We decided, that with the long weekend, it would be a good time to visit the Disney parks in Tokyo. With a country of 127-ish million people, 12-ish million of those in Tokyo, going to the parks during the week would be a safer bet than during the weekend. We spent Sunday in Disneyland and those are the pictures I will share today. (My camera died almost as soon as we entered the park, so I still need to steal some pictures from our travel buddies!)
We left our place around 8 AM on Sunday and we made it to the resort area around 10 AM. We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting all the way to Tokyo without getting lost. :-)
We were welcomed at the JR Maihama Station, located across the street from the park entrance.
We went straight to our hotel, the Sheraton, to check-in and drop off our bags. The resorts at Disney are all located in a little alcove of Tokyo Bay, away from the city, and right on the water. The resort has a monorail that surrounds the park and has 4 stops, one for each park, one for the hotels, and one for the shopping center/Cirque du Soleil theater.
On the Monorail...notice the windows!
The view of "Mysterious Island" and "Tower of Terror" at DisneySea from the Monorail Station
We bought our park tickets at the hotel, then made our way into Disneyland. Of course, Tim had to take a picture in front of Main Street (Adam tried to get in on the action).
Main Street, unlike the American parks, is covered by this large glass structure so that the park can be open 365 days a year.
The castle, as always, is my favorite place to take pictures. They were setting up for a musical celebration, taking place in February, but I still got my picture!
It should be noted that Disneyland Tokyo is huge! The rides are much larger, there is a ton of space to walk and stand, but there are less rides. Much less. We definitely found enough things to do to occupy our time, especially with all the waiting we had to do, but it was pretty obvious that they built the park with the intention of giving people a lot of space and only the best of the best from the original parks. It also didn't help that some of the classics were closed during our trip (Haunted Mansion, Pirates..., Splash Mountain).
Also, the characters are way more accessible here. In fact, I think that the Japanese prefer to take pictures with them more than they like to ride the rides. We had to laugh every time we watched the adults (yes, the ADULTS) sprinting after the characters, cameras ready, with kids in tow. It was quite the sight!
The Seven Dwarfs had a small parade at the park entrance
We managed to get in a few rides on Big Thunder Mtn. Railroad (it was freezing!) and Space Mountain (Much Warmer!). We also tried out Pooh's Hunny Hunt, the wait for this was easily two hours all day, but we caught it at the end with a 10 minute wait. We tried to do as much as possible in each area, even with some long lines.
Tim, trying his hand at some Toon Town dumbbells
The guys got a bit crazy as we made our way through the park and managed to find some perfect picture spots.
Adam as Cinderella and Matt as Prince Charming
We even walked over to Critter Country, even though it was pretty much all empty, with the closure of Splash Mountain.
It was very interesting for me to go to the park with three mechanical engineers in tow. Usually Tim will point out a few things to me here and there, but with three of them, it was an all-out engineering discussion following each ride. I did notice quite a few things I found to be different/humorous/purely Japanese while we were there:
(1) The food was all Japanese. Instead of hot dogs, there were sausages on a stick. Instead of churros or ice cream, it was popcorn (salted, chocolate, curry, pepper, soy sauce, caramel, you name it). When it came to fried food, it was dark-meat chicken, shrimp, or some other seafood.
(2) All of the rides, with the exception of Big Thunder and the very end of Splash Mountain, were under cover. This includes most, if not all, of the line for the ride. The weather was very cold to down right freezing when it got dark, so all of the rides were also heated. This is VERY different from sunny California and Florida, where everything is air conditioned!
(3) As I said before, the rides are much larger, not longer, but larger.
(4) All of the signs, decorations, anything on the walls of the rides are in English. Everything spoken is in Japanese, there is almost no English. It was pretty funny when we decided to do MicroAdventure (aka Honey, I shrunk the Audience), a 3-D show and we realized that we wouldn't understand a word of what was being played. I thought maybe we could just tune out the sound and read the actors' lips, it was all dubbed, but at the last minute we were informed that we could listen to an English version if we sat in a certain row with headphones.
(5) They don't have the classic, Mickey Mouse Club, Mouse Ears here. In their place, they have headbands, ear muffs, and the very popular Mouse Ear Hoods. It is exactly as it sounds, a hood with mouse ears that can tie around your chin. I really wanted one to keep my ears warm, but I never found one I liked enough to spend the Yen...maybe next time!
Well, I think that is all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to get the pictures from our second day pretty soon and then I will post those!
Sorry for the giant lapse in posts, I will try to keep it more updated throughout this week!
3 comments:
Your description is great. I can hardly wait to see it for myself. I hope it was good enough to visit a second time!
It looks like you had a great time. I'm sure half the fun was seeing what was the same/different between the American and Japanese parks. Can't wait to see more!
I am so glad you got to take the trip to Disney already! Sounds like a great time, and I enjoyed reading about all your adventures/discoveries.
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