A Look at $3 Billion Worth of New Disney Attractions Under Construction
In the photo above, you can see over $3 billion worth of new Beauty and the Beast, Big Hero 6, Frozen, Tangled, and Peter Pan attractions, plus two hotels under construction at Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea. In an era of unprecedented development around the world, these are among Imagineering’s most ambitious projects. We’ll take a closer look at construction progress on each in this post.
Let’s start with the photo above (click here to view it larger in a new tab), to provide a bit of context for those of you who are unfamiliar with Tokyo Disney Resort. It was taken from our park-view guest room on the top floor of the Hilton Tokyo Bay, which is a monorail loop hotel that’s a short walk from Bayside Station. You can see that station in the right foreground with a monorail pulling into it.
Immediately below Bayside Station is the beginnings of construction on the Toy Story Hotel, which is a new 600-room resort that broke ground two months ago and is slated to open in fiscal year 2021 (meaning sometime between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022). This hotel will be nestled between the Hilton Tokyo Bay and Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay…
If you follow the Toy Story Hotel construction up, directly above the parking garage for the Sheraton, you can see a blue dome on the far right side of the frame. That’s part of Arabian Coast, a port on the far end of Tokyo DisneySea. Between Lost River Delta and that port (directly behind Jasmine’s Flying Carpets) will be the entrance to the new Fantasy Springs port that’s now under construction.
This is significant because pretty much all of the construction in the mid-ground of this photo is Fantasy Springs (plus its in-park luxury hotel). That’s right. All of those cranes, bore pile drills, and other heavy equipment are there for the construction of Fantasy Springs.
Here’s a look at the concept art, which is roughly from a similar aerial perspective as the top photo:
As a reminder, Fantasy Springs is the huge expansion of Tokyo DisneySea that will be “a magical spring leading to a world of Disney fantasy” and will add Frozen, Tangled and Peter Pan mini-lands to the park, plus an adjacent in-park luxury hotel.
The total budget of this project is $2.3 billion, which to our knowledge makes it the most expensive single land in a Disney Park ever developed. To put that into perspective, it’s more than both versions of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge combined. You can read more about Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea here.
Assuming the model featured in a recent episode of the Imagineering Story is the final design and layout of Fantasy Springs, we know that the new hotel will abut Bayside Station.
The Tangled and Peter Pan areas will roughly be located behind Arabian Coast and Lost River Delta (respectively) in Tokyo DisneySea, and the Frozen area will be behind Toontown and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast area in Tokyo Disneyland.
Looking to the right of Bayside Station (foreground), we have what will more or less be the Tangled and Peter Pan areas.
To the best of our knowledge, the Tangled area will feature a boat ride that boards outside before going into a show building, and one of the Peter Pan attractions will be inside a show building, while the other will be an outdoor flat ride. There will also be counter service restaurants in each area.
What we’re looking at here is the future home of a new hotel (immediately above the monorail) and the future home of Arendelle behind that (between what’s identifiable as Space Mountain and Cinderella Castle behind scrims).
It’s worth reiterating that all of these are best guesses based upon concept art and that single model, which may or may not be the final design. None of this is confirmed.
Based upon information from the Tokyo fan community (I’m not sure whether it’s informed speculation or leaks, but it appears credible), we are under the impression that the Frozen area will be largest of all, with a boat ride plus a table service restaurant.
If the show building sizes floating around are accurate, both the Peter Pan motion base ride and the Frozen boat ride will be massive. The Tangled boat ride size is more modest, but still large. Given the huge size of this plot of land and the lack of retail (only one gift shop in the entire port), those show building sizes are at least credible on their face.
Here’s yet another look before we move on to the Tokyo Disneyland projects that open next year. (Yes, I took a lot of construction photos out our hotel room window…multiple days and different times of day.)
Note the large buildings in the mid-ground between Space Mountain and Cinderella Castle. That’s what we’ll be looking at next.
Here are portions of those same buildings captured from the Tokyo Disney Resort Liner monorail.
On the left is Fantasyland Forest Theatre, a 1500-seat indoor theater with live entertainment featuring Mickey and friends. In the middle is Cinderella Castle. On the right is Beast’s Castle, which serves as the entrance to the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast attraction.
Another look at Cinderella Castle and Beast’s Castle side-by-side. It’s worth noting that Beast’s Castle is not taller than Cinderella Castle–that’s the perspective here. However, it is very tall.
What we can’t see from this vantage is Belle’s village, which features Maurice’s Cottage, Gaston’s fountain, restaurants and shops. Let’s head inside Tokyo Disneyland for that…
The facades on the left are entirely finished and are sitting behind patented Disney Cloaking Devices, completely concealing them from public view. 😉
Some of this is very similar to Belle’s Village in New Fantasyland in Magic Kingdom.
These buildings will serve as dining, shopping, and FastPass distribution.
(Hopefully there are already plans for repurposing the FastPass distribution spot, since that’s quickly moving to the Tokyo Disney Resort app, which has a high adoption rate–and will pretty much be a necessity for actually scoring Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast FastPasses.)
Here’s another look at Beast’s Castle from within Tokyo Disneyland, behind buildings of the village for proper scale.
We spent a lot of time looking at this, as there was constantly active construction visible through the scrim.
Here’s another view at night. It’s worth noting that what’s visible of the castle is not the entire thing–just the top spire. The rest of the castle is behind scrim.
This should be a pretty convincing use of forced perspective.
This is work on Belle’s Village, which is the backside of the Happy Ride with Baymax. On several evenings, we observed a flurry of construction work. It was somewhat surreal, as they were working at “race against the clock” pace on facades that appear largely finished…for a land that doesn’t open until April 15, 2020.
(I’m not sure why I don’t have photos of the Happy Ride with Baymax. It appears to be almost entirely finished, with show lighting tests happening while we were there.)
Over in Toontown, we have Minnie’s Style Studio.
The scrims around this facade came down while we were at Tokyo Disneyland. It was pretty cool to see this revealed.
I’m sure what’s inside won’t appeal to me, but I love the ‘toonified Art Deco of the exterior.
In general, I’m a huge fan of how this expansion is using land to expand Toontown and Fantasyland and slightly shrinking Tomorrowland. The only losses are Grand Circuit Raceway and Star Jets, and I can’t say the speedway is actually much of a loss. Tomorrowland was large and disjointed, and this should help tighten it up a bit.
On the other hand, Fantasyland has always been undersized and pretty bland thematically. This expansion significantly increases its size while also providing thematic depth and engaging outdoor spaces. Tokyo Disneyland still needs some place-making, but this is a huge step in the right direction. Now here’s hoping the Beauty and the Beast attraction lives up to the hype and its sky-high budget!
If you’re thinking of visiting Japan for the first time and are overwhelmed with planning, definitely check out our Tokyo Disney Resort Planning Guide. It covers much more than the parks, from getting there to WiFi to currency and much, much more. For more photos and an idea of what we did day-by-day during our first visit, read our Tokyo Disney Resort Trip Report.
Your Thoughts
Are you excited for Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea? Happy to see several rides and only one gift shop? What about the Beauty and the Beast expansion at Tokyo Disneyland? Do you find this massive construction project interesting, or not? Any questions? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I have to say, though all the renderings of the new fantasy springs look amazing (and I am sure that OLC will actually spend the money to design it properly), I am slightly disappointed that they are putting in generic child Disney IP’s, into a park which I thought was more catered to teens/adults and more about unique rides/themes and niche IP’s.
I feel these rides would have been a better fit in the adjacent Disneyland Park.
Although I will be interested in the end result, I feel this was a misstep by the OLC, and am worried it will change the feel of the park.
Is it me, or does it look like Cinderella’s tallest turret has a new design to it under all that scaffolding? If so, I’m excited as it would now differentiate itself from WDW with new designs than just a different paint job.
Is there an official Tokyo Disney resort app?
Thanks for a great update as always, Tom! We are going to the Tokyo parks for the very first time in April, and are lucky enough to be there for the opening of the new land on April 15th. It was pure luck – we bought our plane tickets last May! We would of course love to experience the new Beauty and the beast attraction, but are worried that all the fastpasses will be distributed on the Japanese app before we have the possibility to run over there. We are staying in a Disney hotel, so we have the “Happy 15” privilege, do you think that will be enough to secure us fastpasses? Do you know if the official Tokyo Disney Resort app will be available in English any time soon? It was wonderful to have the English app in Disneyland Shanghai!
Quick question. Where do locals that drive park their cars now? This new expansion seems to be built on what was a parking lot. Are they building more spaces somewhere else or is this not something OLC worries too much about since so many visitors likely arrive by mass transit? Just curious.
I had the same view of the construction when I stayed at the Hilton in October. It’s interest to know what it’s all for, I had no idea it was that huge of a scope. Are the new hotels operated by Disney like the Disneyland and Miracosta hotels are? Now I really need to come back in 2021 or 2022 to see what comes out of it.
This may be a question with an unknown answer, but I’ll try anyway. I know that OLC pays for licensing IP and R&D, but I was wondering who owns the end results — it seems that some ideas are allowed to be brought out of the Japanese parks, such as trackless technology, indicating that Disney has at least partial ownership of the research at the end, but does OLC retain rights for some of the finished results? For example, would OLC be able to prevent a 20,000 leagues clone in another park since they “own” the ride, or does Disney “own” the rights to what they develop completely? It’s interesting that when trackless was implemented at other parks, it was with a different IP that is now being cloned.
That seems confusingly worded — I can try again if it was poorly phrased.
I’m not privy to any language in Disney’s contracts, but I have worked in new location development, domestically and internationally, for some very well known retail brands. Their licensing agreements would never, never have allowed a different organization to own their creative content.
Ughhhh. Thanks for the heads up! I’ll keep tabs on it as my trip time gets closer. I love Maihama Club :'( but I love sleep more!
Are they still doing construction at night? I was staying at the Tokyo Bay Maihama Club Resort in Feb and was kept up from construction around the station 🙁 Was hoping to avoid that for my next trip, but I will be back before all of this is finished (looking at spring 2021).
Yeah, tons of construction at night. It’s unclear to me whether that’s just in Tokyo Disneyland (where everything opens April 15, 2020) or in the Tokyo DisneySea expansion.
For what it’s worth, we couldn’t hear anything from the Hilton. It and the Sheraton are farther from the construction than the Maihama Club Resort. Something to consider before booking your hotel next time!
If we had several years to wait, any guesstimate of when ALL this will be finished?
OLC announced that Fantasy Springs would open at Tokyo DisneySea in fiscal year 2022, which starts April 1, 2022 and ends March 31, 2023.
Within that timeframe, it’s too early to tell. My guess would be late 2022 at the earliest.
This all looks exciting! My family is planning our first trip to Japan next spring. We are planning at itinerary that focuses more on Japanese culture than on Disney (hoping for a different kind of trip in the future), but plan to spend one day at DisneySea. I would LOVE to ride a Big Hero Six attraction, but we feel like DisneySea will be the better choice, given the limited time we have. Will we be able to see the major attractions there with just one day?
“Will we be able to see the major attractions there with just one day?”
Yes, so long as you’re willing to skip the clones (Soaring Fantastic Flight and Toy Story Mania).
Here’s our itinerary: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/1-day-tokyo-disneysea-plan/
(Can’t blame you for only doing one day at TDR and experiencing more of Japan–Tokyo DisneySea is definitely the better choice in that scenario.)
Thanks, Tom! Japan has been a bucket-list item for me and my husband. We really can’t wait to experience with our kids.
Watching the Imagineering series with my son has been fascinating. He really wants to go to Tokyo because, “that looks like the best Disney park ever”. His words, not mine. Still too young to fathom a budget, and how far away the other side of the world is…
It’s interesting when the series juxtaposes what Imagineering could accomplish in Tokyo (and what seems like what they are still accomplishing based on your photos) with ample budget, and the space to be creative. I never knew that Disney undertook the Tokyo projects while at the same time building half day parks (e.g. DCA).
Great pictures as always!
I haven’t seen the “Hits or Misses” episode yet, but am familiar with that era of history nonetheless.
Can you imagine working at WDI and being assigned to Walt Disney Studios Park or DCA at the same time your colleagues were working on Tokyo DisneySea? Even if the groups were isolated, simply knowing the differences in budgets and expectations would’ve had to been so deflating.
The Imagineers talk about that exact issue in the episode. It felt exactly how you think it felt.
What’s the imagineering series? Sounds like something my 8 yr old son would really enjoy?
It’s on Disney+ and is so amazing. Definitely check it out.
It is a great series, my son is 7 and he has really latched on to the series. Especially if you have spent time at the parks, I think it’s a great complement to that experience. I’m sure your 8 year old would love it.
Thanks Drew and JJ – my son will love this show, can’t wait to watch it with him!
Thanks Drew – my son will love this show!
Thanks for removing Disney from USA and send overseas Iger!
Jon, I understand the frustration with seeing great attractions developed outside the American Parks. The criticism isn’t entirely fair here, because the Oriental Land Company owns all of Tokyo Disney. It costs the Disney Corporation relatively little to design for the Tokyo parks, and all the construction capital comes out of Oriental Land’s coffers. My hope is that someday Disney will be willing to spend to bring some of the best Asian attractions to the USA, knowing that they wouldn’t have to spend much on R & D.
“It costs the Disney Corporation relatively little to design for the Tokyo parks, and all the construction capital comes out of Oriental Land’s coffers.”
Slight correction–it costs the Walt Disney Company nothing to design for the Tokyo parks. Think of Imagineering as the exclusive third party design firm for Tokyo Disney Resort. Disney is paid by OLC for literally everything designed and built for Tokyo. (This is part of why Disney pitches clones to OLC–that effectively reduces R&D costs for what’s built here.) That’s on top of other licensing and merchandising deals.
Tokyo is costing Disney absolutely nothing–it’s pure profit. The criticisms that (arguably) apply to Shanghai, Paris, and Hong Kong definitely do not fit with Tokyo. If anything, the reverse is true.
What episode had the model in it? Do you remember the time frame?
Also, would it be safe to assume that at least one of the rides would be using the Shanghai pirates ride system/technology?
Here it is: https://twitter.com/mariograciotti/status/1200516889006366720
As for Shanghai Pirates, I’m not sure. My guess would be the Peter Pan ride, but that’s a total shot in the dark.