Adventure 23/50 : Tokyo Disneyland

After a good night's sleep at the Nice Inn Mahaima Tokyo Bay, we hopped their shuttle and were dropped off at the gates. We put our stuff in a locker and quickly joined the queue. It was fun to compare the queuing behavior in Tokyo vs. Anaheim and Orlando... But the lines moved pretty quickly despite the crowds, and soon we were in.

I always love how each park has learned from its predecessors and adapted to its climate. Paris has the "quick exits" down the sides along "Main Street", and Tokyo has a big glass roof... perfect for those rainy days.

We didn't linger in the "World Bazaar" -- shopping could wait -- but moved toward the castle for the essential pic:

Then, of course, we made a beeline for one of the two most important rides of the day ... even if we would have preferred it in its natural state!

I was wearing my Haunted Mansion wallpaper tank, which the cute "servants" at the house recognized immediately and fussed over me. Bless. They also liked our classic wool ears, and pretended to ask if we would swap our clothes and ears for their cast member gear.

There was only the briefest wait and we were ushered into the entry. Sadly, we're not as familiar with the Haunted Mansion Holiday script to "follow along"... but once in the stretching room (oh, I wish we could have seen the standard version!!!) it was easy enough. Still, funny to hear Jack speak Japanese!

Portraits in the hallway...

Loading the doom buggies -- not as fancy here as in Anaheim:

Zero trimming the tree in the library:

Jack at the entrance to the graveyard, chatting up a storm:

The beautiful curling hill -- the best part of Haunted Mansion Holiday:

And some denizens of the graveyard, singing the holidazzled "Grim Grinning Ghosts" song:

We enjoyed it so much we went right around and rode it again, much to the delight of the cast members. 

We went from there deeper into Fantasyland to pick up fastpasses for Pooh's Hunny Hunt. We had been told that PHH is an "essential" ride at Tokyo Disneyland, so were curious about it. And then it was time to head to our other favorite ride:

The ride was pretty similar to Disneyland, even passing the Blue Bayou restaurant in the swamp ... though the banjo songs were different, the talking skull spoke Japanese, it lacked the creepy mermaid skeleton on the beach, and still had the women being auctioned off. Plenty of Jack Sparrow, though.

In all honesty, I'm not sure Jack was speaking English... though I think he was?

Key tasks fulfilled, we relaxed and wandered the park. What was funny was that it's very very similar to Disneyland ... but things are slightly in the "wrong: place, and distances are "wrong".

It's a Small World was very similar, but had a larger "Asia" section:

We went on a funny Jungle Cruise where -- even though we don't speak Japanese, we *still* got the jokes.

Don't forget Star Tours, all in Japanese, except in the intro video the droid switched to English and back again!

And then there was this... the Stitchified Enchanted Tiki Room...

The birds sang words and the flowers crooned... and Stitch played Elvis songs on his guitar... #notmytikiroom

But we loved how they had added little Halloween touches in the park: Pennants and elephant pumpkins at Dumbo:

The "Fab 5" in their costumes at the hub:

BTW, Daisy has NEVER looked so glam!

Adorable spiderwebbed Mickey balloons. I always kinda want one of these balloons, but I REALLY wanted one of these:

Again, there were lots of people in coordinated outfits:

and full-blown princess costumes:

Finally it was time for our fastpasses on Pooh's Hunny Hunt. It was a more secure version of fastpasses than in Anaheim -- you had to show the "reminder" ticket, which wasn't actually a fastpass, to go in the special entrance. And then you had to scan your park pass, which actually contained the "fastpass". That meant you couldn't get fastpasses and give them to someone else, which we often have done in the past when we were going to leave the park before the time came up.

Anyway, the queue area for PHH was cute, but we moved through it quite quickly. The ride cars were little hunny pots connected in sets of three; each one able to hold up to 6 people in 2 rows. The ride itself wasn't all *that* different -- the same stories, obviously -- but the behavior of the vehicles did. As we approached each scene, the little "trains" split into the three parts so everyone had a face-on view of the scene and could watch it unfold, and then the trains rejoined. At one scene the hunnypots and the background all "bounced" (no points for guessing who the scene portrayed!); in the "heffalumps and woozles" area all the pots swirled around separately, intermingling with other trains. Pretty great stuff.

Oh, and the gift shop... we did a lot of shopping... but I'm most in love with this Winnie rice spoon...

The day was really hot -- over 100 degrees F and very humid. And yet this was happening all day:

See all those people sitting around the edge of the hub? They're waiting for the parade. That won't start for over 2 hours. The worst part is that 15 minutes before the morning parade, an announcement said that the parade was cancelled "due to high temperatures". I'm guessing there was simply no way to keep the characters cool in their costumes...

By the mid afternoon we had ridden all the rides we wanted to ride, done quite a bit of shopping, and loads of people watching. So we decided to head home. It was a weird decision for us -- we tend to stay as late as we can -- but it was hot, we were tired, and we had squeezed in a lot of fun in 6 hours.

Adventure 22/50 : Tokyo DisneySea

Another "must-do" for our trip to Japan was to visit the Tokyo Disney Resort, and spend a day in each of the parks: Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea.

These parks are different from their American cousins; you need to buy a ticket for a specific day, for a specific park. Once we picked our dates, we tried to buy tickets online from the states, but we could never get a transaction to go through. This is pretty common, judging from discussion boards -- so we decided to go to the Disney Store in Shibuya on our first evening in Japan to secure our tickets.

We would be straddling Halloween Time ... a time of special shows, parades... and full-blown cosplay for adults FOR NEARLY TWO MONTHS. We had booked a hotel near the parks for one night, and decided to spend our first day -- when it wasn't quite Halloween Time -- in Tokyo DisneySea, and the second day in Tokyo Disneyland.

Typhoon Faxia nearly had other plans -- it hit Tokyo the night before, causing a lot of damage and snarling the trains.

Of course, this is Japan, so the trains were pretty much unsnarled by 10am... But we had planned to get on the train to Disneyland at 6:30, and read the trains wouldn't even begin to start until 8, and even then it would be a bit of a struggle. But we got there -- and got to experience a bit of (delayed) rush hour crush en route.

We arrived at the resort -- a couple of hours after we had planned, but, hey, did I mention that a typhoon is what we call a hurricane??? We took the monorail first, just for the fun of it:

It's a little weird that it's not included / free unless you are staying in a Disney hotel, but we decided to think of it as an extra "ride". The train itself is very cute, with Mickey silhouettes in the door windows:

and diffrent Mickey faces in the other windows. Plus, look at those handles!

We put our extra stuff in a locker outside the main entrance, and then went straight in. Tokyo DisneySea is totally different than every other Disney park, though some of the rides exist in other parks.

The park is undergoing renovations, so there wasn't a great "grand vista" at the gate. We started off in the back lanes of Venice:

but we soon arrived at the Mediterranean Harbor:

The buildings around the harbor are actually a hotel -- so beautiful!

We wandered around and noticed that a lot of things were closed, and despite the really hot weather, there weren't a lot of stands selling water or drinks. And then we realized that the staff probably had just as rough of a time getting to the park as we did! And as the day passed, more and more things opened.

It was definitely an unusual day, however. The park stayed pretty empty. The rides that were open were crowded, and they didn't offer fast passes on most rides, so we didn't really ride that many things. But all we really wanted to do was walk around, look at things, people watch, and take it all in.

We liked the American Waterfront area, with Tower of Terror 

and big ocean liner (smokestacks under renovation...):

The ocean liner houses the Teddy Roosevelt Lounge.

We wanted to get a bite to eat there, but the kitchen wasn't fully open yet. Again, I'm guessing it's because they were still trying to get the staff in!

The lounge looks the part of an old lounge on an ocean liner, and the cases hold TR memorabilia. (Nothing rare, mostly magazine covers and books, but still a nice touch.)

And the bar is held up by bears. Of course.

Port Discovery is future themed; we didn't spend much time there, but we did love riding Aquatopia -- and even enjoyed getting sprayed with water because it was so hot.

We also really just skirted around the Lost River Delta -- only looking at the Indiana Jones ride from the outside. 

The Arabian Coast was where we rode our first ride, Sindbad's Storybook Voyage -- which was a very cute retelling of some of the Sinbad tales, all in the same style as It's a Small World.

And we explored the Mysterious Island, where we rode the little submarines in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Both the queue area and the ride were excellent! (So good I didn't take any photos inside...)

Here's sorta what it looks like, including the submarine, from Tokyo DisneySea's site:

 But our favorite part of the park had to be the Mermaid Lagoon.

We held our breath and went "underwater" into a huge covered area full of rides suitable for little kids -- think Bugs Land in California Adventure.

But the surprise highlight of that land was watching King Triton's Concert at the Mermaid Lagoon Theatre. Some days this is a Fastpass attraction, but we pretty much just walked up and got in the first seating area. We didn't know anything about it, but it combines puppetry, animatronics, video screens ... and Ariel swimming overhead. And it's GREAT. Sure, I know it's a woman in a flying harness and a tail costume, but it was a really effective way to represent singing. 

Photos aren't allowed inside, but these are from the Tokyo DisneySea site:

The park was beautiful and it was fun to feel "lost" in a Disney park. Even rides we didn't want to go on were compelling. Look how gorgeous Toy Story Mania is:

Plus who can resist a great photo op? Not us.

As it got dark, we sampled some essential food. #1 must eat? The little green men mochi:

Flavored popcorn is a big deal at Tokyo Disney Resort, with seasonal flavors and highly collectible "popcorn buckets" available for sale in different areas in the park. We didn't try many flavors, but we couldn't resist "Garlic-Shrimp". (Verdict -- nice, more garlic than shrimp.)

Some of the best part about our visit was the people watching, even though we didn't take all that many pictures of people. These people were only slightly over the top, with their backpacks completely covered with the "plush badges" -- a small stuffed animal on a pin. These were much more popular than the pins we're familiar with from the US parks -- we saw very few of those in the shops, and none on the visitors. But plush badges were everywhere:

As were people in full costumes. Again, we didn't take a lot of photos of people, but inadvertently caught this Jasmine, Aladdin, and Genie group while taking a picture of Mount Prometheus, the volcano that serves as the centerpiece of the park:

Tokyo Disney Resort allows adults to wear full character costumes every day during Halloween Time + one day prior. We were surprised how many princesses we saw in very detailed ... and probably very hot ... costumes. But we loved the more obscure characters, including an excellent group from Hercules. (You'll have to trust me.) The only costumes off-limits to visitors are park employees -- so no dressing as a tour guide, a Jungle Cruise skipper, etc. 

We capped off our visit by gathering around the Mediterranean Lagoon to watch Fantasmic! Performed in the round, there are a lot of similarities to the CA and FL versions, but also some nice differences, like a floating "sorcerer's hat" in LEDs, and these giant balloons that had images projected on them.

Oh, and that lovely, lovely dragon:

I love how the wings are represented by illuminated water.

Of course, the happy ending is celebrated by boats full of characters waving and dancing...

and Mickey gets the final laugh. Or chuckle. You know what I mean.

It had been a long, hot day -- so after Fantasmic we did a little shopping and then walked 25 minutes to our hotel -- the Nice Inn Hotel Tokyo Bay Premiere -- where we had a fantastic stay (here's my review on TripAdvisor)  and almost wished we could stay more than the one night. It gave us the chance to rest up for the next day : our visit to Tokyo Disneyland!