The Happiest Place on Earth, Again, at Tokyo Disneyland
Today is part 2 of our Disney Resort adventure. They say Tokyo Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, pretty sure it encompasses DisneySea as well. Queuing up for more than an hour for anything else doesn’t make us happy at all, but over here, we’d gladly wait in the cold at 7.30AM. Park opens at 8.30AM by the way, no complaints whatsoever.
The crowd became insanely huge, I think they opened the park earlier at 8.15AM to do the bag checks. As usual, first thing we did was to rush for our FastPass! Clocked in our first FastPass at 8:39AM – Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek! We made it in less than 10 minutes, and were pretty proud of ourselves. We read online that this is one of the must-do rides in Disneyland, akin to DisneySea’s Toy Story Mania.
Haunted Mansion
We felt like experienced Disney runners now, after collecting the FastPass, we basically roamed the area to look for our first queue. Found that the Haunted Mansion had a growing queue, to play it safe we went in. Seems that the rides here were more kids oriented as compared to DisneySea.
Have to admit that the ride, though kiddy and all, was one of the most beautiful rides in all of Disney. I think it still had the Halloween themed decorations, topped with the original Haunted Mansion look. It was a really enjoyable ride in the dark, although again we don’t understand a thing.
Beaver Brothers Explorer Canoes.
We were so busy snapping photos throughout. In my opinion, Disneyland is prettier than DisneySea. It is so much more colorful, not to mention, the staff were so “into the theme”; enthusiastic and loving their jobs. We were wondering what this Beaver Brothers Explorer Canoes was, thus we queued for it. It was an interactive ride, so interactive we had to paddle the boat with the captain. Initially we thought it was fun, until we realized that we had to paddle the entire lake. What a great morning exercise.
The crowd starting to exponentially increase right now. From the looks of it, I think there was at least 30% more visitors here than at DisneySea. Not to mention that there were so many parents pushing their baby strollers. We were contemplating if we should clock our next FastPass for Pooh’s Hunny Hunt or not. The time-slot allocation indicator was ticking really fast. Since we were nearby, we waited for our window to clock it. And wow, we were indeed lucky to have got it at 8:30PM, the last slot for the day.
Lottery at Tomorrowland
And so, one of the most anticipated activity was to try our luck at the show lottery. Everyone is entitled to one shot at the lottery for the day, and the lottery machines were situated at Tomorrowland Hall. Please la, 保庇 保庇 get please! AND! We didn’t get, sadded.
Pro-tip: Pay a visit to Guanyinma and wear some red undies to Disneyland, it’s gonna be one hell of a lottery when there are at least 30,000 visitors!
While we were at the area, we headed to Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. Nothing much to shout about, it was a Star Wars themed 3D simulator. Gave me a bit of headache from all the flying and dodging X-wings.
Mickey’s Toontown, Tokyo Disneyland
We wanted to clock the FastPass for one of the new attractions – It’s a Small World this morning. However, we were told that the attraction is closed for the day. Now that we walked past, it was re-opened apparently, so we hit the tickets. Right next to this area, was Mickey’s Toontown. This section of Tokyo Disneyland is basically the home to all your baby-ish characters, Goofy, Pooh, Mickey and gang. Here you basically get to meet a life-size mascot of these characters, at attractions called “Meet-and-greet”. Guess what, the queues for these go up to 90 mins. What…?
Toontown is one of the more scenic areas of Disneyland. Because of the vibrant colored setting, the photos look darn pretty. Even the photo shots of our food look amazing! It is also noteworthy to point out that despite the crowd, mostly being Japanese, taking a photo is never difficult. People give way to one another, and help each other take photos. This is just Japan, being Japan.
Tokyo Disneyland’s Most Famous Ride. Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek!
The best ride in Tokyo Disneyland is this – Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek! It is something similar to Toy Story Mania in DisneySea, just that instead of shooting, you point your torch at given spots throughout the ride. So you basically help Boo uncover Sulley and friends. We totally loved this ride, everything in here was just so cute.
After the ride, we went over to the Swiss Family Treehouse. Not so much of a ride, it was a huge treehouse, you walk up, take some photos and you get down. We were starting to drain out, partly due to the insane number of visitors. Even had to think twice about buying random snacks because all the food kiosks had long queues.
Pirates of the Caribbean
We found another ride that seemingly had not much queue. The rest of the area sounded boring so we went in here. However, we didn’t expect that within the “house”, it had a snakey long queue. Took us around half an hour to wait for our turn, but it was worth it. The ride was a dark, underground river boat ride. The river goes past a restaurant, very “Pirates of the Caribbean” themed too it seems. In order to set the mood of thieving pirates sneaking past, we had to lower our volumes (as instructed prior to boarding the boat). It was a very immersive experience, a slow, cooling ride to escape the heat for now.
Tokyo Disneyland’s Parade – Dreaming Up!
Like the afternoon parade at Disney, there was a park-wide announcement for this. Everyone started to scuttle around the perimeters of the performance route. Again, we had our groundsheet ready, and we too hurried to find ourselves a spot for the show. Luckily, we had a relatively shady place to sit, else we’d be sun-burnt in this heat! Pro-tip: Bring your groundsheet, and a cap or some shades if you’re gonna camp out for this show.
Fabulous is the word. There is nothing more amazing to watch these moving vehicles full of character and energy. I think there were at least 30 of these vehicles. Each of them were uniquely decorated, and had respective mascots dancing on top. Really a one-of-a-kind experience.
It’s a Small, Small World
And right after the parade show, we went to our next ride – It’s a Small World! It was yet another boat ride through the magical small small world. It was as though the entire Disneyland shrunk into half, and all the characters sound like chipmunks. Throughout the ride, the small small world song was playing (in the chipmunk voice). After the ride, the song was stuck in our heads.
We couldn’t utilize the FastPasses anymore for the day. The FastPass for Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters were fully redeemed. Not to mention, they were all queuing for more than 60 mins. Not worth to wait for anything more than 30 mins in my opinion.
Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade Dreamlights and Brand New Dream
We’re more or less complete, only needed to clear the Pooh’s Hunny Hunt later on. Got ourselves some snacks, before we knew it, the sky turned dark pretty quickly, at around 5.30PM. The show starts at 6, but we queued early. This time round, at the castle podium area, you can’t sit down. If only we’d won the lottery tickets, we’ll be sitting in front at the VIP section! Roar.
The show was the animation projection on the majestic Disney castle in the backdrop. Again it was a perfect combination of pyrotechnics, light shows and music. It was a visual treat, with all of Disney’s characters combined into a story (we couldn’t comprehend), projected on the castle with an enormous amount of energy.
Right after that projection show, the next one would be park-wide again. Back at DisneySea, the finale show was on water, basically at the huge lake. Here, the route was the same as Dreaming Up! from the afternoon. We placed our groundsheets and sat in the freezing wind for the show to start. With an ice-cream in hand. How weird. This time round it was like a Chingay Parade. Beautifully curated, each car was so mesmerizing! We cannot decide which show was better.
Sadly there were no fireworks at the end of the day. Due to the bad weather it was canceled. Thankfully and we managed to catch the one at DisneySea last night!
Pooh’s Hunny Hunt
Down to our last ride of the day – Pooh’s Hunny Hunt! We were very excited about this because it’s a new ride. Judging from the timestamp allocated, it obviously was the most popular ride in Disneyland. Now that the hype is real, the expectation is also this high. Basically you sit on a honey-pot as it brings you through Pooh’s world, meeting Eeyor, Piglet, Tigger and gang. Overall it wasn’t fantastic enough to justify for the wait. We don’t recommend queuing for this if you don’t have a FastPass slot, it’s really not worth it. Go for the Mountain rides if possible.
Part of the disappointment was caused by the two teenagers who shared our honey-pot. They were quite noisy, acting like fools and shouting to the other honey-pot where their fool friends were. Pro-tip (if those idiots ever chance upon our site): Do not act like retards in Disneyland, be considerate for other park goers.
Goodbye Tokyo Disneyland, Goodbye DisneySea!
During the course of 2 days we also collected numerous coin medallions from both DisneySea and Disneyland. In most parts of the park, there would be these machines. We even made it a point to drop off at all the monorail stations to check out the machines. Costs a 100 yen a pop, we got 24 of these coins and we even bought a holder for them! That’s about 50 SGD going into our cupboard until the next time we feel like reminiscing about Disneyland.
Anyway, these were really memorable and fun-filled days. Were we tired? Pretty damn tired! And did we enjoy ourselves? Hell yeah! Goodbye Disneyland and DisneySea. We’ll be back again someday.
