Tokyo Disney Resort

Tokyo Disney Resort offers Guests a timeless Disney experience right in the heart of this Japanese capitol city. Featuring two separate Parks, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, a shopping and entertainment venue called Ikspiari, and five Resort hotels, Tokyo Disney Resort appeals to locals as well as visitors to the greater Tokyo area. The Disney Resort Line monorail provides access to key points in the Resort, and for travelers’ convenience, baggage assistance and trip planning are available at the Tokyo Disney Resort Welcome Center at the Japan Railway Maihama Station.

Tokyo Disneyland Park is similar to other Magic Kingdom Parks with its wheel-and-hub design and multi-Land layout encircling Cinderella Castle. Instead of strolling down Mainstreet, U.S.A., however, Guests enter the Park through World Bazaar, an area featuring American turn-of-the-twentieth-century décor, an old-fashioned Penny Arcade, and a 33-passenger Omnibus, as well as several eateries. From World Bazaar, Guests explore Adventureland’s Caribbean bayous, Latin American marketplaces, African jungles, and Asian and Polynesian tropics. They continue on to the American Old West in Westernland, where Big Thunder Mountain Railroad towers high above and explorers guide canoes around the Rivers of America. Beyond the portals of Cinderella Castle, Guests enter a land of enchantment, greeting classic Disney Characters, like Pinocchio, Snow White and Peter Pan. The younger Park visitors enjoy Toontown, “a loony town square, and a suburban neighborhood where Disney characters live, work, and play.” But no one should leave the Park without passing through Tomorrowland, the futuristic world of scientific discovery.

Tokyo DisneySea Park contains seven maritime themed ports of call, full of adventure and discovery, myths and legends. Mediterranean Harbor, American Waterfront, and Lost River Delta overflow with international flavor, transporting Guests to the coastlines surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic seaboard of North America, and the Central American jungle shores of El Rio Perdido. Creative imagination pulls visitors into the fictional lands of Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin at the Arabian Coast, Captain Nemo’s secret base on the Mysterious Island, and Ariel’s undersea playground of Mermaid Lagoon. An elevated trolley connects the American Waterfront to Port Discovery. Once there, check out the latest weather experiments and other futuristic possibilities.

Today’s Takeaway:
Only in books and at Tokyo DisneySea can anyone journey to the center of the earth!

Read the classic novel by Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Here’s a summary via Barnes & Noble:
Wildly popular, prolific and prophetic, Jules Verne leads his legions of delighted readers on journeys beneath the sea and beyond the stars. Here, the grandfather of modern science fiction takes us to the Earth’s core. The quest begins when irascible but dedicated mineralogy professor Otto Lidenbrock finds a centuries-old parchment inside an even older book. His nephew Axel decodes it, and discovers instructions on how to get to the center of the Earth: “Go down into the crater of Snaefells Yocul,” an extinct Icelandic volcano. As they descend, the explorers also travel backward to the past, through layers of human history and geologic time, encountering prehistoric plants and animals and ultimately coming to understand the origins of humanity itself.

Though brimming with exciting exploits, this journey is also metaphorical—a spiritual and psychological trip to the center of the human soul. While many of Verne’s scientific speculations have been proven, it is this author’s remarkable ability to fashion a rousing tale full of compelling characters, extraordinary adventures, and provocative ideas that ensures he will be read for years to come.

Ursula Heise’s explains in the introduction to Journey to the Center of the Earth:
Traveling to the center of the Earth would involve a downward trip of about 4,000 miles that would cut through the Earth’s crust and its mostly solid, rocky mantle into a liquid core of iron alloy, then end at a solid inner core of iron and nickel. Pressure and temperature would rise with increasing depth, and temperatures would reach about 10,300 degrees Fahrenheit at the Earth’s center.

Although Verne had studied science and technology rather extensively, much of Earth’s geophysical structure was still unknown in 1864 at the book’s publication. Research the competing hypotheses that were popular at that time. Using Styrofoam craft spheres or molding clay, create cross-sections of two of those hypotheses and also create a model of today’s accepted theory of our planet’s composition.

For further study, consider and discuss the validity (or nonsense) of Verne’s proposed journey.

SCHOOL SUBJECT: Geology
SKILL LEVEL: High School

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