Extinct Attractions: Disney's Easter Wonderland

Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I celebrated this weekend’s holiday with a look back at one of the few attractions to celebrate it.

With Easter this coming Sunday, I decided to look into some of the Easter activities that the Disney Parks have had over the years. They don’t often have major celebrations for Easter, which makes sense with the holiday having heavier religious connotations than something like Christmas. But that doesn’t mean Easter celebrations are completely non-existent with parks as far as Tokyo getting into the mix.

Via Disney Wiki

With that in mind, Tokyo Disneyland introduced Disney’s Easter Wonderland on April 1, 2010 for the Easter event in the park at the time. 2010’s Alice In Wonderland was taking the world by storm at the time, though it wouldn’t make its debut in Japan until April 17th, which ended up being its highest-grossing international territory. With that in mind, it made a lot of sense to include some Alice in Wonderland representation, even animated characters, especially with the White Rabbit being so prevalent to the lore.

The parade started out with a giant Cheshire Cat float that included the talking door at the back of the float along with Alice, Mad Hatter and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. The cat was decked out in some Easter garb with presents and eggs and what could be cuter?

Next on the docket was a float that really got into the spirit of the holiday with a giant Oswald as the core of the float. The lucky rabbit had plenty of rabbit friends near him with Rabbit (from Winnie the Pooh), Br’er Rabbit, the White Rabbit and Thumper and Miss Bunny (from Bambi). Donald Duck with some fun rabbit ears was also hiding out at the top of the float, so he doesn’t quite count, but I’ll give him an A for effort.

Via Disney Wiki

The rest of the gang from Winnie the Pooh, aka Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger were up next with standing on a hunny pot that had cutely been crossed out to say Bunny instead. Tigger also got to show off dance moves because let me tell you, this tiger could get it.

Lilo & Stitch got the next stab at inclusion with a really fun cast of characters, starting with Angel and Stitch in at the start of a Polynesian float. Bringing up the rear were Pleakly and Experiment 625, aka Rueben. Tokyo always leans into Stitch and friends a lot more than the domestic parks and when you throw some rabbit ears on the characters, it’s hard to deny the cuteness factor was up to 11.

A giant egg counter joined the party next with Max, Goofy and Pluto guiding it forward, while Chip and Dale brought up the rear and ensured that each and every egg was represented.

Via Crave Coasters 

Pixar came up next, with an interesting combo float of Buzz, Woody, Mike and Sulley. It was fun to see a few different characters combined like that, but the best part was definitely the painted egg of Roz herself.

But that wasn’t even the most interesting mashup because the next large float had the Three Little Pigs sharing a float with Esmeralda and Clopin. I’m really not sure how to make that pairing make sense, but with all of the other fun going on, I can’t say it didn’t feel right for some reason?

The last couple of floats had Huey, Dewey and Louie on a simple float similar to the Hunny Pot as well as a much more fun float filled with Easter decorations along with Clarisse, Daisy, Minnie and the main man Mickey himself. They were all dressed in really fun Easter outfits as were all of the backup dancers in between floats. Between that and the catchy Easter song that played throughout, the show did a great job celebrating the holiday, especially in a country where it is not prevalent.

Via Flickr 

But the highlight of the show was the showstop that happened in front of the castle because Mickey underwent about six costume changes. It was so fun watching him run from float to float and disappear inside it before appearing again in a completely different outfit. It was really seamless and unlike anything I had ever seen in a parade. 

Disney’s Easter Wonderland was just a wonderful time seeing all the cool decorations and costumes. It’s just so hard to beat a Tokyo Disneyland parade, though they tried when the Easter Wonderland closed on June 30, 2012 with Hippity Hoppity Springtime eventually replacing it, though that’s a story for another day.

Via No-Guilt Disney 

As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.

Thanks for reading and have a magical day!