The 5 Most Magical Disney Castles Around The World, According To Fans

There are 12 different Disney theme parks around the world, but only half of those qualify as "castle parks." These are the parks where a fairy-tale castle serves as the centerpiece, as opposed to another eye-catching landmark like Spaceship Earth, the Chinese Theatre, or the Tree of Life (which anchor Disney World's three non-castle parks). As you enter each park, the sight of the castle draws you into the hub, where you can venture off into various lands. As of this writing, Disney's six main castles are Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland and Disneyland Paris, Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland, the Castle of Magical Dreams at Hong Kong Disneyland, and Enchanted Storybook Castle at Shanghai Disneyland.

The question is, how do those six castles rank among Disney fans? We looked to the internet to find out, drilling down into polls and rankings on fan forums, fan sites, and social media. Opinions were sourced from the kind of hardcore fans who are likely to have visited more than one castle park in different states or even countries.

If you're wondering why our tabulation of votes yielded a list with only five spots, it's because two of the castles tied for fourth place. We'll unpack our methodology for this list at the end, but for now, it's worth noting that the future opening of a seventh Disney castle park could change the order of popularity among fans. Disney is building a brand-new, state-of-the-art theme park in Abu Dhabi, with concept art showing what looks like a crystal castle at its center.

At 197 feet tall, Disney's newest all-around castle, Enchanted Storybook Castle, is also the largest it's ever built. When it opened in Shanghai in 2016, this was the first Disney castle to depart from the usual Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty theme. Shanghai Disneyland bills it as "the only Disney theme park castle dedicated to all the Princesses." That includes Tiana from "The Princess and the Frog," Merida from "Brave," Rapunzel from "Tangled," and Anna and Elsa from "Frozen." The four of them are depicted in seasonal mosaics inside the castle's Grand Rotunda, where a spiral staircase leads up to the Snow White-themed walkthrough attraction, "Once Upon a Time" Adventure.

While Enchanted Storybook Castle received the lowest number of fan votes in our tally — perhaps because it hasn't been around as long to receive as many visitors — it still has its proponents. In a fan forum poll on WDWMagic, ranking the best Disney castles, one member wrote: "I personally think that Shanghai has the best castle. It is the biggest castle of all, it has several attractions within it, including the finale of Voyage to the Crystal Grotto beneath it, and it captures classic European architecture while compromising [sic] some Chinese elements."

Voyage to the Crystal Grotto is a boat ride that runs through a cavern below the castle. On the ground level of Enchanted Storybook Castle, you can meet Disney princesses against the backdrop of an ornate castle relief sculpted out of authentic jade. The castle also offers a character dining experience, the Royal Banquet Hall, where you'll meet another Disney princess along with Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Donald and Daisy Duck, all dressed in their best royal attire.

The fan site Mickey Visit is partial to Sleeping Beauty Castle because it's "the only Disney castle that Walt Disney had a hand in designing and constructing." Walt died in 1966, five years before the Magic Kingdom opened, so he never lived to see Florida's Cinderella Castle or any of the other four castles built after it. They all dwarf Disneyland's 77-foot-tall Sleeping Beauty Castle, which is undeniably short by today's standards. However, this is the California classic that started it all back in 1955, after the mesmerizing Neuschwanstein Castle inspired Disney's Sleeping Beauty. In the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough, storybook pages and diorama windows tell the tale of Princess Aurora and the dame-turned-dragon, Maleficent.

You could visit the real European destinations that inspired Cinderella Castle, but that castle draws from a hodgepodge of influences. It doesn't visually align with any one landmark — except perhaps its own twin. That's because Tokyo Disneyland's version of Cinderella Castle is a faithful reproduction of the original one at the Magic Kingdom. The main differences are that it's shorter by 22 feet, and it holds its own walkthrough called Cinderella's Fairy Tale Hall, where you can snoop around the throne room while the princess is away.

In the WDWMagic forum poll, one fan explained why they prefer Tokyo's Cinderella Castle, saying: "Because it lacks all the ornaments they put on the Florida version, my vote for the best [castle] goes to Tokyo. I also think they did the best forced perspective on this castle to make it look bigger than it really is." The use of forced perspective in the Beast's Castle, perched atop the Magic Kingdom's Be Our Guest Restaurant, has routinely been criticized, since it leaves the castle looking small and toy-like. Tokyo Disneyland, by contrast, built a full-size, 98-foot castle to house its Beauty and the Beast ride, thereby adding to its appeal as a two-castle park.

Nestled in the mountains of Lantau Island, Hong Kong Disneyland's castle, like Tokyo's, started out as the clone of a stateside castle (in this case, California's instead of Florida's). In 2020, however, the park rebranded its Sleeping Beauty Castle as the Castle of Magical Dreams — extending it upward and taking a cue from Shanghai by dedicating it to 13 princesses and queens, including China's own Mulan. The newly erected towers and domes evoke them in what Disney Parks Blog calls "the first Disney park to have a castle built on top of a castle."

Princess Aurora's tower reaches highest, and if you look closely, you'll see that the previous Sleeping Beauty structure still forms part of the castle's visible base. Character lovers might get lucky and meet Aurora or another princess inside the Royal Reception Hall. It's the layered architecture that truly distinguishes this castle from others, however. In a fan channel countdown on YouTube, the Magic Fix ranked Hong Kong's Disney castle as the best, saying, "I think it's just the fact that they've taken something quite basic, but something very big in terms of Disney history, and they've just completely done their own thing with it."

The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique in Shanghai Disneyland's castle lets kids dress up in costume jewelry to become pint-sized royals. Let's just say that the Castle of Magical Dreams goes much harder when it comes to jewelry. It brought in real, artisanal jewelers from Hong Kong's Chow Tai Fook to operate its Enchanted Treasures shop. To celebrate the first anniversary of the castle's updated design, these jewelers created a three-foot-high, pure, 24-karat gold model of it worth over two million dollars. They've also designed gold coins and pendants that would set you back mere hundreds.

It should come as no surprise that the central landmark of the world's most-visited theme park proves popular with fans. For over 50 years, Cinderella Castle (officially, there's no apostrophe) has been beckoning families to Florida's Magic Kingdom for the Disney vacations of their dreams. Surveys suggest that nearly half those families are going into debt, and there's an argument to be made that Disney vacations are way too expensive now. However, even with the "fairytale dining dinner pricing" of $89 per adult and $54 per child, the magic of dining inside the castle at Cinderella's Royal Table hasn't worn off. If it had, it might be easier to get a reservation there (which it isn't).

With a height of 189 feet, this was the tallest Disney castle globally until Shanghai Disneyland's Enchanted Storybook Castle debuted in 2016. Originally, Cinderella Castle was built at that height to circumvent an FAA requirement that structures 190 feet or taller display aircraft warning lights. The requirement was later changed to 200 feet, which is why other Disney World landmarks like Expedition Everest and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror top out at 199 feet.

Today, Florida's only no-fly zone is over Disney World, so your best bet for seeing Cinderella Castle is from the ground. Even if you don't dine in the castle and meet Cinderella herself, you can still walk through its breezeway and admire the mosaic murals depicting her story. At night, the best spots to watch the Magic Kingdom's fireworks will allow you to see projection mapping on the castle, too.

One of the most unexpected things about Disneyland Paris might be how well-regarded its castle is in the fan community. After all, Disney didn't initially have success when it expanded beyond the U.S. and Japan to Europe with the opening of its first Paris theme park back in 1992. Then known as Euro Disney, the park lost almost a billion dollars in its first full year of operation, which happened to coincide with a recession. Its name soon became a byword for financial failure, serving as a punchline on late-night talk shows like "The Late Show with David Letterman."

Despite that, one thing the park has always had going for it is its elegant rendition of Sleeping Beauty Castle (known in French as Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant). Since Europe — and France in particular — already has thousands of real historical castles, Disney wasn't content to just produce a carbon copy of California's castle in Paris. Instead, its Imagineers drew from fairy tales and the rich architecture of places like Mont Saint-Michel. They doubled the castle's height, built it into an artificial hillside, and surrounded it with cube-like trees straight out of the "Sleeping Beauty" animated movie.

The result was a castle that's emerged as a clear favorite among fans, winning polls and rankings by a wide margin, so that there wasn't much contest between it and the other five castles here. The fan site Mouse Lists, run by two guys who have "visited every Castle in person," argues that this one's "unquestionably the greatest Disney Castle in the world." The castle's La Galerie de la Belle au Bois Dormant walkthrough depicts "Sleeping Beauty" characters in nine stained glass windows by the same artisan who restored Notre Dame's. Even better is the La Tanière du Dragon attraction, where a two-ton dragon (at one time, the world's biggest Audio-Animatronic) occassionally stirs from its resting place in the castle's dungeon.

To arrive at this ranking of Disney castles, we first combined the votes from two different polls on fan forums. On the WDWMagic forum, fans voted to answer the question, "What is the best Castle worldwide?" On a Theme Park Review forum, they voted to answer, "Now that there are 6 Disney Castles around the world, which one do you like, as 'the fairest of them all?'" In both polls, the two top-ranked castles were Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Paris and Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom. In our final tally, these two castles earned 46.2% and 23.8% of the vote, respectively.

Some votes were added by consulting rankings on fan sites like Disney Park Nerds, Disney Trippers, Mickey Visit, Mouse Hacking, MouseLists, and Pixie Dust and Passports. To give equal weight to all votes, we only counted the top pick in each ranking as a single vote. This still gave Hong Kong Disneyland's Castle of Magical Dreams a boost to third place in our ranking, where it claimed 8.9% of the vote. We also factored in personal rankings that fans shared on social media platforms like YouTube, X, and Instagram (here and here).

In the end, the top three castles never wavered, while Tokyo Disneyland's version of Cinderella Castle and the original Sleeping Beauty Castle at California's Disneyland were left tied with 7.4% of the vote. Though Shanghai Disneyland's Enchanted Storybook Castle tailed them with just 5.9%, it's worth noting that the three Asian castles may have ranked lower simply because fans posting on English-language sites haven't visited them as much. A separate poll on a DISboards forum asked, "Have you seen any of the Disney Parks castles? If yes....which ones?" Fans there indicated that they had seen the Disney castles in America and Europe more than the ones in China and Japan.