Fortress Explorations (Mediterranean Harbor)
| Fortress Explorations | |
|---|---|
| Park | Tokyo DisneySea |
| Land / area | Mediterranean Harbor |
| Type | Walk-through attraction |
| Opened | September 4, 2001 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
Fortress Explorations is a walk-through attraction in Mediterranean Harbor at Tokyo DisneySea in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan. Set in and around a stone fortress on the western side of the harbour, at a landing called Explorers Landing, it is a self-guided exploration of towers, courtyards, hands-on exhibits and a full-size galleon moored outside — with no ride vehicles, no track and no set route. It opened with the park on September 4, 2001.[1][2]
The fortress is best known as the birthplace of one of Disney's longest-running pieces of connected storytelling: it is the headquarters of the fictional Society of Explorers and Adventurers, usually shortened to S.E.A.[1]
History
Tokyo DisneySea was designed around exploration, and Mediterranean Harbor, its entrance port, is a fictional Italian harbour town called Porto Paradiso. The fortress at its edge was conceived as the home of S.E.A., a society which, in the attraction's backstory, was founded on August 12, 1538, during the golden age of exploration, by figures of the Renaissance world.[1][2]
Fortress Explorations was the first attraction anywhere to introduce the society, its crest and its mottoes. S.E.A. later spread across Disney parks worldwide — into Tokyo DisneySea's own Tower of Terror and Soaring: Fantastic Flight, and far beyond Japan — but the details of the society, its four guiding ideas and its founding, were all laid out here first.[1][2]
Experience
Guests explore at their own pace. The citadel is divided into a series of themed chambers devoted to the tools and ideas of early exploration — astronomy, navigation, cartography and flight among them — filled with working and hands-on exhibits: telescopes, models, a camera obscura-style chamber and other devices guests can operate themselves.[2] Outside, ramps and battlements give views over Mediterranean Harbor and Mount Prometheus, and the exploration continues aboard the galleon moored at the landing below the fortress.[2]
Running through the fortress is a game. In the Leonardo Challenge, guests follow clues on a map around the fortress to prove themselves worthy of the society, a puzzle trail named for Leonardo da Vinci, who looms large in the S.E.A. backstory.[2]
The society's crest, displayed throughout, stands for its four guiding concepts: Adventure, Romance, Discovery and Innovation.[1][2] The fortress also contains Magellan's, one of Tokyo DisneySea's most sought-after restaurants, named for the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, so for many guests the attraction doubles as the dramatic approach to a meal.
Because nothing here moves, Fortress Explorations is easy to walk past on the way to bigger rides. It repays slowing down: it is the most densely detailed walk-through Disney has built at any park, and the source document, in effect, for a storyline that now runs through attractions on three continents.
See also
- Tokyo DisneySea
- Mediterranean Harbor
- Tower of Terror (Tokyo DisneySea)
- List of Tokyo DisneySea attractions