An Asian Disney and Universal Adventure - Trip Report COMPLETED 6/23

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 2 - A Long Long Time ago, in a Galaxy Far Far Away....Monsters Inc!

After Pooh we had planned to ride Space Mountain, but the wait was already 30 minutes when we arrived. Suspecting that this was about as long as waits would get in the park (it was obviously so quite - we were loving it!), and having changed our attitudes from Shanghai where 30 minutes was a reasonable wait to "30 minutes, I'm not waiting that", we instead we decided to come back when we were eligible to get our second Fastpass and grab one for this ride. We instead headed over to Star Tours where we rode with only a 5 minute wait! I was really determined that we would get photos inside the wonderful line this time around (we've never really done it before) and so I made Jared photograph EVERYTHING!







Even the squid heads operating the Space Port!





I believe we were so engrossed with photos we were letting people pass us, with no wait to be seen though we weren't too concern about this. In fact some of the Japanese guests were so polite we had to encourage them to go around us while we stopped for photos, as they seemed hesitant to skip their place in the line (after our experience with queue jumping at Shanghai Disneyland this was a wonderful relief to be amongst guests so polite and courteous!



Ahh the Hitchhiking Driods - I love how Disney hides little inside jokes in their rides that only Disney fans with a decent knowledge of the parks will get!



Baggage check!



Love that the heat senser screen capture Jared capturing this photo



Our trip through the galaxy went well. We escaped Storm Troopers, fought a battle on the ice planet Hoth before finding ourselves in a star battle with the Death Star over Geonosis.

Once we were done with Star Tours we could grab our second Fastpass, so we made our way back to Space Mountain and got our Fastpasses for 11:15am - 12:15pm. We'd been in the park not quite an hour and had two rides done and two Fastpasses in hand, and had met two characters, so we were very pleased with ourselves! It was really a wonderfully quite time at the park and touring it was made so much easier because of this!



Space Mountain Fastpasses in hand we decided to use our previous Fastpass for Monsters Ride and Go Seek. This cute dark ride attraction has an interactive element where you shine flashlights on hats with M symbols to reveal characters and Monsters throughout the ride. Still this is a little bit of a side note as the ride itself is already a great dark ride, with excellent animatronics and some cute special effects.



We pretty much walked straight onto this with our Fastpass, I think the regular the standby wait was about an hour at this point (it's the most popular ride in the park).































Continued in Next Post...

 

[Beccybooboo]

Tokyo DL looks wonderful will have to make sure we visit when we eventually get to Japan.

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Tokyo DL looks wonderful will have to make sure we visit when we eventually get to Japan.

It really is wonderful!! We love Tokyo Disney!

 

[Beccybooboo]

It really is wonderful!! We love Tokyo Disney!

The people and cast members sound amazing and so friendly.

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 3 - A Zip-a-dee-doo-dah day

Hello again everyone, apologise for the lack of posts, I decided to take some time off writing over the Easter break. I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter break as well .

Anyway, when we last left off we had managed to already get 2 Fastpasses and ride 3 rides at Tokyo Disneyland, and it was barely an hour after opening! We were loving how quite the park was! Because we knew our touring plans could be quite relaxed, given the obvious lack of crowds, we decided we could afford to have a snack break! Snack breaks are almost an attraction of their own at Tokyo Disney, as there are so many yummy, but also Kawaii (cute) snacks to choose from, not to mention so many flavours of popcorn. Today we decided to take a break at the sweetheart cafe with a Mickey Mouse chocolate muffin (mainly ate by Jared) and some caramel popcorn for me!



While we were eating the Frozen parade, a small little parade with multiple show stops, trundled past through the hub. We weren't hugely close from our table out the front of the Sweetheart Cafe, but enjoyed the Frozen music drifting our way! I can't really describe how happy I was at that moment, relaxing in one of my favourite Disney parks on such a perfect day (a real zip-a-dee-doo-dah day to put it in Disney terms!).

Jared decided to trundle over to get some shots of Elsa singing Let it Go in Japanese! He also got a quick video too!

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10207889943462070

The 'snow' was a really adorable touch! The parade wasn't really much to look it, but a great diversion when you are already relaxing in the area!



Like I said, it was a PERFECT day at Tokyo Disney!



Perfect but cold, so our next ride choice may surprise you (or maybe not given the title of this chapter). To get to it we had to make our way through Adventureland.



And then on into Critter Country!



So you've probably guessed our next stop was Splash Mountain. Given the weather you may think us crazy (it was probably about 12 C - about 54 F), but we had bought our poncho's so we could avoid getting wet, and Splash Mountain is Jared's FAVOURITE ride of all time, so we had to do it! One of the good things about Japan's Splash is that you don't seem to get as wet on it! Perhaps because of the colder weather in Japan about 50% of the year, or because Japanese guests just don't like getting wet. Either way, Jared felt brave enough (with his poncho to hide the camera under) to get the camera out and take some of the best pictures we've ever got of Splash! We did ride as single riders though. Figuring it was too cold for many people to care about Splash, we thought lines would be short, but when we arrived the wait was at an hour. Not wanting to wait that long we used our secret weapon, the Splash Mountain single rider line! I don't know if the Japanese don't know about this line, or they don't like to be seperated, but there in our experience there has NEVER been any wait for single riders at Splash Mountain. We walked straight on, bypassing a 60 minute wait (we perhaps waited about 5 minutes to be assigned a spot as a single ride but that was nothing). Anyway, onto these amazing pictures.



Taken on the ride! The sun was in the exact right spot that morning for this picture!



































I think Jared's love of this attraction is evident by the number of pictures he took, and the quality of those pictures. He really wanted to get them right!

Continued in Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 4 - The West in the East

When we were done with Splash we had an immediate desire to ride again, especially since we knew this would be our one chance, as the ride was going down for repairs the next day. Still, we had to go get a Fastpass because our Fastpass availability had opened up again, so I suggested Jared go get some Big Thunder Mountain Fastpasses for us, and I'd wait and soak up the wonderful ambience of the area of Critter Country behind Splash Mountain. This is one of those lovely nooks in the park that never seem too busy, and it's a great place to just stop and rest and soak in your surroundings.

Turns out I didn't do a lot of resting and taking in my surrounds while Jared was off getting Fastpasses, because all of sudden Br'aer Bear and Pocahontas were out and about, meeting with guests! I had to take the opportunity to grab a picture with them, especially because of the randomness of their appearance!

Here I am with the dim-witted villian of Splash Mountain



And here's me and Pocahontas!



Pocahontas and I enjoyed a great chat too. There didn't seem to be many people around to meet her, and I'm not sure if she spoke Japanese (she spoke excellent English) so we had a great old chat! We both greeted each other with Wingapo, and the she asked if I'd been up the mountain, to which I replied that I had, and she told me that she hadn't, because Meeko was afraid it was too fast! I told her it wasn't really that bad and Meeko should give it a go!

Jared came back just around the time I was done having a chat with Pocahontas, so the timing worked perfectly. Since I'm more into character meet and greets than he is he didn't really mind that he'd missed out! With our Big Thunder Mountain Fastpasses in hand we hopped back in the single rider line for Splash and rode again! This time I sat with an adorable Japanese family! The mum clearly wanted to communicate with me, but my Japanese is very basic (I was able to say Wakarimasen - I don't understand - and that was about it!). Still, I think what she wanted to communicate was her excitement about the ride, and that was definitely came across while we were riding! After the main drop we spent the Zip-a-dee-doo-dah section of the ride smiling at each other and giving each other the thumbs up! It was so lovely to share the ride experience with someone so genuinely over-joyed about experiencing it!







After these few shots of Splash we headed back on over to Space Mountain to use our second lot of Fastpasses for the day. We enjoyed the Frozen Fantasy decorations on our way back through the hub, knowing we had lots of time (it was so nice finding ourselves in such a relaxed pace!)















As you can see the day continued to be perfect. Space Mountain was great, it was really nice to be able to experience the classic Space Mountain, rather than Hyperspace Mountain. Space Mountain had been down but came back up as soon as we arrived at the ride, so there was literally no one in line yet, which was perfect. We walked on, with no wait, and though we had Fastpass and wouldn't have waited long anyway we took this as a win!

After this Jared went off for our 4th Fastpass of the day (yes it was only about 12:30 and we were already able to get our 4th Fastpass, we were killing it!), and while he went to do that I decided to use the toilet. Normally using the facilities would not be interesting enough to warrant a mention in a trip report, but I discovered an awesome feature in Tokyo Disney's toilets that I just had to rave about! The cubicles all had these little octagon shapes sticking out from the door. The doors opened inwards and when the cubicle was open the shape would stick out, indicating that toilet was free, and when a door was closed it would rest against the door, so you could tell that toilet was occupied. It was a great way to quickly and easily see which toilets were free and available, even from the front of the cubicle area! Anyway, Jared returned with Pooh Fastpasses for 5:20pm - 6:20pm, which worked perfectly with our planned schedule,

We made our way back to the "West" of Tokyo Disney (Westernland and Critter Country) and over to Big Thunder Mountain to use our third Fastpass of the day. We skipped a 40 minute wait here, walking pretty much straight on. The Fastpass line at Big Thunder Mountain merges with the main line really late, so it's an excellent use of Fastpass as you really do skip a huge portion of the line! Jared managed some photos on Big Thunder, and I love the feeling of motion I get when I look at them!













This guy in front of Jared was an excellent head model for all our shots!



Back out into Westernland, we decided to sit and take a break. These little cuties caught our attention!



I enjoyed sitting on a bench (anyone watch How I Met Your Mother and get that reference?) and studying my park map!



And we made our way back to Tomorrowland to try our hand at the lottery for the central viewing area for the Frozen Forever projection show that evening.





Have I mentioned what a perfect day it was (sorry, but it was the nicest day we'd had in a park so far, the sky was a crisp clear blue and there was not a cloud in site!





We didn't win the lottery (It really is quite rare to win it at Tokyo Disney, as in life I'm sure!) but we weren't too concerned, we were sure we'd be able to find a reasonable place to shoot the show from.

Continued in Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 5 - What a sky!

Today was a gluten day!! I know that doesn't found that exciting, but to me it was! The reason why, Tokyo Disney sells the most Kawaii Disney burgers ever! After our extremely successful morning at the park we were stopping for a quick lunch before heading out of the park for a rest until sunset. We were that happy with what we'd managed to achieve! And we were even happier when we headed to the Tomorrowland Terrace and got to eat this delicious morsel!



Is that not the cutest hamburger you've ever seen. It was pretty good to eat as well!

Anyway, we left the park at about 1:30ish, take a few pictures of World Bazaar as we walked the 2 minutes from the front gate to the inside of the Tokyo Disney Hotel (seriously, staying at the Tokyo Disney Hotel or the Miracosta is so convenient!) They only other Disney hotel I can think that's this close to the park is the Grand Californian and Disney's California Adventure!







Anyway, we enjoyed our restful afternoon in our hotel room, and we headed back into the park about 4:45pm. We had thought, because of the cloud cover, the we wouldn't get a spectacular sunset, but wow were we wrong! The sky behind the castle was looking incredible, so we ran around snap happy as you please!































It really fascinates me how much the sky can change in the space of about 25 minutes, and how it looks so different from different angles. All of these photos were taken within about 15 minutes of each other, and you can see the fantastic sunset sky didn't last long!

When we were done snapping photos we headed over to Pooh's Hunny Hunt to use our final Fastpass of the day. The next hour and a half comprised a lot of sitting, as we waited in a prime spot for the Tokyo Disney Electrical Parade - Dreamlights!

Continued in Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 6 - Dreamlights - Part 1

We were extremely excited to see the Tokyo Disney Electrical Parade Dreamlights again! On our first trip to Tokyo Disney we fell in love with this parade, and we'd never really been in love with a parade (having never seen the Main Street Electrical Parade, or any night parade at that time). We also knew Tokyo Disney had plussed the floats and added a new one since we last visited, so we were very excited. Yes, we did find a spot 1.5 hours in advance. The reason for this is we wanted a particular spot on the curve in which we could get the castle behind the floats. We had decided to grab some quick service dinner (nuggets and chips in the end I think) and eat on the sidewalk, taking in the hustle and bustle of the park and enjoying the blue hour ambience while we waited for the parade. You aren't technically allowed to reserve spots for parades more than 1 hour in advance, but the cast members will tell you this simply means you aren't allow to put a mat down on the ground more than an hour in advance, but plenty of people had already started sitting on the concrete along the edge of the hub waiting for the show. I love how everyone at Tokyo sits for parades, allowing those behind them to see everything so well. Most of the curbs around the hub were about two rows thick of people sitting, with one row of people standing behind. Everyone could see this way plus you get to rest your tired tired feet! The parade was of course amazing, so amazing that I have a full three posts worth of photos to share with you! The new version was a lot more sophisticated than the older version, most of the lights had been replaced with LED's, there were a lot more LCD effects and other elements that were a bit more like Paint the Night. It was a complete toss up for me which of these two night parades I prefer. While I love Paint the Night's bold colours, and incredible use of LCD screens, tube lighting and LED effects, I do miss the twinkling of fairy-lights that comprises the Dreamlights parade. With Dreamlights incorporation more LED's and a few more cool effects, it now also makes use of modern lighting technology, while keeping some of that original electrical parade vibe, so it's really hard to call. I think nostalgically I like the Tokyo Disney Electrical Parade more, but either way they both make me so happy! Oh, and Paint the Night wins huge points for it's use of "When will I see you again" by Owl City as it's theme song (not that I don't love the 1970s style electrical boogie played at the Electrical Parade, but it does grate after a while!).

Anyway, the next three posts probably won't have a lot of commentary, you can see for yourselves how incredible this parade is (yes, it was almost photographer moment by moment!).

The blue fairy waves her wand and gets the magic started.





















Up next is the Cheshire cat and Alice! His grin becomes more pronounced as he moves along.











Next we find Snow White in a garden of lovely lights!









Pete and his dragon are next. Before the new movie I always thought this very old character was an odd choice for a float, but it is pretty impressive!







Captain Hook's ship has been hugely improved since we last saw the show, the LCD sails are really fun!









Continued in Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 7 - Dreamlights - Part 2









The Finding Nemo float was probably my least favourite.





These little green alien men skaters were the cutest (I was loving these guys ever since their adorable elevator announcements at Shanghai Disney)



And the logical thing to follow green alien men skaters was of course, the Toy Story Float!





It was super bright, colourful and fun!



Genie was up next. This float is incredible, as Genie changes his outfit every few seconds! The more amazing thing is that he is made up of thousands of tiny LED lights, rather than an LED screen that could, I'm sure, handle this effect much easier.











Logically behind Genie comes the Agrabah float, and it is one of my favourites. I really love the walking performers costumes here too! The use of light throughout makes them breathtaking.







And now for the new Tangled float! This float was stunning, I love the colour changing flowers and lanterns particularly, which is why I have included so many photos of it, so you too can see the changing lanterns and flowers!









Rapunzel's Light up hair was another incredible feature!









Continued in Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 8 - Dreamlights - Part 3

Another Disney Princess followed Rapunzel.



Her dress changes colour constantly, which more than makes up for the creepy Fairy Godmother atop the float with her creepy mask face!









Cindy's Prince trails behind her, looking forlorn and holding our her glass slipper!



The fairies are next



There float is also a favourite of mine, because of the constant colour changes, and how bright and vibrant the whole thing is!







The finale floats, with the masked Disney characters and the fab 5 appear to have changed since we last saw the parade too.

I like the addition of the steamboat float, reminiscent of the finale of Fantasmic. It's also really interesting, the float starts out with mostly clear lights, almost like it is representative of the black and white composition of the original Disney cartoons, but before long the float bursts into colour!













Mickey and Minnie get their own float, a balloon for some reason.



Hi Mickey!





Oddly Mickey and Minnie are not the last float, following them we have the Three Caballero's, and Pluto, Donald and Marie on a musical themed float. Odd choices for the final two floats I feel but there you have it!









This lovely lady signalled that the parade was at an end, and we rushed up and fought our way across into the central hub to try and find a good spot for Frozen Forever. I guess you'll have to wait to find out if we managed to or not!





Continued in Next Post...

 

[Duckie42]

What an amazing trip report. Have read it all since yesterday. Looking forward to more!

 

[disneyAndi14]

I have really enjoyed all your recent updates. Japan looks beautiful and Disneyland has some neat different things than WDW. The Disneyland hotel is beautiful!

 

[RachelleBeaney]

What an amazing trip report. Have read it all since yesterday. Looking forward to more!

Thanks for reading along. I'm so glad you are enjoying the report. More coming soon I promise, time has gotten away from me the last week and I haven't had a chance to update the report for a while!

I have really enjoyed all your recent updates. Japan looks beautiful and Disneyland has some neat different things than WDW. The Disneyland hotel is beautiful!

Japan is stunning, we love visiting her so much! Tokyo Disney is definitely up there as one of the best Disney resorts world wide, and the hotels are stunning (though expensive) - the detail, level of maintenance, staff, everything is just incredible at the resort! And wait until you see the pictures of Tokyo Disney Sea, it is so incredibly beautiful words cannot describe it!

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 9 - Frozen Forever

Quick sidebar, I apologise for the delays in posts this past week - there have been a few personal issues that have come up that have prevented me from being in the right head space to write, however I'm back and ready to roll today .

Anyway, when we last left off we were rushing from our perfect spot for the Tokyo Disney Electrical Parade into the Central Hub to try and find a decent spot from which to view and shoot Frozen Forever. This was not going to be an easy task as people had already filled up a lot of the area and watched the Electrical Parade from this sub-par spot in order to get a good spot for the Frozen Forever show. However, we were lucky to find a spot on the central flower bed (at the back of it) which meant clear views to the castle. However, we were quite a bit further back then I would have liked. Still, beggars can't be choosers and we were lucky to have gotten a spot that good given it was only about 45 minutes before the show. This was our view.



The show is mostly made up of projections of the Frozen movie, along with the songs to match. It is supposed to have fireworks, but they were cancelled the night we watched due to wind (apparently, though it didn't feel windy down on the ground to us). I liked the show, though it was a huge disappointment not to be able to see Tokyo Disneyland's regular projection show, Once Upon A Time, which showcases more than one Disney movie (and also looks incredible!). I guess you could say like most people I'm a little over how Disney has "Frozenified" everything, so I was less excited for this show. Still it was well done, the projections, lasers were all great - though being only themed to one movie it lacked a little diversity for my liking. If you love Frozen though this show would have been for you.

I think the show speaks for itself, here are the pictures we took:







Being as far away as we were, we did sacrifice a bit of quality because the surrounds were so dark! We also couldn't use the zoom lens, as the quality would have been too poor, so we stuck with our better quality Sigma lens. Don't love the grain in some of these pictures but even a Canon 6D can't work wonders when there is no light at all!



The close up shots we got worked a bit better.











































After we were done with the show, we begun to notice how cold it had gotten, but more on that soon...

Continued in the Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Part 10 - Elsa's Frozen Tokyo Disneyland - Part 1

The temperature at the parks during the day seemed to have lulled us into a false sense of how cold it would get at night. We were dressed for cold weather, but not almost freezing weather, which is what we ended up getting. Jared had left his gloves on a train from Kyoto to Osaka, and had none, which was fine during the day, but was a challenge this evening. After sitting outside for close to 2.5 hours with the weather growing colder and colder we had begun to shiver and freeze, and I mean it was the coldest either of us had ever felt. We knew we had to stick it out to take some night shots in the park, but before we did that we had to try and get warm, so we headed into the Tomorrowland Terrace for a hot tea, and we sat for about 15 minutes in the heating with our hot drinks. I'm sad to see while this helped a little it by no means warmed us completely, and so we headed back out into the freezing cold, hoping that our constant movement and picture taking would distract us from the cold. For the most part it did, until about 30 minutes after closing, when Jared's hands almost frozen in place from using the camera without gloves (he was literally not able to take pictures anymore!).

I think you'll agree, when you see these pictures we got, that it was worth the discomfort! Still, it was an unusal sensation for us, wishing it were warmed (we live in a city where winter days never get much colder than about 15C (59F) at worst, and are more likely to stay around 25C (77F), which our summers reach temperatures of around 40-42C for days on end (104-108F), so wishing to be warmer is not something we are used to!

Anyway, we started our night photos in Tomorrowland, as that's where we were. I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but I had made little maps of each of the parks we were visiting, and mapped out locations from which I wanted to get photos, based on research and examples of other photos I'd seen that I liked and wanted to emulate. It made the process very efficient, as when we got to each location is was easy to see the compositions that we wanted.

For Tomorrowland's shots we started on the balcony area near Cosmic Ray's







We were just using our green pod for camera stabilisation, and were finding it was amazing and being able to rest on ledges and even railings, so we could get longer exposures. It did effect our compositions though, as we had to find an angle that worked with a wall or railing as our rest point for the camera.



It did mean we were a little locked into certain angles - for example I would have loved to get this shot straight on, but there was no where to rest the camera when taking that angle, so we settled for this one.



I think this is my favourite of all the Tomorrowland shots we took



This photo we had to do hand held, as there was nowhere to rest the green pod!



So we moved into Fantasyland from Tomorrowland, and got my favourite shot of the entire evening (it was a photo I'd seen and wanted to copy, but am still super proud of the unique composition here).



The whole park becomes so beautiful at night, but you notice it the most in places like Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland, as during the day these are probably two of the weakest areas in the park, but you no longer notice at night, as they come to life with beautiful lighting and a wonderful atmosphere.







We managed to get this next few shots during the second showing of Frozen Forever, the search lights really add to them, don't you think!





A few more hand held shots were required next - it is frustrating when you can't use a tripod to get long exposures on any angle you want.





You can really tell the different between the longer exposures and the handle held night photos. They are just not as crisp or brilliant.

We headed into Critter Country next to take what was my second favourite photo of the evening (a very close second!). Splash Mountain's lighting scheme at night is just incredible! Plus we managed to get an amazing blue sky and stars in this one, because it was such a clear night (probably why it was so cold!).



With the movement of the Mark Twain I'm afraid this one didn't quite work, but I like the concept so it's been included anyway.



This one was a bit better focused



Another shot that isn't focused hugely well, but I liked it so I'm showing you guys anyway!



We didn't spend much time in Westernland, shots were particularly hard to get as there weren't a lot of stable surfaces to take pictures. So we moved onto Adventureland.







Another not quite so focused shot, I think the wind had kicked up here, and the green pod is not the most stable thing to begin with (you have to let the beans settle) so in the wind it can be a little unusable, case and point:



Tokyo Disneyland's Adventureland has a unique section which looks just like New Orleans Square at Disneyland (though without the waters of the Rivers of America in it's eye line, it looses a bit of the charm of the Disneyland version).



You'll notice a lot of these photos are from low angles, and that's because we had resorted to using the ground to stable the green pod! Jared looked very funny lying on the ground to get the shots, and it was making him even colder! Commitment to our art (I didn't actually have to do it so I say our, but I really just mean him!).



We were basically done in the parks lands at this point, and the park was closing, but we still had a few more shots to get in World Bazaar.

Continued in Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 20 - Part 11 - Elsa's Frozen Tokyo Disneyland - Part 2

We just needed to take a few photos of the castle, and World Bazaar, and then we could be done and warm in our beds at the Tokyo Disney hotel. Jared was threatening a mutiny (poor thing, his hands were so cold!) but I asked him if he could just stick it out for a few more shots. He is a good man, and so he obliged me, and then we ended up taking about another hour to get everything I wanted to shoot shot (oops - sorry Jared!). He didn't complain (much) and looking back at the pictures now, he is glad he stuck it out!











This photo is not great - there were still too many people around! Oh well!



Moving up the partners statue Jared could sense the exit was close (we decided not to wait for the hub to clear, as we were too cold to try close down the park like we originally planned).









The other side of World Bazaar had horrible scrims up, so we took a picture of just one side!



This also effected these arch way shots, with one of the archways half blocked by scrims





The Frozen Fantasy decorations were really beautiful!







Crowds had started to thin, but there were still a few people around!



This is one of the side streets within World Bazaar that lead to Adventureland and Tomorrowland (this one goes to Adventureland). As you can see, the buildings in world Bazaar aren't as detailed or beautiful as other Main Streets around the world. It looks a little like a cheap mall version, and so it's definitely not my favourite of all the Main Streets world wide.



See - still plenty of people nearly an hour after park close!





We waited a while to get this shot without too many people!









And with that, we were done, and really ready to curl up in our warm beds and defrost a little! I will tell you, my legs were the coldest they have ever been (and my legs never normally get cold) and it took half the night for them to warm up again! Jared's hands were frozen in weird old man claws for a while too, as he had been holding the camera and his hand took some time to defrost too! All in all though, we had a lot of fun taking pictures of the park that evening, even though we were cold. And we were super pleased about how successful our first day at the Tokyo Disney Resort had been!

Continued in Next Post...

 

[disneyAndi14]

Beautiful night shots, Frozen fever is getting tiresome! I have to giggle a little about the cold, I am sure it was very chilly, however I live in Duluth, Minnesota and it is still frigid here at the end of April. It is only 30F right now ugh! Our winters get down to -20F in January so when it is 30-34F we go outside without jackets lol! We do have beautiful summers and fall,with temps in the 70F range. I can't imagine having 50-60F temps as our coldest days, would be nice!

In your opinion what is the best time crowd wise to visit Tokyo DL?

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Beautiful night shots, Frozen fever is getting tiresome! I have to giggle a little about the cold, I am sure it was very chilly, however I live in Duluth, Minnesota and it is still frigid here at the end of April. It is only 30F right now ugh! Our winters get down to -20F in January so when it is 30-34F we go outside without jackets lol! We do have beautiful summers and fall,with temps in the 70F range. I can't imagine having 50-60F temps as our coldest days, would be nice!

In your opinion what is the best time crowd wise to visit Tokyo DL?

Thanks for the lovely compliment re the photos! I also think your body acclimatises to the climate you are used to, which is probably why we got so cold, not being used to that sort of cold weather! I can't imagine living anywhere as cold as Minnesota! But I guess you learn to get used to what you know!

January is definitely an amazing time to visit Tokyo Disney, as it's so quite! The only other time we've been was November - but it was busier then. You can find a crowd calendar for Tokyo Disney here - it does require google translate but from my experience it's a good representation of what times will be busy and what won't. For more info on how to read it and our Tokyo Disney planning you can have a look at my pre-trip report here. Because Tokyo does get so much colder than other Disney theme park locations winter in definitely the best time to go though I'd say - and if you don't get snow you'll likely have nice sunny days - just cold ones (though perhaps not for you!)

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 21 - Part 1 - We won the lottery!

Our second day at Tokyo Disney we choose to visit Tokyo Disneyland again, it was so much more convenient from the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel. We arrived again at 8:10am for a 9:00am opening and were only a few people back from the front of the gates. We had decided to prioritise a Monsters Inc Fastpass first thing morning, and then ride Space Mountain, and this plan went off without a hitch. Space was a walk on though by the time we were done with it the wait had already hit 25 minutes. We hit Star Tours next, with a 5 minute wait. I was sad we got the Hoth scene again, but we managed to get Coruscant, and the Darth Vadar start, which were different from our first ride. We also got BB8 as our Rebel communicator, he must have been added since the new movies? Has anybody else seen him in the ride?

We had decided to try our hand at the lottery for One Man's Dream after this, and we went to, only to discover that there wasn't one that day! I should explain, a few of the shows at Tokyo Disney, and some of the reserved viewing areas for night performances, require a lottery ticket. You can only try for one lottery ticket per person per show per day, and we had never won one before! If you don't win there are still ways to see the show, though it usually means arriving super early and inferior viewing. We were pretty pleased that there was no lottery for One Man's Dream that day, as it meant we could see the show when we wanted (provided we showed up early enough).Since we were there we thought we'd try our hand at the lottery for Frozen Forever. This was a bit silly as we didn't plan on seeing Frozen Forever that evening, but we thought there was no way we'd win so we would just try anyway, and of course, because we didn't really want it, we won! We actually won a lottery at Tokyo Disney (so it can be done apparently). Anyway, we found a nice couple and gave them the tickets we had one, as we saw they had lost. They looked completely confused as to why we were giving away the lottery tickets, but also very grateful, and it was nice to be able to pass on the joy.

After the lottery we could use our 9:40 - 10:40 Monsters Inc Fastpasses, so we headed that way. You'll notice we weren't bothering with photos at this point, we were too busy getting from point A to point B. When we were done on Monsters Inc we headed over to Big Thunder Mountain to grab another Fastpass and got one for 11:15 - 12:15. We then headed into Fantasyland to have a go on an attraction we hadn't yet experienced, the Haunted Mansion. It has been down for a refurb (I'm guessing to remove the holiday overlay) and today was it's first day of operation since the refurb. Last time we were at Tokyo Disney we skipped the Haunted Mansion, because it had the Nightmare before Christmas overlay that I HATE (it makes me nauseous!) but this time it was the regular ride. We enjoyed humming Grim Grinning Ghosts to ourselves as we lined up, there was a bit of a wait, probably because the ride had just reopened after a closure.

The ride is pretty much the same as the Magic Kingdom version, though somehow Tokyo's version seems more crisp, and a little better? Maybe I'm bias, but I also know Tokyo Disney's maintenance of their attractions is stunning, so I would imagine that the Haunted Mansion is no different.











The Haunted Mansion remains one of the only dark rides we are still not able to photograph perfectly! It's so dark, and though we have a great camera and know how to use it, I don't think we have the right lens for the attraction that would allow us to capture the images in such a dark environment. We weren't happy with our results the first time around, so we decided to ride Peter Pan, which we wanted to ride anyway, and then go back and try again.

Peter Pan is another of those dark rides that is really hard to capture on the camera, and once again, we didn't really nail it! The wait was also about 25 minutes, which I think was the longest we waited for anything the entire time at Tokyo Disney (I really shouldn't complain about that, 25 minutes is nothing compared to the queues at Shanghai Disney), and the wait didn't feel too bad with the line constantly moving.











Anyway, after Peter Pan, we were back onto the Haunted Mansion and the wait had gone down somehow (only 10 minutes at this point). This time, we some adjustment of our settings, we got a few more shots, though nothing perfect.













The Hitchhiking Ghosts remained a little elusive to us this trip, we kept missing them. This was the best we could manage.



Nothing really noteworthy apparently happened today, because my trip report notes just seem to be a run down of each activity we did, still we were having a great morning, enjoying the pace and the low wait times for attractions.

We were heading over to Big Thunder Mountain to use our Fastpasses next, which is always great. I really do enjoy the Wildest Ride in the Wilderness!









Continued in Next Post...

 

[RachelleBeaney]

Day 21 - Part 2 - Above Fantasyland

Our next stop was the Cinderella's Fairytale Hall, the castle walk through at Tokyo Disneyland. This walk through is incredibly popular as it has lots of great photo opportunities, and cute little details. These include a throne that you can have pictures on, Cinderella's glass slipped you can try on, and a viewing balcony that overlooks Fantasyland.

The place was a bit of a mad house when we visited, so we didn't spend a lot of time looking at the details. Still, from what we did say I'd classify it as the best Disney castle walk through I've seen (though of course, I haven't been to Disneyland Paris and seen the dragon that resides in the castle there - I hear it's pretty spectacular!).

I think it's all the small details that make this the best walk through, and the fact you can actually interact with it!





Plus it is bigger than many of the walk throughs, much grander, and there is a lot more detail too.







Here I am trying on the glass slipper - it didn't fit sadly







And this was the view once you came out the back balcony! It's funny, I don't really think much of Tokyo Disney's Fantasyland. Since the Magic Kingdom's New Fantasyland I'd say it's probably the worst of all the Fantasyland's, still stuck in a medieval carnival that looks a bit cheap and plastic. I do know they are opening a Beauty and the Beast area here for 2020 (in time for the Tokyo Olympics I'd say) which will improve the area I'm sure, but for the time being it's too much concrete, and not enough detail. However, somehow, from up above, it's really beautiful!









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