6. Walt Disney Studios Park

Image: Disney

Call us unfair, but we're going to lump all of the lands at Disneyland Paris' second gate together. The most underbuilt, underfunded, and creatively starved Disney Park ever (yes, worse than 2001's California Adventure), Walt Disney Studios was a contractual obligation that obliged at the downright-worst time in Disney Parks history. Voila! We took a walk through the pathetic park in its own feature, Declassified Disaster: Walt Disney Studios Park, but imagine taking all that was wrong with Disney's Hollywood Studios and removing the attractions that helped make it right. 

In fact, the park was made of only four lands when it opened: Studio 1 (an enclosed entry modeled after Hollywood Blvd., but exclusively populated with flat facades and studio lighting rigs), Production Courtyard (offering only the park's Studio Tram Tour, even more pointless than Florida's), Production Courtyard (with a clone of Florida's Rock 'n' Roller Coaster) and Animation Courtyard (with a simple Dumbo-style spinning ride of Flying Carpets). That's it. The park was mostly made of wide open blacktop expanses and industrial "backlot" plazas of oversized attraction marquees and bland, beige studio soundstages.

Now, in the years since its opening, Disney has – of course – invested heavily in the miniscule mini-park (to the detriment of poor Disneyland Paris next door, who hasn't recieved a new E-Ticket since 1995). The addition of a small Toy Story Land helped some, and a mini-land themed to Ratatouille and featuring an anchor E-Ticket was much-needed. But Walt Disney Studios needed its own California Adventure-sized redo... and thankfully, it's on the way.

Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney

In 2018, Disney surprised everyone by revealing that Walt Disney Studios will soon undergo a floor-to-ceiling transformation, creating a lagoon encircled by World Showcase style pavilions, except that – rather than international countries  – those "pavilions" will be immersive worlds from Disney films: Marvel, Star Wars, and Frozen to start, joining Toy Story and Ratatouille. You can see the beginnings of a new model arising here, melding Disney's hit lands with an Islands-of-Adventure layout to create the next generation of what a "movie" park could be. But until that transformation is complete, Walt Disney Studios will remain – by a wide margin – the worst Disney Park on Earth.

7. Future World

Image: Disney

Location: Epcot

We mentioned at the start of this feature that if a Disney land isn't immersive, it's probably because designers didn't want it to be. That's definitely the case with Future World, one of the two realms of EPCOT Center. At least at its origin, EPCOT Center's thesis was surprisingly simple: it would be a permanent World's Fair that – like the real international expos of the century (and especially in Disney's case, decades) prior – would feature large "pavilions" with rides, shows, restaurants, and shops inside. A well-circulated antecdote story says that EPCOT Center came about when a model of a "science and industry" themed World's Fair and a "culture" themed World's Fair were pushed together, with Future World and World Showcase as the result.

Image: Disney

At its height, Future World offered nine pavilions – each dedicated to an area of industry and innovation, sponsored by a mega-corporation, almost inevitably featuring a closed classic Lost Legend, and focused on a single area of study: energy (Universe of Energy), health and medicine (Wonders of Life), transportation (World of Motion), communication (Spaceship Earth), technology (Communicore), oceans (The Living Seas), agriculture (The Land), creativity (Journey into Imagination), and the keystone to bring them all together (Horizons). 

Think of how revolutionary it was in 1982 that Disney – synonymous with castles, princesses, and pirates – had built a park entirely abstaining from Disney characters, fairy tales, or fantasy! EPCOT Center was something different entirely – something arguably grander. And maybe that was its downfall.

Image: Disney

Obviously, we know today that the groundbreaking "edutainment" pavilions of Future World have fallen, replacing conceptually-connected, epic, educational dark rides with Guardians of the Galaxy, Mission: SPACE, TEST TRACK, Nemo and Friends, Soarin', and the Imagination Institute, cutting the ties that bound them together into a larger-than-life narrative about civilization and instead becoming piecemeal parts of a seemingly aimless shift in direction without a core vision. But at its heart, Future World is unique in its unprecedented rejection of the "immersive," cinematic styling Disney Parks had been otherwise known for, opting for optimistic reality and futurism instead. 

"Here you leave today..."

From the start, Disney Parks have done things differently. Their "bread and butter" is inviting guests to step into "worlds that never were, but always will be;" cinematic scenes born of pop culture; historic, idealized, romanticized worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.

Image: Disney / Lucasfilm

But once in a while, lands diverge from Disney's strengths – sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with a Disney land failing to be "immersive." But it's interesting to see where Disney ditches its signature style... and why.

What do you think? Are some of the lands here among Disney's strongest, even though they ditch fantasy or fail to fully immerse guests into a living world? And don't forget to make the jump to our Countdown: The Most Immersive Themed Lands on Earth to see the lands we rank highest in immersion and "magic," and the immersive lands soon-to-come that may dethrone them all...