Disney’s Tokyo Hollywood Studios | Canceled theme park before DisneySea
A version of Disney’s Hollywood Studios was planned for Tokyo Disney Resort before being canceled in favor of Tokyo DisneySea.
Bob Weis, former president of Walt Disney Imagineering, shared this tidbit of theme park history with us in our recent interview with him:
We were going to add Disney’s Hollywood Studios next to Tokyo Disneyland, and it got canceled. We were all downtrodden after working on it for a couple years, but the end result was that it became Tokyo DisneySea, so you just never know where it’s going to lead you, and what you’re going to learn from it.
Bob Weis, Attractions Magazine interview
Photo courtesy of Disney
Had it been built, the Tokyo iteration of a park focused on the behind-the-scenes of the entertainment business would have been the second of its kind in the Disney portfolio, following the opening of Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios) in 1989.
Photo courtesy of Disney
Eventually, Disney did build another park with this template, Walt Disney Studios Park, which opened at Disneyland Paris in 2002 (and will soon be renamed Disney Adventure World).
The proposed Tokyo Hollywood Studios project wasn’t the only canceled project in Weis’ Disney career.
“At one point we thought we might do a project in Sydney, Australia,” Weis reflected in our interview with him, “which I was really excited about, but we decided not to do that.”
Weis also discussed Disney’s America, the park Disney developed for the Washington, D.C., area in the mid-’90s. “We all thought were going to build Disney’s America in Virginia. The project was going well, and we were starting to work with the government. But we ended up not doing it and though I don’t regret not doing it, it was a sharp turn.”
Artwork courtesy of Disney
Read more of Bob Weis’ stories from decades of work with Imagineering in our full interview with him.
Stay tuned to Attractions Magazine for daily coverage of theme park news, trip reports, and exclusive interviews from Disney, Universal, and independent attractions around the world.
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