Back in the 90s, Disney announced plans to build a sea-themed park called Port Disney in Long Beach, California. Unfortunately, financial problems caused the project to be cancelled before any work can begin. Japan’s Oriental Land Company, which owns Tokyo Disney Resort, revived those plans as Tokyo DisneySea, opened 2001.
Here’s a list of Tokyo DisneySea’s themed areas, known as “ports of call†due to their being styled after various historical and fantastical seaside locations. Tokyo Disney Resort bills DisneySea as a more “grown-up” alternative to the original Tokyo Disneyland nearby.
- Mediterranean Harbor – the entrance hub; patterned after an Italian port with gondolas for guests to ride. It is home to the only Disney hotel completely within the boundaries of a theme park, the Tokyo DisneySea Hotel MiraCosta (other Disney Hotels are usually outside park grounds).
- Mysterious Island – retro science fiction zone; based on the works of Jules Verne. Its Mount Prometheus volcano is DisneySea’s analogue to the Princess castles in other Disney theme parks.
- Mermaid Lagoon – DisneySea’s only mostly indoor-located themed area, based on characters from The Little Mermaid. Outside it’s designed like King Triton’s palace, and the interior effects give off the feeling of being underwater.
- Arabian Coast – themed after Aladdin’s home of Agrabah; populated with minaret palaces and open bazaars.
- Lost River Delta – Interestingly, it’s mainly themed around its central attraction based on Indiana Jones. This is the other port for the DisneySea Steamer, which travels back and forth from here to Mediterranean Harbor.
- Port Discovery – another sci-fi themed area with a more art deco-inspired design; in-universe, its “Center for Weather Control†manages the weather for the whole park. Attractions based on Finding Nemo/Finding Dory can be found here.
- American Waterfront – has two sub-areas that replicate iconic American port aesthetics; one is patterned after a Cape Cod fishing town, and the other takes after how an Eastern Seaboard port city looked like in the early 20th Century, with a steamship passenger liner replica on the dock. The DisneySea Electric Railway connects between here and Port Discovery.