Theme parks and resorts that changed their names
Theme parks around the world have changed their names over the years, from Disney’s Wild Animal Kingdom to Universal Studios Escape.
With the news of Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris changing its name to Disney Adventure World, we rounded up a list of (some of) the theme parks, resorts, attractions, and destinations that have changed their names, presented below in alphabetical order.
This list pertains to changing a name but retaining the overall experience, but does not include major transformations or outright replacements. For example, Frozen Ever After replaced Maelstrom at Epcot, but Frozen Ever After isn’t on this list because Disney did much more than simply change the title of the Maelstrom ride.
Discovery Island
Today, the area surrounding the Tree of Life at the center of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park is known as Discovery Island; however, when Animal Kingdom first opened in 1998, the area was called Safari Village.
At the time, Disney already had a Discovery Island: the island in the middle of Bay Lake near Magic Kingdom Park, mostly home to bird exhibits. That Discovery Island closed in 1999, and Disney renamed Safari Village as Discovery Island in 2000.
Disney Adventure World
Walt Disney Studios Park opened at Disneyland Paris in 2002. As part of an ongoing expansion — which will include World of Frozen — the park will become Disney Adventure World. Disney announced the change in April 2024, but did not specify a time frame for when the new name will take effect.
Disney California Adventure Park
Disneyland Park in California received a next-door neighbor when Disney’s California Adventure Park opened in 2001. Come 2010, in the middle of a multi-year re-imagining of the park, the company dropped the apostrophe “s” from the park’s name and it became Disney California Adventure from that point forward.
Disney Springs
While the Disney Springs shopping and dining district at Walt Disney World has admittedly changed significantly through the decades in what it offers and the style of its atmosphere, other parts of the district still resemble much of their original form, justifying its inclusion on this list. Its extensive changes also require a more pointed timeline.
- 1975: Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village opened.
- 1977: Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village became Walt Disney World Village.
- 1989: Walt Disney World Village became Disney Village Marketplace.
- 1989: Pleasure Island opened adjacent to Disney Village Marketplace.
- 1996 or 1997*: Disney Village Marketplace became Downtown Disney Marketplace. Together, Downtown Disney Marketplace and Pleasure Island became known as Downtown Disney.
- 1997: Downtown Disney West Side opened adjacent to Pleasure Island.
- 2015: Downtown Disney became Disney Springs, with three neighborhoods. Marketplace and West Side both dropped their Downtown Disney prefixes. Pleasure Island became The Landing.
- 2016: Town Center, a fourth Disney Springs neighborhood, opened.
*Disney’s own documentation contradicts itself on the discrepancy between 1996 and 1997 (see exhibit A, exhibit B, and exhibit C). An Orlando Sentinel article published Sept. 21, 1996 relayed the news of the Downtown Disney name, then seemingly still in the future. This may (or may not) indicate a 1996 announcement, followed by a phased, gradual adoption of the new name during the remainder of 1996 and into 1997.
Disney Village
Disney Village, the shopping and dining district at Disneyland Paris, opened in 1992 as Festival Disney. Its name changed in 1996. The area is currently in the middle of a multi-year transformation, but is expected to retain its Disney Village name.
Disneyland Paris
Today, Disneyland Paris refers to the collective property of two Disney theme parks and multiple hotels near Paris, France. The destination has gone by several names in its three decades:
- Euro Disney Resort: 1992-1994
- Disneyland Paris: 1994-2002
- Disneyland Resort Paris: 2002-2009
- Disneyland Paris: 2009-present
The theme park ubiquitous with the Disneyland Paris name is technically called Disneyland Park (the same name as its California sibling). It too began its life under a different monicker, opening as Euro Disneyland in 1992 before switching in 1994.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park
Disney changed one park’s name before it even opened. In 1995, the company announced Disney’s Wild Animal Kingdom, a fourth theme park for Walt Disney World.
The following year, Disney dropped “Wild” from the name, possibly because of its shared verbiage with Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” television show, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Today, the park’s formal name is Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park.
Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
The hotel at Walt Disney World today known as Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa opened in 1988 as Disney’s Grand Floridian Beach Resort. Disney changed the name in 1997.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Walt Disney World opened its third gate, then known as Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park, in 1989. It’s hard to trace when Disney dropped the “Theme Park” from the park’s formal title. The 1993 map still displays those words (along with the same illustration of Genie that Disney would recycle for Disney Genie+ in 2021). By 1995, the map had omitted the words “Theme Park.” In any case, the park was renamed altogether as Disney’s Hollywood Studios in 2008.
“The new name reflects how the park has grown from representing the golden age of movies to a celebration of the new entertainment that today’s Hollywood has to offer — in music, television, movies, and theater,” said Meg Crofton, then-president of Walt Disney World, in a press release quoted by the Orlando Sentinel.
The change followed a period of several years during which the park was still named Disney-MGM Studios, but Disney inexplicably referred to it as “Disney Studios” in marketing materials.
In 2015, Disney CEO Bob Iger mentioned Hollywood Studios would receive yet another name change, but that never happened.
Disney’s Old Key West Resort
The sprawling accommodations at Walt Disney World that we today know as Disney’s Old Key West Resort opened in 1991 under the name of the Disney Vacation Club Resort, as part of the launch of its titular vacation-points program.
With the program’s continued expansion to include other Disney resort hotels, the Vacation Club Resort became Disney’s Old Key West Resort in 1996.
Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort was one of the original Walt Disney World hotel offerings when the vacation destination debuted in 1971.
According to Yesterland, Disney dropped “Village” from the name in 1985; however, during a 2014/2015 makeover, the property became Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort once more.
Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter and Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside
Today, the two adjacent New Orleans-themed hotels at Walt Disney World are called Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter and Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside.
French Quarter opened first, in 1991, then simply known as Disney’s Port Orleans Resort. In 1992, its Riverside sibling opened, but at the time the addition was called Disney’s Dixie Landings Resort.
Both complexes changed titles in 2001, connected in name but still listed as two separate lodging options by Disney.
Dolly Parton’s Stampede
The chain of dinner theater attractions now known as Dolly Parton’s Stampede debuted in 1988 as Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede. In 2018, Parton shortened the name.
In a 2020 interview with Billboard, Parton said, “When they said ‘dixie’ is an offensive word, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it Stampede.’ You just do stuff not realizing, but as soon as you realize that it is a problem, you should fix it.”
Epcot
The city once envisioned by Walt Disney as an experimental prototype community of tomorrow materialized as a theme park called EPCOT Center in 1982.
As part of a slate of new attractions in 1994 — including Innoventions and “The Magical World of Barbie” — the park’s official name became Epcot ’94. Disney followed suit in 1995 with another rename to Epcot ’95. The park reverted to just Epcot (lowercase) in 1996, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
As for the all-caps punctuation of EPCOT vs. the first-letter-only Epcot, Theme Park Insider extrapolated the subject in 2023 by saying, “Disney’s preference at the moment is to style the park’s name in all caps, as EPCOT, while I have been using Epcot here on Theme Park Insider. Why? My journalism geek training was to avoid gratuitous use of capitalization in words and titles, reserving all caps for initialisms and certain acronyms where people commonly used the all caps form.”
In most cases (ha), we also write the park as “Epcot” on Attractions Magazine.
Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail
The walk-through animal exhibit within the Africa area of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park opened in April 1998 as Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail. Just three months later, Disney changed the attraction’s name to Pangani Forest Exploration Trail. Come 2016, Disney switched the trail back to its original name.
United Parks & Resorts
In recent news, SeaWorld Entertainment — a portfolio that includes several SeaWorld locations, as well as parks belonging to the Busch Gardens and Sesame Place banners — became United Parks & Resorts in February 2024.
“Our new company name, United Parks & Resorts Inc., better reflects that we have been, and will continue to be, a diverse collection of park brands and experiences,” said Marc Swanson, the company’s CEO. “What also remains unchanged is our deep commitment to creating experiences that matter for our guests and inspiring them to help protect animals and the wild wonders of the world.”
All of United’s individual parks retain their same names.
Universal Islands of Adventure
Universal’s second theme park in Orlando was originally called Universal Studios Islands of Adventure when it opened in 1999. At some point (at least by 2001), the park was known as Universal’s Islands of Adventure.
As was the case with the pesky apostrophe formerly inhabiting Disney California Adventure, in 2023, Universal subtly began dropping the apostrophe “s” from the name, the park’s title formally becoming Universal Islands of Adventure.
The change aligned with a broader corporate change of Universal Parks & Resorts becoming Universal Destinations & Experiences.
Universal Orlando Resort
Similar to the Disney Springs saga, the overall name for the Universal Orlando Resort property as a whole has continually changed in the midst of expansions and marketing experiments. Thus, a timeline is in order:
- 1990: Universal Studios Florida (one theme park) opened.
- 1997: Universal assigned a name to its overall property, Universal City Florida. In the same way that Magic Kingdom was part of Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Florida was part of Universal City Florida.
- 1998: Universal City Florida became Universal Studios Escape.
- 2000*: Universal Studios Escape became Universal Orlando Resort.
*In the same article as this news, the Orlando Sentinel said Universal Studios Florida would drop “Florida” from its name. It’s difficult to trace if this ever came to pass. In any case, the park goes by its original name today.
Walt Disney World
Famously, Walt Disney World was originally intended to simply be “Disney World.” Falling Walt Disney’s death, his brother, Roy, led the charge in lengthening the name in honor of Walt’s legacy.
Quoted by D23, Roy O. Disney once said, “Everybody knows the Ford car, but not everybody knows it was Henry Ford who started it all. It’s going to be Walt Disney World, so people will always know that this was Walt’s dream.”
Executives Talk Walt Disney Studios Name Change
Hear Disney leadership discuss the big-picture vision behind Walt Disney Studios Park becoming Disney Adventure World:
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