Disney is sharing more images from inside its new Zootopia land at Shanghai Disneyland.
Zootopia opens officially on December 20 at Shanghai Disneyland, bringing the award-winning 2016 Walt Disney Animation Studios movie to life.
As we showed you in a first-look POV video yesterday, Zootopia: Hot Pursuit is the land's anchor attraction. Following a similar layout to Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, this trackless dark ride put riders in a Zootopia police vehicle for a chase through multiple locations in Zootopia to track down Gazelle and free her from Bellwether and her gang.
I'm not calling spoiler alerts with these images because, c'mon, you couldn't possibly think that Disney was going to give us anything other than a happy ending here, right?
The lans's other attractions are character interactions. Zootopia Police Department Recruitment Center is a more traditional meet and greet, where visitors can meet Officers Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps. The Zootopia Park Apartments is a different type of character interaction, where Zootopia residents including Fru Fru, Mr. Big, Koslov the polar bear, Flash the sloth, Yax the yak, Duke Weaselton the weasel, and members of the Hopps family will interact with each other and park guests from windows above Zootopia's Mane Street. (I see what they did there.)
The land's restaurant will be Jumbeaux’s Café, and though we do not have a full menu for that yet, Disney is showing off a photo of its entrance, which promotes "Officer Clawhauser’s favorite – The Big Donut."
The other food service location in the land will be Zootopia Market, which will comprise four food stands: a Jumbeaux pop-up cart serving the Disney Zootopia Pawsicle, Hopps Family Farm and their "corn-flavored popcorn" (I have questions...), Cottonball Candy, and Slothful Slurps.
The land's store will be Fashions by Fru Fru.
You can see some of the items that will be for sale on the people in a Zootopia promo commercial from Shanghai Disneyland.
It doesn't look like I will be getting to see Zootopia before it opens, to bring you an on-site review and report. All of us who were covering the World of Frozen press event in Hong Kong were lobbying hard for invites to the Zootopia press event, but any U.S. media covering an official press event at Shanghai Disneyland would need to get a special visa to enter China. And some of Disney's own media reps were saying that it's next to impossible for them to get visas into the country at this moment, much less sponsoring a bunch of American theme park journalists.
(In case you are wondering, having a tourist visa does not help, since those do not permit working in China during your stay - and covering a press event is legally considering working there. I have zero desire to break any nation's immigration laws and especially not China's.)
I am still working on getting some more behind-the-scenes coverage of the making of the land for you, however, and Disney has promised more information and media leading up to the official Zootopia opening, so please stay tuned.
If you have one of those tourist visas, though, and want to see the new land, please visit our partner's Shanghai Disneyland tickets page for discounted admission to the park.
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Part of Zootopia's appeal in the movie was that it was just so big. It's hard to communicate urban scale in a theme park land, especially other-worldly urban scale. So, yeah, I think "a cross between Seuss Landing and Mickey's Toontown" is a perfect description of what I have seen of the land to date.
... Huh, I never really thought about it before, but I guess they can't really serve any meat in this land, can they?
Appreciate the coverage, Robert. Sorry you're unlikely to be able to get into the land any time soon, but thankful for the content nonetheless.
I'm curious Robert, if you were able to cover Frozen at HKDL, what is different about there, which I thought was under full Chinese rule now, and Shanghai? Does Hong Kong have different work visa requirements because of its history as a business hub under British control?
Americans aren't required to get a visa to enter Hong Kong if their stay is under 90 days. All Americans need a visa to enter mainland China (and it appears movement between mainland China and Hong Kong is also restricted for residents). That said, Robert may have needed a visa to work in Hong Kong.
That's a big old MEH. It looks like Universal, like secret life of pets land or whatever. One lame, derivative ride, moderately whimsical styling--it's definitely sub-Toontown. Maybe Chinese audiences see something in it that I can't.
Epic Universe is coming. If Disney thinks these rinky-dink lands with mid-to-lame rides are going to compete, it's tripping.
Hong Kong is not under full Chinese control at all, Russell, though they are attempting to crack down on personal freedoms in the region. I was there last week to go to HKDL and encountered no issues. In fact, it was easier to get into Hong Kong than Japan.
Doesn’t interest me but I’m not the target . And we still have no insider information on epic universe ?
@tiptop22 if you're into that kind of thing, there are weekly videos online that use drone footage to update the construction of Epic Universe, and they reveal amazing detail after detail. The Donkey Kong roller coaster seems particularly impressive, as does the Universal Monsters land, with a restaurant that is huge windmill that's always on fire. Just search Epic universe updates, there are several competing videos each week.
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It's been a while since I've seen the movie (at least 3 years or more), but this land looks like a cross between Seuss Landing and Mickey's Toontown more than what I remember from the film.