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Old 7 Aug 19, 09:12 AM  
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kk20
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Adventure to the land of the rising sun Day 4

Index - https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho... php?t=1139534

We get up around 8.30/9am and have the usual lunch in our room. The pattern developed will be pretty much the same throughout the holiday, light breakfast, "prepack lunch" and evening meal out somewhere. The japanese do seem to like croissants and the more Mediterranean breakfast style and so far we havent had much issue with eating food.

Lunches have been taken into the park without issue either: onigiri, yakitori, cold cooked noodles etc. We have also developed a taste for green and black iced tea - it really is refreshing when you are borderline 30C outside and today is supposed to be the hottest day so far. I dont have as many photos today as we took it very leisurely and just enjoyed the day. My notes are fairly well written though as we weren't jet lagged by this time.

The monorail station is deserted as it is about 10:00. We are heading into the Disneyland park today with a focus on shows and parades. We pretty much went on half the rides the first afternoon. Toon town is mostly "down" for maintenance and we already knew that hide and go seek was down for our visit - a shame really as its a unique ride. Even the monorail stations have nice decoration and of course it is spotlessly clean.



What I havent mentioned so far are lockers, there are PLENTY of lockers in the monorail station and also lockers in a dedicated block just outside the entrance. Even "mid day" there are lockers available.

No queue to get into the park and the crowds look a little lighter today. Apologies for the shakiness but I was skipping a little along "main street"... Met a few characters, Mary Poppins and Bear (the name escapes me, even though we went to the bear theatre later)



The railroad is down (which is a shame as it doesnt come back all day) so we go on a river cruise instead. The tour is in Japanese, the cast member guide is very good, highly animated and you do get the gist of what is going on. The river cruise is a very good blend of animatronics, effects and also modern projection. As usual, the cast members are smiling and very happy.



As soon as we get off the cruise, woody woodpecker arrives! Now that's a blast from the past, our two didnt have any idea who woody was.



We go to do the stitch show, which again is in Japanese. We missed out on the translation devices (which arent really needed) as I think you need to ask for them. By the time we saw them near the entrance the show was starting so we didnt bother. It is nice to see the theming has a blend of culture.



A note on ears and headwear. Both are very popular with boys and girls so feel free to wear yours. It was far too hot for anything other than anti sun headwear. Luckily there are drinking fountains everywhere, even in the queues, which was nice. We didn't go without water for our stay.



Grab a FP for BTM and we go to Country Bear Theatre. This is an old school animatronics show that was ok. Some songs in Japanese, some in English. Still it was air conditioned and midday :-D

Getting hungry now and although we have heard horror stories regarding the queues for Queen of Hearts banquet hall, I really want to go. the queues for the popcorn stands on the way rival rides and the takeaway concession queues are also long.



However, when inside the banquet hall things are calmer and although there is a long line it is moving as fast as you can walk so all in all about 10 mins. Not bad. Plenty to choose from with steaks, chicken, rice, noodles etc. I choose a cake because i'm a grown up, i'm paying and I can.



Suitably refreshed we ride the carousel, have a bit of shopping in tomorrowland and ride buzz lightyear laser blast (the FP beats the standby queue, another nice trick). We havent used the app much today as we are not looking at the big ticket items. That being said it is still useful as I picked up on the buzz lightyear laserblast FP times whilst shopping. Whilst in tomorrowland we tried for some shows and got lucky for the "Oh Summer Banzai!" main show. It did have a warning that you might get wet (oh how correct it was).



Disappointed by the shops again but it seems the tomorrowland shops are themed more - I appear to be collecting mugs this trip. Incidentally, the buzz lightyear laserblast is identical to the others we have been on, even the hidden "circle" at the start and the triangle in the tunnel are there. These are massive scoring ones and easier to hit than zurgs chest so you can easily get 300k+ if you know about these (which we all do :-D )



Whilst grabbing a FP for star tours (again, FP return time is a mere 3 minutes after the issue time) we run into four green army men.



Our BTM FP is due and the crowds near BTM are quite thick. The standby queue is 95 mins says my notes. Yikes. Even the FP has a 10 min queue not counting the windy walk. If you want a big ticket ride then you really need to plan your FP accordingly. That being said, I stand by my wholly unscientific reasoning that this park does appear to be smaller in footprint (easier to walk between areas) but has wider paths so can accommodate "flow" easier. There are lots of shortcuts too. We had no issue moving about.



Parade time and a good view can be had as the "standing line" is quite far back. I stood up further back whilst the kids sat down at the front. A great idea that is enforced by the cast members. Tripods/monopods are not allowed either.



The afternoon parade is pretty long and a good show in its own right.




We were hard pushed to think of characters not represented as the floats were very packed.



Even if the characters werent on floats, they were dancing in-between them.



It was about 17:15 so we decided to have a brew at the sweetheart cafe and get ourselves ready for the evening show. A swift detour to teacups and smallworld on the way back.



We did want to go up the castle but the queues were always enormous whenever we checked the app.




Quite a few others were also having a small picnic so we decided to get our onigiri out too! It seemed to be the norm where we looked so we didnt feel out of place, plus the dedicated picnic area was closed for refurbishment.



Onwards for the show. There were two queuing areas for the lottery ticket winners. Your ticket has a rough allocation of where you should go and it seems that the area we got was at the front. The first warning signs were when people started putting their coats on whilst queuing. Coats? Its still 25C plus. Then when you got to the front of the queue you could choose an even closer area to the stage if you wished. Those people had waterproofs on. Hmmm. No, I think we'll go back a little bit to our allocated area. By absolute fluke of chance I happened to have our lightweight pack macs at the bottom of my day rucksack - I mean, we are from the lake district, we ALWAYS have the lightweight rollaway things. These proved a godsend. we also stripped one of the large purchase bags and bagged our rucksacks - very important as the floor turned to a swimming pool... I'll post one of the later photos first:



This is a combination of fireworks, projection onto the castle and giant water cannons. These cannons fired "packets" of water or occasionally just sprayed water onto the crowd at the front. If we had chosen the "very front" then you would have been drowned I think.

The show was awesome. Really really good. It was a mix of "dreams" style castle projection, with fireworks, music, flame throwers and water cannons.



But also a live show on a stage too. The premise is basically Donald plants a magic seed and a jungle appears. Plenty of dancing and singing. Mostly in Japanese but that doesn't matter much.



The flamethrowers were a good touch and you could really feel the heat.



Very good getting tickets for the front but that being said, you would get a "dreams" experience if you didn't so not a major loss.

After finishing the show we were debating heading out and getting food - which we should have done really - but instead we decided to go for one last ride (as the FP was better than standby) for space mountain. This was our first let down, we should have left on the high really as space mountain wasnt very good. After being spoilt by DLP, the DLJ space mountain is entirely dark and isnt really anything to shout home about. The queue has some good theming and the space departure hall looks good. My terrible phone has difficulties at the best of times in the dark but I couldnt take anything reasonable here. Oh well.

So we headed out of the park and walked back along the walkway (rather than take the monorail) through the large disney shop (similar to world of disney) and had an evening meal at the Hawaiian burger joint in Ikspiari. Restocked our breakfast and lunches then headed back to our hotel. An early start tomorrow as its a mad dash to DisneySea Toy Story FastPass!

Notes:

The app is again useful in getting FP return times. We timed getting a BTM to coincide with seeing the parade, many queues avoided too.

25367 steps according to fitbit - we stayed in the park all day and didnt return back to the hotel for a nap. Thats close to 40km walked in 3 days. Pick comfy shoes people! We use Merrell sandals as those are really comfy. The kids have a mix of Merrell trainer style shoes and some sandals. This might seem like an advert but we've found them to be decent on the breathable front so you dont get sweaty sore feet. They also survive the heat and hot floor too (and the sea on other holidays).

The shops remained a little disappointing as there is very little "exclusive" merchandise. We wanted a disneyland Japan TShirt but there were very few options. even the merchandise isnt stamped DLJ for example (nearly all our DLP merchandise has DLP on them - especially the larger plushies we have - not so here). Still, there were some good mugs.

The parades are good quality and the seated crowds really do help enormously. The Oh Summer Banzai show was awesome.

Edited at 11:14 AM.
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Old 11 Aug 19, 09:42 AM  
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mickeymouseears
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Did you get to visit the big Disney store in Tokyo by the big pedestrian crossing?
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Old 12 Aug 19, 08:27 PM  
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kk20
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No we didnt. Tokyo was pokemon, with some pokemon and a little more pokemon...

I did pop into a little disney store in harajuku of all places. That had some different things.
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Old 16 Aug 19, 07:37 AM  
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AntonyJ
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Amazing report - but sorry to be "that" person but it was not Woody Woodpecker - they are the characters from the animated short The Three Caballeros - the film stars Donald Duck, who in the course of the film is joined by old friend José Carioca, the cigar-smoking parrot from Saludos Amigos, who represents Brazil, and later becomes friends with a pistol-packing rooster named Panchito Pistoles, who represents Mexico.

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Old 18 Aug 19, 08:41 PM  
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Well there you go. You learn something new every day. Certainly a character ive never seen!
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Old 19 Aug 19, 07:34 PM  
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Old 5 Jan 20, 09:49 PM  
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Sounds like you had another busy but fab day! I’m really surprised the merchandise wasn’t up to much as I’d always thought the Tokyo park went mad for it

Also realising my comment from your earlier day was very much covered by today! X
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