TDR Day 1: Tokyo Disneyland
The bus ride was quick and we were dropped off near the front of the park. The entrance area was pretty empty, with only a few checkpoints open.
I immediately headed to a shop and bought a Donald Duck headband- which was only $13. Have I mentioned how cheap some of the merchandise is relative to the US parks? Ears were around $15, t-shirts were about $20, plush ran $15-40 (for some of the more exclusive plush). And it’s all super cute, with lots of exclusive and limited merch. In general, if you see something you like, buy it then, because that may be the only place to sell it. We bought a lot of stuff over the next few days.
Our first ride: Star Tours. You know the spiel from the safety instructor droid, and how at one point in the US park version she switches to Spanish? The Japanese version is obviously in Japanese, and she switches to English for a brief moment. We noticed this in Paris as well- it just amuses me. Anyways, even if you’ve done Star Tours elsewhere, it’s still fun to experience this ride, and the wait never seemed long. Plus, there’s this nice nod to the Haunted Mansion in the queue, with three hitchhiking droids.
We took a quick detour to Toontown, which seemed chaotic. Seriously, it was like everyone was there. We took a run through Donald’s boat and I grabbed a popsicle. OMG, the popsicles! I want these in the US parks. There was a Mickey “tropical fruit” flavor (orange colored) and a Minnie peach and raspberry (colored pink). Only $2.51 each, and delicious!
By the way, we were able to use credit cards at every cart. We had read some older reports that some may only take cash, but that wasn’t our experience. This may be a post-covid effect.
We then hit up it’s a small world, which included the Disney characters throughout. I’m sure there’s a breakdown on the differences here, but nothing groundbreaking.
The line for Pooh’s Hunny Hunt seemed manageable- 25 minutes, I think, so we jumped in that. I LOVED this ride. It is so stinking cute. I know that Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast gets a lot of credit, and yes, it’s fantastic (more on that later), but this Pooh ride is adorable and the wait is not nearly as long as Enchanted Tale, so I think the time investment and quality combination make this a better “value.” (That may be a controversial take!)
Then it was Haunted Mansion, which isn’t noticeably different from the Magic Kingdom version. (In contrast with the Paris version, which is very different!) Well, much of it is in Japanese, of course. Oh, and no one brought out their phone lights, which was a big improvement from many pervious experiences in US parks!
We had dinner at the Polynesian Terrace. This was a reservation I had made about a month before our stay. A bit on reservations- I think hotel guests have a separate “bucket” of reservations to pull from, as I didn’t understand I could make reservations through my hotel booking at first. I had tried from the public group, which had almost no availability 30 days out, then eventually stumbled into a different page through my booking with lots more availability. I still don’t quite understand the process, but we were able to get everything we wanted. I tried to book a table restaurant a day to guarantee we had a set time to eat, but I think we would have survived just fine on the snack stands around the parks!
Back to the Polynesian Terrace. We were not allowed to check in more than 10 minutes before our reservation time, and we were only sent to the actual restaurant at our exact reservation time. This held pretty true for the rest of our trip- timing was precise, and getting there early offered you no favors.
At the time, they did not have the luau or stage show. It was just a restaurant. The food was decent, if not the most exciting. My husband got some steak and rice plate with a shrimp cocktail appetizer that I ate. I ordered the fluffy pancakes, which were great. (Who can deny the magical fluffy pancakes?) Total cost was $36.48- incredibly reasonable for a sit-down dining experience at a theme park!
We headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean, which is in the most non-descript building. (Seriously, it’s a let down after Magic Kingdom’s and Paris’s versions.) The ride is much like Magic Kingdom’s, with at least one notable difference. They still have the wench/bride auction, which is a bit of a trip if you’re used to the US versions!
We then did the Tiki Room. This version is officially the Enchanted Tiki Room: Stitch Presents Aloha E Komo Mai!, and it is markedly different that the “classic” version. As you can guess, Stitch features heavily in this version. The four host birds have different names- and one is a female! The songs are also mostly different. They don’t sing the standard Tiki Room song, and mainly feature songs from Lilo & Stitch (the movies and series). It’s a lot of fun, even if I had no firm idea what was going on! (Basically Stitch wanted to be included in the show.)
For our last ride, we hit up Snow White’s Adventures, which has the weird ending where the dwarfs and the transformed Queen are on the cliff. No “happy ending” scene here, just imagine it, folks!
All in all, we were at the park for about six hours.
I guess the chances of us getting any back in Australia are pretty minimal then!
