Around the World in 7 Days: Part III

Day 4/Wednesday, Laurie and I decided to sleep in and be lazy.  We were going to meet Tim after work and head to Tokyo that night, so we packed our bags and headed into Yokosuka.  Thanks to the train stations, we were able to rent a locker and store our stuff while we grabbed lunch and went shopping downtown.  The weather was gross again, so it was nice to stay indoors.  When Tim finally got done, he met us at Mister Donut to pick up some breakfast food for our trip and we headed to the trains.  He had spent the entire day on his feet and has recently acquired a Nintendo DS XL, so Laurie and I let him have the one open seat to relax.

Once we got through the crazy, rush hour, traffic of Tokyo station and to our hotel to check-in, we headed to Ikspiari (Tokyo's version of Downtown Disney) and got burgers at Kua'Aina.  

I ate WAY too much, but it was ok, because we ended up walking miles the next day at DisneySea.  Let me just say: Disney on a Thursday, with PERFECT weather = best conditions ever.  

We waited no more than 15 minutes for ride (and that includes having to walk through the maze of lines, like Indiana Jones), the restaurants were practically empty and it was in the 60s until the sun went down. We couldn't have asked for a better time!

Getting onto "Journey to the Center of the Earth"

 We ate lunch at this Mexican cantina at the Lost River Delta.  We were all very pleasantly surprised at how good the food was.  Obviously, it's a bit nerve-wracking to get "international food internationally," but it did not disappoint!

The theme of the park had changed since our last visit (this was #3) and they were celebrating the Spring Carnival.  Outside of the Tower of Terror, they had a Fantasia themed topiary garden.  We couldn't pass up the opportunity for pictures!

We ended up going on the Tower of Terror and when we got out of the ride we ran into a MOB of people.  Do I ever pass up the opportunity to see what's going on?  Of course not!  And what did we find??  CELEBRITIES! 

And no, I do not know who they are, but they were very popular in the parks.  We ended up seeing them and some other apparent J-Pop celebrities a few more times filming around the park...

Laurie and I finally managed to get Tim to go to the Mermaid Lagoon portion of the park.  Previously, he was convinced this was strictly a children's area and while that is the age group it's most appropriate for, we had a blast! Our first stop was Triton's Kingdom, an indoor/underwater play area. We found one of our favorite rides here, the Whirlpool.  We figured it would be just like the Tea Cups, but instead of spinning the cup manually, you have to use centrifugal force.  We had to keep going on it just to get the spinning down! :-) 

We actually spent a lot of time wandering around the park, going on rides as much as we wanted and catching a few shows.  One of these shows ended up being a trashcan drum trio.  We pretty much had to watch them because in-between shouting out greetings in Japanese, they looked at us and were like "What's up guys?"  We figured we had to support our fellow Americans! :-)

We ended up wandering around some more, fitting on tons of more rides, and taking pictures at all of the best spots...

Outside "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls" Ride

Looking at the Mediterranean

After dinner, we caught the evening show (BraviSEAmo!), went shopping, got on some more rides, and took more pictures...

By the time we got back to the hotel, after 11.5 hours in the park, we were exhausted!  And did I mention we had 4 beds?  Due to a miscommunication about # of beds vs. # of people, they upgraded our room to club level free of charge.  

This is pretty long, so I'll update about our last two days in our journey around the world tomorrow...we spent the rest of Laurie's trip in Japan, so this is the end of our "international" trip.