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!