Each year, we ask Orange County Register readers to choose their favorite places to shop, dine, play and do business in OC.
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Here are the top picks for Best theme park ride:
1. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
Disneyland
Rise of the Resistance retains the top spot for a third year in a row and has finished first four of the past five years. The epic dark ride debuted in 2019 in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland.
Of course, Best of Orange County readers aren’t the only ones to shower the ambitious, first-of-its-kind attraction with accolades. The Themed Entertainment Association gave it the Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement — the theme park equivalent of an Academy Award — in 2020 while readers of Theme Park Insider have named Rise of the Resistance the world’s best theme park attraction every year from 2020 through 2026.
The ride’s innovative design combines four separate ride systems with state-of-the-art audio-animatronics and visual effects. The attraction’s complexity yields its only downside — it breaks down more frequently than simpler rides.
Rise of the Resistance enlists recruits to join a battle between the villainous First Order and the heroic Resistance.
The backstory for the attraction finds riders entering a dense forest where the Resistance has set up a temporary and secret military base camp outside of the Black Spire Outpost village on the Star Wars planet of Batuu, the setting for the 14-acre Galaxy’s Edge themed land.
Along the way, the recruits will be captured aboard a Star Destroyer, break out of a First Order detention cell, elude the clutches of Kylo Ren and escape back to a secret base on Batuu.
2. Pirates of the Caribbean
Disneyland
This charming boat trip into a pirate’s lair seems to be timeless after 59 years in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square. Its popularity is only enhanced by the fact that visitors get 15 minutes of cool, watery pleasure off their feet that often provides a respite from brutal heat in the park. And the hit movies starring Johnny Depp based on the ride only add to the appeal.
After an ominous warning that “Dead men tell no tales,” riders are whisked into various scenes of pirates pillaging, partying, firing cannons and at times paying the price for their larcenous pursuits. Earlier this year, Disneyland updated the ride by adding an animatronic pirate sitting atop a pile of cursed gold who transforms from a living buccaneer into a ghostly skeleton and back again as riders float past.
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Pirates of the Caribbean is the last ride that Walt Disney himself had a hand in creating, although he died before it opened in 1967, so to the most ardent Disney fans, it’s sacred ground. To tired parents everywhere, it’s a chance to cool off and rest their feet.
In 1997, the Themed Entertainment Association gave Pirates of the Caribbean its Thea Classic Award, which recognizes compelling places and experiences that have been successfully operating for at least 20 years.
3. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Disneyland
Big Thunder Mountain slides into third place stealing a spot normally occupied by Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones Adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout, Soarin’ or Incredicoaster.
The $15.8 million Big Thunder Mountain Railroad mine train roller coaster opened in 1979 in Frontierland at Disneyland.
The backstory takes riders inside a haunted 1850s gold mine set amid hoodoo rock spires resembling the landscape of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.
Versions of the Big Thunder coaster opened at the Magic Kingdom in Florida in 1980, Tokyo Disneyland in 1987 and Disneyland Paris in 1992.
The Disneyland version of the ride features a Rainbow Ridge ghost town repurposed from the Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland attraction that once occupied the Frontierland location.
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