Pixar Adventurous Journey at Shanghai Disneyland Review and Guide: Is it Worth Visiting?

Opening in June 2025 as Shanghai Disneyland’s newest walkthrough attraction, Pixar Adventurous Journey features immersive environments themed to your favorite Pixar stories such as Inside Out, Turning Red, and Soul. Located at the back of Tomorrowland, this experience also includes a meet and greet area for Pixar characters and a gift shop.

But with the number of walkthroughs and other attractions to do and see in Shanghai Disneyland, is Pixar Adventurous Journey a must-do attraction? And how does it compare to the other walkthroughs in Shanghai Disneyland, a park known for its incredible walkthrough attractions. In this review and guide I will be going into every aspect of this new attraction, including whether I think it’s worth visiting or not.

Let’s get into it!

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Table of Contents

Background

The Pixar Adventurous Journey attraction was announced on June 13, 2025, in time for and as part of the park’s 9th anniversary celebration. The experience opened shortly after the announcement on June 27, 2025. The experience was announced to feature “seven designed areas inspired by Pixar films, including Inside Out, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Turning Red, Coco, Up and Soul.”

The walkthrough attraction “combines Disney’s storytelling with interactive experiences, featuring character sculptures, immersive decor, dynamic lighting, atmospheric audio effects, and high-tech interactive technologies such as motion simulation.” In other words, this was supposed to be an immersive walkthrough of various Pixar stories, including visual and audio effects that were set up to enhance the experience.

Shanghai Disneyland is probably second only to Disneyland Paris for being known as a park with some of the best walkthrough attractions. Shanghai Disneyland probably has THE best walkthrough attraction with Challenge Trails. This new Pixar Adventurous Journey has a lot to live up to if it wants to continue the legacy of great walkthroughs established by the likes of the Alice in Wonderland Maze and Once Upon a Time Adventure.

And, for the most part, it delivers.

While it’s not the best walkthrough in the park, and there was no way it was going to be, Pixar Adventurous Journey is a fun, detailed, and immersive walkthrough experience. While some of the scenes could have benefited from more movement, and its setting is probably the worst among all the walkthroughs in the park, it does what it can with the space it’s provided. While not a must-see attraction, it’s definitely something you should do if you have time to spare and are in the area.

Pixar Adventurous Journey Guide

The main Pixar Adventurous Journey walkthrough doesn’t get a queue whatsoever. You don’t usually have to wait to enter the attraction. Do note, however, that the walkthrough isn’t open the entire day. It has specific opening hours, which you can find on either the app or posted outside the attraction on the attraction marquee. It’s usually open from 10am to 6pm, so keep that in mind if you want to do this attraction.

The meet and greet area for Pixar characters is located by the entrance to the pathway that leads to the building where the experience is located. You will be meeting a random Pixar character, so just keep that in mind before entering the queue.

When walking through the experience, you may have to wait in a short queue to take photos with certain elements in the walkthrough. There are cast members stationed throughout the walkthrough to assist you in case you want photos taken or if you need anything else. I would recommend slowly walking through the experience and taking the time to interact with the different elements in the walkthrough. The experience should not take you more than 20 minutes.

The Walkthrough Experience

Passing the marquee, you then approach the building that houses the experience. There are some Pixar Adventurous Journey banners and theming scattered around as you go up to the building. You enter the door on the left to get to the main part of the walkthrough.

You’ll first enter a hallway with lit up arches and a screen at the end, which shows clips from the movies seen in the walkthrough. It’s a cool hallway that sets up the immersive environment that will come pretty well.

You then enter the Inside Out portion of the walkthrough. You first enter headquarters where you can spot memory orbs and statues of the different emotions. There’s a life size control console that you can take pictures with, with a window behind it that opens up to Riley’s different personality islands. You then move onto the next room, which features the Belief System and statues of Sadness and Joy.

After this you move onto the Monsters Inc portion of the walkthrough. You first enter the locker rooms of Monsters Inc where you can spot some really clever details scattered throughout. You then enter a recreation of the door factory, where you see Mike, Sulley, and Boo as statues hanging onto doors. It reminded me a lot of the Monsters Inc dark ride at Disney California Adventure, in a good way. I wish there were more doors to make the room feel more expansive, but what they had was good enough.

Next was the Finding Nemo room. You could see Nemo and Dory as statues around the room, and the main thing to do in this room is an interactive activity. You could design your own fish and then, upon submitting your design, you could see it float around in the water in front of you. It’s a cool experience that reminded me of a similar exhibit in the ArtScience Museum in Singapore.

After this room was the first of two Turning Red rooms. The first room is a recreation of the bamboo forest from the climax of the movie. The next room is set in Mei’s school, where there are banners for each member of 4Town, as well as a life size statue of Red Panda Mei. The school room also featured pictures of the characters in Turning Red. I think this Turning Red space was the biggest among all the movies represented in Pixar Adventurous Journey.

Next was the Coco section. In the room you feel like you stepped into Mexico as depicted in the movie. There’s a statue of Miguel in the first room, before you step into the second room that has one of the coolest elements in the whole walkthrough: you get to walk over the bridge to the afterlife, and as you walk on it, the screen that you walk on responds to your steps. It’s a pretty cool interactive moment that had me walking back and forth along the bridge to see how the screen would respond.

Then we enter the Up section of Pixar Adventurous Journey, which was my favorite bit. I liked it mostly because there would be a sequence in the house where you can see out the window that the house is rising up to sky. As it does, the walls around you also move in sync with the house floating upwards. It’s a great effect that added so much to the immersion of the room. I would go back just to experience this room again. Then of course you have the Paradise Falls section where you can see Doug, Russell, and Kevin (who pops up from the side of the room).

Finally, you enter the Soul room, the last room of the walkthrough. This was the most underwhelming room, in my opinion. It felt like an afterthought that they shoehorned in just to add another movie into the attraction. There are statues of Joe Gardner and 22, and wiry figures of the different beings located in the Great Before.

After going through these rooms, you’re then led into the gift shop that sells different Pixar merchandise. You then exit the attraction and end up back in Tomorrowland.

Pixar Adventurous Journey Thoughts

I thought Pixar Adventurous Journey was done really well. It was very immersive and had elements and activities that I think take it above the Alice in Wonderland maze and make it the third best walkthrough in the park after the Once Upon a Time Adventure and the Challenge Trails. Although a case could be made for it being tied with the Once Upon a time Adventure because of the breadth of movies represented, but the Once Upon a Time Adventure has effects that surpass anything in Pixar Adventurous Journey.

On the whole, I thought that the walkthroughs did a great job of immersing you in the environments of these movies. They picked a great selection of movies to be represented here, although I would have liked to see worlds centered on Elemental, Onward, and Luca here as well as they have such distinct environments. But for what it’s worth, the 7 movies they chose to be represented here all have worlds that translate well to three dimensional, walkthrough environments. I hope to see them periodically swapping out different movies for other movies in the future.

On the whole, I wish that there were more moving parts to the rooms. The reason why the Up room was my favorite was because the walls of the house moved and because Kevin moved as well. The other rooms were pretty static, with most of the movement coming from screens. That isn’t necessarily a negative, but it would’ve added so much to the immersion of the scenes if there were moving elements that could help us feel like the rooms themselves were alive.

I also thought that, while the rooms were for the most part very immersive, some left me a little underwhelmed. Particularly, the Monsters Inc and Soul rooms were a bit bare in my opinion. The Monsters Inc section would have benefited from some additional doors being placed around the door scene, and the Soul room could have benefited from better backgrounds and interactive elements. The other 5 sections, however, were all amazing and really sold the immersion of being in these movies.

Highlights include the control console and headquarters room of Inside Out, the design-a-fish game in the Finding Nemo room, the bamboo forest area of Turning Red, the bridge to the afterlife in Coco, and the Up House in Up. All those elements added so much to my enjoyment of the walkthrough. I was actually wondering why no one else was in the walkthrough with me because these walkthrough elements were a joy.

Now I will have to say that there is a lack of a unique artistic direction with Pixar Adventurous Journey. The Alice in Wonderland Maze and the Once Upon a Time Adventure both have a particular art style that I think works impeccably well in making the different walkthrough elements feel immersive. I felt like in comparison, the style of everything in this felt a little generic. But I guess that’s to be expected since the point of this walkthrough was to immerse you in the movies represented in the attraction.

You can tell throughout that the budget wasn’t high for this attraction. But I think it perfectly exemplifies how Disney can create immersive environments even when presented with restrictions in budget or space. This was an expertly crafted piece of walkthrough entertainment that I hope they continuously refresh so as to include more areas for other Pixar movies.

Score

Pixar Adventurous Journey is a good enough attraction that I would do it at least once on every trip to Shanghai Disneyland. It’s not a big enough headliner for me to recommend you go out of your way to see it, but if you have time in your day to swing by for 20 minutes, I would highly recommend doing so! It’s a good example of how Disney can still make environments that are immersive and interactive, even on a low budget, as long as they infuse as much creativity as possible into its design.

7.5/10

Pixar Adventurous Journey Conclusion

I hope this review gave you a better idea of what the Pixar Adventurous Journey is like and gave you a better sense of whether this attraction is something that could potentially interest you or not. Like I said, it’s not the best walkthrough in the park, but given that it never has a wait, I would highly recommend doing it if you have the time. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out on my socials!