Queues too good to miss

GOTG Mission Breakout is fun with the movie setup and other bits.

I loved Runaway Railway's museum of Mickey stuff.

The Haunted Mansion in WDW has some fun interactive bits and a little riddle on what family killed each member in order.

The Harry Potter attractions. Kong. The Star Wars attractions. Cosmic Rewind. Tower of Terror.

While the new items for the Haunted Mansion at WDW are nice, I prefer the DL walk through the library. I also hate where they put the HBG in WDW.

The original Dueling Dragons at IoA had a pretty amazing queue. Forbidden Journey at WWOHP is worth it. And then you can Single Rider after you’ve experienced it. Everest and even Kali River rapids are both pretty deeply themed as well. This list could go on and on. I’ve always had a fondness for Star Tours as well, with the de-skinned Hen AA’s from Splash Mountain / America Sings doubling as perfect droids.

Honestly, there's too many to list, especially at Disney and Universal parks. In my opinion, if an attraction offers a queue featuring animatronics or story scenes rather than just a themed environment it is worth waiting through the regular queue at least once to experience it. If I had to pick, I'd probably nominate Escape from Gringotts and Forbidden Journey as the least skippable queues, but for so many attractions built over the past couple decades the experience really begins in the queue, so you're missing out if you bypass that portion (unless you're only skipping switchbacks and merge in before anything story-centric happens).

Outside of the obvious Disney and Universal queues, I think big/fast coasters with queues well placed in the ride area are enjoyable as well. I remember as a kid waiting in line for Shockwave at SFGAm, which was one of the worlds tallest and fastest coasters at the time, was straight hype.

On the other hand its really disappointing when parks do this poorly, like Kingda Ka where IMO they really missed. The ride should have been facing in the other direction so the tophat is near the park/queue. Instead the tophat is a mile away and all you go near while waiting in line (or in the park at all) is a little bit of the launch track. You can still see the tophat but its far away and doesn't really build hype. Although the queue for Zumanjaro now builds a hype for Kingda Ka well, albeing being really terribly designed (just a long path that goes a mile from the park to the ride).

'Men In Black: Alien Attack'. The attraction's story (one of the best ever written) is carried forward as you move through MIB headquarters. The recreation of the immigration room, the hilarious alien criminal and the "Doofus and Do-Right" videos are all great.

@ AJ: I like 'Escape from Gringotts', but the noise from the crowd in the queue always seems to wash out the conversations taking place behind the office doors.

@TH - You're so right TH, and I often forget how good the MIB queue is because we always skip it through the UE or single rider line, and often use the "child swap" corridor to expedite re-rides. The Doofus/Do-right video is one of the best instructional/safety videos (up there with Soarin'), and the "Imigration Room" is straight off the movie set - Pro-Tip, I'm not sure if they still do it, but you used to be able to ask for a "tour" of the Imigration Room where a Team Member will take you downstairs so you can get up close and personal with Bob and Bhnxaxx.

I've always been partial to queues that serve multiple purposes to not only contain and entertain crowds waiting to ride (and keep them from spilling into the park pathways), but to also tell part of the story and to physically get the guests from the main pathway to the actual attraction. Disneyland's Haunted Mansion does this in the most inventive way through the "Stretch Room" that is an actual elevator that takes guests below street level to the attraction's load area. Indy's queue in Disneyland has to take guests under the train tracks to the show building outside the traditional park perimeter. The queue for FoP has to maintain the forced perspective of the Pandoran landscape while getting guests back to the show building and facilitate groups splitting to multiple levels of each of the 4 theaters.

To me, the best queues are the ones where you arrive at the load platform and have absolutely no idea how you got there. Whether that's through clever design, theming or storytelling as a distraction, that should be the goal of every queue.

Upon quite a bit of reflection, I have to say I should have mentioned WDW’s Space Mountain. I enjoy the ride of the DL version better, but nothing brings back more nostalgia and sheer happiness as the stroll through the thin corridors of the WDW attraction. The sound and cheesy window scenes just bring it back to me. The retro-sci-fi scenes at the end are great. Of course it is not the best queue, but I do love it.

It also makes me wish I could be the ultimate overlord for decisions for a time. Tomorrowland is showing its age, and I would start with a super high end revamp of the TTA and put in a new mission to mars where Stitch was (I loved the Alien attraction, but it was just too much for some). We need the optimistic version of the future as much today as we did when the Cold War was in full swing.