Alaska Adventure: Tokyo Disneyland

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Tokyo Disneyland

~~Comments will be added as time permits.~~

Our day (Thursday, October 29) started fairly early as the trip to Disneyland takes about an hour and a half. We first walked to Ogikubo station, rode on the Chuo line rapid to Tokyo then transferred to the Keiyo line to Maihama station. Then it’s about a 10 minute walk to the ticket booths. When we entered the park, it was about 10 a.m.

We saw many guests dressed in various Disney character costumes. “Was this a normal, Tokyo Disneyland thing?” we wondered. It turns out that in the days around Halloween, the park allows guests to come in full Disney costume. Thus we saw lots of Alice costumes, quite a few Minnies, hosts of other Disney princesses, and various other characters.

We first headed over to the newest attraction, Monsters, Inc.’s Ride-and-Go-Seek adventure ride. The FastPass was already at 18:45 or thereabouts. We skipped that one and went to Star Tours next door which had a five minute wait. After that we went over to Space Mountain and got its FastPass, then returned to Monsters, Inc. and waited about 75 minutes. It is the newest attraction and therefore attracting all the crowds, but I’m not sure it was worth all that waiting under normal circumstances. It was a ride through a number of different scenes and each person gets to shine a flashlight on the scene to look for monsters and Boo that may be hiding. However, the ride was halted for maintenance not long after we went through, so I guess waiting for it was okay in that respect.

We raced all the way across the park to Splash Mountain and got its FastPass, then raced back to Space Mountain. After that we wandered half the park for lunch that wasn’t exorbitantly expensive and was acceptable to all of us – not at all an easy task. We ended up about where we started looking for lunch: at the pizza counter service restaurant next to Space Mountain. We all had a slice of chicken vegetable (always includes corn) pizza set, which included a small drink and about half a dozen mini cream puffs drizzled with a little chocolate (even fast food is somewhat artistically presented in Japan). For our drinks Shelley and I selected apple tea soda. It was quite good.

Following lunch we went on what I think was my favorite attraction: Buzz Lightyear’s AstroBlaster. The guests get into a small vehicle which then goes through different scenes. Each person gets an AstroBlaster with which they try to hit targets. It was a lot like a shooting gallery except that you are moving all the time. I got 55,000 points, which apparently is rather mediocre…

Because we still had a little time before Splash Mountain, we headed across the way to Micro Adventure. “What is that?” you ask? It’s the Japanese name given to the U.S. attraction, “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.”

We went across the park to Splash Mountain and breezed our way to the front with our FastPass. It was definitely “interesting” listening to the songs in Japanese. (Sample in one of the audio clips below.) Elise wanted to get the photo of us coming down the mountain (to have proof that I actually was with the family), so we did. Afterwards we headed to Big Thunder Mountain but decided to forego it when we saw that the FastPass time was 9 p.m.

We headed to Pirates of the Caribbean and queued up, preparing to wait the 60 or so minutes that was shown at the back of the line. But the line went quickly and we only waited about half the time. After exiting the ride we stopped at a nearby crepe restaurant and had some dessert crepes.

From there we went across the park again to the Haunted Mansion. This being the Halloween season, the Mansion was said to be decorated all for it. Even though the wait time was predicted to be about 80 minutes we decided to wait for it. Like Pirates, the actual wait turned out to be about half the time. The Mansion was decorated in The Nightmare Before Christmas theme.

Elise and the girls rode the teacups, and that was it for the attractions. Elise wanted to stay to watch the Electric Parade – a wait of about 2-1/2 hours. We wandered about the different shops and such.

I had started to get a headache around noon and by this time had gotten quite severe. After browsing a number of shops, it was becoming unbearable and I decided to sit and rest for the remainder of the evening.

The ladies went off to watch the parade. After a while the parade came through close enough to where I was resting so that I could see it go by in the distance.

And then it was time to head back into Tokyo and home. We boarded the train and at our transfer in Tokyo, we decided to stop and get some supper. Tokyo station is huge and it is like a mall. There are all sorts of shops. We ended up at an Italian restaurant where we had spaghetti and a lasagna. Then it was back onto the train for home.