When you gachapon a star: Tokyo Disney and Japan 2019 - Day 3

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Hello everyone,

I know I'm shamefully later again, but this time you really can't blame me. This one is on Bex who took a veeerrrry long time sorting out her photos. Tut tut. But anyway, on with Day 3!

You know that feeling when you’re on holiday with a compulsive Disnerd, and you really really want to have one of those smug lie-ins that you get to have on holiday, where you think about what all your colleagues are doing right now, while you’re still luxuriating in bed, but you know there’s literally no way in hell that’s ever going to happen because Goddammit you’re not missing a single second that could be spent imbibing Disney through every pore?

Come on, guys, I know it’s not just me.

So anyway, we woke up at 6 on Day 3, which was great . Bex got ready really fast and was raring to go by 6.30. I was...a little slower.

We ended up leaving at 6.45 and went downstairs to wait for the bus to the monorail. We waited a good five minutes before we remembered that it doesn’t actually start running until 7:00 (not to mention our lazy asses knew it was only a 2-minute walk to the station), when we decided to walk instead.

Even with this slight delay, we arrived at DisneySea at about 7:10 and were quite near the front of the queue we joined. Everyone sat down in their queues today, as it wasn’t raining, and the atmosphere was really nice and relaxed. We chatted and people-watched until the park opened at 8:00

The atmosphere as soon as they started letting people through the turnstiles changed immediately and became absolutely mental! People began running as soon as they got through, even though there were CMs holding up signs saying to walk, and of course everyone was going in the same direction. I took almost no pictures in the first couple of hours of being in the park, I’m afraid, because we were running from place to place, as was everyone else!

As usual we had a strategic choice to make: should we get a fastpass for Toy Story Midway Mania (where everybody else was going) or Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which was what were most excited about? We weighed it up and realised there was no way we’d get on Toy Story if we didn’t follow the crowds and that, if we were quick, we could hurry back to Journey and still take advantage of the shorter standby line.

This is what we did and it wasn't too bad. The area around Toy Story Mania was absolutely rammed, but the queues at least moved quite quickly, and we picked up a fastpass for 10:05-11:05.

We then walked briskly to Journey to the Centre of the Earth and were happy to see that there was only a 5-minute wait!

The queue was completely brilliant; similar in style to the Big Thunder Mountain queues, with lots of cool period-appropriate gadgets, maps, pictures etc. to look at. We didn’t really get a chance to appreciate it on this occasion though, as we almost walked straight on.

This. Ride. Was. Insane!

While Monsters Inc. was my favourite ride in Disneyland this was definitely my favourite overall. There is so much to look at, all of the animatronics and scenes are completely awesome (especially the lava monster omg it’s so good! ), and there’s thrills and spills and a big drop to boot! Even the ride vehicles are so so special, with a beautiful steampunk design. This ride has everything - I love it!

I only wish I could have taken more pictures to show y’all, but as usual the CMs stopped you taking photos anywhere in the queues or the rides if they saw you.

Of course the ride was so excellent that we had to walk straight round and do it again. The queue was now at 20 minutes, so we had a bit longer to enjoy the brilliant queue area.

Bex decided to pass the time by finding a synopsis of Journey to the Centre of the Earth online and reading it out to me while we waited. I don’t even think she got a third of the way through - it seems like quite a lengthy novel, and weird as heck. We also found that there was a trashy movie based on Journey to the Centre of the Earth and starring Brendan Fraser () so we vowed to watch that at some point during the holiday. She stopped reading when we entered the lift that takes you down into the final queuing area, which is a ginormous indescribably awesome cavern.

The ride was again fantastic, and we swapped sides so the other person could sit near the lava monster. We both found that you got the most thrills and could see the most interesting things sitting on the right of the vehicle, though both sides were good.

Still skipping with adrenalin, we walked down the steps towards Port Discovery to try and ride Aquatopia.

These guys were signing autographs by the ride!

I love you Elastigirl!

The line for Aquatopia was 5 minutes so we hopped on - it was lovely and relaxing. Even nicer this time than it had been the other day, as the weather was actually not half bad!

Next we caught the exceptionally cute train back to the other side of the park - the American Waterfront - and walked from there to Mediterranean Harbour.

We managed to get slightly better pictures of the park from the train on this occasion - that sun really was trying its best to come out!

We wandered through the American Waterfront Area, taking in a bit of the atmosphere - and boy, was there some atmosphere!

Once back at the Mediterranean Harbour we walked over the bridge that takes you to the Venetian gondolas.

The posted wait for the boats was 10 minutes, but I think we waited a bit longer than that. Not that that mattered because it’s a seated queue! Have you ever heard of anything so heavenly?

The gondola ride itself was also an incredibly relaxing experience. Our lovely gondolier took us out into the harbour and then back through the canals and under a couple of bridges.

At one point we all had to close our eyes and make a wish as we went under the longest bridge. And the gondolier sang Santa Lucia while we all had our eyes closed - God, it was perfect. You can also see that the sun had really come out now, making this most beautiful of parks look even more beautiful It was one of my favourite moments of the whole holiday.

As you can see, the weather was infinitely more photogenic today!

We tried the Big Band Beat lottery again before leaving the Mediteranean Harbour, because even though we’d already seen it we were desperate to go again. We weren’t successful this time though.

We still had a bit of time before our Toy Story Mania fastapsses opened up, so we popped to the Tower of Terror first to pick up some fastpasses for that. We got some for later at 13:25-14:25.

Both Tower of Terror and the Toy Story Toyville area are part of the American Waterfront so it was a short walk to Toy Story mania from there.

We joined the Toy Story queue, excited because we hadn’t ridden this ride in a long time, but had only been waiting about 10 minutes when the ride went tech. They turned all the lights on and told people to come back later if they had fastpasses.

We decided to leave, as this didn’t look like being sorted out any time soon, but many people stayed in the queue. It seemed to be the most popular ride in the park, and people seemed to be happy to wait for hours if necessary

We went to get some breakfast instead, and walked back to Mama Biscotti’s on the Mediterranean Harbour.

They had a fantastic selection of pastries, but Bex wasn’t very hungry. We got an egg and bacon focaccia to share and I also got an iced coffee. Bex went elsewhere to get a coke, as they didn’t sell them at Mama Biscotti’s. How she can drink coke with breakfast I have no idea, the savage! The total came to 880 yen (£6.23).

As we were finishing our breakfast, a show began on the lake. This was the Tanabata festival show, which was on in July to celebrate the Japanese festival of Tanabata. Tanabata is to do with stars and wishing, so it’s very suitable to Disney! They were celebrating in Disneyland too, with stations where you could write down your wishes and add them to a wall in the manner of a Shinto shrine.

It was quite a small show, with just one big steamer boat float that went round in a few big circles accompanied by a cool remix of the music from the Wishes fireworks show. We hadn’t been planning to watch, so we didn’t have a good spot for it, but it was quite cute so we hung around to get some pictures. It was, of course, extremely popular with everybody else, because it featured Duffy and Shellie May.

End of Part 1

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Part 2

After the show we quickly walked to the boat dock in order to be at the front of the queue. We boarded the steamer-style boat straight away with no waiting and took the boat to Lost River Delta on the other side of the park. It was a very nice alternative to walking, and a beautiful boat ride.

We arrived at the Lost River Delta and went straight to the Indiana Jones ride.

As before, we single-ridered, meaning that we queued for 5-10 minutes. The ride was, of course, awesome!

Afterwards we walked across the bridge to the Arabian Coast to ride Sindbad again.

As usual, it didn’t have a long wait (it’s a great ride, but I think it’s been there for years) and we were soon on. The ride was fabulous and I fell even more in love with Chandu than I had the first time.

After we were finished we went into the bazaar to look at the Chandu merch, especially these extremely cute Chandu bag ornaments and plushies.

We decided to write down the price (1400 yen-£10.70) and come back on our last day if we still wanted them. They also had some nice Aladdin-themed stuff in there.

Next we went to queue for the double-decker carousel. I don’t really know what the thinking was in having a double-decker carousel, but it’s pretty cool. The area was really beautiful and also quite cool, which was a relief as it was really hot by this point.

Of course, we went to queue for the upstairs bit. I definitely wanted to ride a genie, and Bex chose to ride a weird, colourful griffin.

The ride was nothing special, it was just a carousel, but it was nice to be able to take some pictures without being told off for once.

Then we wandered round the area, taking in some of the atmosphere for a bit.

Afterwards we went to sit in the shade for 10 minutes and had some water - as I say, it was really quite hot at this point, and we wanted to have a sit down before walking all the way across the park.

We walked back towards the American Waterfront, with the hope that we’d be able to use our Toy Story fastpass.

On the way we passed a little stall that was selling shaved ice and basically we couldn’t resist. We bought the pear flavour (400 yen-£3) and shared it as we walked along - it was heaven!

It was about 13:00 when we arrived back at the Toyville area. We showed our fastpasses to the CM at the front of the queue and were let straight into the Toy Story Mania queue.

Of course the ride is maybe the most popular in the park, so even with a fastpass we queued about 15 minutes. The ride was as good as I remembered and brought out the competitive side in both of us! We had great fun trash-talking each other all the way round. Bex couldn’t beat my awesome skills however - it wasn’t even close! I was also best in vehicle.

Next up was our Tower of Terror fastpass, which had opened at 13:25. The queue for this looked massive, so we were glad we had the fastpass.

Here was another example of truly fantastic theming! It was clear the Imagineers who did the buying for this ride had gone all out and had great fun doing it. The ride is themed around this guy called Harrison Hightower, who collects objects from around the world, and what happens when he foolishly brings back a haunted statue called Shiriki Utundu from I think somewhere in Africa - spoilers, it’s nothing good.

The queue is filled with things from his collection, like huge Egyptian statues and mummies and medieval armour and things. There’s loads to look at and it’s super fun, which was a good thing because I think we queued for like 25 minutes here, even with the fastpass. The ride pre-show is also very cool, with a great effect where Shiriki Utundu vanishes before your eyes! The story behind the ride is probably better than the Twilight Zone one, and a bit more developed.

Once you get onto the ride it’s pretty much the same as in the other Disney parks, i.e. awesome! I think it needed one or two slightly bigger drops (like at DLP), as I love that floating feeling you get on the really big ones!

The shop at the exit of the ride is really cool - themed like Harrison Hightower’s swimming baths. I also thought the Shiriki Utundu merch was quite fun, but I was hesitant to buy any because, if you didn’t know the story behind it, you might just think I was a fan of slightly racist faux-African statuary.

It was lunchtime at this point, so we walked up through the American Waterfront area to the New York Deli, which sold sandwiches. We weren’t massively hungry, so shared a Reuben grilled sandwich meal (cheese and really good ham) and added an extra drink. The sandwich meal was 1150 yen (£8.80) and a large coke was 350 yen (£2.70).

The sandwich was really delish - they were generous with the meat and it was just the right amount of food. The deli was really nice too, with an authentic 1930s NY sort of feel.

End of Part 2

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Part 3

It was time for some rest and relaxation, so we headed back to the hotel by monorail. As was often the case, there were characters out by the entrance to the park.

As usual the monorail didn’t take long, and we were back at Tokyo Bay by about 14:45.

We relaxed for an hour or so (I haven’t written anything down about this, so it must have been pretty uneventful) then got ready to spend the evening in Disneyland.

We got to Disneyland in record time - we left the hotel at 16:00 and were at the One Man’s Dream II lottery area in Tomorrowland by 16:25. One Man’s Dream II is the Disneyland show, and being big fans of Disney parks shows in general, and having seen the incredible Big Band Beat, we were really keen to see it. The next performance was at 17:10, and we had thought that we could enter the lottery for the show up to half an hour before, which was why we had raced into the park at such speed. It turned out, however, that this wasn’t true. The machines only showed the last performance, 18:40, as available, and we didn’t want to enter that one, as we would miss the Main Street Electrical Parade, which we’d missed the night before due to the weather and definitely didn’t want to miss again. It was a shame, but we still had one more day to try the One Man’s Dream lottery again.

Of course Plan B was to do some rides, but that wasn’t going to be particularly easy. The park was extremely busy and felt a bit stressful. DisneySea has a wonderful way of being quite relaxing, even when it’s absolutely chokka, but Disneyland, on this hot day, was somewhat overwhelming. Still beautiful though...

In the end we decided to queue for Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, as it’s just so good, and had a 35-minute wait according to the app. We also picked up a fastpass for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger spin for later that evening (around 21:00) before leaving Tomorrowland. Like in the other parks, Buzz was always extremely popular, and not possible to ride without a fastpass, which is the same in DLP. I’m not sure why; the ride is very average.

The posted wait once we got to Pooh’s Hunny Hunt was 45 minutes, which we didn’t think was too bad, considering how nice the queue is.

Quite a bit of it is inside too, which was nice on such a hot day. In the end, we only waited about 30 minutes, and the queue was a peaceful escape from the mania of the park. The ride was fab, as it had been the first time.

As we walked past the Haunted Mansion, we saw that it had a 13 minute posted wait time. Bex said she thought that meant it was a walk-on, so we joined the queue.

There was certainly something not right about the queue projection though, because I would estimate we actually waited 30-35 minutes. However the Haunted Mansion queue is a really good one and of course the ride itself is a classic.

It was still early when we emerged into the land of the living, about 18:10, but it was already time to start waiting for the parade. We found a spot on the edge of Westernland - in fact it was the bench where we’d watched the midday parade the day before. Having found our excellent spot, we really didn’t want to lose it, so I went on a reconnaissance mission to find us something to eat, while Bex saved the bench. There really wasn’t a lot of choice in the area, but I found a pizza joint which looked OK. Unfortunately, the queue was massive and I really couldn’t face it.

Those of you who have read my other trippies will know about my endless problems with foot pain, and this trip was no exception. The pain wasn't too bad at this point, but I was also trying to save myself from agony later on (there were still 14 days to go) so I decided to ask Bex to do the queueing for food. Of course she said she would (she’s the best) and I saved the bench while she went to get the food.

While I was waiting, a lovely Japanese lady came up to me to say she liked my t-shirt (it was the Zootopia one that Bex had got me in Shanghai) and to ask if I was having a good time. I said I was and explained about it being our first trip and our first time in Japan, which I think she understood. I tried to talk to her a bit, but her English wasn’t really up to it; but she was absolutely lovely. She was decked out in Disney merch from head to toe, including a bag that had upwards of 20 little bag ornaments and must have been really quite heavy. After a bit, she seemed to decide to go and find somewhere to sit for the parade, and gave me a Disney postcard as a present before saying goodbye. So sweet!

Bex soon came back with 2 slices of seafood pizza, 2 drinks and a side of cheesy potatoes, which came to 1950 yen (£14.80) - not cheap considering it wasn’t really that much food. It was OK, and we were both starving so we bolted it down, but I wouldn’t search out that pizza place again. The cheesy potatoes were probably the best bit. We were both also left feeling a little unsatisfied.

The parade eventually began at 19:30 and was fabulous! I didn’t take any pictures of it because I was filming it to send to our sister back home, so these are all Bex’s.

It was a really long parade - seriously, it just kept going and going - and every float was so creative and cool.

Plus the music was the old-school Electrical Parade music (“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Tokyo Disneyland proudly presents our spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination in thousands of sparkling lights…”) which I hadn’t heard in years, and brought a bit of a tear to the eye. It was definitely my favourite parade that we saw in Disney - just breathtaking!

Sorry for the overload - I couldn't resist!

After the parade we were still hungry, so we headed into Tomorrowland in search of some more food. We had also decided that this was the moment to try the famous Toy Story green alien mochi - possibly the most popular, and definitely the most instagrammable, of Tokyo Disneyland’s signature foods.

We decided on the Pan Galactic Pizza Parlour because they sold the mochi, which turned out to be an excellent decision, not because of the food (the food was meh), but because of the hilarious theming. There was a brilliant alien animatronic in the middle of the room who was operating a pizza-making contraption and talking about how much the humans liked pizza. Bex adored it - she loves a bit of cheesy theming.

As I say, the pizza was kind of OK - we ordered a seafood calzone to share and a drink, which came to 820 yen (£6.20). We ate this in the pizza parlour - we pretty much had it to ourselves as it was a weird time to be eating.

The green alien mochi cost 360 yen (£2.70), and we took them back to the hub with us to eat while we watched the fireworks.

We were just arriving in the hub when an announcement came over the tannoy to say that the fireworks had been cancelled due to weather conditions. This was weird, since there was no rain or wind or anything. We sat down on a bench, a bit disappointed, to eat our alien mochi. Luckily the mochi were really tasty and, of course, looked adorable. The inside is a sort of mousse and comes in three flavours, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry - though you don’t know which flavour it is until you bite into the alien. The outside of the alien is made of rice paste and just tastes sort of sweet. These are definitely a must if you ever find yourself in Tokyo Disney!

We debated what to do next, as we still had quite a while before park closing. Since we were on the edge of Tomorrowland, and had a Buzz fastpass for later, we decided to go back and see what queues looked like in there. We also must have stopped for a quick bathroom break somewhere around this time because I finally managed to get a good picture of the Mickey soap! It’s not all of the soap dispensers, but with some of them the soap comes out looking like Mickey, which is just another example of how much thought and love has gone into Tokyo Disney (and all the Disney parks). God, I love Disney.

As before, the Star Tours line was only 5 minutes, so we skipped straight on to that one.

We also got lucky on this occasion, visiting Crait (which is a really fun sequence) and then ending up in Batuu! Bex started struggling against her seatbelt and saying, “This is my stop! I want to get out!” and then “No, no, no!” when the connecting wall started coming down and hiding Threepio and the screen. It was so funny!

We emerged from the ride - unfortunately not into Batuu, but still into Disneyland so not all bad - and went to use our Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin fastpass. It was just after 21:00 at this point. We waited about 5 minutes and the ride was pretty fun, though not different in any significant way from the DLP one. It also paled into insignificance beside the awesomeness of the Monsters Inc ride. I got the higher score, but we were both rubbish at the shooting!

It was almost time for park closing now, but we decided to try and fit in one more ride. I suggested we make it Pirates of the Caribbean as I predicted it would be a walk-on, and it was. The ride was a lovely and relaxing end to the day, and on this second time we started noticing lots of new things, and appreciating how absurdly detailed the ride is. I love Pirates of the Caribbean! Rarely for Tokyo Disney, the ride track was also mostly in English, which was nice for us.

It was a great last ride, and afterwards we wandered back towards the entrance at our own pace. We quickly popped into the homeware store on the edge of the World Bazaar, as you can never have enough Disney homeware.

There was some really nice stuff, including some very pretty chopsticks and these DIY Disney rice bowl kits that looked really cool. I actually wish I’d bought one now, but I didn’t - I think they were a bit pricey.

There were no must-haves, however, and I think we were still at the beginning-of-the-holiday-trying-to-save-money-because-you-don’t-know-what-you-might-fall-in-love-with-tomorrow stage, so we didn’t buy anything.

We took the monorail home with no fuss - it took about 20 minutes - then the usual shower, take off make-up, flick through photos, check messages and bed routine. We turned the lights out at 23:30.

P.S. We started doing step counts at this point (when I remembered I had a step counter on my phone), and I will try and report them to you guys when I remember to. However, Bex is pretty certain that the step counter on my phone isn’t very accurate, as it often felt like we’d done a lot more steps than were on the step counter. Also, our first two days were probably our longest and most step heavy, so the number of steps went down quite drastically from Day 3 onwards. All this to say...our step count was 16,857 steps - a light one, but still not bad.

Thanks for reading, friends, see you soon!

[AntonyJ]

Wow - you had an mazing day, thanks fro the report. I was there in May and loved it but Monsters Inc ride I do not get. Yes, it looks amazing but the lack of an scoring systems makes it somehow... boring!

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by AntonyJ

Wow - you had an mazing day, thanks fro the report. I was there in May and loved it but Monsters Inc ride I do not get. Yes, it looks amazing but the lack of an scoring systems makes it somehow... boring!

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You're welcome, thank you for reading and commenting

I get not loving Monsters Inc if you like things to be a bit more competitive - I just thought it was delightful though! Which was your favourite ride?

[rachelhelen82]

Another great day with plenty packed in. Journey to the centre of the earth is my all time favourite ride. Unfortunately we never got to ride Toy Story Mania, some days the queues were posted as being 4 hours!

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by rachelhelen82

Another great day with plenty packed in. Journey to the centre of the earth is my all time favourite ride. Unfortunately we never got to ride Toy Story Mania, some days the queues were posted as being 4 hours!

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That is a shame, it's really fun. I don't know if you've been to Florida because it is exactly the same as that one. I think I would prioritise Journey to the Centre of the Earth another time though, as it was completely fantastic and DisneySea is the only place you can find it!

[rachelhelen82]

Originally Posted by Gr8WideSomewher

That is a shame, it's really fun. I don't know if you've been to Florida because it is exactly the same as that one. I think I would prioritise Journey to the Centre of the Earth another time though, as it was completely fantastic and DisneySea is the only place you can find it!

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We’ve been to Florida quite a few times but I hadn’t realised the Toy Story rides were exactly the same, I don’t feel as disappointed now 😊. We’ll definitely try ride it when we hopefully return next year.

[Tinkermom]

Today looked amazing, and I loved your T-shirts!

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by Tinkermom

Today looked amazing, and I loved your T-shirts!

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Thank you! Bex bought us those t-shirts in Shanghai Disney - apparently the merch game there is amazing. I'm hoping she will be able to write a report of the day she spent in that park at some point.