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Tokyo Disney mid-term plan for up to 2017

The whole Beauty and the Beast area ride and restaurant looks amazing. I guess it will be the same Be our Guest restaurant as in Orlando but with a ride attached to it.

Shame the DisneySea plans of the Scandinavia port seem to have been put on hold for now..

peep said:
The Beauty and the beast ride sounds amazing, really hope Paris gets it at some point.
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Wish Paris would just release a plan like this!

Interestingly though there was a Beauty and the Beast ride planned for Paris Fantasyland at one point, not on the scale of Tokyo's though.

https://disneylovezone.wordpress.com/20 ... and-paris/

Little bit on it here in an interview with Tony Baxter too:

http://disneyandmore.blogspot.co.uk/200 ... rmaid.html
 
spicy said:
The whole Beauty and the Beast area ride and restaurant looks amazing. I guess it will be the same Be our Guest restaurant as in Orlando but with a ride attached to it.

Shame the DisneySea plans of the Scandinavia port seem to have been put on hold for now..

peep said:
The Beauty and the beast ride sounds amazing, really hope Paris gets it at some point.
Click to expand...

Wish Paris would just release a plan like this!

Interestingly though there was a Beauty and the Beast ride planned for Paris Fantasyland at one point, not on the scale of Tokyo's though.

https://disneylovezone.wordpress.com/20 ... and-paris/

Little bit on it here in an interview with Tony Baxter too:

http://disneyandmore.blogspot.co.uk/200 ... rmaid.html
Click to expand...
I haven't read those articles yet but I was always under the impression it was an animatronics based show like the Tiki room?

The cost of this new area is cheaper than what Paris paid for Ratatouille which I think is interesting to note.

Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk
 
Awesome that all this finally is official with artworks and stuff! Beauty and the Beast area looks amazing.
The Big Hero 6 ride is a cool addition too I guess, but with a price tag of 54 million USD for what's basically a Demolition Derby, it really tells you how much more Disney adds in terms of theming!

The Scandinavia Port is for 2021 and will be officially announced at a later date as far as I can understand.
 
In case nobody has worked it out yet, the "tentative" cost of the Beauty and the Beast ride/area is 32 billion yen, which is just under £200 million / US$290 million.
 
Hixee said:
Yeah, that's pretty impressive!
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It really is. Visually stunning and very immersive. It's Disney ride design at its finest.

But if I were to criticize it a little, it feels like there's something off on a conceptual level. The TL;DR of it is the old complaint - "It's an IP based ride" - or at least the implications that it involves. It falls a little too deeply into the trap of becoming a clip show of the movie instead of telling a self-contained story.

Dark rides are a storytelling medium in themselves. Original rides designed from the ground up have the opportunity to tell a story in a self-contained fashion - Mystic Manor in Hong Kong may be the best example I can think of, but the original Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion come close too. A short story of a few minutes where the guests are in the middle of the action the whole time.

Meanwhile, Beauty and the Beast is an 84-minute movie. A dark ride presentation of it will inevitably only be able to tell a brief summary, if it tried. And similar to Ariel's Grotto, it doesn't really appear to try to do that. From the video, one might surmise that the story of Beauty and the Beast goes as follow: Girl enters castle where beast lives, girl has great dinner, girl falls in love with beast, castle is attacked, beast turns into man, girl and man dance. It misses out on all the context, relying on the audience to know the story already while just giving the highlights.

I mean, by no means it's a bad ride. For a Beauty and the Beast attraction, this is probably the best they could hope to do. The execution is spotless. But it's not going all the way to the top of the list of my favourite attractions (well, the attractions that excite me the most, that is - I haven't ridden it, of course), because it doesn't quite take advantage of its medium. It's a very fine clip show attraction, miles better than Frozen Ever After or Forbidden Journey or Ariel's Grotto, but a clip show attraction nonetheless.
 
I just said to my boyfriend last night that I need to get to Tokyo Disneyland to ride this and Disneyland Hong Kong to ride Mystic Manor. It looks incredible. I really hope they bring this to WDW at some point.
 
Looks excellent, but I have to say that it seems to be weighed a bit down by the need for such a high capacity - which is impressive I might add - as it looks like it stalls the momentum at a few points. All the big vehicles seem to be fighting for the best spot at some scenes and it makes it a lot less intimate than something like Symbolica for example.
 
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It was a bit gutting to watch that POV as I was supposed to be there for the original planned opening day back in April.

That said, I'm glad I didn't have to wait in what would have undoubtedly been a massive queue... because it looks disappointing to me.

The rooms are too wide-open and it all seems a bit slow. The sets don't seem all that detailed. The first scene feels like it should be the finale.

I do agree with Pokemaniac. A large-scale dark ride like this would be better with a more inspiring story than just a highlights reel of the film. I don't mind it on the smaller Fantasyland dark rides but on a huge, expensive ride like this it seems a bit of a waste. There's nothing all that surprising and you can guess exactly what's coming.

Obviously it's visually pleasant, but to me it all just seems a tad boring.

Hate to be negative, but I do honestly feel that Covid has done me in a favour in saving me from waiting in a 9-hour queue for this. ?
 
During the "Something There" sequence the cars are definitely getting stacked as the programmed events are long over by the time they move to the next room. Maybe it'll flow better once operations have been optimized but add me to the crowd thinking it's more or less a slowly paced clip show.
 
I'm trying not to watch a pov for now, but the exterior looks to have excelled my castle expectations. Hopefully the interior will still impress even if the ride is not as expected (whatever that is).

Handy to have tempered expectations, however if there is stunning detail and more of the Belle type animatronics I'll be just fine.
 
I refuse to watch the POV as as a massive BatB fan I want the full experience in person when I finally get back to Japan, whenever that may be. But damn, the glimpses that have forced themselves onto my Twitter feed have looked wonderful. So glad they were able to open despite this year's unpleasantness.
 
I'm desperately trying to avoid spoilers too but what I have seen so far looks fantastic.

Pokemaniac said:
The TL;DR of it is the old complaint - "It's an IP based ride" - or at least the implications that it involves. It falls a little too deeply into the trap of becoming a clip show of the movie instead of telling a self-contained story.
Click to expand...

I've been seeing rumours that the Tokyo Frozen ride will have an entirely new story to differentiate it from the EPCOT/WDS/HKDL ones. I think this makes it one of the more interesting dark rides coming up.
 
peep said:
I've been seeing rumours that the Tokyo Frozen ride will have an entirely new story to differentiate it from the EPCOT/WDS/HKDL ones. I think this makes it one of the more interesting dark rides coming up.
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It would still be difficult for it to be anything other than a highlight reel of the movie, though. Being themed to the Frozen movies automatically sets expectations for certain characters, settings, and songs to be included, and by that point it's hard to tell any original story. I fear it will be another clip show.

Then again, it would be a different clip show, and it could be a very good clip show at that. So it's still something to be excited for, even though it may not be everything one could hope for.
 
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