Got to ride the monorail today!
Unlike at our American parks, the monorail here is not free. You have to use your subway card. This would have been nice to know before I left the room, but it meant I had to buy a day pass with Duffy on it.
Tokyo DisneySea had been hyped to me a bunch, and it has no equivalent in Florida or California, so I didn’t know what to expect. The centerpiece of the park is a big ol’ volcano, which is pretty impressive.
My immediate thought upon entering was, “It’s giving Epcot”…
Which turned out to be spot-on, because they even have a food and wine festival going on right now.
Unfortunately, there were no little stalls all over the place; each restaurant had a special tasting menu for the event that you could choose items from.
I went clockwise from the entrance and wound up in a pretty faithful representation of early 20th Century New York, like I stepped into Newsies or something.
…Except for this, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
The building on the left of this photo is Tokyo’s version of Tower of Terror.
When I say Epcot vibes, I mean it. They were even playing Future World entrance music in this section of the park.
The first ride I rode was Journey to the Center of the Earth, and that led me unexpectedly straight into the caldera of the volcano, where I stumbled into a perfect representation of my wildest steampunk dreams. It was surreal being totally surrounded by this theming.
If the ride had a plot, it was in Japanese and I didn’t understand it. The ride vehicles took you through a series of really beautiful little scenes–glowing crystals, cute cave critters–until you stumble across a monster and jet out of there for about thirty seconds of roller coastering.
Almost everything at DisneySea had a huge wait, and fastpasses were going fast. After Journey to the Center of the Earth, it was a couple hours until my next one and Indiana Jones had run out of fastpasses for the day, so I headed over there and braced myself for ninety minutes of waiting. As I was walking up, thought, a cast member spotted me and said those two magic words: ‘single rider’.
I got to go through the fastpass lane anyway, and even bypass some of those folks!
It’s essentially the same ride as California’s, but it’s a fun one.
I swear this park was built for social media. Wandering through it, there seemed to be vast swaths of beautiful scenery that took up a ton of space and housed…not much of anything? Maybe a couple kiddie rides and a shop? But they were very instagrammable.
Next I headed back to the caldera for the other Jules Verne-inspired ride, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I remember riding Walt Disney World’s version as a kid, where the animatronics and stuff were actually submerged. Spoiler alert, this one is just cleverly set up to look like everything out the window is underwater. And you don’t board the Nautilus itself (it’s just there for show) but a little diving pod.
Once again, if there was a plot, it was in Japanese, but similar to Journey to the Center of the Earth, you pass a lot of beautiful scenery
and then KRAKEN!
The only difference was, this time after the big scary monster there were some underwater sentient beings saying hello to us.
Next I headed to the Fantasy Springs section of the park, which has an entryway so grand I actually stood there slack-jawed in real life, taking it in.
I have mentioned how beautiful this park is, right?
My first stop was the Rapunzel ride, which was incredibly beautiful with state of the art technology but also…kinda short. If I’d waited in line two hours for it, that would have annoyed me.
Doesn’t mean I didn’t gasp when I got to this scene.
Next, over to Neverland for the Peter Pan ride.
This was such a cute ride. It was similar to Spiderman at Universal Studios, where you wear 3D glasses and as the car moves through the ride there’s a series of screens set within actual physical set pieces that put the action around you as you move through it. I gathered the plot was that John had been kidnapped by pirates and Peter, Wendy, and the Lost Boys had to rescue him.
This was the ride that made me smile the biggest today. I would love for something like this to come to Florida.
I had a while before my final fastpass at Soarin’, so I sucked it up and waited 2+ hours for the Frozen ride.
You guys: their Frozen ride absolutely kicks Epcot’s Frozen ride’s butt.
By the time I exited Frozen, it was dark, and I don’t know how this is possible but the park was even prettier?
Soarin’ was the same ride as in Florida, but I really like theming here–it has a sort of Steampunk/Jules Verne era World’s Fair feel to it. It’s a museum of flight, if flight were also magic.
As I took the monorail back to the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel, I exited just in time to watch the fireworks from the platform.
And that was it: my last full day in Tokyo. Tomorrow I have a few hours to kill before I have to head to the airport, so I have a reservation at an extremely fancy tea shop to do a flight of teas from all over Japan (paired with sweets). I may not make a blog post just for that.
Japan has been a whirlwind, but at the same time the convention feels like it was years ago. I’m leaving happy–and really proud of myself. I had to step out of my comfort zone a whole bunch on this trip, and I feel like I rose to the occasion every time. At the same time, I can tell it’s time to go. Being at a Disney park made me feel kinda homesick. I want to see familiar faces. And I really want a pizza.
Laura Writes 