When you gachapon a star: Tokyo Disney and Japan 2019 - Day 4

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Day 4: Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea, featuring having Ariel’s Undersea Kingdom almost to ourselves

I'm back - and so soon too. I had this day written already and I was just waiting for Bex to finish off her pictures so I could get it posted. So here goes!

I was up a bit before Bex on Day 4 - I had set my alarm for 10 to 7 to give myself time to tend to my rapidly forming blisters, which I had been too beat to do before I went to sleep. They weren’t too bad at this stage, but I have a careful foot routine when we’re on holiday (especially on holiday in Disney Parks which, however much your dreams may be coming true or whatever, are absolutely punishing on the feet), which helps me keep the blisters at bay.

Overshare? Well too bad - if you didn’t sign up for a woman whingeing about her foot pain you may be in the wrong place.

But as I say, the blisters weren’t too bad as yet, and we were soon up and ready. Down at the bus stop we waited quite a long time for the bus, which when it arrived was very slow. We would have been much quicker walking. We eventually caught the monorail just before 8 and arrived at Disneyland Park at about 10 past. The monorail was so frequent that even at this peak time, and on an exceptionally busy day, we still got to sit down the whole way.

It was looking like another extremely busy day, and was also shaping up to be very hot.

We joined one of the queues and sat on the tarmac under Bex’s umbrella for shade; and then liberally applied sunscreen to every bit of skin that peeped out from under clothing. It was already 27 or 28 degrees at this point, and it was only 8.00.

We were let in at 9.00 and decided to stick to our strategy from Day 2. This meant joining the river of people heading to the Monsters Inc fastpass queue. Despite arriving an hour before park opening we were still 10 minutes back in the fastpass queues, but did manage to secure one for 10.45 to 11.45.

Next it was round to Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, which had a 30 minute posted wait. We thought the queue couldn’t possibly have built up that much yet, so we joined thinking we wouldn’t actually be waiting 30 minutes. We probably would have been right, but the ride seemed to go tech while we were in the queue, leading to us waiting the full 30 minutes.

I will now halt proceedings for a few minutes because my cat has decided to sit on my notes. Bex thinks my cat is a moron, but moments like this remind me that he is, in fact, a genius. He knows that it’s the notes that are drawing my attention from him, so he has sat on them to remind me of my priorities.

Excuse this picture, I took it with my iPod which is about 100 years old (in iPod years) at this point.


Anyway, we waited the full 30 minutes, but it was totally worth it for this visually exciting and super fun ride. We realised we’d now experienced all three different ‘versions’ - as in the different ways the honey pot ride vehicle could move around the ride.

Next up was Peter Pan’s Flight, which as usual was very popular. The park was absolutely bursting this morning, and it was our last morning, so we were doing things we definitely wanted to try, knowing we would have to wait for them. The Peter Pan queue was possibly the worst in the park, being just a very long winding queue with nothing to look at, and the same ride announcements played about 12,000 times. We waited 20 minutes.

The ride itself was quite good. That’s all I've written. Quite good. It’s kind of how I always feel about Peter Pan unfortunately, movie and ride.

Then it was time for Snow White, which I usually enjoy much more than Peter Pan.

The queue was about 10 minutes long and the ride was super scary and awesome. I think the DLP one is pretty creepy, but this one was possibly even scarier, with lots of really good jump scares. Of course there were tonnes of little kids queuing for the ride, but many of them were emerging with tears on their faces, poor things.

On a related point, I do find it interesting how Disney, especially early Disney, has this reputation for being cutesy and overly-saccharine. Nobody who has ever actually seen Snow White, Fantasia or Bambi could ever accuse them of being too cute - they’re bloody terrifying!

I have not written it down, but at some point we must have gone to pick up some fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain for early in the afternoon.

After this we headed towards the castle with a vague idea of checking out Cinderella’s throne. This is something Bex had read about, but we really didn’t know what it was. It’s fairly hidden away though, so it didn’t have much of a wait. We joined a short queue outside the castle, then were taken in with a group, and up in a lift to the first floor.

It turned out to be a series of dioramas in little cabinets, showing scenes from Cinderella, but using lots of different media so they all looked very different. Some of them used special effects too, where the lighting would change and things would appear and disappear - it was pretty cool.

After the dioramas you went into a high-ceilinged room which held the glass slipper and the throne.

These were essentially spots of taking pictures and both had quite long queues. Bex and I grabbed a picture on the throne - Bex looked quite at home up there!

We walked out via a staircase on the side of the castle, helping out a woman in a wheelchair as we did so.

I don’t know if there was an accessible route she could have taken, but she seemed to be managing really well anyway. She had gotten out and was pushing the chair down the steps, so we helped her carry it. She spoke perfect English (she may have been from Hong Kong) and we chatted for a bit about how wonderful the parks were. She asked if we’d been to DisneySea yet, and we said we had, leading to several minutes of rhapsodising among the three of us.

It was 11:00 by this point and we’d done loads, despite the fact that everything had really long lines. Bex suggested going to Tomorrowland to use our Monsters Inc fastpass, but I was adamant that it was breakfast time - we could do Monsters Inc. after. I would come to regret this decision!

However, it was definitely time for breakfast and boy, did I know what I wanted, so we headed back the Sweetheart Cafe for some more melon bread. This time we bought a little apple turnover thing as well as the melon bread and I got an iced coffee. The total was 840 yen (£6.30) and Bex bought a coke separately for 350 yen (£2.60).

We ate fairly quickly, as we needed to be back in Tomorrowland to take advantage of our Monsters Inc. fastpasses pretty soon. We also wanted to try out the lottery for a showing of One Man’s Dream II later that afternoon, though we didn’t hold out much hope.

We got to the spot where you try out the lottery and popped in our tickets. I think we were hoping for the 14:00 showing, but it wasn’t to be. Outside, we saw that a line had started to form for the 12:00 show. This confused us a bit, as we’d thought you would need a ticket to join the line. We asked a CM about it and she said you could just join the line; you didn’t need a ticket, which left us in a bit of a quandry: the line wasn’t really that long, and if we joined it we thought we’d be in with a good chance of seeing the show, but that would mean forfeiting our Monsters Inc fastpasses and probably not being able to do the ride again.

Sometimes you gotta make those hard choices. We decided that even though Monsters Inc. is such an amazing ride we had done it before, and Disney shows are so special that we had to try and see One Man’s Dream II.

We queued for the show for about 10 minutes in the sun before walking into the auditorium. We found pretty good seats about 7 rows from the front and on the edge of the middle section. It’s sometimes nice being only two people in a Disney park!

We were quite hot and tired at that point, so were grateful for a sit down. We were also annoyed at having to sacrifice our Monsters Ince fastpasses, but were convinced that this was the right thing to do. We’ll have to live with the regret of not doing Monsters Inc. before breakfast!

This having been said the show was spectacular and I wouldn’t have missed it! Before the show started, there were a few announcements in Japanese, and the CMs were walking around holding imaginary cameras to their faces, so we assumed that, like in other places, cameras weren’t allowed in this show. This turned out to be wrong, however, as when the show started people were all taking photos. This means I have some photos to show you for once!

If anyone is planning to go to Japan anytime soon, it might be helpful to know that when CMs, attendants etc. cross their hands over each other in front of their chests, this means something isn’t allowed. And it usually refers to taking photos.

The show started with a delightful bit recalling the original Mickey cartoons, with a black and white Mickey and Minnie and a black and white house. The show then continued with bits of songs from the movies in the Disney canon which the characters danced to.

They even did some ballet, which was lovely.

The finale of the show was Mickey, Minnie and lots of friends doing a tribute to Hollywood.

Overall it wasn’t as good as Big Band Beat, but it was still pretty magical, and the One Man’s Dream song really got stuck in my head. One man’s dreeeeeeeeam!

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Part 2

The show finished about 12:30 and we walked over to Westernland to use our Big Thunder Mountain fastpass. It was a short wait and we rode in the middle of the train.

We didn’t have any more fastpasses at this point, so started wandering trying to find something that we could stand to queue for. It really was a hot day (nice that it wasn’t raining for a change, but it does tire you out) and we were trying to stay out of the sun.

Walking through Adventureland to Tomorrowland we found a place called Boiler Room Bites, which was selling the shaved ice we’d had in DisneySea, and which we’d promised ourselves we would try the other flavour of.

So we joined the queue and bought the strawberry flavour, and found a table in the shade to eat it. It cost 400 yen (£3) and was delish. We both decided we probably preferred the melon flavour, but not by much, as both were yummy.

In Tomorrowland we checked out the wait times for various things, but the only thing we really wanted to do was Monsters Inc. Monsters Inc. had a 50 minute wait, which we just couldn’t face at that point, being so weary and footsore. I actually just wanted to go back to the hotel at that point, so Bex asked if we could just wander over to Toontown and grab some pictures of it (as the last time we’d been there it had been chucking it down and Toontown had not been looking its best) and then we would go back for a rest.

We therefore went to Toontown, which was absolutely mobbed, and wandered around taking some pictures and soaking up the bonkers atmosphere.

We also popped into one of the shops and I found an alien mochi keyring which I decided to buy. It cost 950 yen (£7.10).

We also encountered our first themed gachapon machine, but didn’t play it - I really wish we had now I look at the prizes!

I don’t know if I’ve explained as yet, but gachapon (or gachupon, or gashapon or however you want to spell it) are Japanese lucky dip machines, where you pop in a small amount of money and then get a mystery prize around a particular theme in a plastic ball. I have named my trippie ‘When you Gachapon a Star’ firstly for the spectacular punnage, but also because Bex and I became somewhat obsessed with gachapon machines when we were in Japan and made a point of trying as many as we could afford in every place we visited. I have included a select few, and some of the random bits of junk we won, on my Instagram if anyone fancies checking that out @rosalind.scott.125 but I will also be documenting them in this trippie. Disney, of course, had themed gachapons in a few places around the parks, including in the shop in Toontown, the Tower of Terror shop and Ariel’s Underwater Kingdom.

Back to Day 4. It was about 14:00 at this point, and we walked back towards the hub - we had one more thing to tick off the list before leaving Disneyland for the last time: we needed to visit the ice cream parlour next to Sweetheart Cafe. I can’t remember what it was called, but if you remember, we had taken pictures in there on Day 2 and vowed to return.

It’s very unusual for us to choose a sweet treat instead of lunch, but we simply had to try the ice cream. Once inside we each chose to have 1 scoop in a cone; Bex chose mint choc chip and I chose matcha. They each cost 300 yen (£2.20).

I’d actually had a checklist of Japan-themed things to do before the holiday (watch all the Ghibli movies, cook some ramen, buy some sushi, watch Lost in Translation etc.) and had managed to do all of them except trying something flavoured with matcha. I was therefore trying it for the first time, and Bex was certain I wouldn't like it; I really did however, it’s a bit like beans and a bit smoky, but also sweet. It doesn't sound nice when I describe it like that, but it really was.

It was made all the more perfect by the fact that the midday parade was going by in front of the castle as we ate. Of course we were quite far back so we couldn’t see much, but the music had me bopping, and we could see some of the bigger floats even over the crowds. It was a perfect end to our time in Disneyland.

After that we wandered back to the entrance and said goodbye to Disneyland. We were spending the evening at DisneySea, and would be back there right at the end of the holiday, but this was our last time in the main park.

We were back at the hotel before 15:00 thoroughly exhausted from the heat.

We both had to sit on our beds and stared into space for a moment or two before we could move again. For Bex, moving meant doing a thorough clothes audit and moving things around in her case, so she would be ready to finish packing and leave the following morning. For me it meant lying on my bed and playing about with my phone for an hour or so. Later we both showered and changed - we didn’t really have enough clothes but our morning clothes were too gross to get back into!

Bex took some lovely pictures of the parks from our hotel room as the sun went down.

We had a longer rest than usual that day and left for DisneySea at about 18:00. We arrived 20 minutes later. We had perhaps arrived a bit later than we meant to, because we’d wanted to do a few things before tea (such as visiting Ariel’s Underwater Kingdom) but realised we wouldn’t have time, if we wanted to be back for Fantasmic. We therefore went straight to Cafe Portofino (which is right opposite the harbour) to get some food.

We were both quite hungry, having only really eaten sweet snacks all day, so we were a bit dismayed to see the prices. Cafe Portofino was not cheap - presumably you were paying for the location. It’s all Italian-style food and some of it looked quite nice. We both decided to get Chef’s Special meals, which included a bowl of pasta, some little appetisers, a drink and a pannacotta for dessert. This cost 1880 yen each (£14.20).

We got a seafood pasta and a carbonara and swapped halfway through so we could each try both.

The carbonara was probably nicer. Our favourite bit of the meal was definitely the appetisers (sorry I started eating before I remembered to take a picture!) - tiny little portions of meatball, ratatouille and paella. They were very small though.

The pannacotta was OK.

The food was all pretty nice, but really you were paying for the setting more than anything else. I also think the amount of food you got wasn’t quite sufficient for what you paid.

After tea we found a spot for Fantasmic. As usual, everyone was sitting down, so we would have a good view wherever we ended up. We sat near the back of the front section, and waited from 19:20 to 20:00. We played Disney character 20 questions to pass the time - this was quite fun having just come off our Disney Animated Movie Marathon, because we could go for really deep cuts to challenge each other. We are so cool.

At this point my notes become a little sketchy. I think we must have been so busy for the rest of the evening that I didn’t write things up until I got back to the hotel - bad Dibbing, I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to remember.

Fantasmic was really spectacular. Some of the music was the same as the Walt Disney World version, and some of the projections could have been the same too.

It was all projected onto a big popup hat in the middle of the harbour, which Mickey stood on top of directing proceedings. Then lots of floats came in and moved around the hat, all lit up with characters on them dancing.

As usual in DisneySea, it was obvious no expense had been spared, and there was loads of things to look at every minute. The climax of the show saw the Maleficent dragon emerge from the magic mirror where all the villains had been projected, like literal magic, to do battle with Mickey and the power of imagination. It was insane and I have no idea how they did it.

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Part 3

After Fantasmic, it was time to go and look around the Atlantica area, as it was the only part of DisneySea we hadn’t explored. We’d been looking forward to it for ages, but had wanted to have time to do it justice. We walked over, so we could take in some of the atmosphere of DisneySea at night.

Atlantica looked so cool all lit up.

This probably ended up being my favourite evening of the holiday. We wandered around Atlantica for hours, until park closing, and because the area is more obviously aimed at kids, we had it largely to ourselves.

If we’d gone earlier, there would have been children everywhere and we wouldn't have been able to appreciate how much there is to explore in this area. So if you ever go to DisneySea, go to Ariel’s Underwater Kingdom late in the evening, and don’t be put off by the simplistic rides and bright colours - take your time and take it all in, it’s completely fantastic.

First we went into the shops and made a note of some merch to possibly come back to. As usual, there wasn’t masses that called out to us.

Next we went into Ariel’s Playground, which was the real highlight. On the face of it, it was just a sort of play area, with things for kids to sit on and climb on, and displays to interact with, but because this was DisneySea, everything was soooo well done.

I happen to be a ginormous fan of The Little Mermaid, but even if you weren’t you wouldn’t be able to help being amazed at the detail and the scale of this area.

It was sort of a maze, where around every corner there was something new to look at. We encountered cool mirrors and windows with lots of different effects, like Ursula’s face appearing, or being able to see characters as if they were under the sea.

You could interact with things and they’d play sound effects or light up. There was an area that was like a sunken ship, with lots of lightning and sound effects that made it properly creepy, all leading up to a massive flash of lightning which made this guy appear right next to you!

Bex nearly jumped out of her skin! Afterwards we waited in the area for a few more minutes, until the shark came round again, just so we could watch its effect on a group of Sailor Moon-looking chicks who had wandered in unawares. Tee hee.

Our favourite bit was right at the centre of the maze - Ariel’s grotto. You could touch and interact with all her hoozits and wotsits, many of which had cool effects, and, of course, we took some pictures with the jewel of her collection!

We explored the entire area, some of it twice, and it was so nice having it basically to ourselves. We got really lucky.

Afterwards we rode the blowfish ride, which was a walk-on. It was short but nice, and we took a couple of pictures.

You don’t really come into this area for the rides, but for the atmosphere. Even so late in the evening the CMs were showing no signs of being fed up, and they contributed to the fun, chilled out atmosphere of the whole evening. We loved every minute of it.

We stayed in Atlantica until 22:00, which was park closing, but were very loathe to leave even then.

We very much dawdled back to the entrance, taking a slight detour to look round the Arabian Coast at night.

And later to take some selfies with the Mediterranean Harbour behind us.

We were very happy that we’d be back to DisneySea at the end of the holiday, because the place just seemed thoroughly magical.

Eventually we made it back to the monorail. We then walked back to the hotel from the monorail stop and were back in our hotel room by 22:45. The monorails were running every 4 minutes! We couldn’t believe how quickly we’d gotten back, and talked about how nice it was to get back to your hotel promptly at the end of a crazy day in the parks - it meant you could really make the most of your time and didn’t arrive back all grumpy and fed up.

That having been said, it had been a very long day, and for a while after we got back we were too tired to even get ready for bed. We messed about for a bit and reminisced about the holiday so far, before finally showering, doing some last bits of packing, and getting into bed. We eventually turned off our lights at about midnight. What a day!

Cheers for now, friends, see ya real soon.

[AntonyJ]

I was the same with the gachapon - I must have over 30 pics of the ones we saw around Tokyo, the weird and the wonderful! The gas mask collection being one highlight

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by AntonyJ

I was the same with the gachapon - I must have over 30 pics of the ones we saw around Tokyo, the weird and the wonderful! The gas mask collection being one highlight

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Gas mask collection! I loved how bizarre some of the themes were. Definitely more on gachapons later in the trip.

Thanks for reading

[rachelhelen82]

Another lovely day, thanks for sharing.

[Tinkermom]

I’m totally hooked, I’ve been pricing up flights today 😳

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by rachelhelen82

Another lovely day, thanks for sharing.

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I'm glad you enjoyed it - thanks for reading!

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by Tinkermom

I’m totally hooked, I’ve been pricing up flights today 😳

See more...

Hooray! If you want any more info about anything give me a shout!

[Tinkermom]

Originally Posted by Gr8WideSomewher

Hooray! If you want any more info about anything give me a shout!

See more...

Thank you that’s so kind