Tales of the Oriental Land Co., From Blue Sky Disney

Curious to hear more about the Oriental Land Company, owners and operators of Tokyo Disneyland? Blue Sky Disney’s got you covered. A brief snippet from their excellent post:

Back in the late 1970’s Walt Disney Productions(now known as the Walt Disney Company) was building a little theme park we like to call EPCOT. Now, even though Walt had passed from this world for over a decade and there was, at times and in areas of the company, a lack of direction, some areas of the company still focused on a great deal of attention, detail and quality to the parks. EPCOT was costing the company millions and millions of dollars in cost overruns as it moved toward completion(the final bill would be over a billion dollars in 1982 dollars, friends). Now around this time a company known as the Keisei Electric Railway Company was also having financial difficulties in Japan. Through their real estate holding company, known as The Oriental Land Company they just happened to own a piece of land near Tokyo’s harbor and came up with the idea of getting Walt Disney Productions to build a park there. Knowing the Japanese love of Disney characters, the company thought it would be a great way to get out of debt and what better way than getting the Mouse to build a park in the land of the rising sun.

But why didn’t Disney just build it themselves? Read on at BlueSky for the rest of the story . . .