Why does this website exist?

ParkHopping.com is over 22 years old. I registered this domain on January 1, 2004. New years day? Really? That seems weird, but that is what the WHOIS record says…

This domain was registered in 2004.

I always think of my original DisneyFans.com site as much older than ParkHopping.com, but it was only registered four years earlier in 2000.

DisneyFans.com started as a section in my personal home pages in 1995, then moved to a domain name in 2000.

The GeoPages Years (1995-1996)

www.geopages.com/SiliconValley/1842

However, my original site started in 1995 as a part of my “personal home page” at GeoPages.com. GeoPages, which was later renamed to GeoCities.com, offered a whopping 512K (if memory serves) of web page storage free! This, and a few similar free web hosting sites, were how quite a few of the “now ancient” theme park sites started (though few of us are still around, it seems).

I called my website “Al’s Place“. It contained sections for my local Iowa amusement park (“Al’s Adventureland InfoPages”), a section for the U.S. Disney parks, as well other sections for various hobbies and interests (such as laser tag).

Time Machine: The Internet Archive has a copy of that site, but the earliest copy they have is from January 1999:

https://web.archive.org/web/19990202065140/http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/1842

In 1996 I bought my first digital camera – an Epson PhotoPC. This let me take up to 16 “high resolution” 640 x 480 photos, or 32 at 320 x 240. At 55K (or so) per image, there was no way I could host very many photos on my free GeoCities site. Instead, at night I ran an FTP server on my laptop. Folks could dial in to the internet and “surf” to my laptop via a link on my personal home page and then download the photos I took from my trips… slowly…

Ah, current edge technology.

The Delphi Years (1997-1998)

people.delphi.com/os9al

At some point, GeoCities went away and I moved my site Delphi.com. Delphi started out in the 1980s — long before there even was a World Wide Web. It was a dial-up text service, similar to CompuServe or General Electric’s GEnie.

Side Note: GEnie was the first national text service I was on back in the late 1980s. It was through the GEnie Destination Florida RoundTable (messages, files and chat) section, which had a Walt Disney World and Disneyland section, that I learned about the coming Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. While I went on many many summer vacations to Disney World with my family (starting in the early 1970s), I had not been to Disneyland since Big Thunder Mountain was brand new. (Or maybe it was Space Mountain, and I saw Big Thunder in Florida for the first time.)

Time Machine: The Internet Archive has a copy of my Delphi site, and goes back to 1997 (with a 1996 copyright). This tells me I probably only spent two years at GeoPages/GeoCities:

https://web.archive.org/web/19970303031312/http://people.delphi.com:80/os9al/

The Simplenet Years (1998-1999)

disneyparks.simplenet.com

After buying an expensive memory upgrade for my camera that let me take up to 99 640 x 480 images, my photo gallery really began to grow. I realized I would have to pay for a hosting service to properly share my photos. That service ended up being an “unlimited” hosting provider known as Simplenet. I created a new site called “Al’s Media Archive Site.” Thanks to “unlimited” storage, I was able to share my entire gallery of thousands of theme park photos for the first time. I kept my Delphi site around for my non-theme park content.

Welcome to the temporary index page for the all new Al’s Place photo archive site. Here you will find over SEVEN THOUSAND digital photographs taken at theme parks and other amusement places such as Disneyland, Walt Disney World (Epcot Center, The Magic Kingdom, Disney/MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom), Universal Studios Florida, Six Flags Over Georgia, Paramount’s Great America, Kennywood (Pittsburgh, PA), Winchester Mystery House (San Jose, CA), Adventureland (Des Moines, IA), Various Renaissance Festivals (Iowa & Kansas), Color Computer Fests, …and more!

At some point, Yahoo! (if I recall correctly) purchased Simplenet and removed the unlimited hosting plans. This would make it cost prohibitive for me to share my galleries there. I needed a new hosting provider, and I would finally register my own domain name.

The StG Net Years (2000-200X)

April 23, 2000 – My photo archives are now hosted at www.DisneyFans.com and my renaissance festival pictures can be found at www.AtTheFaire.com. Please visit these sites and add them to your bookmark list.

A Letter from the Webmaster…

In the past few years I have been happy to share my photo album with many of you. Simplenet has served me very, very well and I cannot thank them enough for being a great high-performance, low cost web space provider. I have absolutely zero complaints about them and would recommend them in an instant.

I now find it time to move on to the next phase of things, and thus my photos have migrated to the new DisneyFans.com domain (with my renaissance festival pictures being hosted by AtTheFaire.com). I hope you will take a moment to visit these two sites and let us know what you think. Both are still under construction, but all the photos are uploaded and in-tact (or at least they seem to be — I haven’t verified all 11,000 of them myself).

Thanks so much for visiting! If you have any questions or comments about this, feel free to e-mail me. See you real soon! — Allen

This is where a friend I knew from my Radio Shack Color Computer days, Scott G., helped out. He had a dedicated server machine hooked to the Internet and was providing “unlimited” hosting plans for $7/month. I moved my website over to his server and registered the domain name DisneyFans.com. This is where I first became a web host provider, reselling accounts on his server. At its peak, I hosted dozens of Disney fan sites for others. I chose the name DisneyFans with the idea that people could be things like “hauntedmansion.disneyfans.com” and such. Buying a domain name was quite expensive in the early days ($75/year, which adjusted for inflation today would be … more), so offering subdomains made it much more affordable for folks.

Unrelated to this site, a few months after registering DisneyFans.com I also registered a similar site dedicated for digital photos and news from Midwest Renaissance festivals. Using the domain name for that site, I must have hosted close to 200 sites for merchants, performers and even a dozen or so festival webpages. (Though my Renaissance festival partner in crime, Lindsy, did most of the web design, and I just handled the technical stuff.)

Today, I no longer offer this service publicly, but still host over 70 websites. (As of this writing, I am scaling that operation way back, with a goal of having less than 50 active accounts. Hosting fees have been going up the past few years.)

But I digress…

And the Rest (200X-2009, 2009-current)

As some point, I moved to a commercial webhosting provider and spent some good years with them before they became bad years and I had to move everything to yet another commercial hosting provider.

Which brings us up to “modern” times…

Even though ParkHopping.com came into existence just a few years after DisneyFans.com, it was basically just a placeholder until I put up a WordPress blog in 2017 for one special purpose…

And a year later, I decided to start posting retro photo essays. I began going through my oldest digital photos and creating small blog posts discussing what things were like in the parks back in the 90s.

And this leads me to the topic of this post: why does this site exist?

Why does this site exist?

In the early years of the World Wide Web, most folks didn’t have computers. And of those that did have computers, most of them did not have a telephone modem to let them dial in to the Internet. And those that did have modems mostly used services like America Online (AOL), which were graphical national networks that basically killed off all the text services like Delphi and CompuServe. (Anyone remember PC-Link? MSN? AppleLink? Prodigy?)

All of the fan websites back then started out as personal home pages or subdomains. Those that survived eventually registered domain names when they got affordable. I got my first domain name by using a service called GANDI out of France to register my domains for about $12.

Once domains got cheap, we saw a bunch of sites all using “Disney” in their domain name. (Keep in mind, my website predates The Disney Company from having their own website! While Disney had the domain name for Internet use back in 1990, they didn’t put up an official Disney website until 1996!)

Once Disney joined the World Wide Web, they initially left the fan sites alone. But, in the early 2000s, Disneyland (and maybe Disney World too?) reportedly was not inviting any web site with “Disney” in the name to any special press events. This caused many fan sites to rebrand and reregister. This may be why we ended up with sites using Disney-adjacent names such as Laughing Place, Mouse Planet and MiceAge.

For me, ParkHopping.com was my “I better stop using Disney in my domain name” domain name. I had fully planned to migrate my entire site over to that new domain and be free and clear from any problems from The Mouse.

But … I never got around to it, and Disney never asked me to stop using DisneyFans.com

And now you know why this site exists.

It is amazing to think it all started 31 years ago (yipes!) with a free personal home page.

To be continued…?

Disney/Universal ride counts…

As of March 1, 2026…

In the past, it was well-known that the two Disneyland Resort parks (Disneyland and Disney California Adventure) had about as many attractions as all four Walt Disney World parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom). I was curious how things stand today with so many ride closures at Walt Disney World. I was also curious to see where Universal Epic Universe stands in the mix, since the overwhelming opinion I read online is that this new park has far too few rides.

I will dive into this more later, but for now, I refer only to rides with a vehicle you get in that moves — such as a roller coaster, or even a motion simulator. Later, I may do a follow-up post about non-ride attractions such as stage shows, parades and fireworks.

I also did not count double-rides, such as the two Dumbos at Magic Kingdom (it is the same ride, just increased capacity). I also wonder if I should count two-track rides when they are even slightly different – such as the two tracks of Matterhorn Bobsleds (quite different) or Magic Kingdom’s Space Mountain (slightly different though in opposite directions). Universal’s Stardust Racers also has two tracks, but I have not checked to see how different they are. Should these be counted? I think probably, since someone who likes coasters would want to ride both tracks. But for now, that is not included in the totals.

Please let me know if I missed any. I will place the ride data at the end of this article.

Here is my quick count, from most to least actual “rides”:

  • Disneyland – 36
  • Magic Kingdom – 22
  • Disney California Adventure – 18
  • Islands of Adventure – 18
  • Universal Studios Florida – 13
  • Epcot – 12
  • Epic Univesse – 11
  • Disney Hollywood Studios – 9
  • Disney’s Animal Kingdom – 6

Looking at resorts, this breaks down to:

  • Disneyland Resort – 54
  • Walt Disney World – 49
  • Universal Orlando Resort – 42

Yes, Virginia, you could ride more things at the two small parks in Disneyland than all The Walt Disney World parks, or at all three Universal Orlando parks.

Some of you (mostly fans of Disneyland) are aware of this.

For the rest of you, if you like rides, would you consider visiting Disneyland instead of Walt Disney World?

More to come, including a breakdown (and verification) of these numbers…

NOTE: For the pedantic/OCD types out there, some of the names in this list are not the official names. For example, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run is just listed as Smugglers Run. I am happy to correct them if you bring them to my attention. (And I see at least one that has changed names since the name I was familiar with, so I need to fix that one at some point, too.)

Rides at Disneyland

  1. Alice in Wonderland
  2. Astro Orbiter
  3. Autopia
  4. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
  5. Buzz Lightyear
  6. Car Toon Spin
  7. Casey Jr. Circus Train
  8. Davy Crocket Canoes
  9. Disneyland Railroad
  10. Dumbo
  11. Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
  12. Gadget’s Go Coaster
  13. Haunted Mansion
  14. Indiana Jones Adventure
  15. It’s a Small World
  16. Jungle Cruise
  17. King Arthurs Carousel
  18. Mad Tea Party
  19. Main Street Vehicles
  20. Mark Twain Riverboat
  21. Matterhorn Bobsleds (x2)
  22. Monorail
  23. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
  24. Peter Pan’s Flight
  25. Pinnocchio’s Daring Journey
  26. Pirates of Caribbean
  27. Rise of the Resistance
  28. Runaway Railway
  29. Sailing SHip Columbia
  30. Smuggler’s Run
  31. Snow White’s Happy Time Adventure
  32. Space Mountain
  33. Star Tours
  34. Storybookland Canal Boats
  35. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
  36. Winnie the Pooh

Rides at The Magic Kingdom

  1. Astro Orbitor
  2. Barnstormer
  3. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
  4. Buzz Lightyear
  5. Carousel
  6. Disney World Railroad
  7. Dumbo (x2)
  8. Haunted Mansion
  9. It’s a Small World
  10. Jungle Cruise
  11. Mad Tea Party
  12. Magic Carpets
  13. Peoplemover
  14. Peter Pan’s Flight
  15. Pirates of the Caribbean
  16. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
  17. Space Mountain (x2)
  18. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
  19. Tomorrowland Speedway
  20. TRON Lightcycle Run
  21. Under the Sea
  22. Winnie the Pooh

Rides at Disney California Adventure

  1. Critter Carousel
  2. Emotional Whirlwind
  3. Golden Zephyr
  4. Goofy’s Sky School
  5. Grizzly River Run
  6. Incredicoaster
  7. Jumpin’ Jellyfish
  8. Junkyard Jamboree
  9. Littler Mermaid
  10. Luigi’s Rollikin’ Roadsters
  11. Midway Mania
  12. Mission: Breakout
  13. Monsters Inc
  14. Pal-A-Round
  15. Radiator Springs Racers
  16. Silly Symphony
  17. Soarin’
  18. Web Slingers

Rides at Universal Islands of Adventure

  1. Accelatron
  2. Bilge-Rat Barges
  3. Caro-Seuss-el
  4. Cat in the Hat
  5. Dr. Doom’s Fearfall
  6. Forbidden Journey
  7. Hagrid’s Motorbike
  8. Hippogriff
  9. Hogwarts Express
  10. Incredible Hulk
  11. One Fish, Two Fish
  12. Pteranodon Flyers
  13. Ripsaw Falls
  14. River Adventure
  15. Skull Island
  16. Spider-Man
  17. Trolley Train
  18. VelociCoaster

Rides at Universal Studios Florida

  1. E.T.
  2. Escape from Gringotts
  3. Fast and Furious
  4. Hogwarts Express
  5. Men in Black
  6. Minon Blast
  7. Minon Mayhem
  8. Race Through NY
  9. Revenge of the Mummy
  10. Simpsons Ride
  11. Transformers
  12. Trollercoaster
  13. Twirl ‘n’ Hurl

Rides at Epcot

  1. Cosmic Rewind
  2. Friendship Boats
  3. Frozen Ever After
  4. Gran Fiesta Tour
  5. Journey into Imagination
  6. Living with the Land
  7. Mission: Space
  8. Ratatoullie
  9. Soarin’
  10. Spaceship Earth
  11. Test Track
  12. The Seas

Rides at Universal Epic Universe

  1. Battle at the Ministry
  2. Constellation Carousel
  3. Curse of the Werewolf
  4. Dragon Racer’s Rally
  5. Fyre Drill
  6. Hiccup’s Wing Gliders
  7. Mario Kart
  8. Mine-Cart Madness
  9. Monsters Unchained
  10. Stardust Racers (x2)
  11. Yoshi’s Adventure

Rides at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

  1. Alien Swirling Saucers
  2. Rise of the Resistence
  3. Rock n Rollercoaster
  4. Runaway Railway
  5. Slinky Dog Dash
  6. Smugglers Run
  7. Star Tours
  8. Tower of Terror
  9. Toy Story Mania

What did I miss? Please let me know in the comments.

New Epic Universe and SeaWorld photos

I have finally had time to update the photo galleries. New photos have been added to the Universal/SeaWorld gallery including:

  • Universal Epic Universe
  • Universal Studios Florida – Mardi Gras celebration.
  • Islands of Adventure
  • SeaWorld Orlando – Seven Seas food festival.

I have also spent some time regenerating all the other galleries to shut off that annoying “cookie” pop-up, as well as updating the main page banner with links to the other galleries.

You can find them all here:

To be continued… My hosting lease is increasing prices again, so I may need to scale back these huge sites at some point later this year.

Truth Traveller in Branson, MO and more photos

Another small batch of photos has been added the the Misc. gallery. These include images from the new VR experience Truth Traveller, plus restaurants like Steamy Joe Cafe, Hidden Pines, and more.

https://misc.disneyfans.com/OtherPlaces/Missouri/Branson/Branson2025/index.html

Happy holidays!

Wild West World in Kansas

My Park Hopping Podcast sign-off was usually some variation of this…

“So the next time you’re there, be sure to take an extra picture and shoot some extra video because you never know when something you like, love or hate will go away and never be around again…”

Over the decades, there have been many things I decided to skip during a visit that ended up being shut down or removed by the time I made a return visit.

But I never expected it would be an entire amusement park.

In May 2007, we make a road trip to visit the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival. On Sunday afternoon, we headed back on the eight hour drive home. I was aware of the new Wild West World amusement park opening in Kansas, and we considered making a detour to go see it. Due to the long drive home, it would have had to be a short visit so we decided to skip it this time and come back to see it later.

Later never happened. Wild West World closed less than two months after it opened. Here is the Wikipedia entry for the park:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_World

This has been one of my regrets. It would have been a visit to an amusement park that few people know about, and even fewer people ever got to see.

Here is the flyer for the park:

If you have ever been to Iowa’s Aventureland, you may spot something familiar. Wild West World used a photo of Adventureland’s River Rapids log flume ride (with the logo replaced) and a photo of Adventureland’s Sidewinder ride. I think the tea cups ride may even be from Adventureland.

When I first picked up this flyer, I recall contacting Adventureland to ask about it. They were aware, and had given permission for this new park to use some photos from Adventureland. Nice.

I am posting this for the search engines… Did you get to visit Will West Park during the two months it was open? Leave a comment and let us know.

Until next time…

Did Disney’s The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights end up at Silver Dollar City?

During a visit to the Orlando area, we were chatting with a server at a restaurant and mentioned we had been to Silver Dollar City in Missouri. Across the room, a bartender perked up and ran over to join in to the conversation. He had grown up in Arkansas, and had visited Silver Dollar City many times growing up in the area.

One of the things he mentioned was that the Disney World The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights had moved to Silver Dollar City after it was shut down at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (formerly known as Disney/MGM Studios). He said there were photos online showing displays installed at Disney, then later at Silver Dollar City, matching up.

Could this be true? Casual searching does not reveal any confirmation of this, but Disney usually ensures that anything they once had (such as the MaliBoomer drop tower in California) is not to be promoted as an “ex-Disney” attraction when it is installed elsewhere. I would assume the same would go for a light display.

Silver Dollar City began their Old Time Christmas event in 1988. If A.I. results are to be believed (ahem), it was in the 2010s that the park added 1.5 million lights to the event:

2010s: Introduction of the massive five-story special effects Christmas tree and the Christmas in Midtown expansion, which alone added 1.5 million lights.

Bing Copilot

Today, they boast over 6.5 million lights.

So when did they jump to that number?

Silver Dollar City’s “An Old Time Christmas” festival expanded from 1.5 million lights to 6.5 million lights in 2017 with the debut of the Christmas in Midtown Light Spectacular. This was the park’s largest single lighting expansion in two decades, adding 1.5 million new lights to towering structures and tunnels, which brought the total across the park to 6.5 million.

Bing Copilot, reference Missouri Magazine

2017 is an interesting year. The last year the Osbourne lights were on display at Walt Disney World was … 2015 (though, they run Christmas through early January, so technically 2016 for you nitpickers).

So after the 2015 season, Disney took the lights down and prepared for construction of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

Two years later, in 2017, Silver Dollar City added millions of lights to their display.

And this, my friends, is how rumors get started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Osborne_Family_Spectacle_of_Dancing_Lights

For those of you too FULL OF FEAR, one last chance to EXIT HERE.

Is this door still labeled as such inside Walt Disney World’s Haunted Mansion? I just read a reference that said “it used to be” labeled like this.

I believe this exists outside to this door:

…but in all my years visiting the park and riding Haunted Mansion (starting as a tot around 1974 or so), I have never taken the chicken exit to see it for myself 😉

My 2002 Haunted Mansion adventure game returns!

On a whim, I decided to see if one of the A.I.s could resurrect my 2002 Haunted Mansion adventure game. Back then, Java was all the rage. My game was a Java applet that ran in a web browser. Fast forward some years and Java is no longer a standard feature in web browsers…

My original work-in-progress has been translated (bugs and all) to Javascript so it can now play in a modern web browser. Check it out:

https://www.disneyfans.com/adventure/index.html

Or, if you want to see the new version I am working on now, try here:

https://www.disneyfans.com/adventure-new

I have been working on it tonight adding new commands and things that will let me build an actual game with puzzles to solve. There may be a door to unlock, and a secret to find, already… (But no “game” to win yet.)

I hope to resume work on it (many new features have already been added, thanks to partnering with a robot).

There’s no turning back now…

Wizard of Oz at The Sphere is Las Vegas

Wizard of Oz at The Sphere in Las Vegas is an interesting attraction. It would fit right at home with classic Disneyland/World, though on a scale you could never do inside a theme park. It was very much like one of the Disney 4-D theater attractions, except instead of a 3-D movie, you see a huge surrounding dome image and “real” theater effects. There is wind, blowing “leaves” (paper), falling (foam) apples, flying monkeys (yep, a really cool drone thing) as well as some huge butterflies that fly around during one of the sequences. Add to that fog and fire and lighting effects and you have something far beyond just seeing an old movie upscaled and “special edition-ed” to fit a dome screen.

And, the seats also vibrate.

One real clever thing they do is project this on the dome as you are entering the theater:

The Sphere – Las Vegas

I wish I had not already know about this. The transition from what appears to be a stage with a curtain and speakers hanging around to this…

The Sphere – Las Vegas

…us truly a “wow” moment.

When I get some time, I will write up some thoughts about it from a theme park perspective. It was quite the unique experience.

More to come…

Discovery Cove photos added…and more.

A batch of photos from Discovery Cove have been sorted and added to the Universal/SeaWorld gallery:

https://us-sw.disneyfans.com

While I was there, I found some Disney Skyliner photos I never added to the Walt Disney World gallery:

https://wdw.disneyfans.com

I had completely forgot that while we were in town last year, we took a ride share over to one of the resorts and then explored the Skyliner routes. (Probably the “cheapest” day to spend in Orlando, if you don’t stop and buy food and drink while visiting them 😉

I am still going through the VR360 footage and uploading it to my Park Hopping in VR YouTube Channel as time permits:

https://www.youtube.com/@ParkHoppingInVR

There are a few nighttime ones taken at Universal Epic Universe in the Dark Universe area of the park. They are pretty cool to watch, even if the low-light quality is pretty poor. It is a much more accurate way to “see” what it is like in that immersive area compared to photos.

I also have a similar on walking through the portal (green pipe) to Super Nintendo World all the way to the entrance to Donkey Kong Country. These, and more, will be showing up soon-ish.

Meanwhile, my submission to Google Street View of the walking path from Stella Nova Resort to the entrance of Universal Epic Universe has been processing for 11 days so far. While it is promising that it did not get rejected the first day, as often is the case (gaps in the GPS signal being the usual suspect), it is bothersome that it is taking this long. I am now bracing for some new error telling me to try again.

More to come, I am sure.