A visit from the Parents: Part 3

Day 7:

Finally Timmy got a weekend, so all four of us got on the train to Tokyo on for the final days of T&P's visit.

Our hotel was located in Urayasu, located almost halfway in-between the Disney Resort and Narita airport, our two big destinations that weekend.  After dropping off all of our bags, we headed to Akihabara (of course) and didn't take any pictures (did you expect more?).  This trip had a purpose though, T&P graciously packed our Wii, but we forgot that we switched our cable to HDMI.  Our current TV situation doesn't work with the HDMI cable, so we had to find a new, original cable.  That was a lot explanation, wasn't it?  Hmmm...sorry 'bout that.

After finding what we needed, we headed to Ueno to check out the park area and grab dinner.  We found a great market area and saw some early cherry blossoms.  It was awesome!  I had to take the next picture in honor of my Lion parents...you follow me everywhere! :-)

There were quite a few traditional-looking buildings, temples and shrines within the park.

And as we were heading towards the main street for dinner, we heard the familiar Japanese sirens and saw some emergency vehicles.  This picture is for my nephew, who I think of every time I see/hear an EMERGENCY...

Yes, the light bar is raised up off the roof.  That only happens when they're parked and I don't know why.  Weird. 

We ended the day with dinner at a Korean BBQ place.  It was DELICIOUS! Thankfully, they also had an English menu, so we didn't have to be worried about ordering cow heart or chicken livers.  Yessssss.

Day Eight:

After a breakfast at the hotel, we caught the bus and headed to DisneySea.  Unfortunately it was raining, but we hoped that this would shorten the lines a bit.  We. were. wrong.  What was our first warning???

This was taken at 10:00am.  In the event that you're not familiar with FastPass terminology, a FP gets you into a shorter line, therefore bypassing the standby line.  This sign shows us that at 10:00am, the next FastPasses available are for 9:30pm and the current standby line is 180 minutes! THAT'S 3 HOURS!  Yep, they were all like that.  :-(

Luckily, this park is a good one for wandering around, looking in shops, and just randomly exploring.  And even though Tim & I had been there before, it was all still pretty unfamiliar.  We did manage to get on all of the rides at least once.  One of these was the two-story carousel located on the "Arabian Coast." The theme is Aladdin!

And, unlike our last visit, we had time to watch the mid-day show. 

Do you see all of those umbrellas!?  They were driving Timmy crazy, because they were all at eye-level and he had to spend most of his time avoiding losing an eye.  

I think I mentioned all of the crazy popcorn last time, well we actually tried some this time around.  We ended up trying Strawberry, Chocolate, Black Pepper, and (finally) Caramel.  I had literally been hunting the park for the Caramel, but we didn't find it until about 15 minutes before they shut down! It was meant to be...

Our longest wait for a ride was 2.5 hours for Journey to the Center of the Earth.  The line felt like it never moved, we were all starving, and we were all soaked from the rain. Yes, the line was inside, but when you're wet and cold, it's really hard to stay positive.  Ya know what I mean!?  Once we finally got on the ride, Tim and Patti LOVED it!  I think it's still, easily, our favorite.  (I mean no disrespect to Tower of Terror, but the shoulder straps kind of kill it for me...plus I think it's shorter.)

We finally got dinner following this ride, and we were able to watch the evening water show from our booth inside the restaurant.  The rain had let up a little, so we headed outside to watch the firework show.  I won't lie.  It was a disappointment.  We had to back up enough to see over the main buildings and even then, it was difficult to see.  They obviously share the show with Disneyland, which means the real show is in Disneyland and you can just happen to catch it in DisneySea.  Boo. 

We pretty much closed down the park, but we managed to get a final picture in front of the signature globe.  

The next day we headed to the airport, walked around a bit and had lunch with the parents before catching the DOD bus back to base.  We spent the evening at a spaghetti dinner/game night with some of our friends/Tim's co-workers.  

All in all, we had a WONDERFUL week with our visitors and we're looking forward to hosting Tim's sister in a few weeks! :-)