Interesting Read: Here's What An Abandoned Magic Kingdom / Disney Land Would Look Like.

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Years ago China opened a Disney Land Knockoff, it closed with the nearby opening of the real Disney.

The Story of Nara Dreamland:
There's something extremely beautiful because of the surreal nature of a huge abandoned theme park. 
One of the most intriguing abandoned theme park stories has to be Nara Dreamland. The developer copied many of the Disney rides as best he could, from the Matterhorn to the Monorail, the Castle, and even a creepy abandoned Jungle Cruise - this now abandoned park, Nara Dreamland, is what an abandoned Disney would look like if it was untouched for years.

The story goes: "In the late 1950s, Kunizu Matsuo, a Japanese businessman & president of the Matsuo Entertainment Company, visited the United States. As part of his trip, he visited the then-new Disneyland in Anaheim and was quite impressed, inspiring him to bring Disneyland to Japan. Later on, he met with Walt Disney about bringing Disneyland to Japan; specifically to Japan's old capital, Nara. Matsuo also talked with engineers to create the Japanese version of Disneyland. However, towards the end of the construction phase, Matsuo and Disney had disagreements on licensing fees for all the famous Disney characters, though they soon settled when the former paid for the latter's help. So, MEC abandoned the idea of Nara Disneyland and created their own mascots and trademarks." - Wikipedia
These ideas all blatantly copied Disney, but what was built is one of the most famous and best stories of a theme park ever, a park that was just waiting for its demise, but once thrilled tens of millions.

On July 1, 1961, Nara Dreamland opened. The entrance to the park was designed to look almost identical to Disneyland, including the Train depot, a Main Street, U.S.A. and the familiar Sleeping Beauty Castle at the hub. It also had a Matterhorn-type mountain (with a Matterhorn Bobsleds-type ride, called Bobsleigh) with the skyway running through it, as well as an Autopia-type pubs and a monorail. The park also had its own mascots, Ran-chan and Dori-chan, two children dressed as bearskin guards. 
It was almost an exact replica of Disneyland, visitors liked going there as it was the closest thing they could get without traveling to US. At its peak, the park had 1.6 million visitors a year. -wiki
The Proper People have a video below that showcases the fake Disney Land park in my favourite video of this majestic place. The end of the video is in daylight while the first half is at night. The video is extremely tense and interesting to watch.



The climb up the "Matterhorn" is very surreal!

Unfortunately, demolition is said to have started last year on this beautiful property. The expected time for this to take is 14 months, so once 2018 hits, this incredible story will no longer be standing. Nara Dreamland, from 1961-2017 will not be forgotten.

There's another video below that shows the state just before demolition. It is sad but also incredible to watch. Bradley Lusk

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