At Tokyo Disneyland, buildings were still being checked for safety. About 2,000 guests there could not yet be brought indoors. Next door, Tokyo DisneySea had room.
So about 1,500 guests were led from one park to the other through the backstage areas, the hidden world behind the scenes that guests are never supposed to see.
Keiji Tamura was running DisneySea's park operations that day. Ten years later, he would talk to a reporter about that decision.
The resort had prepared for a night like this. It trained its staff with disaster drills that assumed a major earthquake and 100,000 guests, and it kept emergency food for 50,000 people for three days.