Just now I was watching a TV show that seemed to be about sending a cute girl to cake stores all over Tokyo and showing her response to eating delicious cakes. Such things are typical for Japanese TV 🙂
Also, my whack-a-bison video from the other day has already received 2 comments! Maybe I should post another UFO catching video and try to surpass the hits on my one from Australia?!
Anyway… here’s what we did yesterday:
As with other Disney parks, Disney Sea is one of the happiest places on earth, and you can be absolutely sure you won’t be rubbing shoulders with criminals here:
< Read that fine print!
Disney Sea is built around a large lagoon, and features a half dozen or so themed areas including ruined South American temple, a Jules-Verneish zone (inside a volcano), a Mexican zone and an early-twentieth century America. Architecturally, this is perhaps the most impressive of all the Disney parks, and it is a real treat to just walk around and admire the attention to detail Disney put into virtually everything.
That edifice on the right is the Tower Of Terror, a reimagined version of the ride of the same name at Hollywood park in Florida’s Disney World. It is a ‘drop ride’ where you sit in an elevator car that drops in the dark three times. It’s thrilling and a lot of fun, especially when 75% of the car are Japanese teenage girls screaming their brains out. It is clearly the most popular ride in the park, and only minutes after opening the ride looked like this:
< Tower Of Terror ride
The line is visible on both sides of the image, and curls around behind me. The actual end of the line is not visible (it’s beyond what you can see on the left side) and that’s just where it enters the building – there’s a good 30 minutes more wait inside. We joined this line! Why? Since the Fastpass line was almost as long! It took us maye 45 minutes (maybe more) to ride the first time 🙂
Disney Sea yesterday was very, very busy! I’d estimate attendance at about 30% families, 30% dating couples, 39.98% gaggles of Japanese teenage girls and 0.02% westerners. Happily Japanese people love the parades and the shops, so even a very very busy park doesn’t translate into absurd lines (above exception notwithstanding), so it wasn’t a problem for us!
We ended up riding Tower Of Terror 3 times during the day, and it got better every time. Here’s a couple of photos of photos of our rides:
Obviously, by the third time (rightmost photo) we had worked out when they actually take the shot. Note my Billy Mays impersonation!
We’d been to Disney Sea once before, way back in 2002. The park has changed a lot since then, mostly since it was very new before (for instance, all the trees have grown in now). There seem to be a few new rides (our memory of ’02 is dim). Tower Of Terror is one, and Raging Spirits, a rollercoaster, is another.
< Raging Spirits
This ride is notable for two reasons:
1) It has a loop, which makes it (to my knowledge) the only Disney ride in the world with one. You can see it in the left image if you look closely
2) It’s a half-man ride. During the actual ride (we waited about 45 minutes…) I was heard to yell out “This is a ride for babies!”. Given the excessive amount of warnings during the line I was expecting something thrilling, but had I been asleep upon boarding I’m not even sure it would have woken me 🙂
Aquatopia, by the way, is the worst ever Disney ride. I’ll provide images, but spare you the details of it’s horror:
Random Disney photo time!
From the left: KLS looking sweet in the Tower Of Terror Line, Goofy with the levitation buff, and a wedding parade through the park (yes, an actual wedding). Lord knows how much they spent for that!
< Wow
The above shows planters full of… orchids! It was amazing seeing so many in one place like that. The park as a whole is full of flowers that have been placed as part of the Spring festival that is ongoing.
< Tiny Burger!
< Nadeshiko
The above shows an attendant on the Tower Of Terror line. All the attractions at the Tokyo Disney parks have unique uniforms, but this was one of the best.
< Donald Duck
Although we didn’t stay for the fireworks, we ended up spending over 8 hours at Disney Sea yesterday, which (believe it or not) made for a relatively restful day compared to those so far! Dinner was Denny’s (KLS choice, not mine!) before collapsing into a dead sleep.
Those Denny’s fries tasted like the fries we used to get at the Oak factory in my youth. How’s that for a memory?
And JAF, you’re not keeping Emi!