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.
Splash Mountain - NOW CLOSED through Mar. 5, 2015
Haunted Mansion - NOW CLOSED through Mar. 29, 2015
Chip ‘n Dale’s Treehouse - NOW CLOSED through Feb. 6, 2015
Donald’s Boat - NOW CLOSED through Feb. 3, 2015
Gadget’s Go Coaster - NOW CLOSED through Feb. 3, 2015
Enchanted Tiki Room - Feb. 4 through Feb. 13, 2015
Minnie’s House - Feb. 18 through Mar. 19, 2015
Mickey’s PhilharMagic - Mar. 6 through Mar. 12, 2015
Pooh’s Hunny Hunt - Apr. 5, through Apr. 20, 2015
Show White’s Adventures - Apr. 21 through Apr. 25, 2015
Star Tours - May 11 through May 18, 2015
Monsters Inc. Ride & Go Seek - May 19 through June 3, 2015
Pinocchio’s Daring Journey - May 20 through May 29, 2015
Peter Pan’s Flight - June 1, 2015 through Feb. 29, 2016
Space Mountain - June 22 through July 15, 2015
Mark Twain Riverboat - June 29 through July 10, 2015
Enchanted Tiki Room - July 21 through Aug 3
 General Resort News - (12/31/14) Tokyo Disneyland will be hosting Anna and Elsa’s Frozen Fantasy event in 2015 from January 13th through to March 20th. In not sure of all the details, but it looks like there will be special live entertainment, character interaction, themed food items, new merchandise and a special new projection mapping show on the castle called “Once Upon A Time – Special Winter Edition”.
In other character news, it seems Duffy the bear has a new exclusive friend for the Tokyo Disney resort parks, now that the use of ShellieMay has extended out of Tokyo and into Hong Kong. Duffy now has a cat friend called Gelatoni which started off as just a simple cat doll park guests can buy, but the parks now offer a Christmas costume for Galatoni, and much like Duffy and ShellieMay, an assortment of new costumes and merchandise is expected to arrive over the next year.
(12/28/14) Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea fans will love this update, as Disney & More has posted some great scans over the course of two updates: Part 1 has Tokyo Disneyland and Part 2 shows off the attractions of Tokyo DisneySea. As many of our readers are surely familiar with the Disneyland and Disney World attraction posters, it’s great to see how this tradition has continued in Tokyo as well over the years.
(10/3/14) Disney & More reports that the Tokyo Disneyland Resort saw their attendance drop over the past few months, which is assumed to be caused by the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Japan. In response, as the first time Tokyo Disney really has seen some serious competition cause their numbers to drop, they are planning an assortment of new special events to drive up attendance for Easter and Summer 2015, as well as the opening of the new Stitch Encounter attraction in the summer.
Beyond that they are also apparently looking into a possible revamp of their Electrical Parade, a full fledged Halloween event in the fall of 2015, more Christmas fun next year including capitalizing on the Frozen characters with Anna & Elsa’s Frozen Fantasy in early 2016 and more.
In the meantime, I have to wonder if this also lit a fire under them to start development of a major new attraction or entire land redevelopment plan for each of the parks.
(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.
September 8th, 2014 - Jungle Cruise: Wildlife Expeditions - (9/5/14) The all new “Jungle Cruise Wildlife Expedition” has opened at Tokyo Disneyland and features amazing new lighting, new visual effects (especially in the temple), new music and more. Pictures of the new attraction (taken at night) along with videos (day and night versios) can be seen over at Disney & More this week.
(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 - Confirmed - (10/30/14) The Oriental Land Company made a huge announcement regarding the future expansion of both the Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea theme parks a short time ago. This is apparently part of a planned 500 billion Yen investment into the resort over the next 10 years, which roughly converts to an amazing $4.59 billion US dollars.
Starting at Tokyo Disneyland, the plan here is to focus on a huge redevelopment of Fantasyland that will see the land nearly double in size by the time they are done by adding new attractions, shops and restaurants. The final plan is still being worked out it seems, but the overall plan will see the existing Fantasyland area renovated, the backstage area behind it improved, the “its A Small World” attraction moved and rebuilt in an entirely new location, and while nearby Toon Town will stay, a large section of Tomorrowland will be taken over and repurposed for the Fantasyland expansion that cause the removal of the park’s Star Jets and Grand Circuit Raceway attractions, as well as the removal of part of the structure that is home to the Tomorrowland Terrace restaurant.
According to the press release provided by OLC, the Fantasyland project will see “multiple major attractions” added, but I don’t think we’ll see any serious work begin here until Late 2016. They released a piece of concept art showing off the Fantasyland expansion which looks to have a collection of village buildings, a larger building where the Speedway used to be that will likely be the new Small World location, a possible Be Our Guest restaurant area like the one in Walt Disney World nearby, then a strange pink forest area on the left side and more. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it all yet, but it may be intentionally vague.
Also of major importance… not listed in the press release, but mentioned elsewhere… they do plan to include Arendelle, the world of Frozen into one of these expansions, complete with the castle. The logical place however would be over at Tokyo DisneySea! Click to read more!
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(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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