OK, I've finally got around to updating the third day of our adventure! We were up early again...it's not too tough to get up early when you have a day of Tokyo
Disneyland ahead of you, plus the parks close at 10pm so you do get to bed at a reasonable hour. None of the parks stay open late due to the fact that many Japanese take the train back home at night and they don't run past midnight. That would make you wonder why the parks can't stay open late for guest at the resort hotels, but then you have all the extra staff that needs to get home at the end of day, too. So there you have it, the Tokyo Parks will never stay open as late as DL or MK. Due to the shortened hours it cannot be understated how vitally important it is to arrive no later than 30 minutes prior to park opening if you're plan is to see as much as you can. Of course, if your objective is a leisurely visit then you could arrive anytime you'd like...plus there is so much to see and the parks are just dripping with details, more so than the US parks, IMHO...
We had four must do attractions that day: Ride Monsters Hide and Go Seek, see One Man's Dream II (a stage show full of awesome characters!), check out the Electrical Parade and end the day with Once Upon a Time, a new projection show on the castle. We started our day with a quick sprint to Monster's Hide and Go Seek to get a fast pass and once we secured that we went to the Lottery Building to see if we could get lucky! Lottery Building you ask? Well, here is a major difference between Tokyo and the other resorts. Due to the crazy popularity of the stage shows because of the all the rare and unique character appearances (the Japanese LOVE their characters...love isn't strong enough...they go absolutely insane for them!) TDR has implemented a lottery system to see which guests can attend the shows. Not all shows have a lottery and some days the "lottery" shows don't have a lottery that day. Just check with the cast members in front of the attraction venues for information on the lottery the day you go. Anyways, we queued up for the lottery machines and once we got to a terminal we inserted our park tickets and ended up scoring seats for One Man's Dream II, but not for Once Upon a Time, which is what we really wanted, but we ended up with a nice spot anyways. It was an interesting room, with screams of delight coming from some parties, and sighs of grief coming from others.
After the lottery we hit the standby for Pooh's Hunny Hunt which was only about 20 minutes which is outstanding. This gave us an opportunity to enjoy the queue area more. One thing about TDR, the queues are awesome and yes, you are going to wait in lines, no matter how much of an expert fast pass strategy you implement. This is a non-issue with Japanese since they seem to enjoy queueing for attractions and are a very polite and orderly people. With this in mind, the imagineers did a wonderful job with most of the queues at the more popular attractions. Pooh's Hunny Hunt is no exception. The outdoor queue is wonderfully landscaped and once inside the travel through huge pages of the A.A. Milne classic story and you get a good look at Christopher Robin's toy room and bedroom. It's amazing!
After Pooh's Hunny Hunt we stayed in Fantasyland and rode on It's a Small World, this was closed during our last visit (this visit Space Mountain was closed...boo!) and the facade is just as impressive as the original in DL...very colorful. The queue area has some wonderful murals that ooze Mary Blair, but I'm not sure if she did these or not.
