Welcome to Disney Heaven
For all of you following the blog for the amazing culture and history of Japan, you can stop reading for the next few days - we have arrived at Disney. For many it would seem rather odd to spend time at an American invention while in Japan, but for us it is as natural as when we hit Disneyland Paris while visiting London. We are Disney fanatics, and as Disney fanatics we have found shangri-la.
The day started off interestingly as we decided to leave during rush hour with our heavy luggage. Being packed onto the train like sardines while also trying to keep track of our bags was quite an experience, and actually rather fun. I was surprised at how short the trip was, I expected Disney to be way outside of Tokyo proper but it really isn’t. After just one transfer we were at the Maihama Station, where the welcome center is and where you board the monorail. The monorail here is actually a legit transportation vehicle and even requires regular railway tickets to ride, pretty cool.
After dropping our bags at the hotel we headed straight for DisneySea and it didn’t take but a few steps to realize how amazing this place is. The best I can describe is every Disney park we’ve been to combined, and then made 1,000 times better. The quality, detail, imagination and sheer investment in the park is astounding. Every corner we turned was another mind boggle - oh hey, look, a full size steamship; oh hey, look, the Tower of Terror is twice the size of the one in Florida; oh hey, look, a little kid’s ride about Sindbad has better animatronics than anything in California - and the list goes on.
We headed directly for Journey to the Center of the Earth, but made a quick pit stop at 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This was a wonderful surprise, I didn’t know anything about it and it was a pleasant surprise with the innovative ride vehicles, spotlights you can control and incredible scenery. From here it was a few steps over to bad news - Journey is closed! Oh well, we moved on to Indiana Jones, which is a pretty close copy of the California ride, only they have fixed some of the cheesier parts of that ride - the hallway of poisoned arrows, for instance, is a bunch of 3 dimensional sculptures as opposed to a series of bad blacklight paintings.
From Indiana Jones we headed to the Tower of Terror, which was at the top of my list of not-to-be-missed rides, and it did not disappoint. The building is unbelievable, so much bigger and more detailed than Florida and a far more interesting design. The ride itself is subtly different, more so in the pre show then anything else. The only bummer was the fact that I got scolded for attempting to take pictures not only in line, but also was reprimanded via loud speaker while on the ride itself. Oops!
The rest of the day was spent making our rounds through the rest of the park, hitting rides we didn’t even know existed, yet are amazing (like Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage, which had insanely awesome animatronics) and taking in as much as we possibly could. The things that have amazed me most are the little tidbits like the walk through Fortress Explorations (a super detailed DaVinci era castle you can walk through and interact with), and the Electric Railway and Steamer Line which are both excellent ways to see the park.
It was just about time to actually check in, and the room was another mind blower. This has to be the nicest Disney room we’ve stayed in, and the view is right down into the park. Once our things were settled we headed out to the S.S. Columbia (the full size steamship I mentioned earlier) for an amazing meal - Sommer had chicken and I had shrimp and scallops. The night was creeping in and we left just in time to get a great view of the BraviSEAmo show and the fireworks. For good measure we strolled through a gift shop (one of about 10 we hit today) and bought more souvenirs. I think we’ll be checking a few additional bags on the way back to the states.
Interesting side notes: you cannot tip anyone here, no matter what - a bell hop helped us more than anyone has ever helped us at a hotel and absolutely refused a tip, same with waiters and waitresses; you cannot take pictures in rides here, I tried multiple times and they are on you in a second - even without using a flash; there are a ton of options for eating, and it all looks super duper good - expect more on this.
Check out the pictures from today (sorry I didn’t spend much time on captions, too tired).
