Camp Discovery
| Camp Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Park | Shanghai Disneyland |
| Land / area | Adventure Isle |
| Type | Ropes course and exploration trails |
| Opened | June 16, 2016 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 106 cm minimum (Challenge Trails) |
| Status | Operating |
Camp Discovery is an exploration attraction in Adventure Isle at Shanghai Disneyland, built around and into Roaring Mountain. It opened with the park on June 16, 2016. Shanghai Disneyland was the first Disney park to offer anything of its kind: instead of a vehicle, guests explore on foot and on rope courses, hiking scenic trails, crossing elevated challenge courses beside waterfalls and through tribal ruins, and digging at an excavation site for ancient relics. Guests choose their own expedition and their own level of difficulty.[1]
History
Camp Discovery was created for Adventure Isle, a land unique to Shanghai Disneyland, whose story concerns the League of Adventurers — an expedition of explorers who were blown off course and came ashore on the island in the 1930s — and the Arbori, the island's indigenous people, from whom the League learned. The camp is presented as the League's base at the foot of Roaring Mountain, known to the Arbori as Apu Taku, the source of the roaring sound that gives the mountain its name and the setting of the neighbouring Roaring Rapids ride. Disney promoted Camp Discovery before opening as a first for a Disney park: a place where adventurers of all ages and abilities could gather to explore ruins and dig sites in search of ancient tribal relics.[2]
Experience
The camp has three main components, at three levels of exertion.
The Challenge Trails are the headline element: an elevated ropes course built into the scenery of Roaring Mountain, running beside waterfalls, through caves and across the mountain's rockwork. Participants are fitted with a seated harness attached by a rope to a continuous overhead track, and then set off along the course, choosing between different routes at junctions. Crossings offer options of differing difficulty side by side — a straightforward walkway, a narrow log, or a bridge with missing planks, for example — and other obstacles include stepping across stone columns high above the ground. The harness system means a fall is a dangle rather than a drop, but the exposure is real, and the trails carry a minimum height requirement of 106 cm. Loose items, including phones, must be left behind before climbing.[3]
The Vista Trail is the ground-level alternative: a hiking path around the mountain's base, past waterfalls and ruins, with no height restriction and no harness, open to anyone who can walk it. The Excavation Site is a dig area aimed at younger explorers, with its own smaller-scale challenges themed to searching for Arbori relics.
Taken together, the three parts make Camp Discovery the park's most physical attraction, and one of the few in any Disney park where the guest's own balance and nerve, rather than a ride system, determine how the experience goes. It also rewards repeat visits: because the Challenge Trails branch, no two crossings need take the same route.