Snow White's Adventures (Fantasyland)
| Snow White's Adventures | |
|---|---|
| Park | Tokyo Disneyland |
| Land / area | Fantasyland |
| Type | Dark ride |
| Opened | April 15, 1983 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
Snow White's Adventures is a dark ride in Fantasyland at Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan. It retells Disney's 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in a series of short scenes ridden in mine cars, following Snow White from the dwarfs' cottage through the dark forest to her encounter with the Evil Queen, disguised as a witch, and the poisoned apple. The attraction opened with the park on April 15, 1983, and is still operating under its original Tokyo name.[1][2]
Tokyo's is one of a family of Snow White dark rides. Versions have operated at Disneyland in California, at Magic Kingdom in Florida, and at Disneyland Park in Paris, but the names, tones and endings have diverged over the years, which makes the surviving Tokyo ride a useful record of an earlier form of the attraction.[1]
History
The Snow White ride began at Disneyland in 1955 as one of Fantasyland's original dark rides. When Tokyo Disneyland was built, it received a version that drew heavily on the original Magic Kingdom ride of 1971, which was also called Snow White's Adventures, though the Tokyo version was somewhat toned down in scariness compared with that Florida original.[3]
That timing mattered. Tokyo Disneyland and the rebuilt New Fantasyland in California both arrived in 1983, and the two projects shared design work, so Tokyo opened with the newer generation of Fantasyland dark rides rather than the simpler 1955 originals.[1]
While other parks have since closed or softened their versions — Magic Kingdom's closed in 2012, and California's was reworked and renamed Snow White's Enchanted Wish in 2021 — Tokyo's ride has kept its original name and its darker tone.[1][3]
Experience
Guests board four-person mine cars for a ride of about two and a half minutes.[1] The cars leave the loading area for the dwarfs' cottage, where the Seven Dwarfs are at work and at play, and then move into the story's threatening half: the Queen's transformation into a stooped witch, the dark forest, and the moment the witch offers Snow White the poisoned apple.
In keeping with the early versions of this ride, the emphasis falls less on Snow White herself — who appears only briefly, as she did in the 1983 generation of the attraction — and more on the Queen and the forest as places of danger.[1] The scenes are built from painted flats, dimensional figures and black-light effects in the classic Fantasyland dark-ride manner, the same toolkit used by its neighbours Pinocchio's Daring Journey and Peter Pan's Flight, which opened alongside it.
That plainness is now part of the appeal. In a Fantasyland that also holds the large, trackless Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast and Pooh's Hunny Hunt, Snow White's Adventures is a surviving example of the small, short, storybook dark ride that defined the land in 1983 — and, unusually, it still tells the scariest version of its story still on offer at any Disney park.