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TOKYO DISNEYLAND
at the Tokyo Disney Resort
Tokyo, Japan (Abbreviation: TDL)
Disney & Oriental Land Company (OLC)
Ride Rehabs - The following information is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate.
Mark Twain Riverboat - NOW CLOSED through July 6, 2014
Monsters Inc - NOW CLOSED through July 15, 2014
Jungle Cruise - NOW CLOSED through 9/7/14
Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin - July 7 through July 18, 2014
Snow White’s Adventures - July 22 through August 1, 2014
Haunted Mansion - August 23 through Sept. 7, 2014
Big Thunder Mt - Sept. 24 through Dec. 19, 2014
It’s A Small World - Oct. 3 through Nov. 6, 2014
Pinocchio’s Daring Journey - Nov. 25 through Dec. 17, 2014
Country Bear Theater - Dec. 28 (One Day)
It’s A Small World - Jan. 5, 2015 through Jan. 13, 2015
Splash Mountain - Jan. 5, 2015 through Mar. 5, 2015
Haunted Mansion - Jan. 5, 2015 through Mar. 29, 2015
Chip ‘n Dale’s Treehouse - Jan. 14 through Feb. 6, 2015
Donald’s Boat - Jan. 14 through Feb. 3, 2015
Gadget’s Go Coaster - Jan. 14 through Feb. 3, 2015
 General Resort News - (6/12/14) An interesting picture was posted to Twitter not long ago showing off an assortment of height check balloons flying over the Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain area at Tokyo Disneyland. Something interesting may be in development for the park as a large future new addition. Any ideas?
(5/1/14) Oriental Land Company released their annual report this week with lots of good news, including the fact that they served 31.3 million guests during the fiscal year, a 13.8% attendance increase over the prior year. Guest spending PerCaps were all up 4.5%, along with a healthy 8.4% increase in merchandise sales along, which was likely aided by special 30th Anniversary merchandise.
Part of the report details their basic investment plans over the next 10 years, which includes “large-scale development projects such as renewal of the entire area” at Tokyo Disneyland, “large-scale development projects such as those using an extended area” at Tokyo DisneySea and for the Resort itself, more “large-scale renewal and improvement” projects, and improvements to create an even “more comfortable and satisfying environment”.
While their plans for DisneySea are a little more vague, it sounds like the rumors we’ve heard on and off again for a few years about the future plans for Tokyo Disneyland may be right on track once again. For years Imagineering has drawn up ideas and “makeover” plans to update and renew the various lands in the park, but OLC has always seemed to vote them down in favor of other attraction plans.
Way back before Tokyo DisneySea was built, they came up with huge plans to transform Tomorrowland into “Sci-Fi City” and it was only a few years ago I’m told that they pitched a few more concepts for a Tomorrowland 2.0 concept to go along with Star Tours 2, but the rest fell on deaf ears. Some of the concepts put to use in the New Fantasyland makeover at Walt Disney World were also pitched to Tokyo Disneyland as well as a way to bring their Fantasyland up to speed, but the project was deemed to be too costly. Sounds like they may be bringing out some of these old ideas once again over the next decade to rejuvenate the park experience for the next generation land by land, instead of just one attraction at a time. All together they are planning on investing ¥500 billion ($4.9 billion US) over the next 10 years, in order to see annual attendance at the parks hit 30+million each and every year by 2023.
Also new today, check out the video preview of projection mapping on the castle for the Once Upon A Time show.
(4/4/14) The Tokyo Disney Resort reports that at the end of the 2013 fiscal year, they served an all time record of 31.1 million visitors, aided by huge crowds that came in to help celebrate the resort’s 30th Anniversary offerings as well as the new “Star Tours: The Adventures Continue” attraction that opened in May 2013.
(2/26/14) Dejiki has posted an incredible photo tour of the unique and awesome Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek attraction, found only at Tokyo Disneyland.
(2/1/14) Oriental Land Company has reported seeing record profits at the theme parks between April and December 2013, due in most part to the response to the park’s 30th Anniversary events. Sales during the 9 month period were up 20% over the same period from the previous year, with operating profit up 37.8%. Attendance so far for the year has also been hitting all time record high marks.
(1/2/14) Dejiki has posted a fantastic photo tour of the Tokyo Disneyland’s infamous Pooh’s Hunny Hunt attraction, from outside, through the queue, the ride and into the gift shop at the end. See it here.
(12/27/13) The
Oriental Land Company has released documents showing that they have acquired new land, “totaling approximately 23,382 square meters along with ancillary facilities located in the Urayasu-shi, Chiba Prefecture” from the Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, LTD. The land itself is described as being “within the Tokyo Disney Resort” and offers a valuable and sizable new space to be used for future use. The site itself is listed as the former site of the “Tokyo Bay NK Hall”. While the agreement has been finalized, it appears that the property itself will not change hands until April 2016.
The Tokyo Bay NK Hall was a sporting and concert arena once on the Tokyo Disney Resort property site from 1988 to 2005. The site sits along the waterside of the resort property, nestled in between several resort hotels and the Bayside monorail station.
(10/2/13) Oriental Land Company reports that attendance to the Tokyo Disney theme parks for the first half of the fiscal year (through Sept. 30) is up 15.9%, giving them an interim record attendance of 15.359 million guests. The previous record for the same term (April to Septmber) set in 2012 was 13.25 million guests.
(4/15/13) Tokyo Disneyland will be celebrating the park’s 30th Anniversary on April 15th with a number of special events. Click here for more information. According to this report the Tokyo Disney Resort is hoping to top their 2012 record of 27.5 million guests this year. Oriental Land Company has also said that they are planning to invest $1.5 billion into the theme parks between 2011 and 2020.
2014 - Once Upon A Time - (7/7/14) A great video showing off the entire Once Upon A Time projection show on the Tokyo Disneyland Castle has been posted to YouTube and can be seen below.
(5/28/14) Video footage of the new Tokyo Disneyland castle projection show, “Once Upon A Time” can be found at Disney & More this week.
(5/1/14) A test video showing off projection mapping on Cinderella’s Castle at Tokyo Disneyland can be found below. The technology will be used for the new upcoming Once Upon a Time show starting on May 29th, 2014.
(10/9/13) Tokyo Disneyland has announced that their new projection mapping show on the park’s castle, Once Upon a Time, will premier on May 29th, 2014. Accord to the release, the story of the show begins with Mrs. Potts telling her son Chip a bedtime story, which comes to life through the projection mapping technology, special effects and pyrotechnics.
(6/24/13) BlooLoop reports that Tokyo Disneyland will add a new nighttime spectacular called “Once Upon A Time” in Summer 2014. The new show will make extensive use of projection mapping technology on the park’s Cinderella Castle as well as music, dancers and pyrotechnics.
September 8th, 2014 - Jungle Cruise: Wildlife Expeditions - Confirmed - (3/20/14) Tokyo Disneyland has announced a new name for their revamped Jungle Cruise ride. They will call it Jungle Cruise: Wildlife Expeditions, and confirmed that it will reopen to guests on September 8th, 2014, with both a daytime and nighttime version.
(7/14/13) Huge news from Tokyo Disneyland came out on Friday afternoon that the park would put the Jungle Cruise under the knife for a 1.6 billion Yen ($16.1 million US) upgrade that will be ready to reopen by Fall 2014. According to the press release from the Oriental Land Company,
“The revamped version of the attraction will have new lighting effects and other special show effects. In addition, a specially written musical sound track will be heard throughout the attraction for the first time in any Jungle Cruise. Also, an after-dark only “night cruise” will provide a unique take on the jungle adventure.
The new Jungle Cruise will offer Guests an adventure that is even more thrilling than before. From on board the attraction’s boats, Guests will explore jungle landscapes full of wild animals with the help of their daring and comical skipper who guides them through the beauty and dangers of this exotic world. The adventure includes a startling encounter with one of the animal spirit guardians in the ruins of a lost jungle temple.”
The current version of the Jungle Cruise will close down on January 6, 2014.
 2015 - Stitch Encounter - (12/20/13) Tokyo Disneyland has confirmed that Captain EO will close down forever on June 30, 2014 to make way for a new Stitch Encounter theater attraction to open in Summer 2015. This is not a copy of the Walt Disney World attraction, but instead seems to be a copy of the Stitch Encounter from Hong Kong Disneyland where a theater full of guests can communicate with a computer animated Stitch character on a large screen. The concept was first used to create the Turtle Talk with Crush at Walt Disney World’s Epcot theme park.
???? - New Fantasyland - Rumor - (9/18/13) Disney & More reports that a proposal to brings Cars Land to Tokyo Disneyland has been turned down by the Oriental Land Company. Instead the next major project coming to the park is expected to be a large scale update of the park’s Fantasyland area, similar to what we’ve seen take place so far in Walt Disney World. While this will likely include Seven Dwarfs Mine Train coaster, the Little Mermaid dark ride will likely be left out, as it would really need to go into Mermaid Lagoon over at Tokyo DisneySea instead. So far no timeline on this project either, as the park may have to remove or move a few attractions to make room as Fantasyland has virtually no available space to grow in Tokyo.
Other Resort News - (2/28/13) Oriental Land Company has announced that through a subsidiary company (Milial Resorts Hotel Co.), they will buy Brighton Corp. for 500 million Yen. Brighton owns four hotels in Kyoto as well as more in other locations. One such hotel is the Urayasu Brighton Hotel which is a current partner with the Tokyo Disney Resort and offers special theme park room packages. For some time now Oriental Land Company has been seeking other opportunities to expand their business efforts beyond the Tokyo Disney Resort.
(4/5/12) The Tokyo Disney Resort has released their 2011 Fiscal Year annual attendance figures this week. The combined total between the two parks was 25.347 million guests, only a 1% decline from the previous year which is pretty good considering all the days the parks were closed following last year’s earthquake.
(10/1/10) An interesting article about OLC’s growth plan for the Tokyo Disney Resort for the next quarter century can be found at BlooLoop. They mention a plan to invest about 200 Billion Yen between now and 2021, with the majority of the investment in “new products” coming into play between now and 2016. From 2017 to 2021 they will focus on “renewals and improvements”. They will also seek to promote themselves to the “post-family” over 40 segment, which currently is responsible for 18% of the resort guests and rising.
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