First Time to Disneyland

Louise here,

On Monday I went with the Arakawa family (Arakawa sensei, his wife Keiko and his two sons, Yusuke and Masatoshi) to Tokyo Disneyland for the first time, hooray! Erica was spending time with her parents who had come over to Japan for a short visit. It was a cold and cloudy day, but that didn't stop what seemed like half of Tokyo also going to Disneyland.

We went on the big rides: Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain and Space Mountain. I think the best one was Space Mountain, an insane roller coaster ride in the dark. It was scarier not being able to see where we were going.

Before the crowds got bad, Big Thunder Mountain

The main detraction from the experience I found was the crowds. We spent a lot of the day standing in line for rides that'd be only a few minutes long. Also, there were so many things to do that, to do everything with those crowds, we'd have to spend several days there. In other words, I will have to go back again!

In front of Cinderella's castle: l-r Arakawa sensei, Masatoshi, me wearing my newly acquired Monsters Inc. hat

Finally, after indulging my inner child by riding the merry go round, we watched the Electrical Parade Dreamlights. There were many floats with Disney characters outlined in coloured lights, such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse (of course), Cinderella, Sully and Mike from Monsters Inc., Nemo, Peter Pan and Pooh.

Just as we were heading home, walking toward the carpark, the clouds burst and it was like someone had turned on a garden hose above us. We ran for the car but still got very wet. The many people still in the park must've been soaked as well. Good thing it happened on the way home.

Half of Captain Hook's ship

Disney Sea

Carl here...

A few months ago Amy and I went to the fantastic Disney Land and had a great time, so to celebrate Amy's 26th birthday, we decided to see what Disney Sea had to offer.

I must say, that I'm not particularly into the cuddly Disney characters at all. I prefer the cool characters like Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story and the funny Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. Both of these characters are honoured at Disney land (including a brand new Monsters Inc ride!), But Amy really likes Aladdin and for that, we had to go to Disney Sea!

Tickets...!

A view of 'part' of the queue to get in the park.
The picture was taken from the Disney monorail.

It was a Sunday, and it was forecast for great weather so naturally it was very busy. We made sure that we arrived before opening so that we could beat some of the queues though. Once the doors are opened the crowd race to their favourite parts of the park to secure a FASTPASS for their chosen rides. The Fastpass is a great idea for cutting your waiting times, they basically give you a time slot to come back to the ride so that you don't have to stand around all day.





In front of the Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull ride.

Apparently Disney Sea is very popular with 20-30 year olds (like us!), maybe because a lot of the rides have height restrictions that stop smaller kids from enjoying certain rides. Of course, it could be because Disney Sea actually sells beer!.

Though there are still plenty of rides that young and old can enjoy...



...just don't try to tell Amy which ones are which!



The 'Tower of Terror' was definately my favourite ride, but I won't spoil it for you all. :-)


Twilight in Disney


Finale!

Anyway, we had a great time yet again thanks to those great people at Disney. I definately recommend a visit for people of any age. At first glance, the entrance fee can seem expensive, but when you think that we were there for over 12 hours, then it's actually quite good value.

Tokyo Disney

Carl here.

10TH DECEMBER 2008

After working flat out for what feels like the last two months, Amy and I decided to have some well deserved R and R, so we headed off to Tokyo Disney to satisfy our inner child.

We obviously wanted to make the most of the day out, so we set off ridiculously early to get there for opening time at 8:00am. The plan was to have a marathon Disneyland fest and stay there all day.

After buying our tickets we walked in through the main entrance and we’re greeted by the biggest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen! We both gave in to our inner child, smiled and ran up to take a picture in front of it.

We skipped by all the shops and had a bit of a wonder around; we stopped at a food place for a huge hot dog. We looked at our map of the place but in typical fashion we decided to just wander around and wing it. After eating we went for a walk and we ended up in ‘Tomorrowland’ and were faced with a life size Buzz Lightyear, only the coolest cartoon character ever!

Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters
We grabbed a ‘fastpass’ for space mountain and made our next move. I must say that the next thing we did was a very British thing to do, we joined the biggest queue in the place – the funny thing is that we weren’t entirely sure what the ride was that we were lining up for, I just knew the name was ‘Buzz lightyear’s Astro Blasters’ which I must say was enough to convince me. After nearly 3 hours waiting (no really!) we got inside.



The ride was really really cool, you sit in a little car that you can spin as it goes along a track, they also give you laser guns too! You have to shoot all of Zurg’s (The super villain from Toy Story aka Buzz Lightyear’s nemesis and dad!) minions and then you finally take on Zurg himself. Both people in each car have a digital display of their score; I’ve laid the gauntlet down to all future intern’s to beat my score on this ride 90,400 which nearly put me on level 3! Amy managed to get about 20,000 which she put down to me constantly spinning the car.

Anyway, after we finally got on the ride we missed our allocated fastpass slot for Space Mountain but the really nice lady let us in anyway. This ride was really good too, but I’m not going to spoil it for you... I was just pleased that we didn’t have to queue up for another 3 hours.



After ‘Space Mountain’ we watched the Jubilation parade, which celebrates Tokyo Disney Resorts 25th birthday. We spent the rest of the day buying souvenirs, going on nearly every ride in the place and generally having a great time. I almost got a Sheriff badge at the ‘Shootin’ Gallery’ but I wasn’t quite good enough.



We ended up leaving the resort at 22:30 but the adventure didn’t finish there! We ended up missing our stop for the private train direct to Wado station which meant that we had to take the JR (Japan rail) train to Kuki and transfer. Easy enough however we got back to Kuki very late and therefore missed the last train. A short taxi ride later and we could pass out in bed, a very long day but really fun!



Next year we’ll try Disney Sea, which is the second resort at the Tokyo Disney complex. I can’t wait!!!



You'll notice that there aren't any photo's of Amy on this post, she said that all the photo's of her were terrible!