I definitely see the ways in which it’s lacking certain features, but the experience of riding it is inherently fun and nostalgic.
You Disneylanders are a tough crowd! I love both resorts equally.
I have a hard time being forgiving when I know that an older iteration of an attraction has more to it than a subsequent version.
While it's true that the DLRR didn't originally open with those features, they were added in eventually. At WDW these enhancements became yet another item on the to-do list that they eventually forgot about or decided didn't matter. It could have-should have-been an easy thing to do for the 50th. Alas, nothing won out, as it tends to do.
But apart from Disney, I also visit lots of theme and amusement parks around the country. I can think of several non-Disney parks that have superior train rides to WDW, either by virtue of there being more to see or by the lack of scenery being less of a big deal when I'm not paying such exorbitant ticket prices to enter. Off the top of my head, Silver Dollar City, Dollywood, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Busch Gardens Tampa, Six Flags Over Texas, Knoebels, and Cedar Point all have more interesting railroads than Magic Kingdom.
So how does the WDWRR compare to the worst parts of the DLRR? Which for most people I assume would be from the end of Small World through the TL station. I think it’s cool we have the Grand Canyon Diorama and Primeval World but it’s probably me least favorite part of the ride unless it’s a really cold or really hot day. I prefer to be outside seeing the park.
Think of it this way: the pass through Splash Mountain is probably the best part of the WDW railroad. That's the high point and there's else nothing comparable really on the WDW route.
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There are some nice things that you don't get at Disneyland in Florida: the aforementioned pass right next to Big Thunder (though Tokyo also has this) is one, and because Magic Kingdom doesn't have a berm, you can look out onto the Seven Seas Lagoon and the Contemporary as you approach Main Street station.
But the rest of the route is basically the Adventureland portion of the DLR train ride: just trees, except unlike the DLRR you're almost never close enough to the rest of the park to see anything of interest, and you're in a swamp. No figures, no dioramas, no people on midways. Only trees. That's most of the route.
The worst part is basically the area that I and
@lazyboy97o earlier referred to-the stretch at the back of the park-where you're far removed from the park and there's nothing except trees the entire way, but even more so than the rest of the route. But then, right before you get to the Fantasyland station, you literally go under a highway-style overpass, as seen in this photo from the Passport2Dreams blog:
It's a low point that no other Disney castle park train approaches.
RE the dioramas: I love them! They add visual interest, and if they weren't there at Disneyland you'd be either looking backstage or in a long featureless tunnel, and DLR is the only park that has two dioramas! I imagine you might miss them if you were on WDW's train, which really and truly has long stretches of nothing to look at. Perhaps a situation where you don't know what you got 'til it's gone.
Here's a POV of the WDW train (pre-Tron closure) if you want to check it out and compare:
