Shanghai Disneyland expansion
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Wow, sounds interesting! Really hope it's still opening this year.

Invitations are being sent out for a "Creative Preview" of the upcoming Zootopia area, which will take place on September 5.

Source: http://xhslink.com/YSjgyt

I'm curious too about the opening date. Does anyone know something about that? I will be visiting Hong Kong and Shanghai in December, all the way from Spain So it would be amazing to see Frozen land in Hong Kong and Zootopia in Shanghai!

Any guesses on if this still opens this year? Planning a trip to Shanghai in December and hoping we can see this, but no official updates since July 2022 doesn't bode super well. Especially since they're not shy at promoting the Frozen construction in Hong Kong.

Anyway it's academic at this point I suppose, it's not like they will expand the land just to add something as basic as a carousel. If the one ride they do have proves a massive hit, maybe they will build something else, a C or D ticket, to absorb part of the traffic into the land. That's one of the things Animal Kingdom got right with the Pandora land; Flight of Passage is obviously the big hitter but a good number of people, who might not have researched the park as thoroughly, get diverted into Na'vi River Journey. FoP queues are already enormous, imagine if the land didn't have a second ride. (It has to be said, though, that River is so short that people are out again in a flash.)

Originally Posted by Guest

Not necessarily, since cities can and do have simple flat rides in playgrounds/parks. Of course ideally I would want a second fully-themed E-ticket but assuming budgets are the constraint, then something simple and lightly-themed will have to do. It could be as easy as a carousel with Zootopia animals.

I agree that they can make "auto-themed" flat rides that are technically still "immersive," e.g., Dino-Rama at Disney's Animal Kingdom being themed as a carnival, but IMHO that usually comes across as a transparent retroactive rationalization to install inexpensive amusement park rides in a themed environment (or, worse, the backstory isn't obvious to guests, who thus interpret it simply as a non-immersive amusement park within a theme park, e.g., Dino-Rama again).

That said, something like what you suggested - a carousel in a park-themed subsection - would probably be among the least-intrusive / most-successfully-fitting options.

Originally Posted by Guest

Not necessarily, since cities can and do have simple flat rides in playgrounds/parks. Of course ideally I would want a second fully-themed E-ticket but assuming budgets are the constraint, then something simple and lightly-themed will have to do. It could be as easy as a carousel with Zootopia animals.

Right, but wouldn't a Zootopia Carousel not have animals on it since they are animals. Would it have people? That's weird....

Not necessarily, since cities can and do have simple flat rides in playgrounds/parks. Of course ideally I would want a second fully-themed E-ticket but assuming budgets are the constraint, then something simple and lightly-themed will have to do. It could be as easy as a carousel with Zootopia animals.

Indeed, Grizzly Gulch and Super Nintendo World at USH have worked successfully... and a flat ride would break the immersion that the rest of the land seems like it's aiming to deliver (similarly to the ill-placed spinner that "breaks" Adventureland at The Magic Kingdom).

Originally Posted by Guest

It looks good, but I can't help thinking it's a waste to build a whole new land for just one ride. Why can't they throw in at least a simple spinner?

More than just the ride- a character show, dining, and retail (no different than Frozen at WDS, Nintendo at USH, Mystic Manor/Grizzly Gulch at HKDL, WaterWorld at Universal Beijing...)