Why is Tokyo DisneySea soooo much better than any other park worldwide?

[mbroschak]

Hi all,

first of all, I'm a hardcore Disney fan through and through. Been to DL more times than I can count, WDW on 7 separate trips, 4 Disney crusies, twice to what was EuroDisney and now Disneyland Paris and once to Tokyo Disneyland before DisneySea opened. I've seen some very detailed footage of DisneySea and this park is unbelievable, the attractions, the shows (including now the new fantasmic) the fit and finish of every detail of the park blows everything we have at our American parks out of the water. How is this so when all of the roots of the company are here? That park looks incredible down to the last tile on the floor and it makes me sad that we will never see that kind of top notch theme park design stateside.

 

[v_misses_epcot]

I have to agree! Never been but it just looks so much better. Even the merchandise is amazing and cute to boot! My friend that works there say that it's very strict and no slacking off is allowed. She showed me a video of how all the areas basically look brand new and spotless due to cleaning even if a teeny piece of popcorn falls on the ground haha. I can't wait to visit it but yes, the costumes are amazing!

 

[marni1971]

Because The Oriental Land Company owns and pays for Tokyo Disney. It is licensed by TWDC. It shows what can be done with a good consistant budget.

 

[tampabrad]

OLC owns and pays for the property. They still use Disney imagineers for planning and design of attractions. Also, the people of Japan have a different idea of "pride" in their jobs.

 

[MarkTwain]

I once read an anecdotal story about how traditionally, Imagineers deliberately overdesign a design proposal with so much extra detail, so many extravagant touches, or perhaps a few more attractions than they actually anticipate, that when the design is ultimately reviewed by the bean-counters and invariably has the budget slashed below what they asked for, the final budget still allows for a design that's reasonably close to what they were actually hoping to get. Well apparently, when the Imagineers pitched the over-the-top $4 billion Tokyo DisneySea design to the OLC executives, OLC just gave them everything they asked for... all $4 billion of it! :lol: I don't know if that's true or not, but it might help explain just why TDS is so ridiculously hyper-detailed... because it's what happens when Imagineers are allowed to bring all of their designs to reality.

 

[Buried20KLeague]

What Martin said. Think "nearly unlimited budget".

It's what Imagineers can do if you get rid of all the red tape.

That park alone is worth the trip to the resort... And beyond that, Japan is a GREAT country with amazing people. Win-win-win, all the way around.

 

[ChrisFL]

There's also the point that they used a lot of creations that had been worked on for DECADES earlier. DisneySea is the culmination of a lot of ideas for other lands/attractions/parks that Imagineering had worked on before.