November 16, 2009

A Space Flight Over Seas

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Opening with Tokyo Disneyland on April 15, 1983, this Space Mountain became the first mountain to open with the park on opening day. Before then, all the Magic Kingdom style theme parks’ mountains (Splash, Thunder, Matterhorn) never opened with the park.

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From 1983 to late 2006, Tokyo Disneyland's Space Mountain was an almost exact clone of Disneyland's Space Mountain as it had opened in 1977. Apart from some outside architectural elements with the exception of both having the same shape and dimensions, the interior was the same, although there were some different effects. The track layouts, rocket designs, and original special effects and elements were the same as its Californian counterpart.

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Though there were some differences between Tokyo and California’s Space Mountains.

1- On the first lift hill, the ceiling lights were blue and the flashing arrows on the sides were yellow and flashed slightly faster than at the pattern of the Disneyland version. In the Disneyland version, the ceiling lights were yellow-white and the flashing arrows red.

2- On the second lift hill, the tractor beam light of the Tokyo version changed color as the trains ascended the lift, while the Disneyland version had a tractor beam that stayed on red for the entire lift.

3- Each version had their own version of the reentry tunnel. While Disneyland's reentry tunnel was an orange round warp effect, the Tokyo version had a hexagonal shaped reentry tunnel, with blue lighting instead of orange.

4- Before the Dick Dale soundtrack was added to the Disneyland version, the sounds of the tractor beams on the second lift hill were different in pitch. The Tokyo version also had an ignition sound in its sound effect while such effect was not on the Disneyland version.

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In mid-2006, some Disney-fan sites reported that Tokyo Disneyland was rumored to get a small refurbishment of their Space Mountain in a period of six months between October 2006 and April 2007. While some thought it was a technical rehab and that changes to the ride and story were just rumors, in November 2006, outside the construction walls of Space Mountain, concept art of a new station and rockets, new logo, and new color scheme appeared, thus confirming all rumors and speculation of the rehab were true.

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On April 28, 2007 Space Mountain re-opened. The new Space Mountain has a more sci-fi futuristic look to it, there are new effects, new space port which features a futuristic space ship hanging from the ceiling. The ride has changed but the effects are built on top the original ride effects. Like the California counterpart, it now includes a hyper speed tunnel at the end of the ride.

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<Samsung NV3, Samsung VLUU NV3>   Space Mountain Tokyo Disneyland

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Now onto the pins…

This first pin features the original Space vehicle, it was apart of one of TDL’s first pin sets, and Attraction Series, PRE- Refurbishment.pin15135 pin40228

This pin was released for the Space Mountain Re-Launch of 2007, with the new color scheme of Blue, and the new logo.pin54757

This WDI pin was released for the reopening of TDL’s Space Mountain featuring new concept art to enhance the story. pin57987 

This final pin was released for the TDL Attraction Series, it features famous elements of the attraction: the building, attraction vehicles, space elements and CM attraction. pin67608 

Pictures and Information from TDRFan.com, AllEarsNet and Wikipedia.org

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