12 Disney Parks.
How many have you visited?

Unique fact: Walt Disney's original park opened on 17 July 1955 to a chaotic preview day later dubbed "Black Sunday", counterfeit tickets, plumbing problems, and a heat wave. The park has been open every day since.

Why visit: See the park where every other Disney park's DNA was set. Walt himself worked from an apartment above the Main Street firehouse, and a light still burns there in his memory.

Unique fact: The first park at Walt Disney World, built on swampland Walt Disney secretly bought up under shell companies in the 1960s to avoid driving up prices. Cinderella Castle is a forced-perspective trick, it's only 56 m tall but appears taller.

Why visit: Walk under the train station onto Main Street USA, that "scent of vanilla" you notice is real, piped in via the bakery and the under-park "smellitzer" system. Magic Kingdom is the most-visited theme park on Earth, and you can feel why.

Unique fact: Originally Walt's vision of an "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", a real city of 20,000 residents. After his death in 1966, plans shifted to a permanent World's Fair celebrating innovation and culture.

Why visit: World Showcase's 11 country pavilions are staffed by international students from each nation, on annual cultural-exchange visas. Eat your way around the lagoon, it's the closest you can get to a passport tour without a passport.

Unique fact: At 580 acres, the largest single Disney park in the world by area. It houses about 1,700 animals across 250 species, and Disney is officially accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums for its animal care program.

Why visit: The Kilimanjaro Safaris ride goes through real African savanna habitat, the animals decide where they roam, so every trip is different. The Avatar: Flight of Passage attraction is widely considered one of the best theme park rides ever built.

Unique fact: A nautical-themed park with no equivalent anywhere else in the Disney portfolio. Cost roughly $4 billion to build, the most expensive theme park ever constructed at the time of opening.

Why visit: Routinely ranked the best theme park on Earth for theming and detail. Tower of Terror sits in a different fictional universe than the other versions worldwide. Don't miss the dusk water show in Mediterranean Harbor.

Unique fact: Originally branded "Euro Disney," the resort opened in April 1992 to a famously rocky start, rain, recession, and French cultural pushback. Within a decade, it had become Europe's most-visited paid tourist attraction.

Why visit: The Sleeping Beauty Castle is the most ornate of any Disney park, taller, pinker, and with a real animatronic dragon living in the dungeon underneath. Phantom Manor is a darker reimagining of the Haunted Mansion you won't find anywhere else.

Unique fact: Disney's newest castle park and its first in mainland China. The Enchanted Storybook Castle is the largest Disney castle ever built at 60 m, and was designed to feature all Disney princesses rather than a single one.

Why visit: TRON Lightcycle Power Run, the launched motorbike-style coaster, opened here years before Magic Kingdom got its version. Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure is a 15-minute mega-attraction with no equivalent in any other park.

Unique fact: Built on reclaimed land at Penny's Bay, the smallest Disney castle park by area at 27.4 hectares. It's a 50/50 joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and the Hong Kong government.

Why visit: The shortest entry queue of any Disney park, the Castle of Magical Dreams' redesign in 2020 made it one of the prettiest, and the views across Lantau's mountains are striking. A great first Disney park if you don't love crowds.