Miscellaneous Tokyo Thoughts

[DarkMetroid567]

Their convoluted measures to control crowds and extract money from anticipated demand likely hurt them. Plus Fantasy Springs wasn't even open for half the year.

Universal should pay attention.

I could afford Fantasy Springs Hotel this year. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered going.

 

[tanc]

Their site is also just garbage, but its web design in Japan. The barrier of entry is something that inevitably will stop people from wanting to go.

 

[hopemax]

Just got back from a week in Japan. Our arrival night we stayed at the Hilton Tokyo Bay, then a 2-night package at Fantasy Springs, followed by 5 nights at the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel. We had a total of 3 days at each park, plus a day we went into Tokyo (Shinjuku Disney Store, Nakano Broadway, Nihonbashi Bridge / a couple stores in Tokyo Station).

More thoughts later but:

• Fantasy Springs is amazing.
• Visiting 2 days post holiday was worse than a Saturday. The food / line situation was a real issue these days.
• The app sucks.
• Far, far, far more Westerners visiting than our 2018 trip where we say only like 5 groups in a week. We hit that basically just getting to and into the park on the first day.
• I still absolutely adore DisneySea
• TDR demonstrates how completely awful WDW ops are these days.

 

[hopemax]

Some photos of how dead the parks are today.

The parks have been relatively less crowded on weekends lately, probably a result of flex pricing making weekends the most expensive days.

It's also been extremely hot the past couple weeks, so that could be part of it.

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Looking back at a few pages...oh this is totally not the case now. Ridiculously, more crowded during our week. Especially anything with a Halloween food or beverage had long, long lines. TDS was mostly manageable, but busy. Disneyland was rough. Thank goodness for the package priority access tickets, the free 40th passes and having been there before. When we went for Christmas 2018, we could find a front row parade spot about 80 minutes before. The number of people who entered, and immediately set up camp was most of the parade route. We ended up lining up for Harmony in Color almost 2 hours in advance, for a back row spot in front of CBJ theater, and buying Premiere access for the Halloween parade and Dreamlights.

 

[BasiltheBatLord]

• Far, far, far more Westerners visiting than our 2018 trip where we say only like 5 groups in a week. We hit that basically just getting to and into the park on the first day.

Having lived in Japan for five years, the amount of foreign tourists is absolutely bonkers now. Every where you go in Tokyo they are everywhere. Every neighborhood, every train, every restaurant. Just packed to the gills everywhere you look.

 

[BrianLo]

Forbes article breaking down OLC's finances.

It mentions that OLC appears unlikely to meet their 2024 attendance forecast, despite the opening of Fantasy Springs, and that OLC's capitalization has decreased by $22.3 billion this year.

The Disney Resort Operator That’s Worth Less Now Than It Was Two Years Ago

When theme park operators spend billions on an expansion they don't expect the value of their company to plummet after it opens. But that has happened at one Disney resort.

www.forbes.com

I despise this writer. She’s the one with the nearly unreadable meandering article about Disney Sea that felt written by AI.

Perhaps the article has been updated, but it’s not a failure to meet their attendance targets, attendance is projected to be up 5% and typically OLC under estimates in their forecasts.

It’s the arbitrary failure to be above 2019 attendance that she is highlighting. Maybe failure, since these are projections. Maybe failure, since we don’t really know what this resort is actually targeting for attendance, since they still don’t have APs back. The attendance mix is very different.

 

[hopemax]

While looking around at the masses while lined up for Happy Entry, seeing the lines for all the Halloween snacks, seeing the people enter the park to do nothing more than plant their picnic sheets and watch parades all day, my Dad wondered how many were Passholders. When I told him APs hadn't returned after Covid and everyone had either bought a single day ticket or the even more expensive packages, he was gobsmacked.

So I am glad to hear that the article was overstating the attendance miss, because it looked like a pretty healthy crowd, and I'd hate for those levels to be unsatisfactory.

 

[tanc]

https://www.tokyodisneyresort.jp/tds/guide/disneypremieraccess.html

Premier access will feature all shows soon.

 

[Kevin_W]

Having lived in Japan for five years, the amount of foreign tourists is absolutely bonkers now. Every where you go in Tokyo they are everywhere. Every neighborhood, every train, every restaurant. Just packed to the gills everywhere you look.

Interesting. We were there just ~1.5 years ago and saw very few other obvious tourists. I remember being on the JR line at Shinjuku station during a busy time. There were hundreds of people crammed into our train car and the ones we could see in front and behind us, and we were the only white people in sight.

 

[BasiltheBatLord]

OLC news dump today mostly focused on announcing the new seasonal event periods for early 2025.

TDL gets a Vanellope event and TDS gets a Duffy one (opinion: all of these events are small and lame and are just the bare minimum to get local Disney otaku to repeat visit throughout the year).

Probably the biggest piece of news today is that Big Band Beat (currently still in Special Treat version) is ending permanently on Sep. 30, 2025 and it sounds like an entirely new show might be replacing it.

 

[SweetDuffy101]

OLC news dump today mostly focused on announcing the new seasonal event periods for early 2025.

TDL gets a Vanellope event and TDS gets a Duffy one (opinion: all of these events are small and lame and are just the bare minimum to get local Disney otaku to repeat visit throughout the year).

Probably the biggest piece of news today is that Big Band Beat (currently still in Special Treat version) is ending permanently on Sep. 30, 2025 and it sounds like an entirely new show might be replacing it.

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New BMT show to be announced at a later date.

 

[Vclguy90]

This may be a controversial thought. But is Fantasy Springs kind of a pointless and dumb way to have spent so much money? It is about 1/3 the size of TDS and seems to awkwardly far away from everything and awkwardly laid out. Essentially, I feel it would've been more valuable to give half the plot to TDL and the other half to TDS, put Frozen where it was originally supposed to be placed and did something that got into TDS more thematically. Idk, it just seems like a dumb addiction and, if anything, hurt the appeal of TDS more than help it. I could be alone on this. - Just seems unnecessary

 

[Supersnow84]

This may be a controversial thought. But is Fantasy Springs kind of a pointless and dumb way to have spent so much money? It is about 1/3 the size of TDS and seems to awkwardly far away from everything and awkwardly laid out. Essentially, I feel it would've been more valuable to give half the plot to TDL and the other half to TDS, put Frozen where it was originally supposed to be placed and did something that got into TDS more thematically. Idk, it just seems like a dumb addiction and, if anything, hurt the appeal of TDS more than help it. I could be alone on this. - Just seems unnecessary

If you read my thoughts on the other Tokyo thread (the expansion one) I’m not as against it as you but I share you general criticisms that the expansion is too empty for its size, doesn’t fit TDS well and doesn’t really justify how much money was spent on it

To me arendelle at HK is unequivocally the better land

 

[Vclguy90]

If you read my thoughts on the other Tokyo thread (the expansion one) I’m not as against it as you but I share you general criticisms that the expansion is too empty for its size, doesn’t fit TDS well and doesn’t really justify how much money was spent on it

To me arendelle at HK is unequivocally the better land

Why do you think the only viable expansion area for both parks was given to this?

 

[Supersnow84]

Why do you think the only viable expansion area for both parks was given to this?

I can’t guess. I’d guess it’s probably because we notice its faults because we are theme park nerds but to the average guest this is just the most mind blowing thing they’ve ever seen so our opinion is kinda “pointless” for want of a better word

 

[Gusey]

I will say, I'm glad the original expansion plot where Frozen is going is still vacant, so there is still room for Sea to expand. Land doesn't have that much space left now to expand, right?

 

[Supersnow84]

I will say, I'm glad the original expansion plot where Frozen is going is still vacant, so there is still room for Sea to expand. Land doesn't have that much space left now to expand, right?

Land and sea both have the space of the cast area behind soarin/western railroad and land still has the carpark behind space mountain

The contract for the development of Tokyo bay prevent the parks from expanding to the far side of the monorail loop but it doesn’t exclude backstage/production areas for moving there

I have seen mockup plans that move alot of the central cast areas to the sports fields east of ikspiri then expanded the parks inwards towards each other

 

[BasiltheBatLord]

Buried in a press release that OLC just released today:

New locations and characters are coming to Star Tours at TDL starting April 8, 2025. The new locations will run locked until June 30, after which they will become part of the standard scene rotation.

The press release doesn't mention what the new locations are, but my guess is that this must be the TV show scenes that debuted in the U.S. this year. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Star Tours Japan already has all of the sequel trilogy scenes.

For anyone curious, the rest of the press release goes through TDR's schedule for 2025 events. Nothing else really worth noting except that it confirms the operating period for It's a Small World With Groot (1/15-6/30) and confirms that new entertainment is coming to TDL for Christmas this year.

 

[SweetDuffy101]

Buried in a press release that OLC just released today:

New locations and characters are coming to Star Tours at TDL starting April 8, 2025. The new locations will run locked until June 30, after which they will become part of the standard scene rotation.

The press release doesn't mention what the new locations are, but my guess is that this must be the TV show scenes that debuted in the U.S. this year. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Star Tours Japan already has all of the sequel trilogy scenes.

View attachment 826660

For anyone curious, the rest of the press release goes through TDR's schedule for 2025 events. Nothing else really worth noting except that it confirms the operating period for It's a Small World With Groot (1/15-6/30) and confirms that new entertainment is coming to TDL for Christmas this year.

Im sensing that this press release is giving rush vibes. Especially when theres no mention BBB finale event nor detailed entertainment lineup. Regardless Im looking forward to the Yearlong Duffy event.