While visiting Tokyo Disneyland earlier this month, we got a good look at the ongoing construction of the new Beauty and the Beast attraction and the massive Fantasyland/Tomorrowland/Toontown Expansion going on at the park.
From our room at the Sheraton Tokyo Bay, the site is quite visible. This giant show-building will house the trackless Beauty and the Beast dark ride which will open in 2020. This attraction will be exclusive to Tokyo and open just in time for the Olympics when they come to Japan that year.
The construction site comes up against the parking lot for the park.
We even have a video circling the site via the Disney Resort Line Monorail:
The expansion also includes a new outdoor Fantasyland theater, a meet and greet space in Toontown for Minnie Mouse, and a Baymax ride in Tomorrowland with an adjacent flavored popcorn store (we’ll be talking about the flavored popcorn in a post soon)!
You can check out plenty of photos of the model for the expansion here.
We now head inside the park for a better look. Tall construction walls obscure the view from Tomorrowland.
The steel on the left behind the walls appears to be part of the Beast’s Castle, the facade for the ride. In the attraction, guests will ride in giant teacups. It will be a trackless dark ride, much like Pooh’s Hunny Hunt and many of the new rides coming to Walt Disney World (Ratatouille, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, Star Wars “Battle Escape”).
Yes those are teacups, even though they will look more like soup bowls for the sake of ride capacity. The Oriental Land Company (who operates Tokyo Disney Resort, not Disney) expects massive crowds for this new E-Ticket and hopes to have the largest trackless ride vehicles to date in order to handle the demand.
The steps of the Tomorrowland Terrace restaurant offer a good view.
The Castle will obscure a good portion of the massive show building.
Not much steel has risen for the other buildings yet. We are in the vicinity of the Minnie Mouse meet and greet and Baymax ride complex here.
Here’s where Minnie’s Style Studio will eventually stand.
The Beauty and the Beast show building rises over Toontown. Yes, the mountain range in the Tokyo Toontown is sculpted, not just some flat mountains…
The Beast’s Castle will be quite visible from Donald’s Boat and most of Mickey’s Toontown.