What to Expect: Beauty and the Beast Opening Day Crowds at Tokyo Disneyland

It feels only like yesterday we heard about the additions that were coming to Tokyo Disneyland (2015 to be precise). On April 15, 2020, the wait is over for the “New Fantasyland” that’ll open with the anticipated Beauty and the Beast E-Ticket attraction “Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast,” and new additions to Toontown and Tomorrowland. You can read more about all the new things coming here and here.

With the opening of anything major at Tokyo Disney Resort, the question of “How busy will it be?” and “Will there be any soft openings?” While I’m unable to predict the future, I’ll give my own thoughts on what I think how heavy the crowds could be and information about how soft openings could work. I want to reiterate that these are only my thoughts. Alright, let’s talk about those crowds.

Crowd Predictions for Beauty and the Beast

Without a doubt in my mind, this will be the most popular part of “New Fantasyland.” The new E-Ticket attraction is a dark trackless ride (it’ll have FastPass too) that’ll take you through the Beast’s Castle with scenes and music from the movie you know and love (we wrote about it more here). Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast is the second trackless ride at Tokyo Disneyland — Pooh’s Hunny Hunt is the other.

Now, how about the crowds? Going based on the opening of “Soaring: Fantastic Flight” this past July, the waits will likely reach 8+ hours. I expect extremely high wait times from April 15th all the way through Golden Week before we see any reprieve from high wait times. Golden Week is one of the biggest holidays in Japan and is a time that I always recommend avoiding. For more on Golden Week 2020 see our guide on when to visit Tokyo Disneyland. To give you an idea “Soaring: Fantastic Flight” hit an 8-hour wait time on the first few days. Now it averages around 240 minutes.

The crowds leading up to April 15, should be nothing out of the ordinary. Even with the opening of this new attraction, I believe the crowds for the rest of the Park should be well spread out. Remember we also have the new Baymax attraction (The Happy Ride with Baymax) and a new meet and greet facility (Minnie’s Style Studio), which means the crowds will be split among all the new attractions.

As of right now, even the crowd calendar for Tokyo Disneyland says it’ll be light on the crowds. This means, no one truly knows how it’ll be.

What about FastPass?

That’s a complicated question (I wish it wasn’t). There is the Digital FastPass through the official app and paper FastPass at the kiosks. As of this writing, Digital FastPass is available through the Tokyo Disney Resort Official App that’s only in Japanese, which is problematic for those Explorers who don’t have the app.

Learn more about Digital FastPass at Tokyo Disney Resort. 

When “Soaring: Fantastic Flight” first opened all FastPasses were done withing 10-minutes of Park open. This made it difficult for those who couldn’t use the app and had to get to the kiosks. My thought is this is going to be the same story for the Beauty and the Beast attraction. There’s no word when/if the official app will be in English anytime soon (although they did recently start offering restaurant reservations in English), so unless you go through the steps to download the app, you’ll have to attempt for the FastPass kiosks.

What Should I Do?

For the first couple of months after opening, expect FastPasses to go quickly (within an hour) and wait times to be high. The obvious answer is to make “Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast” the first attraction you do in standby. If you are at one of the Disney Hotels, then make use of your Happy 15 early entry and line up (no word if this attraction is included in the attractions open during the Happy 15). Those 15-minutes don’t sound like a lot but it’ll certainly make everything easier. If you can, try and get a FastPass, but with the Digital FastPass, it’s hard to say how quickly these will run out.

Once the crowds level out after a few months, my prediction is you’ll still make this attraction the first one of the day (instead of Monster’s Inc. or Pooh’s Hunny Hunt). I’ll test this theory once it’s open.

Should you postpone or change the dates of your trip? The short answer is no, I don’t think so. Yes, it’ll be busy with these new attractions but the rest of the Park should be fine (perhaps slightly higher crowds than normal). As a general rule of thumb always avoid weekends and holidays. Read our popular article on when to visit Tokyo Disneyland and study our guide on dealing with the crowds.

Beauty and the Beast Soft Opening

There are usually soft openings for new attractions and offerings. With “Soaring: Fantastic Flight” soft openings weren’t too far in advance of the grand opening (a couple of days). So, it’s tough to say when/if any would happen for Beauty and the Beast. I don’t recommend planning for a soft opening before April 15, 2020, as we simply don’t know what could happen.

As for the other attractions (below), I expect soft openings for them leading up to April 15, 2020. This may include new shops and a popcorn shop as well.

• The Happy Ride with Baymax
• Fantasyland Forest Theatre
• Minnie’s Style Studio

Keep an eye on the attraction weeks/days before the grand opening and you may get lucky! If you watch the #tdr_now hashtag on Twitter, people will post on there if it’s open or not.

Make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter as we’ll post if there are any soft openings happening at Tokyo Disneyland!