Christmas in Tokyo Toontown

It's Christmastime at Tokyo Disneyland! Last year we took a look at some of their Christmas decorations, but we never made it into Toontown. Today, we will venture into "The Land That Toons Built."

First up, we have a shot of the entrance.


Next, we have the Jolly Trolley with a big bow on the roof. Tokyo's Jolly Trolley attraction actually closed permanently in April of this year. :-(


This car is parked in a no parking zone. We know it's a no parking zone because of the three dimensional sign showing a red circle and a slash....with a miniature car literally hanging off the slash!

The previous three photos each have Halloween companion pics. For a seasonal comparison, click (here).

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All of the street lamps...and even this traffic signal, get decorated for Christmas.

Small seasonal touches are also added to the Roger Rabbit fountain in the downtown section of Toontown.

Wacky Christmas garland is hung over the streets.

Out in the residential district, Minnie's house gets decorated.....

....and Goofy has a Christmas tree made out of umbrellas on his front lawn.

Donald has a pretty large stocking hanging off the bow of his ship. His wish list for Santa includes a fishing pole, ice skates, model airplane, portable radio, diver's watch, movie camera, golf clubs, television, and a sports car. Oh, is that all?

Chip and Dale even get dressed up for the occasion!

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To see holiday decor from other areas of Tokyo Disneyland, click here: Christmas In Tokyo Disneyland. And here: Christmas On Main Street.

Tokyo Disneyland Goes to Hades

It's been a while since I've posted about Tokyo Disneyland, so let's take a look at our Disney neighbor from across the Pacific. First up, we have two pics of the "Hades" float from last year's Halloween Parade. This was a wonderful parade with two different versions for daytime and nighttime. The daytime version featured the Disney Villains magically appearing on the floats during the "show mode" part of the parade. The nighttime version featured the Villains on the parade floats during the entire parade and an entirely different parade soundtrack!

This is actually the back of the Hades float. I will try to get photos of the whole parade posted before Halloween. Tokyo Disneyland does a completely different Halloween parade every year. If you would like to see the entire Halloween parade from another year, click here.

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I mentioned in a post last year about how adults are allowed to wear costumes into the park during the week leading up to Halloween. Here is a photo of a guest dressed up as Hades. Some of the guests costumes get so elaborate, they rival the costumes of the Disney characters that walk around the park. To view more park guest costumes click here.

This next pic shows one of last year's Halloween vignettes in the Plaza. It's a ghost with a "Hades" face tormenting poor Goofy. I have also mentioned in the past how the Halloween figures currently seen along Disneyland/Anaheim's tram route are from Tokyo Disneyland's Plaza circa 2005. Tokyo reuses some of the figures from other areas of the park each year, but the Plaza figures are always new every year. I wish Anaheim would get all of Tokyo's old figures every year! (To see Plaza vignettes from other years....including the ones now used at Disneyland, click here.)

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Tokyo Disneyland also decorates their Fantasyland, Toontown, Westernland (Frontierland) and World Bazaar (Main St.) for Halloween. To see Halloween decorations from all of these other "lands," click here.

I "Like" Disneyland

Today we have three vintage lenticular* pins from Disneyland. They are from the late sixties/early seventies. The Mickey Mouse pin above, is a personal souvenir of mine from a childhood visit to the park. This same version can be seen changing while worn by a "celebrity" park guest in this wonderful photo series posted recently by Daveland.

The Goofy pin below, belonged to my brother and was purchased during the same park visit.


Next, is the Tinkerbell version. I purchased this pin recently on ebay just to complete my collection. I believe there were only these three versions available....at least I only remember these three being sold at the park and I haven't seen any others out there for sale since then.


Below is a pic showing what the backs of these pins look like.

(*Lenticular images are those that display one image when held at one angle and another image when tilted slightly.)

Halloween In The Plaza - 2007

Last year's Halloween theme at Tokyo Disneyland was "Happy Haunted Halloween." The vignettes in the plaza and the floats in the Halloween parade were all inspired by the Haunted Mansion attraction. The picture above was taken with a flash and the one below was taken without. I posted both because even though the spotlights on Mickey and Minnie wash them out a bit in the photo below, you do get a better idea of what the ghosts looked like at night.....which was very much like the ghosts in the graveyard scene of the Haunted Mansion.

The photo below was also taken with a flash, so again, you don't get the full ghost effect that was intended. It was difficult to get an in-focus shot of this scene without a flash (I wasn't using a tripod.)

Below is Goofy as the Haunted Mansion's night watchman and Pluto as his trusty companion.

Since Tokyo gets all new character figures in their plaza every year....and since Anaheim got the figures that Tokyo used in 2005 and has used them every year following, I wonder why Anaheim couldn't just get Tokyo's "hand-me-down" figures every year? Oh wait, that would cost something and I'm sure they don't want to spend one more penny than they have to. What a shame. The figures that were used in Tokyo's Plaza in 2005 and that are still in use today in Anaheim, can be seen by clicking here: Tokyo Disneyland Halloween 2005.

Halloween Parade 2005, Part 2

I am going to keep the commentary short and sweet today. Today's post is a continuation of yesterday's. The photo's are from Tokyo Disneyland's Halloween Parade in 2005. Above is Scrooge's float......followed by Huey, Dewey and Louie.

Below, we have a wider view of the Pluto and Goofy float from yesterday.

Next, we have Chip and Dale (playing pumpkin guitars) along with that female chipmunk. Does she have a name?

And finally, we have Stitch, followed by the wicked witch from Snow White.

Halloween Parade 2005, Part 1

As mentioned in yesterday's post, Tokyo Disneyland has a Halloween parade and they change the floats, costumes and parade soundtrack so that it is completely original every year. The photos in today's post are all from 2005. The theme that year was, "A Pumpkin Party in Pumpkin Kingdom". If you compare today's photos with yesterday's, you can see that Donald, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto, are all wearing the same costumes that their corresponding figures in the Plaza were wearing.

Note the bat wings on the pumpkins above and below.

Above, is Minnie as the Pumpkin Queen (sorry for the out of focus shot), and below is Mickey as the Pumpkin King.....pumpkin shorts and all.

Tokyo Disneyland's Halloween parades are always pretty decent in length. There is more to see from this parade. I will be posting pics of the other units tomorrow.

Tokyo Halloween 2005!

We will be taking a little break from Tokyo DisneySea for now, but we will definitely go back and take a closer look since there is still much more to see there. For now, let's go back to Tokyo Disneyland and take a look at how they decorate the park for Halloween. To begin with, I don't remember Disneyland in Anaheim doing too much for Halloween until around the early to mid nineties. Then it seems like they stopped at some point, and didn't do much for Halloween again until just two years ago....but somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about that. I do have photos of DL's Halloween decor in the nineties. I should pull those out and post them.....if I can ever pry myself away from the Tokyo parks. I have to say I was totally blown away by how much decorating Tokyo Disneyland does for Halloween. It seems like more than half the park gets decorated. They decorate the Plaza area, Fantasyland, Westernland, Toontown and World Bazaar (Main St.). The pictures in today's post were all taken in the Plaza in 2005 . If you look closely, you will recognize some of these figures from Anaheim. That's because they acquired them from Tokyo and used them the very next year in 2006......and then again last year in 2007.....and also again this year. Tokyo changes their Plaza vignettes and all of their character figures every year. They only reuse a few of the pumpkin props. In the photo above, the Mickey, Minnie and Donald figures are the same as those seen alongside the tram route in Anaheim. Too bad Anaheim didn't also get the pumpkin carriage.

Anaheim also acquired the Mickey and Minnie ghosts and the Goofy figure seen above and they are also visible along the Disneyland tram route. I am guessing Anaheim didn't want the Marie (Aristocats) ghost figure. (By the way, Marie is a VERY popular character in Tokyo and is depicted on a fairly large selection of Tokyo Disneyland merchandise.)

These ghost figures, Pluto and the pumpkins that spell out "Halloween" were also brought to Anaheim to use the following year.....and the next.....and the next....and we will probably be seeing them again next year, but hey....it's better than nothing, right? I'm guessing that the reason Tokyo changes their figures every year (other than the fact it appears they are not afraid to spend money), is that the figures' costumes reflect what the actual park characters are wearing in the Halloween parade each year. Yes, Tokyo Disneyland has a Halloween parade and THAT changes every year as well....they don't just trot out the same floats year after year. They go to all this effort, for park decorations and a parade that are only in use for about 7 weeks. Oh, and they write an entirely different soundtrack for their Halloween parade every year, done in the classic Disney parade style.

As the month goes on, I will post some photos from Tokyo Disneyland's Halloween parades as well as photos of decorations from other areas of the park.