The post you've all been waiting for...DISNEYSEA

When: January 20, 2008.
Where: TOKYO DISNEYSEA
Info: I'll admit, that when I came to Japan I told myself that I wouldn't waste my money going to Tokyo Disneyland. I mean, I really had no desire to go to see Mickey, go on rides, wait in long lines, eat overpriced food, etc.....But then all of my students raved about it. People told me they went there for their honeymoon it was so amazing. All of my kids students came back glowing from weekend trips with tiny souvenirs for me. Then, finally, Elspeth said she wanted to go. I mean, I dragged her to Kanazawa in the ice rain, so I gave in. Little did I know that it is one of the greatest places in Japan. This was a weekend I'll NEVER forget.

(This guy spent the train ride making a model. He even had his girlfriend helping him at one point. When he finished he seemed really proud of himself and carefully posed it on his tray table)

In order to make the most of our precious Disney time, we caught a late shinkansen to Tokyo Saturday night and stayed in a business hotel. That allowed us to get up EARLY Sunday morning and head to Tokyo DisneySea for a whole day of fun.

(Our hotel room was a 'business twin'. We found out that this means it was essentially two tiny rooms with a shared bathroom in the middle. It was great! We might have watched the same channel on our two TVs, with Elspeth yelling translations across the divide. Yeah, we're lazy. And proud of it)

We made it to Maihama Station about an hour before the parks opened. Here we jumped on the Disney train. We gazed out the Mickey-shaped windows while passing Disneyland, park employees waving to the train from parking lots, the $400/person/night Disney Resort hotels, and Cinderella's castle before arriving at the DisneySea station.

(Due to Valentine's Day in February it was 'The Season of the Heart')

The minute the gate opened people ran towards Tower of Terror. It's the newest attraction in the park and people try to FastPass it. Let me quickly explain the awesomeness of the Japanese Fast Pass. When you get your park pass, it allows you to Fast Pass popular rides. Special machines spit out a ticket with a time period printed on it. This is the time you can return to the ride and enter the Fast Pass entrance, which is usually a much shorter line. Once you get a Fast Pass, you have to wait a while before you can get another one (this prevents people from running from ride to ride and just Fast Passing them all). The system works pretty well.

We decided to stand in line for Tower of Terror since it was only a 20 minute wait. This turned out to be an AWESOME ride. Even waiting in line was interesting because the 'set' was so well decorated. The ride involves being taken up to the top of the tower (so that you can see the whole park out of a window) and then dropped. The process is repeated. I was laughing hysterically and screaming at the top of my lungs! It was so much scarier than I had expected.

Our next stop was to procure the all-important ears! It was a hard decision but I finally decided on a Minnie headband and Elspeth got some Tigger ears. Everything is better when you're wearing Disney ears!

(Elspeth in front of the DisneySea volcano, which occasionally spews smoke)

In the American Waterfront section you can walk through turn of the century New York, check out the S.S. Columbia or take a stroll in Cape Cod. People were frantically buying a new souvenir teddybear here. You could buy 'Cape Cod'-ish clothing for it and other Americana souvenirs. Elspeth and I ran/walked through it on our way to Port Discovery.


This section was cool - it was futuristic, and things were whizzing and spinning. The line for Aquatopia was super short so we hopped into a watercraft. This ride wasn't that fast but it was cool for one special reason - the watercraft were trackless.

(Where the track ends...)

Disney has this crazy system that allows the ride to use sensors and follow blue lines on the ground. This means the ride can spin 360 degrees, back up quickly, and do sharp turns. Very cool.


Some video of the ride for your enjoyment. I apologize for my stupid voice/comments. I was giddy and wearing Minnie Mouse ears. Cut me some slack.




In the Lost River Delta section I was super excited to go on the Indiana Jones Adventure ride but unfortunately it was closed for 'improvements'. I guess that's what you get when you come in the winter/cheap season. So the only bit of Indy I got to see was his plane....little C3PO.

(The entrance to Raging Spirits - a rollercoaster with a 360 degree loop and lots of fog)

(A turbulent ride indeed)

After being flipped upside down in an Aztec ruin, we decided to zip over to the Arabian Coast. We didn't spend much time there, only stopping for a quick ride on the Caravan Carousel. It's a two level carousel but since there weren't that many people in the park that day, the second level was closed.


Next was a quick dip into Mermaid Lagoon. This is an area mainly for little kids so we only ate a quick lunch here (at Sebastian's Calypso Kitchen!) and people watched.

(Here's what I'm thinking happened - She bought the Minnie ears and then afterwards saw the Marie cat ears and wanted them. So her boyfriend bought them for her and deciding not to waste the Minnie ears, he put them on. That, or he just liked them and bought them for himself)

Mysterious Island - The entrance to The Journey to the Center of the Earth (you shoot out of the volcano!) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Coca-Cola, I'm disappointed in your sponsored ride...boring)

(I have no idea why we were puzzled. Isn't our shadow-ear photo cute?)

An interesting thing about Tokyo DisneySea/Land - there aren't a lot of traditional snack stands and there is no cotton candy in sight (boo). But at every corner there are little shacks selling a different flavour of popcorn (Yeah!)(Some we saw - salted, chocolate, caramel, honey, curry(!), coconut). We just had time to grab some coconut popcorn before finding a place to see The Legend of Mythica, a performance near the main entrance in Mediterranean Harbor (aka mini-Venice).

This was AMAZING. I mean, anything that involves jet skis, water jets, fireworks, music, floats, cirque du soleil inspired dancers, kites, fire, giant eggs, phoenix, dragons, unicorns, etc. must be good. And watching Mickey rave-dance at the top of a frighteningly high platform was cool.




The kites were my favourite. Each jet ski had two people on it and one was seated backwards to control the 5 kites. Using these handle things they were able to make the kites do synchronized loops and swirls. All of the jet skis whizzed around the harbor with the kites doing a choreographed dance!



Because Disney says romance...not. Well, at least not to me. The place is very popular with Japanese brides and grooms. For them, it's perfect. Get married in fake Venice and then spend the weekend going around the park in Minnie and Mickey ears. Hey wait...that is starting to sound good...The couple above were very attractive and happy as bells rang and they walked from the Italian chapel. Although I wondered what the bride had to do to convince her future hubby to wear that satiny cream tux.

After The Legend of Mythica, we went on Tower of Terror again and then most of the rides were starting to close so we caught the last performance of Mystic Rhythms. This was a weird modern dance-people dressed in spandex animal costumes thing...And since I was finally warm inside the theatre, I might have fallen asleep for most of it...oops. I woke up when it was over and we decided to grab dinner at the Mexican restaurant near Indiana Jones. It was pretty good and not too expensive. Rumor has it the tortillas are homemade....


After dinner we wandered around a bit, avoided the omiyage stores where everyone was buying last minute souvenirs and then decided to call it a night. We caught the mickey train and after a little detour found our business hotel. We were exhausted after a day of Disney and I was asleep by 10:30pm. I mean, we had to get our sleep - the next day was Tokyo DISNEYLAND!!

Here's a quick look at The Legend of Mythica...