Surprising number-one pick wasn’t Universal Studios Japan either.
For decades, Tokyo Disneyland has been the default image when people in Japan think of a theme park. However, Disneyland might be losing its status as the go-to mental image of a theme park among Japanese kids, as in a recent survey it wasn’t the park they most wanted to visit.
Japanese publisher Shogakukan recently released the results of a survey which collected results from 1,000 readers of its monthly Ciao magazine, which is aimed at elementary school-age girls. The survey asked them which theme parks they’ve been to, and not surprisingly, Tokyo Disneyland was at the top of the list, followed by its most high-profile rival, Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan. Coming in behind them, in order, were Tokyo’s Sanrio Puroland, Nagoya’s Legoland Japan, and Adventure World, a combination amusement park, zoo, and aquarium in Wakayama Prefecture.
Four of those parks were also in the top five responses for the survey’s other question, “What amusement park do you want to visit?” Legoland came in fifth, with Tokyo Disneyland fourth, Sanrio Puroland third, and Universal Studios Japan second. So who bested all those big names in the theme park world?
Chiikawa Park.
Located in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro neighborhood, Chiikawa Park, as the name implies, is all about Chiikawa, the cute but unspecified-species manga/anime character that’s skyrocketed in popularity since its 2020 debut. Chiikawa beat out the casts of Evangelion and Super Mario for the 2022 Japan Character Award and has become such a pop culture phenomenon that it was even recruited for a public awareness campaign teaching foreign tourists about Japanese manners that launched earlier this year. At Chiikawa Park, fans can play games and walk through immersive spaces inspired by the series characters and environments.
▼ Chiikawa Park
It is true that Tokyo Disneyland has seen its popularity slipping. Between the park ratcheting up its ticket prices and a dearth of new attractions, it’s been bested in overall attendance for the last two years by Universal Studios Japan, which can draw from the huge pool of popular non-Disney anime and video game characters for its collaborations and regularly rolls out new, limited-time attractions as part of the partnerships.
However, it’s probably too soon to crown Chiikawa Park the new long-term king of amusement parks, since there are a number of factors that likely boosted its ranking in the survey. First is novelty. Questionnaire cards were included in the issue of Ciao that went on sale August 1, just four days after Chiikawa Park had its grand opening, so it was definitely someplace kids had been hearing/thinking about as they filled out their responses. The August 1 timing also meant that the survey was being conducted during a brutally hot summer. The high temperatures this year have been theorized as another reason for Tokyo Disneyland’s reduced attendance, whereas Chiikawa Park is an entirely indoor, and thus air-conditioned, facility, and is located within the Sunshine City shopping/entertainment center, so you don’t even have to contend with the elements during your walk up to the entrance.
Linguistics might have also influenced the results. In Japanese, the simplest way to say you “want to go” someplace is to use the word ikitai, which comes from iku/“go.” However, in asking respondents which theme park they’d like to go to, the survey used the term “ittemitai,” a conjugated combination of iku/“go” and miru/“see.” Following a verb with a form of miru creates a nuance along the lines of “try (doing something) and see what it’s like,” so it’s most commonly used for talking about new experiences, or at least an experience where you’re not entirely sure what the outcome is going to be like. In other words, ittemitai is a great fit, conceptually, for a brand-new theme park like Chiikawa Park, but might not necessarily trigger a response of wanting to make a repeat visit to someplace someone’s already been to and hasn’t had any major changes since, like Disneyland.
Finally, the results might have skewed more towards Chiikawa Park because of who was conducting the survey. Ciao is one of Japan’s most popular shojo manga (girls’ comics) magazines. While the Chiikawa manga doesn’t run in Ciao, the survey was still polling manga readers, and odds are they’re especially agreeable to the idea of a manga-themed amusement park.
▼ An issue of Ciao
Taking all this into consideration, it’s unlikely that we’ve reached a tipping point in which Chiikawa Park will be perennially more popular than Tokyo Disneyland from now on, and considering Chiikawa Park’s more modest scale and lower repeat-visit potential, interest will probably dip a bit once its newness fades. However, the survey does show that while Japan still loves Tokyo Disneyland, it’s got room in its heart for other amusement parks now too.
Source: PR Times via Narinari
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Insert images: PR Times (1, 2)
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