Tokyo Disneyland marks 35th anniversary

Rides and goods featuring Disney characters have attracted a wide range of popularity, with the number of accumulated visitors to the Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture-based theme park, as well as the adjacent Tokyo DisneySea, reaching 720 million. The number of foreign visitors has also been increasing recently, and it has been a challenge for Disneyland to ease congestion.
 The park opened in April 1983, with the number of visitors reaching 10 million in fiscal 1984. The park added new attractions and shows one after another and annual visitors to the park, combined with DisneySea, marked a record high 31.37 million in fiscal 2014. In recent years, visitors from China and the Southeast Asia region have been rapidly increasing.
 However, congestion has become severe and wait times of two hours to three hours have become the norm at popular attractions on holidays.
 In 2000, the park introduced the Fastpass system in which a visitor is given a specific time for entry for some attractions, and has also started showing wait times on the internet. But congestion has still not eased.