A Day at Tokyo DisneySea

[MomoMama]

Love, LOVE your photos!
Your husband sure is a fantastic photographer. I am not a big fan of fisheye pictures (because they make me dizzy ), but your fisheye photos are gorgeous!

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Awww

Those reflection shots were just gorgeous!

I would have liked to see this but know I won’t have time! Oh well-I guess a repeat visit!

Thanks Lesley! Yes I was so happy with how the shots in the Venetian Canal turned out! And yes I really want to see the light museum now so I’m also going to have to go back! I hope you’ll write a report about your trip - I love reading reports about the Asian parks!

Those are some extremely lovely photos!

And thank you for enlightening me about Ariel's grotto. We've never *looked* at the playground before (being two adults), but I will definitely sneak a peak at Ariel's grotto next time. I had no idea it existed.

Thank you so much! Yes it’s one of those things that you wouldn’t really find unless you knew it was there - I only knew about it thanks to other trip reports I’d read! But if you are a Little Mermaid fan it’s a pretty magical experience

Ariel's Grotto is great for toddlers. 3 kiddie rides in there, a soft play area, a cafe and a theatre

Ariel’s Grotto is actually just the play area I think - Mermaid Lagoon is definitely set up for kids but I, as an adult, really enjoy the theming

Love, LOVE your photos!
Your husband sure is a fantastic photographer. I am not a big fan of fisheye pictures (because they make me dizzy ), but your fisheye photos are gorgeous!

Thank you so much, your too kind I know what you mean about fish eye shots - you have to use it wisely - we have a pretty narrow fish eye too 12mm (I’ve seen some that are much wider, hence more distorted - around 8mm) so it’s not as nauseating! I just like to be able to get a whole scene into a shot (if you can do it in a way that isn’t too distorted )

 

[catmegs]

I wanted to say a massive THANK YOU for your amazing post and all the photos. We're from New Zealand (and also huge Disney fans) and leaving for our first trip to Tokyo in 35 days. Your pics and outline of your day has made me so excited. Thanks for sharing!!

 

[RachelleBeaney]

I wanted to say a massive THANK YOU for your amazing post and all the photos. We're from New Zealand (and also huge Disney fans) and leaving for our first trip to Tokyo in 35 days. Your pics and outline of your day has made me so excited. Thanks for sharing!!

You’re very welcome! I love knowing that sharing our trips has been helpful to someone planning to go. I still sadly have not been to NZ myself (Jared’s been for work a number of times) so I really need to visit! FYI if you’d like to read about our full trip to Tokyo Disney before you go you can at our trip report:

https://www.disboards.com/threads/a...adventure-trip-report-completed-6-23.3579224/

 

[KEK1]

Part 3 - Under the Sea and Into the Blue

By the time Jared was done taking all the panorama's he was hungry and it was dinner time. Knowing there would not be much of a sunset (it was too overcast) he headed over to Mermaid Lagoon to eat dinner at Sebastian's and to take more pretty photos! I personally LOVE Mermaid Lagoon. It's substance is not that exciting (unless you are a kid) but it's just SO beautiful and so fun to walk around in.













My favourite part of Mermaid Lagoon is Ariel's Grotto. Tucked away inside the kids playground (and hard to find too) is a recreation of Ariel's Grotto. I don't know about you, but as a kid I DREAMED of having a grotto like Ariel's, where I could keep all my treasures. Seeing the grotto re-created in reality was so fun for me. Plus, Princ Eric was my dream Prince (yes I know it's weird to dream about cartoon's) but I thought he was gorgeous, with his dark hair and green eyes (just like Jared...who is my real Prince)

Anyway, Jared went and found "my Prince" again on this trip to take more pictures of him.




The statue looks just like it does in the movie - it's so surreal!

Anyway, by the time Jared was done with dinner it was blue hour (the time of day between sunset and night where the sky can look a beautiful blue). He wasn't hopeful that there would be much of a blue hour, because of how overcast it was. To his great surprise though, when he arrived at his first photo location - the Venetian Canals - to find blue. Now the photos I'm about to post have been edited - but only to highlight the colours already there. Jared was so happy, he'd finally found colour!!








After the Venetian Canal's headed over to the Arabian Coast again:








From there he made his way to Cape Cod



He did a great job, didn't he! It's always a struggle with blue hour and night pictures at Tokyo Disney because you can't use a tripod in the park. As a result, we have to use this bean bag thing called a green pod and rest the camera on anything we can find if we want to take a long exposure (which will always look better and sharper). The angle of your shot is often determined by what you can find to rest the camera on, and we discovered that the wide angle and fish eye lens, though great, don't do AS well with sharpeness for hand held shots. They are cheaper lenses, and for the most part we only ever take night photos on a tripod, so it usually doesn't matter. Except at Tokyo Disney it seems!

Continued in Next Post...

OMG those panoramas! I think the arabian coast ones are my fave.. even more striking at night! How would you ever decide which ones to display.. you need one of those rotating digital photos frames!

 

[RachelleBeaney]

OMG those panoramas! I think the arabian coast ones are my fave.. even more striking at night! How would you ever decide which ones to display.. you need one of those rotating digital photos frames!

Thank you! Yes DisneySea is made for Panoramas! There are so many beautiful vistas! We have an Apple TV that we can connect to Flickr so it rotates our last 500 or so photos so we see them on there

 

[ten6mom]

Gorgeous photos and I actually have two friends that live in Perth! (I am in the US). I met them through an annual ladies' trip that all started here on the DIS.

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Gorgeous photos and I actually have two friends that live in Perth! (I am in the US). I met them through an annual ladies' trip that all started here on the DIS.

Thanks - I’m glad you liked the pictures! How cool that you know some people here! It’s cool to know there are other crazy Disney people living in my “home town”

 

[Aussie Wendy]

Great photos as always! Good to read Jared’s experiences as we are back in TDS next September. Likely to be an E or F day as it will be the Tuesday of a 4 day break and just after the Olympics. Will be interesting to see Soaring crowds 18 months on and if sustains as a top attraction. I hope so to draw crowds away. Raging Spirits is also SR. I probably am not going to try and navigate the Japanese FP system but am tempted to splurge on a vacation package and get a batch of bonus FP given our timing. Then we will spend the Wednesday in TDL, still busy but not as bad and as you say, TDS has the gorgeous settings even if we don’t get on many rides. Hence my slotting that in the national hol. Hope to see teamLab too but again will be national hol Monday so we shall see. Have nNoted if so we will need to aim for first entry of the day tix online. Enjoy your future travels and good to see you are still “doing the Disney”. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been on the boards.

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Great photos as always! Good to read Jared’s experiences as we are back in TDS next September. Likely to be an E or F day as it will be the Tuesday of a 4 day break and just after the Olympics. Will be interesting to see Soaring crowds 18 months on and if sustains as a top attraction. I hope so to draw crowds away. Raging Spirits is also SR. I probably am not going to try and navigate the Japanese FP system but am tempted to splurge on a vacation package and get a batch of bonus FP given our timing. Then we will spend the Wednesday in TDL, still busy but not as bad and as you say, TDS has the gorgeous settings even if we don’t get on many rides. Hence my slotting that in the national hol. Hope to see teamLab too but again will be national hol Monday so we shall see. Have nNoted if so we will need to aim for first entry of the day tix online. Enjoy your future travels and good to see you are still “doing the Disney”. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been on the boards.

Oh wow, your brave doing TDS at such a busy time (I'm not sure I would be, I've never seen it truly busy but I've heard it can be a nightmare public holidays - 5-6 hour waits for everything and SO many people!). I would imagine the crowds for Soaring will stay some of the longest at the resort, simply based on how Monsters Inc and Toy Story waits were, even years after their opening (still the most popular attraction at the parks the waits never really got much shorter than 2 hours even when we were there at the quietest time of year in January). It is good, if you aren't fussed about riding that attraction, in how it draws crowds away for other things. We always felt that way about Toy Story Mania, as it's a ride we could do at DL or WDW and we've never been that fussed by it anyway! Sadly, once the new Beauty and the Beast ride opens in spring next year at TDL it will probably have the same kind of crowds, but it will be one you'll want to see (how exciting for you though that you get to see the Fantasyland expansion when you go)!

But yes, if all you get to do is two or three rides with FP and then just walking around TDS you'll still have a fantastic time. Yes teamLab will likely be really busy on a public holiday. Jared went on a Sunday and he said it was pretty crazy then. Though it was summer when he was there.

Thanks, yes it's been 2 years 9 months ish since our last Disney trip to the Asian parks. We had some things we had to prioritize our money towards sadly, and Jared has changed jobs a few times during that period, one job he was earning a little less so getting the money together was harder. I love doing the trips, but we do have to save money for other things too (this makes me sad, I hate adulting!)

 

[Aussie Wendy]

Ha ha. You do pretty well with your trips and it's a bonus Jared's work gives opps for travel. Admittedly we are at the other end of our lives, DH just retired, I have cut back my contracts significantly and the goal is to fit as much more of the world in as we can, while we can! Not sure brave is the right word but we nabbed one of the brilliant JAL Premium Economy airfares to Frankfurt as we had planned a European trip next September (DH is getting fussy in his old age and after a taste of PE won't go back to Economy for long flights - lol!) Meant we had to leave earlier than I wanted to get the deal so the trip is now mid Aug to late Sept. As the point was really to celebrate my "big" birthday in late Sept and we could fly out of Tokyo that day, I couldn't resist flying out of Europe a couple of days early and having a stopover in Tokyo prior so I still got to celebrate in Disney. We will be book-ending it as we are currently planning to meet up with PrincessinOz, if all goes well in our joint planning, in Disney Paris our first few days. I didn't realise til I did more research that unfortunately the stopover coincided with both Monday and Tuesday being national holidays (almost but not quite a silver week). I may regret it! as since our last visit in 2012 apparently visitors to Japan as a whole have gone from something like 8 or 9 million to up to 40 million . Will post our experiences when we get back. DH probably copes with crowds less than me but I can park him in the hotel and go solo!! Haven't mapped out most of the Europe bit as depends partly on what our daughter, who is working in Sweden currently but whose contract finishes around May, is up to but at this stage a visit to Iceland is high on the agenda and semi-planned.