February 2025 marks a huge bucket list I can check off: I’ve visited every Disney theme park on the planet! In case you don’t know, they are the following:
- Disneyland (the OG, in Anaheim, California)
- California Adventure
- Magic Kingdom (in Florida)
- Animal Kingdom (in Florida)
- EPCOT (in Florida)
- Hollywood Studios (in Florida)
- Paris Disneyland
- Walt Disney Studios (in Paris)
- Shanghai Disneyland
- Tokyo Disneyland
- Tokyo DisneySea
- and Hong Kong Disneyland
Some people have asked me to rank my favorites. It’s tough. Several of them have special places in my heart. I would say it’s a tie between the original Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea.
Disneyland will always be my “home park”, the one I grew up going to. I have hundreds of precious memories from there, which color my entire experience of the park… even if there are some serious issues with Disneyland 2025.
But Tokyo DisneySea is such a gem of a theme park, combining nostalgia and cutting edge technology, all delivered in a way that only the Japanese can. You can see the love, care, and meticulous attention to detail in every inch of the park. And my experience there can not be separated from the thousands of local park guests and what they bring to the experience. The Japanese just love DisneySea and Disneyland, from the smallest child to elderly visitors I see in the parks.
EPCOT is a close third, as one that has captured my imagination from my earliest years. As a scifi geek, the idea of the “Experimental Protocol Community of Tomorrow” hit me hard. From the nerdy science area to the world pavillion, I was in love with it all.
