2 months ago, Oriental Land Co., the mother company of Tokyo Disney resort announced a massive expansion of its resort and produced this very unresolute concept art to go along.
This ‘mystery village’ in the center looks closer to a non-sense urban placeholder than any substantial placemaking intent. It’s a forest of windows, roofs, waterfalls and rocks with no path or streets whatsoever. And that Fantasilandesque more substanced village in the back can only forecast one fact : There is gonna be a walkthrough castle, but from which universe ? …nothing match that purplish blue in our DVD collection.
It looks like a typical, “let’s hurry and show our intentions”, real plans will have to be decided later. Now those intentions are real and already quiet satisfactory, beside it still looks better than 2010’s Razulo’s unveiling of his soon to be scrapped version of the New Fantasyland.
And this indecision is quiet understandable. To this day, Tokyo promised both a Fantasyland extension (close to an addition of 2 mini lands) and the real addition of a whole new port (understand land) to the already placemaking champion of the world, Tokyo DiseySea.
Many rumors plan this new port will be a Frozen’s Arrendal bringing some (needed?) colder sea to the park and the 2014 okayed-for sequel-disney-hit attached to it.
But dedicating a whole land/port to one franchise whose look and feel would better fit a Magic Kingdom park is a far stretch, especially from the cold tempered Oriental Land Co., whose wisemen would think twice before running along the US parks into the short term marketing stampede of a still very young (and not really expected) successful franchise.
They are definitely bringing Frozen to their restort, but to which park is a delicate question. Sure Tokyo DisneySea may be in dire need of some best selling characters but the success of DisneySea is also due to its more mature, pondered universe.
One thing is sure, no disappointment is expected from boldest of the resorts. We already know how big it is, no problem with waiting bit to know the how…