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Struggling Legoland Japan will shut down for two days a week starting in fall

12 Comments
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24

It’s been a rough couple of months for Legoland Japan. While hopes were high at the time of the Nagoya park’s grand opening back in April, visitors haven’t been flocking to the facility in anywhere near the numbers many had envisioned.

The general reaction from those who have made the trip to Legoland Japan (including us) is that what’s there is nice, but with ticket prices roughly comparable to those for the much larger and more prestigious Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan, Legoland is a tough sell. Legoland only met 30 percent of its revenue goals for April, and things were still pretty bleak in May, when it pulled in just 60 percent of what management had expected.

The park was initially open every day of the week, but in June the decision was made to close the facility on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with the official reason being to allow time for maintenance crews to do their work and to give service staff some time off. The maintenance explanation, in particular, seems suspect, seeing as how the park had only been open for two months, and with fewer guests coming through the gates than originally estimated, the attractions should ostensibly be showing less wear and tear than initially projected.

With Japanese schools going on summer vacation right about now, as of this week Legoland Japan is back to being a seven-days-a-week park. However, that status will only last until the end of August. In September, the park will once again be closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The park is back to seven days a week in October, before once again being closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from the start of November through the week of December 18.

Aside from the employees of Legoland Japan itself, the park’s struggles are also having a negative effect on other local businesses. The Maker’s Pier shopping center was opened across the street from Legoland almost simultaneously with the park, and many of its 53 tenants were banking on Legoland visitors stopping buy to shop and dine after a day among the plastic blocks.

Over-enthusiastic investment during Japan’s bubble economy of the 1980s led to the construction of a number of poorly planned regional amusement parks, many of which now eventually went out of business. Most of these were located in rural areas, though, and had neither the huge nearby population centers nor the brand-recognition that Legoland Japan enjoys. Hopefully the park can parlay those assets, as well as some restructuring of its pricing, into a sustainable business plan, for both its own sake and that of everyone else who’s counting on its success.

Related: Legoland Japan

Sources: Yahoo! Japan/Asahi Shimbun Digital

Read more stories from SoraNews24.

-- Japan is getting its first full-scale Legoland amusement park

-- Move over Ghibli Museum, a whole new Ghibli Park is on the horizon!

-- World’s largest retail LEGO store to open just outside of Shanghai Disneyland Park in June

© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

12 Comments
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Management may have thought that everybody has a hefty salary and families would queue for a 10万 trip to play with Lego blocks.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Yeah, the price is unreasonable. If you lived in Nagoya, it would still be pricey, but if you are traveling from anywhere else, it's just too pricey when you add hotels, travel and food. For that price I'd rather go to USJ or Disneyland.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

People are so out of touch. The prices of even Disney are now way out of reach of most people. Legoland will go out of business unless they drop their prices. Hell, halve the prices for a month and see how that fans out. If sales pick up due to the price reduction there's your answer. Keep it cheap.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

It doesn't seem to be very interesting except to young kids, and I mean under 7 maybe 8.The curse of nagoya strikes again

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The Legoland in the UK is hugely popular, has been for years. I wonder what they are doing differently to the one in Nagoya?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

They forgot why people like Lego. Instead of creating a theme park where people can actually interact with millions of Lego pieces in different ways creatively, which they can't in real life, and I would personally pay for such an experience. They created just another theme park taking examples from parks filled with iconic movie characters (Disney, universal studios). So yeah, they deserve to fail.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I went to Legoland Windsor some years ago and enjoyed it. Is the Nagoya park too small, or lacking in activities compared to the other Legoland parks? Putting it in Nagoya was perhaps a mistake, it's not exactly a tourist hotspot.

I see it's only open from 10 am to 5 pm, which isn't long compared to the other big parks and means anyone visiting in the summer will be outside in the scorching heat all day. Longer opening hours = more time to sell overpriced food and drink = more profit. I think the management must be pretty useless if they think that closing the park two days a week will save them money when many of their costs are fixed.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

No. Go. Ya. I have two boys, 12 & 8 yrs. old and would love to take them to Legoland. But. No way we are going there. Location x3.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

My son would have loved to go there(oh 10yrs ago), his grandparents live in Nagoya. But agreed to pricey and far otherwise,Shizuoka would be better.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Location is the issue. Why would anyone want to go for a long weekend in Nagoya when there isn't much to do? A long weekend in Osaka or Tokyo is better spent.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Didn't expect it to last long honestly..Super pricy, iffy location, too niche. No reason to go there over Disney Land/sea or USJ if you're spending the money.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

In the end, the location of Legoland in Nagoya may prove to be its undoing. Why? Because within the city of Nagoya itself, there are not that many tourist attractions that appeal to foreigners to start with besides the Noritake Garden and the SCMaglev railroad museum. Tokyo Disneyland/Disney Sea and Universal Studios Japan benefit from the huge number of foreign tourists in the Kanto Plain and Keihanshin region in addition to easy access from the #1 and #2 populated areas of Japan. (Indeed, every now and then Japanese news programs run stories about why Nagoya isn't attractive to tourists, even from within Japan.)

Now, if Legoland Japan had been built in Saitama Prefecture or somewhere just east of Osaka, I think it would have been far more successful, in my opinion.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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