On June 6th this year, Tokyo Disney Resort held its grand opening of Fantasy Springs. To promote tourism to this new theme park, the owner company of Tokyo Disney Resort, namely Oriental Land, started to operate a new poster train, named Magical Journey Shinkansen, on the Tohoku Shinkansen jointly with JR East.
Let's take a quick look at Fantasy Springs to start. This theme park is composed of Frozen Kingdom, Peter Pan's Never Land and Rapunzel's Forest. For example, visitors of Frozen Kingdom are invited to the kingdom of Arendelle from the film Frozen. Needless to say, a movie, Frozen, was a major hit in 2013. The film met with widespread acclaim from critics and audiences, winning two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, among numerous other accolades.
You can see characters of Fantasy Springs on the side bodies of Magical Journey Shinkansen. They are Elsa and Anna of Frozen, Peter Pan and so on. You may remember when I introduced you to Magical “Dream” Shinkansen before. It was Set J69 of the EMU JR East E2-J series. On the other hand, Magical “Journey” Shinkansen is Set U6 of the JR East E5 series. The EMU E5 series is the fastest train in Japan. Its current maximum speed is 320 kilometers per hour (198.8 miles per hour). By tilting the train's body using advanced technology, the E5 series can keep a high speed on tight curves as well. JR Hokkaido's H5 series is a sister train of the E5 series.
