Disney Parks Blog Launches New Design
The Disney Parks Blog is the go-to source for Disney theme park and cruise news (well, other than Diservations). Today, Disney IT launched a beautiful update to this website. With it comes a new URL, a cleaner logo, a more intuitive layout, and larger, cleaner featured images. Most importantly, it loads much faster with fewer accessibility issues.
Unfortunately, the new domain name is causing issues. Disney IT hasn’t set up redirects for existing URLs. Instead, links to old articles are being forwarded to the new homepage. We regularly link to the Disney Park Blog on this site. Those links now provide zero context. Hopefully, they’ll fix this issue soon.
Update: all URLs now redirect to the proper pages.
Accessibility is sometimes an overlooked aspect of website design and development. But it’s vital that all websites are ADA-compliant. And Disney has done an excellent job making sure that this site can be consumed by those with different abilities. There are a couple of minor errors, but those are easily fixed. The article byline doesn’t have enough contrast and the back-to-top button doesn’t have a label. Compared to most websites, Disney crushed it.
The menu is much more usable than the previous version. There is an issue with the “Explore” dropdown on smaller laptop screens. The right side of the menu gets cropped. That’s an easy fix.
The mobile menu is perfect.
The homepage is much more welcoming than its predecessor. Gone is the story carousel. I despise carousels, so I’m already a huge fan. The lead story font feels too large, especially on mobile devices.
Blog posts now include a large featured image at the top of the story. Readability is excellent thanks to narrow content columns.
Disney Parks Blog knows how to serve popular stories. In this case, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure has its own menu entry and template design. I’m sure the menu item will go away eventually, but theming in-demand content like this is brilliant. Maybe they’ll do the same for the updates coming to Animal Kingdom in the next few years.
The previous Disney Parks Blog was a beautiful website for many years, but design trends and usability standards had left it behind. This update is a massive improvement.
