Theme Park Nut News Update - 21st July 2015

This weeks update is going to be 95% Disney, so just for balance, let's start off talking about Universal!

This week, Universal Orlando and Hollywood announced another maze for the upcoming Halloween Horror Nights events: Insidious: Return to the Further. If you are not familiar with the Insidious francise, the Further is sort of like a spooky smoke filled ghost dimension. It's perfect for a maze, and by the sounds of it this maze will feature elements from all 3 movies.

Now, let's get on with the Disney!

This week we saw a huge amount of detail about Shanghai Disneyland released. We finally have a clear picture of what is going to be present for opening day, and the line up looks spectacular. Particular highlights include the Tron Lightcycle, the new Pirates of the Caribbean and the Voyage to the Crystal Grotto ride inside the castle. It will be interesting how Disney's attempts to make the park feel authentically Chinese, will go. Regardless of how well it assimilates, this is a beautiful park in a huge market, so it should do well! Can't wait to see some point of views of the new rides!!

We also heard reports from Screamscape that the Star Wars Launch Bay attraction, could be soon featured at Disneyland and WDW's Hollywood Studios. These rumours suggest that we might see these attractions open before the Shanghai Parks open, which would be cool.

The big theme park news this week, is Disneyland in California had it's 60th Birthday. While diamond theme celebrations have been going on for most of the year at Disneyland resort, last friday was the actual big day for Disneyland, and by the sounds of it a huge crowd came out to celebrate it. On the whole it sounds like the event went well, except for the lack of phone/data/wifi signal in the overcrowded park. Everyone's eyes are on Disney now, as they will need to address these bandwidth issues before it imports MyMagic+.

However, let's not dwell on that, This was a day to celebrate Disney and theme parks in general. Disneyland was the first theme park, it was a new breed. It was more than an amusement park, and it's hard not to argue 60 years later that it was better than an amusement park. Although Disneyland will never be complete, and the park now looks very different to how it did in 1955, the park still has the soul that Walt (and 1000s of others) instilled in the park.

Congratulations to Disneyland on an amazing milestone. While people will argue about whether Magic Kingdom is better, or whether Universal is challenging Disney, no one can argue that Walt built something amazing. It can be duplicated, and challenged, but it certainly cannot be replaced. It's hard to imagine anyway that Disneyland won't be just as popular in 40 years time, for it's 100th birthday.

For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next week, Cheers!