With just over a month until the opening, the park is ready to share its Ghibli magic with the world.

After years of waiting, it feels weird, and wonderfully joyous, to finally be able to say that the opening of the long-awaited Ghibli Park in Aichi Prefecture is now just over a month away.

The first of Ghibli Park’s five areas to open on 1 November are Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, Hill of Youth, and Dondoko Forest, with the opening of Mononoke Village and Witch’s Valley to follow in the latter half of 2023.

The crew, led by Goro Miyazaki, son of Studio Ghibli director and co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, has been working nonstop to make the world of Ghibli come to life at the park, and now they’ve finally released the first photos of what they’ve created for us, and even by Ghibli standards, it looks spectacular.

These photos give us a peek into Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, one of the most highly anticipated areas as it’s home to a video exhibition room and a children’s playground and is said to have a floor area of ​​about 9,600 square metres (103,334 square feet), which is about four times as large as the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo.

▼ Now we finally know the name of the video exhibition room and what it looks like.

The 170-seat video exhibition room is called “Cinema Orion” and it looks more like a mini cinema, wrapped up in all the charm and muted hues of a Ghibli movie. We now know what films will screen here too, as it’s been announced that Cinema Orion will screen all of the 10 short animation films produced by Studio Ghibli, which are usually only shown at the Ghibli Museum.

Like the 80-seat Saturn Theatre at the Ghibli Museum, Cinema Orion will screen the movies on rotation, with a new film being shown each month, starting with Kujiratori (The Whale Hunt), which has a runtime of 16 minutes.

▼ Kujiratori

Along with Cinema Orion, Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse will be home to three additional exhibition rooms, which will display famous scenes from Ghibli movies…

▼ …scenes of food drawn in the films…

▼ …and “A lot of Ghibli“

The exhibition area dedicated to food scenes from Ghibli films is said to be larger than the original one previously shown at the Ghibli Museum, and it’ll include sets used in that exhibition, like the one pictured below, and all-new sets dedicated to food from Spirited Away, From Up on Poppy Hill, and Earwig and the Witch.

The “famous scenes” exhibit will also feature some cool interactive sets like this one, where you can sit by No Face and imagine you’re Chihiro in the train ride scene from Spirited Away.

Another highlight of the Grand Warehouse are the shops and cafes on site, and now we know what they’ll look like too.

▼ The Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse Shop will sell exclusive merchandise unavailable anywhere else.

The Transcontinental Flight Cafe is being described as a place where “people who’ve explored the Grand Warehouse can rest their wings”. Sandwiches and pizzas will feature on the menu, inspired by the concept of foods you can eat with one hand while piloting a long-distance flight.

The Siberi ❆ An Milk Stand is a counter-type milk stand that offers locally produced milk in bottles with original designs. You can also eat “Siberia”, a sweet made of red bean paste sandwiched between two slices of castella sponge cake, which appeared in “The Wind Rises”.

The Grand Warehouse is truly grand, with a wide range of sights and displays waiting to greet visitors.

▼ There’s the giant robot from Laputa: Castle in the Sky…

▼ …the Cat Bus…

▼ …Totoro sleeping in the forest, at the end of a tree-lined tunnel…

▼…the giant airship from Castle in the Sky…

▼ …and a room from the Secret World of Arrietty.

The place we’re most looking forward to exploring is the room designed to look like Yubaba’s office in Spirited Away.

Tickets to Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse are priced from 2,000 yen (US$13.96) for adults on weekdays, while a three-area pass that allows entry to all the areas opening on 1 November are priced from 4,000 yen for adults on weekdays.

With this sneak peek into just one of the areas awaiting visitors, it looks like a day at Ghibli Park will definitely be a day to remember!

Source, images: PR Times
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