BaroqueW

In our quest to see as much as possible while in Japan, we included Tokyo Disney Sea in our itinerary. It’s a 176 acre (714,000 m²) theme park that sits outside of Tokyo, in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan. It (and it’s sister park, Tokyo Disneyland) aren’t actually owned by Disney, but are instead licensed by The Oriental Land Company.

We had our tickets before arriving, but that didn’t help in the slightest since we still had to wait in the ticketing line to exchange our tickets for “real” tickets. Luckily we had two things on our side – we arrived at the park well over an hour before it opened – it was open from 8A.M. to 10P.M. – and there was a typhoon running past Tokyo thus making the weather absolutely awful and slightly cutting down on the number of visitors. For those of you who are aware of our sleeping schedule, yes we did indeed need to wake up at 6A.M. to make that happen. The horror of needing to be awake that early was offset by the fact there’s a special monorail to take visitors to DisneySea. Unfortunately you have to pay for it, which seems like a bit of a rip-off to me… but it was very cute. It had Mickey shaped windows, and the handholds were also little tiny Mickey cut-outs. It was adorable!

As I just mentioned, the weather was.. not so nice. Our first purchases were DisneySea ponchos, but we managed to become soaked through-and-through anyway. I can’t complain too much though because we managed to ride every single ride in the park due to the weather decreasing congestion. We also made use of the odd “fast-pass” ticketing option. You can basically “fast-pass” one ride per hour, which lets you join a faster waiting line. While waiting for the hour to be up and allow you to fast-pass another ride, you can join a “normal” waiting line for another ride. Luckily no one left us in charge of such things and our group leader took charge.

I’ve done other Disney parks, but I’ve got to say that this one was really fantastic. When we first came streaming into the park, all the workers were greeting the guests. All day long there were workers cleaning the park, helping people find what they needed, helping with directions and generally making the park as nice as possible. The rides themselves were absolutely amazing. The level of skill shown in the animatronics was astounding. The singing animatronic puppets in Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage were incredibly detailed, but the details of the park weren’t limited to just the inside of the rides. The entire park, from the walkways, to the waiting lines, to the rides themselves – and even the people operating the rides – were part of the “show”. The streets are lined with realistic buildings and shops. Lost River Delta had a real pyramid, the Mysterious Island sported a smoking lava filled mountain called Mount Prometheus which also fittingly contained the Jules Verne based rides “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. Unlike the Disneyworld I’d visited in Florida, nothing felt “plastic” and fake.. instead it felt fantastic in the true sense of the world – full of fantasy.

It’s also terrific in the original sense of the word – full of terror. The Tower of Terror was elaborate to the point of obsession, and whatever illusion they used in The Tower of Terror for the phantom Shiriki Utundu (and I hope it was an illusion) it was the best I’ve ever seen. Baroquew also experienced his first 360-loop roller coaster with Raging Spirits.

The only downside to the park is the obvious fact that everything is in Japanese. But if you look at it with a positive point of view, you have the unique chance to have Indiana Jones speak to you in Japanese! Although we had no idea what he was saying… But hey, it’s all part of the fun of visiting a foreign country.