunted Mansion? Yes. But that wouldn’t necessarily make us love this attraction more. It already sets the bar for dark ride love!

In fact, the tech from Haunted Mansion is just as mind-boggling today as it was when it opened with the park. The pepper’s ghost effects? Stunning. The never-ending stairway room? How do they do that!?

Change

“it’s a small world!”

Okay, don’t hate us, but the Walt Disney World version of “it’s a small world!” has nothing on the Disneyland version, and not just because Disneyland gets an awesome holiday overlay.

It’s not like Disney could easily do an overhaul to the exterior of “it’s a small world!” Still, the huge small world facade is Disneyland is a testament to the design genius that was Mary Blair and it’s a downright shame that we don’t see more of those design elements on the exterior of the ride.

Still, we’d love to see a queue overhaul at “small world” to give us more of that iconic theming instead of the stall-like old Fantasyland queues. Hey, they did it for Peter Pan’s Flight!

Plus, Disneyland got some flack for adding Disney characters to “small world” but in the end, people tend to like the change! It’s fun to pick out your favorite characters like Ariel, Aladdin, Lilo, Woody, and more. It doesn’t detract from the ride at all and makes for a fun touch.

So yeah, we would like to see a little update over at “Small World” after all that iconic attraction and mind-numbingly addicting song both deserve a lot of love, and that means a little TLC sometimes.

Close

Journey Into Imagination with Figment

Ok, we’re asking again, please don’t hate us. Although on this one, we’re not sure you will. The Disney dark ride that we would like to close is none other than Journey Into Imagination with Figment.

This ride opened in 2002 as the third iteration in a line of Imagination Pavilion rides. Today, it feels shockingly dated for its age and rarely boasts a line longer than 15 minutes. The past few times we’ve ridden it, there have even been audio outages, yikes.

Now, we do love Figment, don’t get us wrong. But he deserves better! There aren’t even many pieces of the current Figment ride we’d keep, but we’d love it if our favorite purple dragon could end up as the main character on a new ride (perhaps with Dreamfinder back again? We’re just saying).

With a lot of improvements coming to Epcot, is this ride here to stay? Who knows! All we can say is, we think it might be time for this attraction to move on to the big amusement park in the sky.

So, what do you think? Were we right or wrong? Tell us what your choices would be in the comments!

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