Nara Dreamland
I was watching one of my favorite YouTubers this Saturday while watching my hair. Defunctland makes videos about discontinued amusement parks/rides and his videos are super interesting. While he mainly talks about western theme parks, like Disney and Universal, I found one of his older videos on Nara Dreamland, a Japanese theme park founded in the 1960s. Nara Dreamland was actually supposed to be Japan’s first Disney World (even before Tokyo Disneyland), however, the founder, Kunizo Matsuo, and Walt Disney had a disagreement over licensing fees and the theme park lost access to Disney theming. Though Nara Dreamland eventually closed, largely due to competition when Tokyo Disneyland was built, it was still a super cool park and very interesting to learn about. It had a lot of cool, traditional Japanese theming and was purposefully built in Nara, Japan’s former capital, to reflect traditional Japanese history and culture. Super interesting video!