April 15 2003 saw the debut of this stunning new show of the castle forecourt stage at Tokyo Disneyland. This exciting musical performance was created especially for the 20th anniversary of the Kingdom of Dreams and Magic.

The show features Mickey & the gang, who produce a huge, talking “Bag of Dreams�? that has mysterious powers to make dreams come true. This animated bag is filled with twenty years of the “dreams�? conceived by both the Disney characters and the millions of park guests who have entered into the Magic Kingdom.

Each character in turn sees their dreams become a reality; Goofy dreams of adventure and the entire stage is transformed into a jungle, with singing monkeys, Timon and Baloo . The music is appropriately thematic, featuring the theme from A Monkey’s Uncle and Disney classics such as The Jungle Book and The Lion King. Goofy’s vision disperses to allow Minnie the opportunity to take centre stage. Naturally, her dreams are of Happily Ever After, as the stage becomes an elegant and romantic ball, as the Disney princesses join Minnie with their dancing partners. Minnie dreams of fairytale romances coming true and is missing her mouse for much of the Act, before Mickey appears to whisk her off her feet for the finale.

Next, Donald gets his turn, but before his dream of fun becomes a reality, the Disney Villians try to take over. Maleficient, Hades and the Evil Queen appear, towering over the Fab Five, threatening to wreak havoc over their precious dreams. However, with the help of the audience, the Bag of Dreams dispels this nightmare. Unfortunately, he has just one more dream to come true - this time for the watching audience. With all the characters and a myriad of dancers, Mickey and his pals wish that all our dreams come true as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of their kingdom.

This show is undoubtedly the most exciting and enjoyable daytime presentation on this stage for many years (perhaps since the Viva! Magic show of the 15th anniversary). There are plenty of visual treats for the entire family and the show is slick and professional for a character-based spectacle. The music is amazing and the finale is a wonderful celebration of the twenty years of this beautiful park.

Mickey’s Gift of Dreams is scheduled to run throughout the summer until September 19 2003 with approximately three shows daily. This show gave TDR management an opportunity to introduce a new technology in the form of random seat selection. Prior to this castle forecourt presentation, tickets for the seated area were available on a “first come, first served�? basis. However, management deemed this to be unfair to those guests unaware of how the system worked, especially those guests who had never visited the park. Now, the vacant Meet the World building has been transformed into a random selection arena. All guests are given the opportunity to attempt for one show daily. One guest queues up with all of his or her party’s entrance passports. The tickets are scanned into a computer, which randomly allocates seating in the preferred area, directly in front of the castle. Each guests only receives one attempt daily and you may enter the lottery up until 40 minutes before your desired showtime. Annual passholders were complaining that they never seemed to win in the lottery, whilst multi-day ticket holders appeared to win daily (like Lindsay and I did). Only time will tell if guests will accept this new system.