One of the undeniable facts of being a fan of Disney Parks in the last decade has been seeing an increasing number of cloned attractions coming to various Disney Parks around the world, domestic and internationally. This has been a consistent point of contention for many Disney fans on if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
So today we are going to weigh the pros and cons of this trend as it looks to expand in coming years, and what the positives and negatives are.
Pros
There are a lot of advantages to this trend for the average Disney Parks fan.
First, most Disney fans will maybe visit one Disney resort their entire lives. If you live near Walt Disney World, you will only visit Walt Disney World. If you live near Disneyland Paris, you will only visit Disneyland Paris, and so on.
Because of this, most guests are likely never to have even heard of, let alone experience many attractions Disney makes if they do not get built in their home resort. Cloning attractions gives them an entirely new audience that would not have if they were only built once.
Most Walt Disney World visitors would never get a chance to ride Tron if it weren't built in the Magic Kingdom as most of them will never make their way to Shanghai Disneyland, and this same fact goes for most cloned attractions.
It also saves on costs. The cost to develop a good Disney ride keeps skyrocketing. Building multiple of the same ride, or ride system allows Disney to spend more money on each attraction. If they didn't clone attractions then they would likely have to design fewer attractions overall.
Disney often plans on building an attraction multiple times when they are building it, and this allows them to spend more money on each expansion, as it is a lot easier to justify developing a ride that will be built in two or three Disney Parks, than one that will only be built once.
Clones have been a part of Disney Parks since before the Magic Kingdom opened, and they allow the parks to all hold some of the same special Disney magic.
Cons
While there are many pros to building rides multiple times, there are also undeniable cons as well.
If you do visit multiple Disney Parks, then having many cloned attractions can make the experience feel a bit repetitive. Having exclusive attractions is what makes it fun to visit different Disney resorts, but as most people will not get a chance to visit every Disney Park, then the parks cannot be full of all exclusives.
But this brings up another con with recently cloned attractions. Historically, clones have been at least a little different from one another. Pirates of the Caribbean at the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland are very different attractions. But Galaxy's Edge is the same in Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios. Tron will be the same in Shanghai Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom.
Pointing out differences between similar rides makes cloned attractions fun for visitors of different Disney Parks, and this is something largely disappearing from parks.
Clones also create issues when they are built at the same time, often meaning mistakes are made twice, as happened with Ariel's Undersea Adventure. It makes it so new attractions end up the same in multiple locations around the world.
My Opinion
Honestly, I think the complaints about cloned attractions are a bit overblown. Most people in the US are never going to be visiting Shanghai Disneyland just as most visitors of Shanghai Disneyland will never visit Walt Disney World. Cloned attractions allow visitors of parks around the world to get some of the best Disney Parks experiences possible.
This is not to say all new attractions should be cloned. Each Disney Park should have its own unique character and attractions, but clones are a necessary and fun part of the Disney experience.
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