Progress City, U.S.A.

Tokyo Disneyland conference room at WED Enterprises

We’ve seen what was happening at EPCOT Center in 1977, but sometimes it’s interesting to look at where projects were in their development relative to others. In many ways, Tokyo Disneyland and EPCOT Center were twin developments; their design and construction overlapped through the late 1970s and early 1980s, and they opened only seven months apart from each other in 1982 and 1983. This period was a high point for the Imagineers at WED Enterprises; never before or since have they simultaneously devised and executed two projects of such magnitude. But if EPCOT was just a model in an Imagineering office at the time, what was Tokyo Disneyland?

“The site of the Company’s proposed Japanese theme park, a 600-acre parcel of land bordered on three sides by Tokyo Bay.”

Tokyo Disneyland seemed to have a leg up, as it at least had a cleared site ready for construction. Strangely, though, it wouldn’t open until after EPCOT Center. From the 1977 Walt Disney Productions Annual Report:

During the last week of September, representatives of the Company made a comprehensive presentation to Mitsui Real Estate Development Co., Ltd., Oriental Land Co., Ltd., and Keisei Electric Railway Co., Ltd. in Tokyo covering the results of the phase II work performed by WED Enterprises in close liason with the Japanese interests.

This year-long effort, the expense of which was borne by the Japanese, covered planning, conceptual design, preliminary engineering, preliminary construction, fabrication and installation estimates, operational planning, organizational development planning and marketing and promotional guidelines. This work also developed the areas in which additional information and input will be forthcoming from the Japanese groups covering essential information available to them and based upon their knowledge and information of conditions in their country.

“THE WORLD BAZAAR: A major new element planned for Tokyo Disneyland is this completely enclosed center for international shopping, dining and entertainment.”

Recently, Oriental Land Co., Ltd. has undergone a major re-organization, with control moving from Keisei Electric Railway Co., Ltd. to Mitsui Real Estate Development Company. Implementation of this change and the necessity for the new organization to appraise the entire project on its own initiative make it probable that a further period of time will elapse before the Japanese and our Company will be in a position to make a decision as to whether the project will go forward.

Further, delays are being experienced in the public access links to the project. The current estimate is that the Tokyo Bay Expressway will not be fully completed until 1982, although the first lanes will open during 1978. The start of construction for the new Keiyo Line Railroad is indefinite at this time.

Assuming a favorable decision to proceed, it would therefore appear that the project could not open to the public before 1982.

A modern aerial view of the Tokyo Disney Resort from the same direction shows Tokyo Disneyland towards the top of the picture, and Tokyo DisneySea towards the bottom.

As you can see, the Tokyo Disneyland project was in a strange limbo at the time. While a great deal of work was well underway, including preliminary construction, it was still officially undecided whether Disney and the Japanese companies were going to go forward with the project. Even with the delayed opening projected as 1982, the park wouldn’t actually open until Spring of 1983.

This map overlay from Google Earth matches up with the cleared land for Tokyo Disneyland in 1977. You can see the S.S. Columbia from Tokyo DisneySea in the foreground; Tokyo Disneyland itself is marked with the red pin.

A saw a story yesterday that made me realize that there have been a lot of little bits and pieces of news trickling out lately about new attractions that are coming to some of the less-covered Disney parks overseas. These developments don’t tend to get the coverage that new American attractions receive, so I thought that I’d summarize them here.

Now, I know I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer lately, what with all the disappointing shenanigans at Feature Animation and Parks & Resorts, but I’m afraid that won’t be turned around by these projects. One can pretty much guarantee that any new project at Tokyo Disneyland will be top notch due to the incredibly high levels of quality and service that the Oriental Land Company manages to achieve, but even they’re getting stuck with some new attractions that are less than… inspiring. But let’s take a look:

Concept art for Fantasmic! at Tokyo DisneySea (Disney)

The most recent announcement came a couple of days ago when the Oriental Land Company announced that it would be replacing its current night-time water show BraviSEAmo! with the similarly punctuated Fantasmic! The new show will debut in April 2011 as part of the celebrations surrounding Tokyo DisneySea’s 10th Anniversary, which is on September 4th of that year.

This might seem underwhelming to Disney fans, who might already have seen Fantasmic! in either California (where it’s played since 1992) or Florida (where it debuted in 1998). Thankfully we can hope for a little of that OLC magic (and their roughly $33.5 million investment) to update the twenty-minute show, as the announcement promises scenes from Aladdin, Cinderella and Finding Nemo. One can expect some new staging, too, on the waters of the park’s Mediterranean Harbor area. The concept art above shows Mickey atop some kind of ziggurat rising out of the water, and it seems apparent that the setup of the show will accommodate the larger lagoon.

BraviSEAmo! will perform its last show on November 13th, 2010, and preparation for Fantasmic! will begin soon after. While it might seem sacrilegious in Disney circles, I really am not a fan of Fantasmic!. In fact, I kinda hate it; it’s just not my thing (save for the giant MechaMaleficent). But hopefully the OLC will pull out all the stops to make it worthwhile. After all, their live shows typically tend to blow the offerings in the American parks completely out of the water.

Of course, DisneySea has been paying the price lately for its decade of awesomeness by receiving a string of cast-offs from other parks. Last year they got Turtle Talk with Crush, which fits beautifully with the 1930s ambiance of the American Waterfront area and the stylish S.S. Columbia. The American Waterfront will be the site of DisneySea’s next expansion, arriving in 2012. We’ve talked about this one before – behold:

Eeeeeehh… (Disney)

Toy Story Mania! (what’s up with all the exclamation points?) will be added to the New York area of the American Waterfront. Hopefully its budget of $129 million will lead to a little plussing.

Now.

Over at Tokyo Disneyland proper, there are a few new attractions on the way. The park, of course, has recently received the massively popular Monsters, Inc. dark ride. While unannounced, it also seems certain that the park will be receiving the upgrades to Star Tours that are on the way to parks stateside. In 2011, Mickey’s Philharmagic will be added in Fantasyland. While that’s perfectly reasonable, it naturally makes me sad because it necessitated the loss of the legendary Mickey Mouse Revue which I will now never be able to see in person. Between the Revue and Meet the World, replaced itself by Monsters, Inc., Tokyo Disneyland was a haven for attractions that should exist at Walt Disney World and I always hoped to see them myself.

Anyway.

Another attraction I’d always wanted to see at Tokyo Disneyland was the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, a walkthrough attraction that took guests through the bowels of the park’s iconic castle. This attraction has to be one of the most truly bizarre in Disney park history, leading guests through a series of encounters with various villains to a final confrontation with the Horned King from The Black Cauldron as he tries to raise an army of the damned.

So, yeah. I kinda hated to miss that one. It sounded insane, it was the sole attraction ever to reference The Black Cauldron, and it furthered my inferiority complex about the Magic Kingdom having the only one of the first four Disney castles to not have an attraction of its own. But the Mystery Tour closed in 2006, without replacement. Until now.

Now, I understand the closing of the old attraction and I understand the desire to make the new walk-through, which opens in 2011, focus specifically on Cinderella. After all, it’s her castle. And if we’re embarking on a brave new world of endless princess meet-and-greet interactive experiences, this would be a reasonable place for one. But I want you to take a moment and absorb the piece of concept art that was released to accompany the press release announcing this attraction. This wasn’t released as part of a sequence of renderings, or to emphasize one specific aspect of the project. This was, and as far as I can tell still is, the only piece of artwork that has been released to promote this new attraction. Can you tell I’m really wanting to build this up? So much that I’m going to put a page break below to make you click through to see?

Drum roll, please – gentlemen, behold!

(more…)