20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Tokyo DisneySea)
| 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea | |
|---|---|
| Park | Tokyo DisneySea |
| Land / area | Mysterious Island |
| Type | Suspended dark ride |
| Opened | September 4, 2001 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a suspended dark ride in Mysterious Island at Tokyo DisneySea in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan. Guests board small submarine vehicles named Neptune to explore the ocean depths as volunteer members of Captain Nemo's crew. It opened with the park on September 4, 2001. Although it shares its name, its Jules Verne source material and several of its scenes with the Magic Kingdom attraction that operated in Florida from 1971 to 1994, the Tokyo ride is a new attraction with a different ride system, different vehicles and a different finale — not a revival of the Florida boats.[1][2]
History
Mysterious Island is built into Mount Prometheus, the volcano at the centre of Tokyo DisneySea, and is based on Verne's fiction and on the mythology of Vulcania, the volcanic island fortress from which Captain Nemo operates.[2] In the attraction's backstory, Nemo has opened Vulcania to visitors, and guests are recruited as volunteer crew to help investigate the secrets of the deep. His ship, the Nautilus, is moored in the harbour of Mysterious Island beside the attraction, where it can be seen and explored from outside the ride.[3]
Disney's connection to Verne's novel ran through the 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the Florida submarine attraction it inspired. For Tokyo, Imagineering kept the subject — a voyage with Nemo past reefs, wrecks and sea monsters — but abandoned the idea of boats travelling through real water. The result is often described as a "dry-for-wet" ride: everything about the experience says the vehicle has dived, while the vehicle itself never gets wet.[1]
Experience
The queue begins outdoors at the upper level of Mysterious Island and spirals downward toward the water, passing a miniature of the submarine guests are about to board. At the loading area, six guests at a time step into a Neptune vehicle: two riders face a large forward porthole, two face to one side and two to the other. Each pair of seats has a joystick-controlled searchlight mounted ahead of the vehicle, so riders can pick out details in the darkness for themselves rather than simply watching a lit show pass by.[1][3]
The secret of the ride is its suspension. The enclosed Neptune vehicles hang from an overhead rail, in a system most often compared to Peter Pan's Flight, and travel through the show building at a steady pace. The portholes are double-glazed with a thin layer of water trapped between the panes; at the dock that water sits still and invisible, but as the submarine "dives", air is bubbled through it, selling the descent completely. Captain Nemo narrates the voyage in Japanese throughout.[1][3]
The route passes coral reefs and then the Graveyard of Lost Ships at Kraken Reef, where the wrecks of vessels from many eras litter the sea floor. A giant squid — the kraken of the reef's name — attacks, its tentacles enveloping the submarine before the vehicle escapes into stranger waters. The final section is the Tokyo ride's own invention: the ruins of the lost city of Atlantis, now inhabited by amphibious Atlanteans, who use the power of crystals to help return the stranded submarine to the surface. The ride lasts about five minutes, has no height restriction, and tells its story with physical sets and effects rather than projection screens.[1]