Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, we’ll be continuing our look at theme park shows about the parks themselves with Tokyo Disneyland’s follow up to Remember … Dreams Come True.
In the last few weeks, we’ve gotten some in-depth looks at some of the attractions coming soon to Tokyo DisneySea’s new land, Fantasy Springs. Officially opening on June 6, these attractions all look incredible, particularly when it comes to the animatronics in the attractions. Their movements look incredibly fluid,while retaining their cartoon-like quality. It is certainly setting the bar high for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure on its recently announced June 28th opening day at Magic Kingdom. As of now, Tokyo Disneyland has not announced any plans to close the last version of Splash Mountain, though we’ll see if that changes with the reception of Fantasy Springs and Tiana’s in the U.S.
Via D23
Tokyo is in a bit of a middle ground between anniversaries at the moment, but they tend to go all out when the time comes, especially in regards to adding parades and fireworks spectaculars. For the 35th anniversary, Tokyo Disneyland added a parade called Dreaming Up and today’s featured attraction, Celebrate! Tokyo Disneyland. Celebrate actually got a bit of a late start, not making its way into the park until July 10, 2018, almost three months after the park’s 35th. But to get it there, they spared no expense, most impressively utilizing 88 searchlights and 87 water fountains to help the show become a full-blown spectacular. And for inspiration, the show took a lot of its cues from Remember … Dreams Come True because why not use one of the most successful fireworks shows as inspiration?
The show started out in a really fun way with some of the buckets from Fantasia appearing as projections to splash some color onto the castle and let us know that things were about to get crazy. From there, a silhouette of Goofy popped up to warm up the orchestra, in a similar way to Donald during Mickey’s PhilharMagic. He didn’t get into quite as many hijinks since a costumed Mickey Mouse appeared about halfway up the castle to blend projections with real life. His music led to a projection bonanza with a ton of attraction ride vehicles popping up as 3D renderings to let us know that this wasn’t going to be our average fireworks show, instead focusing on the park itself like its inspiration, Remember.
Via Wikipedia
The first land represented in the show was Adventureland, which started out with a cool rendition of the Enchanted Tiki Room because we got to hear some Japanese lyrics and see Stitch, the star of the show in Tokyo. The show then moved along to show Mickey as a conductor on the Jungle Cruise, which was so much fun to see a character on such an iconic vehicle. Throughout the course of the show, there were a lot more of these fun moments, so get ready because the next one appeared right away with Mickey falling onto a barrel that found its way into the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction where projection mapping helped him navigate his way through various scenes from the attraction. This section also really showcased the water fountains that were all around the castle, especially because the show didn’t use that many fireworks, giving Celebrate a bit of a World of Color feel.
The next land on the docket was a segment featuring Westernland. It started with a bit of music from Pocahontas with images of the riverboat in the background. The show then transitioned into a rip-roaring ride on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, made even more fun with the addition of the Country Bears on the back of the train and Mickey as the conductor. I mean, how can you beat that?
Fantasyland took center castle next, with this section of the show functioning the most like a traditional fireworks show. It featured a bunch of animated scenes, with many of the scenes pulled straight from the Fantasyland dark rides. Most interesting were scenes from Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast since neither film had an attraction in the park (at that time). Haunted Mansion also popped up in this section because the attraction is notably a part of Fantasyland in Tokyo Disneyland (and part of a different land of each park it is a part of). This part of the show had some very ghoulish projections, which did lean a bit childish, but really worked in the context of the show itself.
The show chugged along after to the Critter Country and Toontown part, with a brief splashdown of Mickey on Splash Mountain before he moved along to strolling around Toontown. It was a lot of fun to see him in his natural element before he moved on to leading the orchestra in some otherworldly themes.
Tomorrowland kicked off with some old attraction posters, one of the few signs that show was also focused on Tokyo Disneyland’s past as well as its present. Celebrate then shifted gears to a battle between Buzz Lightyear and Zurg before Mickey went on his own Star Tours trip. The Star Wars-related projections on the castle were awesome and it was cool to see scenes from the newer Star Tours in there as well.
Having completed the Grand Circle Tour, Mickey got to work on a popcorn machine which popped all over the castle before unveiling some of the dolls from it’s small world and a huge 35 to celebrate the park’s anniversary. We got one more closing number with Mickey conducting the heck out of all of the elements of the show that we had just seen and a resounding roar from the crowd.
All in all, Celebrate! Tokyo Disneyland was super inventive and like most Tokyo Disneyland shows, just a lot of fun. I’m not a huge fan of fireworks, so a show so focused on projection mapping and water fountains is basically exactly what I look for, especially when the show also has a real life Mickey Mouse in it. Celebrate! didn’t dive deep into the history of the park like Remember, but you could feel the inspiration of the show in it, and the use of characters on the ride vehicles was nothing less than inspired. The show ended up sticking around until April 26, 2019 when Light the Night took its place, but Celebrate! did a fantastic job lighting the night all on its own while it was around.
Via Touring Plans
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!