DisCopper, are you back yet? How was your visit to Tokyo
Disneyland and DisneySea?
We just got back and I was surprised at the activity this thread generated.
Here's a trip report:
We arrived at Narita / Tokyo airport an hour early at about 3:30pm. We got through Immigration and Customs very easily and quickly, and immediately found the bus ticket station. We were able to use some Japanese (necessary) to get our tickets, and we had about an hour wait for the bus.
The trip to the hotel was uneventful. It took about an hour and on the highway, there was really little to see. The industrial outskirts of a large city. The landscape almost made it look like New England though.
We checked into the Hotel Okura Tokyo Bay, which is one of the neighboring Disney hotels. I'd highly recommend this place. It's much cheaper than staying at either the Disneyland Resort or the Hotel Miracosta (at DisneySea). They are both beautiful, but I'm told that there isn't a lot of public space at either hotel. In other words, they're just hotels and not Resorts.
The Hotel Okura has an impressive lobby with marble floors. There are four restaurants to choose from with a variety of fare: Japanese, Chinese, Western, and French (where'd that come from?). We ate dinner at the French place. The menus were 99% in Japanese, but the waiter was very helpful and explained the entire menu to us. The meal cost about $50 US per person, but it was worth it. I ate a meal in New Orleans that was $150 per person, and this one held up to it. While I'm on meals, I'll skip ahead to breakfast (which was included), where we ate at a large buffet. It was mixed between western style foods (pancakes, waffles, cereal) and Japanese (sushi, spaghetti, and french-fries???). Well worth it.
The room was excellent. It was very large: not at all what I would expect for a major city. There was a good 6 feet between the foot of the bed and the dresser. The bathroom was equally as large with a deep bathtub and also a large, glassed in shower. The toilet, of course, was complex. When you sat down, it immediately cleaned itself. After a while, it began to warm the seat for you. You also had a selection of options on how to spray yourself off. One of the best things about the room: a view of Disneyland. In about 37 visits to Walt Disney World, I've never had a view of the Castle from my room. Here, you could see all of Disneyland (DisneySea was blocked by another building). The Castle looked great at night.
OK... Disney. To start, I strongly recommend the book Tokyo Disney Made Easy by Kevin Yee. It's available on
Amazon and explains both Parks in detail.
The hotel is directly across the street from the Bayside Monorail station. There's a free bus, but the walk is only about 2 minutes. For about $6.50 US, you can buy a day pass for the Monorail and use it as much as you like.
One catch with the Parks: they want you to spend more than one day there. Since we only had one day (the trip was to see Japan, not specifically Disney), we decided to split the day between both Parks. So--- you gotta buy a ticket for each Park (no Hopping here). Apparently, this is rare enough that we baffled the ticket sales guy at the hotel. It took him a while to understand what we were planning to do.
We started out with DisneySea. My theory was that I've already seen everything in Disneyland and I could spend the day running around seeing new stuff at DisneySea. I've heard that BelleSEAmo (the evening show at DisneySea) is great, but I've always liked Disneyland best at night. I figured it would be fun to just wander around there in the evening.
The Yee book said that you really need to be at the Park when it opens. The Japanese understand the FastPass system fully, and a delay of only a few minutes in the morning can add hours to your wait time later on (really). The book also said that when the gates open, the crowds RAN to the major rides. The book wasn't kidding. EVERYONE was running. It was chaos. I figured Tower of Terror was a big draw, so that's where we headed first. We made it there within minutes of the Park opening, and the FastPass time was an hour later.
We then moved quickly over to the Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull attraction. We had about a 25 minute wait. Interesting to see the animatronic Harrison Ford's talking in Japanese.... but overall the ride was very, very close to what's in Disneyland, CA. The line area was nicely themed, and the attraction itself was (of course) full of detail.
We then walked all the way back to the Tower of Terror (quite a walk) and jumped in the FastPass line. Although the safety instructions are in Japanese and English, the storyline is all in Japanese. There was one sign that summed the whole thing up in a nutshell: rich adventurer brings home cursed idol. They had a good pre-show where a cast member wound up an old phonograph that played and told the story of the Idol (I'm assuming). You watched a stained glass window change and the Idol disappear. The effects were excellent and the ride itself was cool (as always). One thing that was neat: at the top of the tower, the view was of Mysterious Mountain and a glimpse of the Tokyo skyline in the distance.
We then got a FastPass for Journey to the Center of the Earth (supposedly one of the premier attractions at the Park)... already it was for 6:00pm!
We were right at 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, so we got in the Standby line... a 1 ½ hour wait to start. After about a 45 minute wait, the line had a Single Rider branch off. No one was taking it, but we figured why waste valuable time in line. We walked right to the front and boarded in two different cars. Thank God we did this! The attraction is very similar to the Disney original. You're just in a much smaller submersible vehicle that holds about 6 people. There are some interesting water effects... for about 10 seconds, I almost thought we were under water... but then a look at the cheezy fish on wires swimming by and I figured it out. Kids might like this, but unless you really loved the original, I wouldn't wait in line for it.
Another bummer ride: Raging Spirits roller coaster. We had a similar line experience as with 20,000... we waited about 30 minutes, then were able to get into the single rider line. Overall, a kiddie roller coaster. Not very fast, not very exciting. Not even a whole lot of theming going on.
Lunch at Cafe Portofina. Very much a Disney counter-service experience. The cashiers did not speak English, but were adapt at getting us through the transaction. I had pizza, which was similar to US pizza, but with a softer crust.
The Yee book said to take a look at King Triton's undersea kingdom. It's basically kiddie land with a lot of rides for little kids. BUT.... WOW! That's all I can say. The place is entirely inside and it's designed to look like you're underwater. Bright colors, but dark and cool. I didn't exactly feel like I was in The Little Mermaid, but it was an impressive place. THIS is something they need to put in Florida. It would be a great place to go and get out of the sun and cool off.
The shopping here is not extraordinary. The shops are huge, but there's not a lot in them. They are well prepared for crowds, so there's lots of space to move about. There's not a lot of variety either. Lots and lots of sweets (the Japanese love to give ornately wrapped sweets as presents when they go to someone's house... I saw sweets and treats all over Japan). Some china. And that's about it. T-shirts? Not so much. In fact, there wasn't a whole lot of clothing anywhere. I miscalculated the weather and was freezing my butt off. A hunt for a sweatshirt gave me one choice (which I took).
A couple things I found interesting.
- The Japanese all make the Peace sign in photos.
- Tokyo Disney seems to be lacking in the redneck, blue-collar family area. Everyone looks middle-class. Yeah, I saw rough looking guys working construction, but apparently they don't make enough money to take the kids to Disney during their school break (which was going on).
- The Japanese wear clothing with sayings in English on them. They don't always make a lot of sense. Don't middle in other people's business. Peaceful dinnertime. Never mind "University of Ninnesota."
The Journey to the Center of the Earth attraction was awesome. It was very strange... sort of like a roller coaster, but much larger cars. All a Jules Verne theme, of course. It was similar to Test Track in that you moved slowly through some themed areas, and then rapidly accelerated up and out of the mountain. Very cool, and sort of hard to describe.
Why doesn't Disney put a DisneySea in Florida??? There's been rumors of another Park for years, but this would be the perfect one. I wouldn't do it exactly the same (no need for two Tower of Terrors), but they could easily use many of the same attractions and add a few more. If I were Imagineering a Florida DisneySea, I'd put in a huge indoor King Triton area... maybe even building Eric's castle as part of the Park and put a large, underground area similar to the Japan Park, but even bigger.
Although DisneySea was a beautiful Park, it was sort of stark and bare. It was a lot of stone and pavement. Obviously, it's a Park about water- and there's plenty of that. But they really need to include a lot more trees, bushes, etc.. You can focus on the water and still make it lush.
On to Disneyland. Their version of Main Street is, of course, covered with a glass roof. The effect was ok... it didn't really add or distract from the feel of the street. The Park is laid out very much like the Magic Kingdom... but it's like the Magic Kingdom through some sort of weird looking glass. The buildings are the same, or similar, but everything is much more spaced out. There is A LOT of room in this Park. Clearly, they are ready to handle massive crowds.
We saw part of the Main Street Electrical Parade (a few changes from the original, but basically the same thing), and spent some time just wandering the Park. The lines were out of control... 140 minute waits everywhere. We had to check out the Haunted Mansion (been my favorite since I was about 9), which is located in Fantasyland (everyone knows its the only attraction that's located in a different land in each version of Disneyland, right?). The mansion looks almost exactly that the on at the Magic Kingdom, but it's got some extra parts to it. If you compare it to the Magic Kingdom, the building continues on to the left (where the graves are) and sort of merges into Critter Country. The effect is nice... it's a nice queue area. Inside, the whole attraction is almost exactly the same as in the MK (at least before the last update.. the giant spiders are still here, old fashioned bride, and Madame Leota isn't floating). There were one or two new effects such as a bulging portrait and a floating book, but all in all it was the same.
Underestimating the jet-lag and running around the Parks all day, we were dead and actually left about 2 hours before the Park closed. I couldn't believe we were giving it up, but we were dead on our feet.
My plan with this Japan trip was to use Disney as a way to ease into Japan. I figured most people would speak English, there'd be a lot of Americans around, and it would be a transition into the culture. On the one hand, that worked. Many (but not all) of the Cast members spoke English and it was a very western environment. On the other hand, I was wrong about the amount of westerners in attendance: there were very, very few. Probably about 1 in 500 (or more).
We checked out the next morning and took one of their shuttle buses to the JR train station. All the books say that the Japan train systems are easy to use, and they're right. But it doesn't stop you from being overwhelmed when you first arrive on the platform. There are signs everywhere... Japanese, English, and other. It's sort of an information overload. But if you just pay attention to what you need to do (which line you want, etc...) you can figure it out.
In our two weeks in Japan, that was it for Disney. The entire country (by specifically Tokyo) blew me away. If you're a Disney maniac (you're here, aren't you?) and you can at all pull it off, get yourself over there for at least two days at the Parks and other days in Tokyo. Amazing.
