2025 is promising to be an epic year in the theme park world.
This is Theme Park Tribune’s annual list of the biggest most anticipated new theme park rides in North America, and while the top entry may seem obvious to everyone with even a slight interest in an Orlando vacation, the rest of the continent has plenty to offer with roller coasters, indoor rides and (hopefully) entire parks debuting this coming year.
Here are our picks for the top 10 theme park attractions scheduled to open in 2024:
The Flash: Vertical Velocity coming to Six Flags Great Adventure (Six Flags)
10. The 2024 (and earlier) holdovers
It’s almost a running joke that some theme park additions that we include on this list don’t actually end up opening. That was the case again in 2024.
Flash: Vertical Velocity at Six Flags Great Adventure was delayed to 2025. Top Thrill 2 at Cedar Point opened only for a few days, leaving its anticipated 2025 reopening as the first real chance for many (us included) to actually experience it.
Mattel Adventure Park was delayed again after having appeared on both our 2023 and 2024 lists (the park even insisted on the media making corrections to stories to say it would open in late 2024…and then missed that launch date.)
Don’t forget the two roller coasters being built at Cotaland in Austin that were originally set to open in 2022 and 2023.
Rather than give any of these tardy attractions a second (or third) spotlight on this list separately, we’re grouping them all together here — and hoping they actually open and stay open this time around.
Fire Runner concept art (Lost Island)
9. Fire Runner
Opening: TBA 2025 at Lost Island Theme Park
Lost Island’s new coaster is more exciting for what it means about the park’s longevity than the coaster itself — though it should still provide plenty of thrills.
Considering the low crowds that the park reported in its first year, it’s a positive sign that the heavily-themed destination is now confident enough in its future to expand.
Luckily for coaster fans, that expansion will come in the form of a new single-rail Raptor coaster built by Rocky Mountain Construction. It should be similar to the earlier Raptors built at California’s Great America, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and Idaho’s Silverwood — meaning a short but intense ride experience with three snappy inversions — but it’s also the first of this coaster model to be built in Midwest. All the more reason to venture out to Waterloo, Iowa this year.
8. Big Bad Wolf: The Wolf’s Revenge
Opening date: TBA 2025 at Busch Gardens Williamsburg
The new Big Bad Wolf at Busch Gardens Williamsburg has a big legacy looming over it.
The original ride was a legendary Arrow suspended coaster that operated from 1984 to 2009. While the new Wolf is a non-swinging, family inverted coaster built by Bolliger & Mabillard and sports a shorter layout and slower top speed than its predecessor, it does hold the promise of restoring some greater theming to Busch Gardens rides.
Even the best Busch Gardens and SeaWorld coasters have, in recent years, eschewed any major attempts at theming or scenery above what you’d expect to get at Six Flags. With the new ride restoring the Bavarian town seen in the first Big Bad Wolf, perhaps the chain is taking some steps to reverse its thematic decline.
Wrath of Rakshasa infographic (Six Flags)
7. Wrath of Rakshasa
Opening date: TBA 2025 at Six Flags Great America
It’s been six long years since Six Flags Great America got a brand new roller coaster, the longest drought in that park’s 49-year history. So is a Bolliger & Mabillard dive coaster really exciting enough?
In my view, absolutely, because Wrath of Rakshasa is not the same smaller-scale dive coaster that we’ve seen in recent years at Dorney Park or Six Flags Fiesta Texas.
This 2025 dive coaster will be longer, taller and faster than those models — and sport five inversions, more than even the older dive models like SheiKra at Busch Gardens Tampa, and a 96-degree first drop.
Concept art for the new Test Track (Disney)
6. Test Track 3.0
Opening date: Late Summer 2025 at Epcot
The only significant addition coming to Walt Disney World this year, Test Track’s third version won’t be a brand new ride, but it will be….well, something?
In a change from Disney’s practices when it usually announces way too much, way too soon about its coming attractions, we know very little about the upcoming Test Track 3.0.
However, the fact that the overhaul is scheduled to take more than 12 months likely means the changes will be even more consequential than its 2012 redo, and could make Test Track a much bigger priority at Epcot.
5. Arctic flying theater ride
Opening date: TBA at SeaWorld Orlando
If you asked me one year ago what Orlando theme park could be adding a new flying theater attraction in 2025, I would not have guessed SeaWorld Orlando.
We don’t name the name of this attraction yet, but it will see riders pass over scenes with icy Arctic landscapes, sea life such as orcas and walruses and the Aurora Borealis.
Before you go assuming this will be a Soarin’ clone, this flying theater ride is using a newer system from Mack Rides called Airific, featuring three levels of seating which rotate to face a spherical screen.
It’s been a long time since SeaWorld Orlando added a significant attraction that wasn’t a roller coaster. That fact alone has us excited about the ride and whether it could lead SeaWorld to having a little more variety in future additions.
Aerial rendering of Rapterra (Kings Dominion)
4. Rapterra
Opening date: TBA 2025 at Kings Dominion
Kings Dominion is celebrating its 50th anniversary season by adding a launched wing coaster by Bolliger & Mabillard, taking over part of the plot once occupied by the beloved Volcano: The Blast Coaster.
Rapterra will hit a top of 65 mph and sport three inversions over 89 seconds of ride time and 3,086 feet of track. While launched wing coasters aren’t brand new — Thunderbird at Holiday World had the first one back in 2015 — the ride experiences on B&M wings are almost universally praised, so Rapterra is likely to be a welcome addition to Kings Dominion’s already stellar lineup.
Siren’s Call rendering (Cedar Point)
3. Siren’s Curse
Opening date: TBA 2025 at Cedar Point
If the beyond-vertical drops on dive coasters like Wrath of Rakshasa don’t thrill you anymore, maybe North America’s first-ever tilt coaster will?
Riders on Siren’s Curse will be locked into a section of track after the lift hill which is then tilted 90 degrees before the coaster train is released into a twisted drop. The 2,966-foot-long ride will two 360-degree barrel roll inversions and what Cedar Point calls “13 weightless airtime moments” while reaching a top speed of 58 mph.
Very few coaster fans in the U.S. have experienced this particular Vekoma coaster model, as the only other in operation is based in Taiwan. Fitting then for an unfamiliar coaster experience to be added to Cedar Point — let’s just hope its opening year goes more smoothly than Top Thrill 2.
Overview of AlpenFury (Canada’s Wonderland)
2. AlpenFury
Opening date: TBA at Canada’s Wonderland
If you’re looking for the most intense new roller coaster of 2025, you’ll likely have to head north to Canada’s Wonderland.
An inversion on AlpenFury (Canada’s Wonderland)
AlpenFury will tie the North American record for inversions on a single coaster with nine, and sport the most inversions of any launched coaster in the world. That’s in addition to the ride’s 154-foot-drop and 71 mph top speed along 3,280 feet of track that winds in and around the park’s signature Wonder Mountain.
The lands of Epic Universe (Universal)
1. Universal’s Epic Universe
Opening date: May 22, 2025
In other years, there may be some debate about what the biggest, best or most-anticipated theme park addition would be.
Not in 2025. There’s no way Epic Universe couldn’t be on the top of the list.
If you haven’t been overrun by the Epic Universe hype train, here’s the cliff notes: It’s the first brand new theme park in Orlando in 26 years, sporting lands themed around Nintendo, Universal’s classic monster movies, “How to Train Your Dragon,” and the Harry Potter franchise, all tied together with a center hub called Celestial Park.
Stardust Racers, formerly Starfall Racers (Universal)
The rides and shows at Epic Universe would probably occupy every slot on this list if we hadn’t grouped it together under a single entry. But in this one park, you’ll experience a revolt of monsters inside Frankenstein Manor; a battle at the Ministry of Magic; see dragons soar through a theater; and race alongside Mario against Bowser.
And that’s not even counting the park’s four new roller coasters, including the dueling Stardust Racers.
If you’ve enjoyed the trend towards video game-level immersion in theme parks thanks to Universal’s existing Wizarding World lands or Disney’s Pandora and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Epic Universe is promising to take that trend to another level — and be able to do it on a park-wide scale from opening day.