Guests dining at the popular Boma buffet restaurant inside Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge had a little extra smoke with their Zebra Domes last night. A small fire in a storage room prompted the evacuation of the restaurant and surrounding areas of the hotel around 6:45… Read More »Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge evacuates guests due to minor fire
The Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund has acted quickly to meet the needs of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance who are working to protect endangered chimpanzees in Africa. Disney’s ties with Jane Goodall go back to before Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened.… Read More »Chimpanzees Receive Emergency Support from the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund
Events in Japan continue to teeter on the edge of disaster. Whether you’re a villager in Northeastern Japan whose every day is a fight for the basic necessities of survival in a post-tsunami zone or a resident of Fukushima or nearby cities (including Tokyo) where… Read More »When Should Tokyo Disneyland Reopen?
As I fell asleep last night, word from Japan was that the nuclear power plant had experienced further problems with possibility of a larger leak of radiation. To make it worse, winds were shifting driving any radio active particles in the air back toward land. This morning I awoke to news that radiation levels in Tokyo were 10 times higher than normal, which is still a ‘safe’ level but not good obviously, and the situation at the nuclear plant was now ‘catastrophic’. That’s definitely not good.
The Tokyo Disneyland entertainment cast members I’ve been following online were concerned and with good cause. Some to the point of panic ready to break their contracts and buy a $2500 air ticket on their own.
So I’m happy to hear that Disney and OLC management has stepped up to the plate and offered to send any international cast member back home, if they want, with the promise that their job would be available when the situation returns to normal. OLC is even picking up the cost of air travel. Very nice to see them step up to the plate like that. But so far Disney Cast Members have been nothing but professional and amazing, so it was almost expected that they would do this now.
Tokyo Disneyland is contributing in a different way to relief efforts. Water from pools and ponds around the town has been claimed for use as shower and toilet water (but not for drinking please). That now includes water from Tokyo DisneySea’s Mediterranean bay area (and I assume hotel pools, although this article doesn’t mention that).
Below the jump is a video taken from the monorail that shows the condition of the parks.
Read More »Tokyo Disneyland Update: Entertainment Cast Can Go Home
Surfing around for some of the most illustrative videos of the damage in and around Tokyo Disneyland I’ve found the following samples. Evidence of damage like this just outside the gates of the parks, makes you wonder what it looks like inside the parks. I’d love to see video of that.
This appears to be from the welcome plaza near a monorail station:
More damage from near Tokyo Disneyland Maihama-Station. The workers appear to be shoveling away the silt formed after liquefaction in the area. :
More below the jump, including a video inside Tokyo DisneySea moments after the quake:
The 911 tape for the heavily reported on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey evacuation has been released. On it, one of the ride’s passengers claims they had been kept waiting 15 minutes in an uncomfortable position without any notice from ride attendants when help… Read More »When you evacuate an attraction, how long should it take?