Expansion Continues
There’s no denying that the three new lands added to Hong Kong Disneyland were enough to jump-start the young park with the vitality it needed. Mystic Point and Grizzly Gulch, particularly, infused new optimism and vibrancy into a park that otherwise would’ve been doomed to be a third rate Disneyland forever. They also upped the park’s ride count, raising its once-laughable line-up to a pretty respectable standing in our Countdown of Disney and Universal’s Park by Ride Counts.
Here’s the problem: just as Mystic Point opened as the third piece of the puzzle, Disney was hard at work on their next big project: Shanghai Disneyland. A second park in China (granted, Hong Kong and mainland China operate in very different ways), the Shanghai park wasn’t just going to be another Disneyland; it was going to be a better Disneyland.
Image: Disney
Shanghai Disneyland reportedly cost nearly $6 billion (about the same as DisneySea, adjusted for inflation) and aggressively reimagined what a Disneyland-style park could be. The mainland park did away with Adventureland and Frontierland entirely, replacing them with original lands Adventure Isle and Treasure Cove. There’s no Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, or Splash Mountain here, but unlike the budget-crunched Hong Kong, they were replaced with even more ambitious rides like the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run, Roaring Rapids, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure.
In fact, in our In-Depth: Shanghai Disneyland walkthrough, we marveled at the incredible, original attractions devised for the park and celebrated its opening as an astounding step forward for Disney Imagineering.
Click and expand for a more detailed view. Image: Disney
Hong Kong Disneyland and its financiers in the Hong Kong government, meanwhile, were not celebrating…
Allegedly, they argued that the opening of Shanghai Disneyland would cannibalize the still-small Hong Kong park, turning it into even more of a flyover. The opening of Mystic Manor and Big Grizzly Mountain alone couldn’t be enough to make the park stand out among Disney’s lineup, especially with the brand-new, triumphant, cutting-edge, custom-built Shanghai Disneyland drawing from the same region.
At their insistence, Disney began to toy with another round of expansions in Hong Kong, ultimately doing what most thought to be only a wild rumor…
Image: Disney
In its next growth spurt, Hong Kong Disneyland will build an entire sub-land dedicated to Frozen within Fantasyland, construct a Moana theater in Adventureland, annex part of the park’s miniscule Tomorrowland to a new Stark Expo-stylized Marvel land, and most astonishingly...
...add onto the park’s castle (an identical clone of Disneyland’s diminutive 77-foot-tall Sleeping Beauty Castle). The new Castle of Magical Dreams will include a dedicated spire for each Disney Princess, soaring into first place as the tallest Disney Parks castle on Earth.
When Hong Kong Disneyland's second round of expansions finishes, it'll still be the smallest Disneyland-style park on Earth... but it'll also be among the most unique, with no less than four lands that no other castle park contains, and one-of-a-kind rides scattered among them.
Click and expand for a more detailed view. Image: Disney
Which brings us to the question on everyone's mind: what are your chances of seeing Mystic Manor at your local Disney Park?
Mysteries Expand
At least so far, Mystic Manor is a Hong Kong Disneyland exclusive. Allegedly, part of the agreement Disney signed with the Hong Kong government to get the expansion approved required the ride to remain exclusive to Hong Kong for a certain term: reportedly, five years from its 2013 opening.
Image: Disney
In general, Disney fans tend to like “exclusive” rides (insofar as the rides remain exclusive to their own home resort!), though here at Theme Park Tourist we try not to rally for exclusivity just for exclusivity’s sake.
But Mystic Manor is a little different. A glowing masterpiece of a ride, it’s located at – arguably – the most remote Disney Park out there, inaccessible to many if only because it has so little else at the park is worth making a special trip.
Think of it this way: if you’ve grown up at Disneyland or at Walt Disney World, you owe it to yourself to visit the other American resort given how very different they are from one another; you should go to Tokyo Disney Resort because, even though Tokyo Disneyland itself may feel very familiar with lots of rides you’ve “already seen” in the US, Tokyo DisneySea is worth the trip alone; you should go to Disneyland Paris – even if you’ve been to the original Disneyland a million times – because it’s so different in so many ways, offering rides and stories you won’t find in the US.
Image: Disney
But for many Disney fans, the incentive to get to Hong Kong Disneyland is… well… Mystic Manor. While that may change given the park’s second round of expansion, the fact remains that the single park echoes heavily of stuff you’ve “already seen,” and sure, context is everything and we can’t write Hong Kong off at all, but making a purpose-built trip difficult to defend given how small the park still is. Even if Mystic Manor is an absolute must-see, it’s hard to justify a trip to Hong Kong Disneyland as a destination in and of itself.
That’s why there’s a particular push among fans to get Disney to replicate the ride elsewhere. Before the announcement of a Star Wars land and Toy Story Land, we “armchair Imagineered” our own complete rebuild of Disney’s Hollywood Studios that we called Ideal Build-Out: “Disney Hollywoodland Park.” We imagined a version of Mystic Manor in its own mini-land, theming it to an old reclusive Hollywood starlet who’d built herself a remote estate where she’d saved the props from her global adventure films.
Image: Disney
But it wouldn’t even take all that fuss… Mystic Manor would be perfectly at home in Disney California Adventure’s Grizzly Peak, in Disneyland Paris’ Adventureland, or even in Disney’s Animal Kingdom with just a few small changes of setting.
While we might advocate for the ride's recreation in California or Florida, fans know it's just not that simple at Disney Parks today. Especially in the U.S. parks, the "Ride the Movies" mantra has evolved into living the movies. In fact, every major Disney Parks project in the works globally today is connected in some facet to Frozen, The Avengers, Pixar, Tangled, Star Wars, or classic Disney films.
And why shouldn't they be? With nearly $100 billion in brand acquisitions alone in the last two decades, Disney's not shy about using their intellectual properties wherever they can. It just means that the rare original idea – no matter how beloved by fans – would be an exception on Imagineering's line-up.
A Modern Marvel
Image: Disney
Is Mystic Manor the best ride Disney’s ever designed?
In some ways and by some qualifications, it could be. As inventive as Haunted Mansion, as adventurous as Jungle Cruise, as technologically brilliant as Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, and as perfectly storyboarded as Indiana Jones Adventure, Mystic Manor is – by all accounts – a new classic; a shining testament to what Imagineering can do when untethered by box office returns, intellectual properties, and budget cuts.
Now, we want to hear from you. In the comments below, tell us what you think of Mystic Manor. Does this ride really stand among the best of Disney – classic and modern? Have you had the chance to ride it? If not, is Mystic Manor on your “bucket list?” How, where, and – for that matter – should this exciting S.E.A. adventure find its way to the states?
Comments
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