Nara Dreamland
17/10/2012
Ok, so my plan was to
spend the night in a park in Nara so I could explore this abandon amusement
park. This is something that not many people have done because; 1 – its highly
illegal and 2 – not many people know it still exists.
The way I heard and found
out about this place is that I was doing some research on Japan when I was
sitting in my hostel in Riga, Lativa when I came across these ‘Dead Cities’
where people literally pack up and leave all of a sudden leaving books, clothes
and other personal belongings in a house.
Nara Dreamland is an
abandoned amusement park in Nara, Japan. It was closed in 2006 and abandoned
without getting demolished – which makes it quite a unique urbex location since
all the roller coasters, merry-go-rounds, souvenir shops, arcades and other attractions
are still there. (Although it’s up for discussion if the place is really
abandoned. It’s closed, that’s for sure, but the owner of the park obviously
still cares about it to some degree…)
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), and the skyway running through it, as well as an Autopia-type
ride and a monorail. The park also had
its own mascots, Ran-chan and Dori-chan, two kids dressed as bearskinned guards.
Anyway, I didn’t end up
sleeping in the park, and lucky for me that was a wise choice as it practically
rained all night, instead I just slept on the side of the road with a shelter
over my head to protect me from the rain. I slept from 8ish until about 1.30 in
the morning where I woke myself up and started the hike to find Nara Dreamland.
Luckily I found it with no problems.
I started walking up the
street where Nara Dreamland was on and there were street lights to light up the
street, eventually the street lights stopped and with there being no moon made
everything so dark. I was so scared and I wasn’t even in Dreamland yet!
Mind you, I was on my own
for this entire affair so I had no one to get ideas or opinions off, it was
just me, myself and I… all alone in the dark!
I eventually found the
park and jumped over the, low but pretty gnarly gate with barbed wire and all
the works and managed to scratch my wrist as I jumped over, a bit of blood but
no worries. As I jumped over the fence with my bag on my back an my torch in my
hand I noticed what I assume was an old ticket booth for cars to my right, I
walked up to it to check it out I shone my torch to see what was inside and saw
this… It Scared The Living Shit Out Of Me!
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| The ticket booth with... |
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| THIS GUY! :"I'M COMING TO GET YA" |
Once I composed myself I
could just make out a car that was at the end of the very small street leading
towards the car park. As soon as I saw the car i was again freaked out, I was
thinking that there either was a security guard sleeping in the car or worse
walking around the park making sure people like me stayed out. My reason for
being worried about this, is that you don’t just get slap on the wrist if your
caught, instead you are going to have to pay potentially thousands of dollars
which I do not have. So as you can imagine I was very cautious.
As I got closer to the
Mazda 323 it had no body inside which obviously made me think that there could be a
security guard inside… From the parked car I walked left, it was like a small
winding street, I imagined there to be homeless people living in these houses
but I didn’t hear a noise. All the windows were smashed and as I was walking I
would sometimes step on the broken glass making a loud noise. I continued on
until I saw the first roller coaster and the Castle. There I could just make
out the silhouettes on the black sky.
I composed myself and
took out my camera and tried taking some long exposure shots. They came out
O.K, ideally id love to have a big SLR with a tri-pod etc for these photos but
my little digi did really well, check out some photos.
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| So dark... so scary!! |
After I took photos of
the main centre of Dreamland, I walked past the indoor games room where there
were loads of SEGA machines all ready to be played, and im sure if you managed
to get the power in the park working again, they would all work!
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| Games room!! Sega machines everywhere! |
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| At the canteen! Everything was so much cheaper when the park was open! |
I shot some photos here
trying to be as quiet as possible, and afterwards I walked towards the biggest
roller coaster in the park, that was all made of wood!
I don’t think I’d ever
seen a wooden roller coaster, the roller coasters I’ve seen are made out of
steel, so walked into the main entrance which had weeds growing so high at
almost 6ft tall, I turned back a found another entrance to the roller coaster,
which I assume to be the exit for the ride. I climb the stairs on my tippy-toes
to make minimal sound.
From here I walked back
down the stairs and went back toward the main centre of Nara Dreamland, where
the castle was. This time though I walked down the street opposite the castle.
This short street was lined with shop fronts, where the guests could have bought
anything from food to computer games and souvenirs, because it was still
drizzling there were weird noises coming from the shop fronts, I continued on
and took some photos up and down the street, check them out.
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| The main street, looking back at the castle! Even the trees look haunting! |
So at the end of the
street it took me underneath what would have been the ticket booth, I didn’t
see any prices so I’m not sure how much it would have cost to see the amusement
park.
I took some photos of
this part of the park, and then headed around to the left of the next park
which gave me some new views of the big wooden roller coaster. What I did find
out, was that this road it was walking down to get a better view of the roller
coaster runs parallel to one of the many streets in the neighbourhood close by.
I freaked out thinking that it was a car driving into the park!
So as you can imagine I’m
on edge! I’m freaking out about being caught by security, locals, zombies
anything! But it’s all just mind over matter you continue on!
So I take some more
photos and head back to the main square of the park, which is near the Castle,
this time instead of walking down the street I walk to see what is behind the
castle. On this side of the castle there are all the standard rides.
I proceeded to walk up to
a one of the spinning rides, but as I got closer I heard ‘boom, BOOM, BOOM!’
like someone running across a roof towards me!!! I sprinted the other way and
hid behind the corner only to look up to see the Haunted House with a scary
looking Witch looking down upon me!!!
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| After i got the living shitzal scared out of me, i ran into this guy!!! AHHH! |
My heart was racing, but
I calmed myself and walked around the park a little bit more, it was still very
early only about 4am, and I knew that the sun rose around 5.30, so I tried to
get some sleep in the old cafeteria, but if it wasn’t the mosquitoes keeping me
awake it was the bizarre sounds of the park that did.
The time ticked by, and I
ventured out of the cafeteria and explored the park in a bit more light! It was
a lot more enjoyable!
I re-saw all the rides
and it was fun trying to make out what I was looking at in the dark to what I
was meant to see. I’ll be honest though, it was a lot more errie to see it in
the day. Because as you expect, you just imagine all the kids and adults
running around with lots of noise and colour happening, but everything is just
so quiet and empty.
I'm not even sure if you're still on this blog or not but I really like this post! I'm not sure where you live or anything but I've been to the real disney world several times and that park looked very similar! The ride with the tea cups is literally called "The Tea Cups" in case you still didn't know. That weird looking man thing from the ticket booth is from the movie spy kids. They put "easter eggs" everywhere before they actually produced the movie,
ReplyDeleteAnyway if you have any further questions I may be able to answer them
Hayley