Well, it really is one of those days today. No time like the present to write in my blog and it's that time again - Catch-up time. So let's get into the Delorian to travel back just over a month ago.
Christmas Eve - Tokyo Disneyland
Hiromi's christmas present to me turned out to be two tickets to Tokyo Disneyland. I was overjoyed when I found out. I've seen my share of Australian theme parks :- Warner Bros. MovieWorld when I was in junior high school, LunaPark when I went to Melbourne to see Audioslave, and of course, there's the Royal Adelaide Show and Magic Mountain, but all of them pale in comparison to DisneyLand!!
I did a bit of research in the anticipation of visiting the Magic Kingdom and I thought I'd share a couple of fun facts:
- TDL, although designed by Disney's Imagineering; is actually licensed and owned by a bunch of folks called The Orient Land Company.
- FrontierLand is known as WesternLand in TDL, since apparently Japanese people would not only misunderstand the word "frontier", but the concept also.
- Tokyo DisneySea (seperate from TDL) is the most expensive theme park ever built, having costed over US$4 billion to make!
I think we must have caught about four trains to get there (since the park is in Chiba - hang on! Shouldn't it be Chiba DisneyLand? I guess it has less of a ring to it...) As soon as we got off at the station, I knew we had arrived as soon as I heard the station's custom tune - 'Zipadidooda'.
On walking to the entrance, I realised that almost every inch of this park was rigged with a speaker so they could drown you out with their hypnotically cheerful music of choice. The entrance itself should really have better security. Hiromi commented on the fact that they didn't really check anything. I could have been carrying a bomb in my jacket and noone would have noticed until a blew a bunch of kids to smithereens! Sounds farfetched for Japan, I know, but I can see this country getting a big shock one day....
We walked through the World Bazaar (known as Main Street USA in the US DL) and bought lunch. We were both reluctant at giving in to their high, high prices but relented when we realised we really had no choice. I was amazed (but not surprised) at the overkill in service when as soon as we lined up for food we gave our order at the end of the line and were immediately given our food once we reached the counter. When we sat down, I spotted a variation of an American flag. I chuckled because I imagined it was a nod to the park's predecessor without actually claiming an embassy-like status through an authentic US flag.
The entire day, I was searching around for a big Disney character to get a snap with, but the only one I saw was Max, Goofy's son from the cartoon 'Goof Troop'. I later realised this was because almost all of the characters had been relegated to the semi-regular Christmas parades. Speaking of which, after we began walking around, we spotted a woman and her children sitting at the side of the road. Hiromi guessed they were waiting for the parade and asked them when it was starting. To our shock, the mother informed us that she and her kids would be waiting there for more 3 hours in order to have front seats for the parade!! Some people have got their front row tickets to Star Wars or Led Zepellin, some have their first day copy of Harry Potter or Dragon Quest and I guess these people have their close-up Disney Main Street Electrical Parade parade.
We started in AdventureLand and our first attraction was the Swiss Family Treehouse. I chuckled when I peered over the 'Jungle Lookout' to see various buildings outside the park's perimeter. Afterwards, we joined our first long queue of the day waiting to ride the Jungle Cruise. I was really glad after this that we brought our DS's and I brought a book. So, I actually spent half the day reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (which is why I thought it deserved to be featured in a couple of our photos).
The Jungle Cruise was really fun. The host of the ride was really over-the-top happy and fun. I wonderered for a second, how he could keep up such a demeanor all day, then realised the jobs I've had in this country and had my answer; with great difficulty...
It was after this that I suddenly had great sympathy for the female gender as I walked happily into the men's toilet and afterwards watched as the queue for the women's toilet slowly ambled along.
Next stop was Westernland. We lined up for Big Thunder Mountain, which like all rolleroasters before it, scared the bejesus out of me. Despite this, I always enjoy the adrenaline rush I get from them.
It was at this time, that we became really hungry. We headed over to TomorrowLand, where we 'dined' at Pan-Galactic Pizza. I was highly amused by this diner with it's theme of delivering pizzas all over the galaxy. Though, as usual, it was a fair rip-off with over-priced 'slices'. Our next destination was probably my second favourite, Star Tours - a mini-tour/movie through the Star Wars universe (Ashley would've been so jealous!). Hiromi wanted to ride Space Mountain, but decided not to because it was over a 2-hour wait. At this point, she said "next time", a remark I was delighted to hear since I would really like to visit the park during a non-busy period.
Toon Town was less crowded than I expected it to be. It was fun to see all the cartoon houses. We rode on Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin, which produced dizzying results.
I wasn't keen to wait in line to meet Mickey Mouse, so it was off to the Main Street Electrical Parade. This was definitely a sight to see with the thousands of lights attached to each float. They must have had a float for every Disney franchise, it was amazing.
Hiromi commented that; whilst we were watching the parade, the neighbouring rides had extremely short waiting times that slowly got longer and longer towards the end of the parade (I attribute this to us being at the end of Main Street).
Since we were already there, we had a look around FantasyLand. I was hoping for an Alice in Wonderland themed ride complete with croquet game and all, but discovered only Alice's Tea Party - a spinning tea cup ride. We did, however, get our picture taken outside the Queen of Hearts restaurant. I then spotted the "It's a small world" boat ride and immediately jumped in line - I spent the whole ride singing "Duff Beer for me, Duff Beer for you!". Following this, we rode Snow White's Scary Adventure which was great. The trees were really cool. Hiromi had her eyes closed for the majority of the ghost train-like ride.
Our final ride of choice was the Pirates of the Carribean boat ride, which was by far my favourite. It looked really realistic! And, thanks to us riding it late at night, the line was really fast!
Our final destination was the World Bazaar where we got photos taken in front of Cinderella's castle (this one unsuccessful due to poor lighting) and the giant Christmas Tree.
This ended our day at TDL and I hope to visit there again.