Loving your report so far! And please thank Trevor for recording the parade! Main Street Electrical Parade is my favorite, especially the music. Baroque Hoedown always makes me smile!
Loving your report so far! And please thank Trevor for recording the parade! Main Street Electrical Parade is my favorite, especially the music. Baroque Hoedown always makes me smile!
First Ride at DisneySea - Monday May 26, 2025 (part 2)
Trevor and I decided to split up and each take a different line, just to see.
The thought was that whatever line moved faster, we'd join together.
About 5 min or so before it was time for Happy Entry, a bunch of the characters came out and were waving at us in the line! That was neat - I didn't really get any good picture but it was fun to see. Got everyone all excited.
Then it was time and we were pouring in! Though pouring was the wrong word in my case - Trevor's line moved so much faster than mine that by the time we clocked it it wouldn't have really worked for me to move over, and for whatever reason my line just DID NOT MOVE. I think the folks trying to get in were having all sorts of issues - it took me a full five minutes to get in after Trevor. Which doesn't sound like much but when happy entry is only 15 minutes...goodness! Trevor went on ahead to the Toy Story area and when I finally made it in, I headed that way too. On the way, I saw Duffy and some friends!
They had a bunch of characters out in the piazza area meeting and greeting, which was cool. But we had better places to be!
The plan was to ride rides with fastpasses, starting here and working our way around the park. Also I'm an idiot - we had fastpasses and they didn't open the rides up early, we needn't have rushed! Oh well. We did play around a bit in the Carnival Corral:
They had little fun games in there - free of charge - that were fun to play around with. No one was playing in there for early entry, as you might expect.
Right on time, at 9 am, the line opened up and we hopped on in!
It was essentially the same as in DisneyWorld, with slight theming differences.
I thought the yoyo was cute.
Our goal was to work together to try and increase our scores - we did pretty good this first time:
140s isn't bad!
And since the line was short, we decided to go back around, why not! I noticed the theming a bit more this time:
Andy's bed!
The cars come out of the air vent! Love it.
From Toy Story to the Tower - Monday May 26, 2025 (part 3)
One more theming picture -
Presto library book from the Pixar short!! Love it.
On the ride, we both did better this time:
167,100! It was good enough to get one of us best in car:
Spoiler alert, it was Trevor. Dang it!
We got off the ride at 9:20, and we had a standby pass for the capsule toy machine at Tower of Terror, so off we went. Except as we were leaving Toy Story I realized I didn't have my ears on! Thankfully the cast member was able to find them and bring them to me, though once she brought them I had to fill out a whole form on an ipad, but I got my ears back!
Thankfully Tower of Terror was pretty close by, so off we went to try the capsule toy machine!
There was a bit of a line again, but once we got in it turned out it was the same prizes as before in Adventureland - the tote bags.
Prettier machine though!
We weren't going to do it again but Trevor decided he wanted to try and get a Baymax bag for himself:
And he got super lucky - his first try, and it was Baymax! Calling that one a win.
So with the bag secured, we decided it was time to ride Tower of Terror. Warning, the next bunch of pictures is just going to be all of the theming around Tower of Terror - it is FANTASTIC.
The story is that the Tower is the home of Harrison Hightower, and he's an explorer who heads all over the world.
That's how you know you've made it - stained glass window of yourself.
Tower of Terror Queue - Monday May 26, 2025 (part 4)
More theming! The fastpass line was super short, but just enough time to look around at all the theming in the lobby.
Harrison Hightower III brough back the idol Shiriki Utundu that was supposedly cursed, and then one day he just disappeared!
So many pictures of himself in his own fancy mansion...geez Harrison!
Reminds me of both Jungle Cruise and Caribbean Beach resort pool
At the merge point, they bring us together into a little anteroom where the cast member gave a little spiel and there was this poster:
Harrison Hightower getting the cursed idol.
Then into the pre-show room, which I realize now we never filmed. It was a library/office:
Fancy desk!
With another window of Harrison Hightower. Seriously dude, not ALL the art has to include you.
and the idol!
The pre-show is all in Japanese, but essentially what I got from it was that Harrison didn't believe in the curse, brought the idol back, and then the idol crashed his elevator. BUT the cool part is that at the end of the show the idol disappears! I'm sure it's gotta be mirrors but it looked AMAZING. So neat.
After the pre-show, you get dumped again into another line - in the "basement" or storage room of the tower, with all the artifacts that Harrison had acquired (stolen... ).
Similar to the boiler room at Disneyland, with the upstairs queue.
After you wound your way through the storage area, you came into a little antechamber before boarding the elevator, with more storage.
The room we were in had fancy art.
Then finally, the ride! Even with fastpass, it was still about 25 minutes between the waiting and the preshows, from the time we entered the line to the time we got on the elevator.
Definitely a bit more tame, with the shoulder belts. Fun effects though! We liked it, even Trevor with his fear of heights.
The gift shop was themed to the pool area -
But the gift shop only had a couple pins and a small idol plushie thing that was related to the ride - the rest was pretty standard Tokyo Disney resort merch that we'd seen yesterday in Disneyland. I was beginning to notice that most rides had no themed merchandise, which seems like a lost opportunity to me!
We thought about going around again, but with the kind of long wait we decided to press on. I actually had entered the lottery for Big Band Beat for the 11 am show, and while we ended up winning (crazy lucky!) we decided to skip it for today and keep going around the park. Too excited to see the park to sit in a show right now!
The one thing that threw me off is that there wasn't like a set path we could take that would take us all around the park - we'd have to do some backtracking or whathaveyou. But we were looking around a bit more at the waterfront area we were in:
Food and Wine festival was going on, but none of the dishes really appealed, especially with the long waits. The short lines from yesterday at Disneyland (like just a couple people for popcorn) had not carried over!
The area was cool though - the whole steamship!
We then decided to head for Journey of the Center of the Earth as our next ride - I couldn't wait! That took us back a little bit to the Tower:
Such a cool silhouette.
And past the Electric Railway. We thought about trying to ride the railway but the line was like 20 minutes so...no. Especially cause then we'd have to backtrack to the ride.
As we kept going, we arrived the the area with the Italian ship:
I love the theming with the lava flow all dried and down the mountain. So neat!
We explored a little bit (not a ton), just stopping to get one of our included drinks at the quick service in the area - the line was super long for ordering but when we asked the CM at the pickup place if we could redeem our beverage tickets there (cause we weren't sure) she just directed us to the pickup window so we didn't have to wait. Brilliant! Trevor got ginger ale, and I got orange.