It Blows My Mind That THIS Franchise Has (Almost) No Current Theme Park Presence!

Recreating the environments of popular intellectual properties has been a tenant of modern theme parks since the very beginning when Disneyland’s Fantasyland featured rides that took guests into the realms of Peter Pan, Snow White, and others. In recent years, the concept has evolved into mega-lands that bring life to large-scale worlds, including a campus for Marvel superheroes, Star Wars’ Galaxy Far, Far Away, Queen Elsa’s realm of Arendelle, and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. However, all of that leads us to question when theme parks will reach the final frontier…

Star Trek has been a pop-cultural institution for going on six decades. The original series (TOS) was a moderate hit for three television seasons back in 1966, but the property didn’t truly take off until the series hit syndication in the 1970s. The popularity of Kirk, Spock and co. during that decade led to a 6-film series, which in turn led to an 80/90s/00s renaissance featuring 4 television series (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Enterprise) and 4 more films. This has been followed by another jolt in popularity over the last 15 years, with 3 more feature films and litany of new streaming series including Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Lower Decades. So, with all that sustained success, where are the Star Trek theme park lands and attractions?

Now, let’s get this out of the way, Star Trek HAS had some theme park representation in the past. From the late 1980s through the 1990s, there were live-action Star Trek experiences in both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Florida, both known as Star Trek Adventure.

The West Coast version was a live-action show described by Universal at the time as being their “latest and greatest live-action show. At each performance, members of the audience are selected to join Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in battling Klingons, fantastic space creatures and alien superbeings. Then only minutes later, you see these scenes videotaped and edited into actual Star Trek footage. You may go in a spectator and come out a star!” The shoe ran from 1988 until 1994.

Meanwhile, the Florida version was an up-charge experience where guests could dress in costumes and be filmed in front of a blue screen. Said footage would then be edited into a 10-minute film featuring other footage from the Star Trek franchise. The short film could be purchased as a VHS tape souvenir. However, both of these Universal shows paled in comparison to Star Trek’s longest-running — and most influential — themed experience.

Star Trek: The Experience opened at the then-Las Vegas Hilton (now the WestGate Las Vegas) in 1998. The theme-park level installation recreated the world of the Star Trek with a level of detail uncommon at the time.

The headline of Star Trek: The Experience was a combined live-action/simulator ride experience that beamed guests onto a full recreation of the bridge of the Enterprise before a live crew member leads them to the ship’s shuttle bay, where they board a shuttlecraft to battle the Klingons, all of which is very reminiscent of Rise of the Resistance. The experience also features filmed content with most of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In addition to the above, which came to be known as the Klingon Encounter, the Experience featured a History of the Future Museum that was an in-universe display of props and other Star Trek ephemera, and a full-scale recreation of Quark’s bar from Deep Space Nine. The restaurant allowed guests to dine in a fully realized replication of an environment from the series, and eat theme food and drinks, very much in-line with the type of themed dining often seen in modern IP-based lands.

The Experience was enough of a success that a second ride – – Borg Invasion 4-D, featuring characters and sets from Star Trek: Voyager – – was added in 2004. However, the financial crisis, as well as the corporate machinations of Paramount selling its theme park business to Ceder Fair (oddly, during the period when Paramount owned several theme parks, they did little with the Star Trek IP out of some ill-conceived ice-shows… really), led to the closure of the Las Vegas attraction in 2008.

In the near 20 years since Star Trek has been almost completely absent from theme parks. The only exception being a coaster and small surrounding area in Movie Park, a theme park located in Bottrop, Germany. The coaster, entitled Star Trek: Operation Enterprise, a loosely-themed steel launch coaster. According to the park, “As a freshly trained Starfleet cadet, it’s up to you to rescue the U.S.S. Enterprise. Afterward, you can get beamed directly into the neighboring Star Trek Store to find a perfect souvenir of your exciting outer space adventure.

Outside of that, the property is nowhere to be found in a theme park, for reasons that somewhat mystify me. It has the staying power, it has the fanbase, and it has a litany of environments that are ripe for rides, and immersive attractions. Licensing issues with Paramount would seem to be the only realistic issue, though the studio has worked with theme parks to license other properties.

There is a new hope (whoops, wrong franchise) on the horizon however. In 2025 it was announced that Star Trek would be one of the franchises offered as part of Universal Hollywood’s new FanFest Nights.

Entitled Star Trek: Red Alert, the experience is described by Universal as “an out-of-this-world adventure aboard the legendary starship U.S.S. Enterprise-D as a mysterious entity wreaks havoc through the ship’s systems!” Guests will be able to take a “daring walkthrough experience featuring many familiar locations from the legendary franchise including the iconic Bridge—a screen-used set piece from the Paramount+ original series Star Trek: Picard.”

In addition, the Star Trek area will offer Quark’s Cafe with “special themed food such as the Tribble Truffle Trio and refreshing worldly drinks” and the 10 Forward Bar where guests can “indulge on specially crafted drinks such as the Ceti Eel Margarita.”

It remains to be seen if this FanFest offering is the first part of a longer Paramount/Universal relationship when it comes to Star Trek or simply a one-off offering, but I’m certainly hoping it’s the former, as Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic final frontier would be a perfect fit in the modern age of IP-based theme park design. Stay tuned to AllEars for more thoughts on the theme park industry.

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Would you like to see Star Trek come to a major theme park? Let us know in the comments below.

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