4. Space Mountain

Image: Disney

Location: Magic Kingdom (1975), Disneyland (1977), Tokyo Disneyland (1983), Disneyland Paris (1995), Hong Kong Disneyland (2005)

Walt himself first began toying with the concept of a steel coaster through space to act as the headliner of the New Tomorrowland that opened in Disneyland in 1967. However, it wasn't until Magic Kingdom proved unexpectedly popular with teens that Disney moved forward with the plan.

Image: Disney

Florida ride is actually modeled closely after the Matterhorn Bobsleds, with two mirror-imaged roller coaster tracks sharing the darkened, star-projected interior of the mysterious Space Age peak.

When it was decided that Disneyland should have its own Space Mountain, the ride was reconfigured into a single-track roller coaster, which was then duplicated in Tokyo and Hong Kong in turn. Disneyland's ride was eventually rebuilt for the park's 50th Anniversary in 2005, adding new special effects, projection potential, and synchronized, on-board audio. 

Image: Disney

Since Disneyland Paris didn't have a Tomorrowland at all (replacing it with the retro-futuristic, European, literary, golden Discoveryland inspired by Jules Verne), the 1995 ride that opened there was the one-of-a-kind Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De le Terre à la Lune, a distinctly fantasy-infused adventure through the stars. In France, the ride features inversions and a breathtaking launch into the peak, though it – and the Hong Kong version of the mountain – is currently hosting a Star Wars overlay that's especially anachronistic inside of its gilded, steampunk, fantasy shell. 

(When Shanghai Disneyland opened with a very new kind of Tomorrowland, a Chinese-government-enforced moratorium on "Disney classics" found at other resorts meant Space Mountain was axed from the line-up. It was replaced with another spectacular subject of our series, Modern Marvels: TRON Lightcycle Power Run, filling Space Mountain's space literally and figuratively in the land.)

Space Mountain is so legendary, we explored the making-of and launching-of the interstellar adventure in its own feature, Modern Marvels: Space Mountain – a behind-the-scenes look just for Imagineering fans.

3. Expedition Everest

Image: Disney

Location: Disney's Animal Kingdom (2006)
Mountain: The Forbidden Mountain

When Disney's Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, it was perhaps the most ambitious Disney Park to date, featuring remarkably life-like lands: overgrown jungles, craftsman villages, lived-in African towns, collapsing Asian ruins... Packed with naturalistic animal enclosures and encounters, details that would take a century to absorb, and boundless pathways through uncharted regions... There was only one thing the park didn't have: rides. Excluding the two transportation rides, the park had only two: the headlining Kilimanjaro Safaris, and the terrifying Countdown to Extinction.

Though Disney did have plans to open a legendary land of "imagined" creatures like dragons, unicorns, and sea monsters, designers responsible for the fan-favorite Beastly Kingdom were burned by Michael Eisner's decision to scortch their project and allegedly took their business elsewhere... namely, right up the road to Universal where the land was adapted into a Lost Legend: The Lost Continent. Eventually, Disney did get their "imagined" creature with the introduction of Expedition Everest in 2006...

Image: Disney

A "Spiritual Sequel" to the Matterhorn Bobsleds, Expedition Everest is a 21st century thrill the way only Disney could do – a haunting, spiritual build-up in one of the most detailed queues ever created, leading to a forward-backward roller coaster race through the Forbidden Mountain pass – the snow-entombed home to the Himalayas' legendary and monstrous guardian, the Yeti... The ride is so spectacular and so packed with detail, it earned it own in-depth entry in our celebratory series, Modern Marvels: Expedition Everest. 

2. Journey to the Center of the Earth

Image: Disney

Location: Tokyo DisneySea (2001)
Mountain: Mount Prometheus

When Tokyo DisneySea opened in 2001 (the same year as Disney's California Adventure), it instantly became a shining beacon of what Disney can do. The nautical park – set against the real Tokyo Bay – is an absolute wonder; an icon of the "park as the E-Ticket" philosophy; the kind of theme park you could spend a day in, ride nothing, and still feel content. Breathtaking in scale, the magnificent park is simply a Mecca for Disney Parks fans (and indeed, themed entertainment design fans) from around the globe, earning top billing on most fans' bucket lists.

The park's icon is the towering, 200-foot tall Mount Prometheus, but the fire-belching mountain is more than meets the eye... The collapsed caldera of the volcano is in fact Mysterious Island, the secret hideaway of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo. And indeed, among the oxidized catwalks encircling the geothermal water of the caldera, you'll find the entrance to Tokyo's one-of-a-kind version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But the real E-Ticket is buried inside Mount Prometheus itself – a staggering dark ride based on another Verne classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Image: Disney

The ride – which re-uses the TEST TRACK technology once more – whisks guests deeper and deeper into the planet's crust, exploring scenes from the novel like endless glowing crystal caverns, underground forests of bioluminscent life, and vast subterranean oceans alight with their own storms. For most fans, though, the highlight of Journey is its finale when, diverted down a previously-unexplored lava tube – the ride comes face-to-face with enormous, dripping, glowing eggs... and the creature that laid them. The face-to-jaws encounter with a creature that tops our Countdown of the Best Animatronics on Earth is so spectacular, it stands among the greatest moments on any Disney Parks dark ride. Then, the ride accelerates to its top speed, literally racing up and bursting out of Mount Prometheus for a photo-finish.

The entire experience is enough to earn the ride its own in-depth feature, Modern Marvels: Journey to the Center of the Earth that's a must-read for Disney Parks fans.

1. AVATAR Flight of Passage

Image: Disney / Lightstorm Entertainment

Location: Disney's Animal Kingdom (2017)
Mountain: Valley of Mo'ara

While you might not consider AVATAR Flight of Passage a "mountain" ride in the traditional sense, that would be fine... because these are no traditional mountains... They float, after all. While fans vehemently and vocally objected to the 2009 film AVATAR as a candidate for permanent inclusion in its own full Disney Parks land, the 2017 opening of Pandora – The World of AVATAR seemed to assure fans that the land would work at Disney's Animal Kingdom, even if it was in spite of the intellectual property and not because of it. 

Smartly, designers severed the land from the film, outright skipping the action film's militaristic human-led assault on the planet (in search of Unobtanium) and instead set the land forward in time to the moon of Pandora long after humans' attempts to mine Pandora out of existence have been thwarted. In the land, guests play the role of thoughtful eco-tourists, visiting the verdant moon to gaze in awe at its flora and fauna, collectively rolling our eyes at some distant, anonymous ancestors who thought they ought to strip it for profit.

Image: Behind the Thrills

That's why we're invited into an old military base (cleverly being consumed by the planet's alien foliage) to participate in the time-honored, coming-of-age tradition of the native Na'vi people: a ride on the back of a Mountain Banshee.

The brilliance of the concept is a thousand-fold, but there are a few things worth celebrating: first of all, our physical bodies will remain inside the military base, with our mind simply being linked to an "avatar" doing the riding. That explains the industrial set-up, our mounting of an obviously-mechanical device, and the necessary 3-D glasses.

Image: Disney / Lightstorm Entertainment

But once the real world falls away, Flight of Passage becomes – to not say too much of the experience that many have yet to see firsthand – one of the most joyful, surprising, and moving experiences Disney has ever Imagineered. Elevated instantly among the ranks Modern Marvels: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Mystic Manor, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, Indiana Jones Adventure, or TRON Lightcycle Power Run, the ride is a perfect, inimitable blend of technology, fun, story, and heart.

Is AVATAR Flight of Passage the best theme park ride on Earth? For some people, it may be. Could some of our infatuation be a result of its "new car smell?" Perhaps. But it's fair to imagine that – among the literal mountain range Disney's built across the planet, the floating mountains of Mo'ara house the most striking E-Ticket housed in a Disney peak in decades, and if this countdown tells you anything, it should be that that is truly saying something.

While these phenomenal starring mountains may forever be tied to Disney Parks, did you know that there's a full range of peaks that never came to be? Some of Disney's most stunning E-Ticket "mountains" were cancelled before they were built, and we dive into their stories in Possibilityland: 10 Never-Built Disney Mountains that's a great next place to visit. Make the jump and check it out.

Taking a look at our countdown of the best Disney "mountain" E-Tickets, do you agree with our list? Did we get this list entirely backwards, or worse? Which Disney "mountains" belong in last and first place? Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments below!