Fantasyland

The Matterhorn opened in 1959 and changed the industry: it was the first roller coaster built on a tubular steel track, the design every modern coaster descends from. The mountain is roughly 147 feet tall, built at a hundredth the scale of the real Matterhorn, and there are two separate tracks inside it with slightly different layouts.

Peter Pan's Flight has run since opening day in 1955 and is the only Fantasyland dark ride where the vehicle hangs from an overhead rail instead of riding the floor. That single decision is why it works: you are above the scenery looking down, which is exactly the sensation the ride is selling, and it is why the London sequence still lands seventy years on.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride opened with Disneyland in 1955 and is now the only version left anywhere; Magic Kingdom's closed in 1998 and was replaced. That alone makes it worth the twelve minutes, and it is the single ride most likely to surprise a visitor who only knows the Florida parks.

This opened in 1955 as Snow White's Adventures, a ride so frightening that Disney spent decades fielding complaints about it, and it was retitled Snow White's Scary Adventures in 1983 in an attempt to warn people. In 2021 it reopened as Snow White's Enchanted Wish with new projections, new lighting, new music, and a restructured story that ends happily instead of ending on the Witch.

Alice in Wonderland opened in 1958 and exists nowhere else. It runs longer than the other Fantasyland dark rides, at around four minutes, and it is the only one that leaves the building — partway through, your caterpillar car climbs to an upper level and spirals back down an outdoor ramp shaped like a leaf, in full view of the Mad Tea Party below.

Pinocchio's Daring Journey opened in 1983 as part of the Fantasyland rebuild, which makes it the youngest of the group by nearly thirty years. It shows in the technology: better lighting, holographic effects on the Blue Fairy, and smoother scene transitions than its 1955 neighbors.

The teacups have been in Fantasyland since 1955. Each cup sits on a small turntable, which sits on a larger turntable, which sits on the main platform, and the wheel in the middle of your cup controls your own rotation. Three layers of spin, one of them entirely under your control, in about ninety seconds.

The carousel predates the park by eighty years. Its frame was built in 1875 and it operated in Canada for decades before Disney bought it, rebuilt it, and installed it at the center of Fantasyland in 1955. The horses were sourced from several antique carousels, restored, and repainted, and no two are identical.

Dumbo has flown in Fantasyland since 1955, rebuilt and relocated in the 1983 remodel. Sixteen elephants circle a center hub while each rider works a lever that raises and lowers their own vehicle, which is the entire appeal for a three-year-old and the reason the line behaves the way it does.

Casey Jr. has run since opening day and covers the same landscaped hillside as the Storybook Land Canal Boats, just from above and at three times the speed. The train is short, the grades are steep for a miniature railway, and the cresting of the first hill produces a small genuine lift.

You board a small boat, pass through the open mouth of Monstro the whale, and spend eight minutes drifting past miniature versions of homes and villages from Disney films — Cinderella's chateau, the Seven Dwarfs' cottage, Toad Hall, Agrabah, Arendelle — each built at roughly one-twelfth scale with working details and real, living, meticulously pruned plants standing in for full-size trees.

it's a small world was built for the 1964 New York World's Fair and moved to Disneyland in 1966, where Disney built it a facade rather than tucking it into a show building. That facade — white, gold-trimmed, geometric, with a clock tower that opens on the quarter hour and parades wooden figures — is the reason the Disneyland version photographs better than any of the others.

The walkthrough opened in 1957, closed in 2001, and returned in 2008. It runs up a narrow spiral stair inside Sleeping Beauty Castle past a series of dioramas — three-dimensional dollhouse-scale scenes behind glass with lighting effects, some of which use forced perspective and small mechanical elements to sell depth. It takes eight minutes at a normal pace.

Pixie Hollow sits on the path between the hub and Tomorrowland, on the site of the old Motor Boat Cruise. The path winds through oversized flowers, leaves, and blades of grass built at a scale that makes visitors read as fairy-sized in photos, and ends at a meeting area where you meet Tinker Bell and, depending on the day, one or two of the other fairies.

The Royal Theatre is the small covered stage at Fantasy Faire, between the hub and Fantasyland, where a rotating pair of shows retells a Disney story in about twenty-two minutes. The storytelling is handled by two hosts — a pompous one and a long-suffering one — who work the crowd, ad-lib heavily, and hand most of the actual plot to a princess and a few props.

Royal Hall is the indoor half of Fantasy Faire, a small hall where three princesses hold court in adjacent alcoves. You meet all three in one pass, which makes it far more efficient than chasing individual characters around the park, and PhotoPass photographers cover each position.