Tokyo Disney - Part 2

The majority of my next two days in Tokyo were spent in the Tokyo Disneyland park, although I did have a little time to check out the Ikspiari shopping and dining area which was great!

Tokyo Disneyland is very similar to the main park at any Disney resort, with the castle as the centrepiece. Although of course being Tokyo Disney there were many unique attractions in the park.

 Entrance to the park - World Bazaar - Similar to Main Street USA but undercover

The park has a similar layout to that of Disneyland or Magic Kingdom. Adventureland has the Jungle Cruise (which was pretty funny to see in Japanese although I literally had no clue what was going on - the skipper certainly seemed energetic and into his role though!). Pirates of the Caribbean was one of my favourites as usual and the Western River Railroad made for a nice ride around half of the park. I also enjoyed climbing the Swiss Family Treehouse and the views of the park from the top.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Western River Railroad

Swiss Family Treehouse

The next land round is Frontierland. I took in the Country Bear Jamboree - most of it was in Japanese which was pretty entertaining! I also took a ride on the Mark Twain Riverboat, which gave you great views of the area. I loved taking the Tom Sawyer Island Rafts over to the island - it is a great place to walk around and explore!

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Mark Twain Riverboat

Tom Sawyer Island

The next land was Critter Country, home of Splash Mountain! This was another ride that had a single rider queue, which meant I skipped the couple of hours long queue and was on in about 15 minutes.

We then come round to Fantasyland, which is very similar to it's US counterparts. They had Philharmagic, a 4D show here which I absolutely loved, although even the songs were in Japanese! Of course a ride on It's A Small World had to be done a few times! They also still have the Toontown Area in this park, which made for a nice place to explore when it was busy one evening. Sadly I never got to see a parade or fireworks in this park due to the weather. The parade was shown on my first day there but it was finishing that day - people were queued from 9am in the morning for the 3pm parade - crazy!

The final land in this park was Tomorrowland, which is one of my favourites. It had a very unique attraction in the Monsters, Inc. Hide & Go Seek - you used flashlights to see the various monsters from the film. I absolutely loved this ride and wish they had it elsewhere!

I took in most of the attractions in this area over the 2 days, and enjoyed the One Man's Dream II: The Magic Lives On show - one of the boys who lived with my in the first year of Uni was in the show, so it was great to see!

I had an amazing few days here and loved Tokyo as well (I was able to see a bit more one evening on the way back).

This links well to my next adventure at Walt Disney World. I am starting a new blog to document the year and the program - find it at http://disneywonderlist.com/

Caroline :)

Tokyo Disney - Part 1

One of the main reasons I have always wanted to visit Tokyo was to see Tokyo Disney - my dream is to visit all of the Disney parks in the world, and now I just have Hong Kong Disneyland left! Tokyo Disney is very different to the other parks I have visited - there are two parks Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. Tokyo DisneySea is very unique in comparison to all the other worldwide parks, and was the one I was most excited for and spent my first day at. I purchased a 3-day pass - you had to select which park you wanted to visit for the first two days, then it was up to you how you used the 3rd day.

When you first arrive at Tokyo Disney by JR Train to the Maihama Station you then have to get a monorail to Tokyo DisneySea, or walk to Tokyo Disneyland (can also be accessed by monorail). I hadn't purchased my tickets in advance so had to queue for about 30 minutes to get my tickets, then about the same again to get into the park. The one thing I had not expected about Tokyo Disney was the ridiculous queues! Most rides were quoted as having 2-3 hour queues, although the times were never as long as they stated.

Entrance to Tokyo DisneySea

The main area of the park is the Mediterranean Harbor, which has most of the restaurants and shops, and is the area that is used for the afternoon parade and Fantasmic in the evening.

After grabbing a FastPass for 20,000 Leagues under the Sea for later, I headed to the Arabian Coast area of the park, themed on the film Aladdin. There was an amazing double decker Carousel, the Caravan Carousel here - I got to ride on the Genie which was fun!

I next took in Sinbad's Storybook Voyage, a boat ride similar to that of It's A Small World - it had a nice song to the ride, although with the Japanese speaking I wasn't always too sure what was going on with some of the attractions in the park!

After a quick breakfast pastry I headed to Mermaid Lagoon, which features attractions with the characters from The Little Mermaid. I was very impressed with this area of the park - most of it is inside and it feels like a huge underwater interactive play area. I watched The Little Mermaid show (I was given a translation shell as the speaking is all in Japanese, although the songs were in English). There are very few English speaking visitors to the parks, but you are able to find cast members who speak English and get an English map from Guest Relations.

It was soon time to ride 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - definitely one of the best rides in this park and so unique - you feel like you are being submerged under water in your vehicle!

I then took a walk around to the Lost River Delta, in hope of riding Indiana Jones: Temple of the Crystal Skull. I've been on this before in Disneyland, and with the queue time I thought I would just skip it here - however I looked at my map and realised there was a single rider line! After finding an English speaking cast member I was on the ride within about 5 minutes, as opposed to waiting 2 hours! Great result and a brilliant ride!

It was soon time for The Legend of Mythica, the afternoon parade show on the Mediterranean Lagoon. This was a great show, and very different to a typical parade.

The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the Port Discovery and American Waterfront areas of the park, and fortunately I was able to get a Ballot ticket to see the Big Band Beat show - this is a very popular Jazz music show featuring the Disney characters. It was also interesting to see the few American and English (and I think Australian) performers here. The DisneySea Electric Railway was a nice way to go in between the two areas of this park.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't great whilst I was in Tokyo, which meant the fireworks were cancelled every night I was there, but I did get to see Fantasmic at the end of the day on the Mediterranean Harbor. This is one of my favourite Disney night time shows, and it was amazing here and a great end to my day!

Tokyo, Japan

I flew into Tokyo Narita airport from Cairns, and after collecting my luggage made the journey by train to the hostel I had booked called Ace Inn Shinjuku, which was only a couple of stops from Shinjuku which is a very busy shopping area with many department stores! The hostel was excellent and had the sort of pod set up, with your own curtain and compartment to sleep in.

The next day I spent the whole day doing some serious Tokyo sightseeing! Unfortunately it rained a lot of the day, and the colder weather proved a bit of a shock to my system after the last 2 months!

My first stop was the Imperial Palace.

My next stop was Shibuya, which is a big shopping district. I managed a great chain to eat in, which did delicious Chicken Katsu curries. I found it pretty hard to understand the menus in most places here so eating was a bit more challenging!

My final stop for the afternoon was Harajuku, where I took a visit to the beautiful Meiji shrine.

There was nice some shopping in this area too and some lovely jewellery shops. I had a great busy first day in Tokyo - stay tuned for my next few days fulfilling my dream of visiting Tokyo Disney.

Surfers Paradise, Australia

After flying into the Gold Coast Airport I caught a short coach to Surfers Paradise where I stayed for 3 nights. Surfers Paradise is very touristic, and the main attractions here are the beach and the local theme parks. I was keen to check out a couple of the theme parks here - the first day I went to SeaWorld with a couple of people I met at the hostel, and the next day I went to Dream World.

SeaWorld made for a great day out. I love parks like this which combine shows, animals and a few attractions. Although the shows were not on the scale of the park in Orlando (this SeaWorld isn't related to the US parks), the dolphin show was excellent and there was also a brilliant jet ski show with some very talented jet skiers!

Jet Ski Show (this hovering craft was incredible!)

Sea Lion Show

Dolphin Show

The next day I spent at Dream World - I spent the morning in Dream World and the afternoon in the attached water park, White Water World. I enjoyed the theme park here, but not as much as SeaWorld. They have some nice themed areas with characters such as from Shrek, and also Australian animals in one area and tigers. The water park was good fun though and nice to sit out and enjoy the sunny day.