Kimchi and Sweet Tea

There was this one time, over Lunar New Year, that Julie and I decided to go to Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea.

Now, I had never been to any Disney parks (I know, right?) so I had absolutely no expectations. I just knew that Julie and her family were crazy about Disney parks and that they were certainly a bit different than the parks I was used to going to. When I looked at pictures of the parks online I was looking for roller coasters and saw none...but then again the pictures on the internet were pretty terrible somehow. BUT I knew that Tokyo would be awesome, and who could possibly pass up a chance to go overseas on a very rare long weekend (especially one that Japan was randomly not celebrating!)

I won't bore you with all the actually quite engrossing details of planning or getting there; let me just introduce you to Tokyo DisneySea (also known as, The Place I Now Want To Live Forever)

At the airport in Busan

Our hotel was cheap online and the pictures made it look pretty awful, but we didn't think that we would spend much time there anyway. When we got there, however, it turned out to the one of the fanciest hotels I've ever seen, much less had the chance to stay in. Our room had a perfect view of Tokyo Tower and the friendly staff booked us free shuttles to Disney Land and Disney Sea that picked us up at the hotel door and dropped us right at the gate of the park and then back again.

The first day we got tickets, the early morning shuttle was already full so we got tickets for 11, which put us at the park at 11:30. But it was Friday and still a work and school day in Japan, so we thought we would still have a chance to do everything. Saturday we booked tickets at 7am because, well, Saturday.

So, we got on the bus at 11 on Friday morning heading to Disney Sea and, once again, I had no expectations but I was so excited.

When we walked in
and I saw everything
and I heard the music
and I saw the giant mountain and the lake with the boats on it
and I was surrounded instantly by Disney Magic
I cried. Like a child. My heart simply exploded.

So, before I go into all the stories about how cool all of the rides were let me tell you some of the differences between tons of people being in one place together in Japan vs The Rest of the World

1. In Japan Disney, when you want to take a picture, you don't have to wait for a break in the crowd. People see from a distance that you are attempting to take a picture and they will stop their lives and wait for you to take it, no matter how long it takes you. OR they will take your camera for you, and with the crowd stopped, will take as many pictures as you think are necessary to get the perfect shot.

2. In Japan Disney, the cool snack in the parks is popcorn. They have several different flavors scattered around the park. On the map it shows where the stands are and what flavor they are selling. Everyone, from a three year old to an old lady is carrying bags of popcorn around and there is not one single shred of popcorn on the ground. Not in the park, not in the lines, not in a hidden corner, no where. There's not a shred of mess anywhere, in the parks, outside of the parks.

3. In Japan, when they know a parade is about to start (in an hour or two. . .) they set up their little areas seated on the clean as can be street and start to wait. People, over the course of waiting, all set up their area waiting for the parade. Why sit on the ground for hours waiting? Because they would never dream of getting in someone else's way and certainly more people will be able to see if the people closest to the parade are seated instead of standing. Genius!

4. In Japan, they are serious about Disney. Serious. There were only a handful of people that we saw in the couple of days that weren't absolutely DECKED OUT in Disney gear. It was pretty chilly so they HUGE character hats were really popular on this particular day. They were wearing hats that made it look like they were inside of various Toy Story characters heads or really any movie, and for the most part entire groups would have chosen a movie and would all have hats representing the different characters in that particular movie. It was a pretty awesome sight.

Without further ado, here are some pics!

The night view from our hotel. That's Tokyo Tower ^^

In front of our lovely hotel.

Day view from our hotel. Good morning, Tokyo!!

In our FREE shuttle bus to Disney Sea! Look at all those Tokyo palm trees!

So excited I can't see straight!!!

Right on the inside! Tickets were a breeze...I had not yet begun to cry...

The Happiness Year at Disney Sea ^^ (as opposed to last year's The Depression Year...)

Getting close to the actual entrance now. . .childhood beginning to take over my little heart. . .

The first time someone offered to take our picture for us. . .but certainly not the last. You can see the magic peeking through the door there...

This is when all of my childhood came right out of my tear ducts. It was so beautiful.

Look at the...EVERYTHING!!

This was in the Old Italian part of the park. Everything was very da Vinci and Old Master style. Lovely..

A lake, on which you can take several different types of boat rides. In the distance there is the Tower of Terror.

I'm sure you can tell from the picture, but we couldn't have ordered better weather. It looks like a white sky in the picture but it was actually a cloudless blue. Gorgeous!

Look at it!

So, then we decided it was time to go on our very first ride. We walked through the Italian part and into the most amazing steam punk area ever to go to the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride. Walking into this area, to a pool of water surrounded by the volcano and the mountains around it, was beyond impressive.

In the line for 20,000. That's the Nautilus there, bubbling away.

Inside the line.

Just some pretty sets. ^^

After the very cool 20,000 Leagues ride (my first animatronic ride, as far as I can remember...as least one of this caliber) we headed off to find the Little Mermaid Kingdom :-)

Isn't it pretty??

See all the hats and gear? This park was good for that...but Disneyland was even crazier!

Couldn't have picked a better day, seriously. I couldn't stop taking pictures of just everything!

Aladin's Arabia was across the way from Little Mermaid Kingdom, but more on that later.

People really did try to stop when they noticed I was trying to take the picture. . .

Inside the Little Mermaid Castle it was like being transported to another world. . .like everything else in this lovely place!

Rides, restaurants, and lots of kids having the time of their lives awaited us here.

I just couldn't get over how pretty everything was!

Julie really wants one of these lamps. . .they are pretty cool ^^

In Little Mermaid Land we ate a delicious scallop cream sandwich that was on bread shaped like a scallop shell. Even at this introductory point in our Disney adventure, we were starving to death.

After Little Mermaid land it was time to explore Arabia. Arabia called to us with the promising scent of fresh curry popcorn. . .

This is a double decker carousel!!

Are you happy, lady? With your curry popcorn??

There was a beautiful double decker merry-go-round in Arabia, and a brass band. There were also, of course, Aladdin, Jasmine and Abu walking around hugging kids :-).

After that, we walked to the Indiana Jones ride which, for whatever reason wasn't open, but it was very impressive looking!.....

Can you see the giant structure peeking through the foliage?

Then we found this charming gentleman actually cleaning the air. . .

But obviously, it was just an adorable street show.

Didn't quite get the "I'm totally not taking a selfie" face quite right. . .

After walking around for a bit and watching the street show, we decided to tackle the only obvious roller coaster in the park. Since this was Disney, the roller coaster still had a story, of course. This roller coaster was a trip around an ancient burial ground, boasted a 360 degree loop and actual fire shooting out at you at some point during the ride.

This was the first ride we actually had to wait any real amount of time for.

This was the ride where we witness a family eating sunflower seeds out of one baggie and then spitting the seeds into another baggie, so as not to make a mess.

We're close to the actual ride, does that mean we're close to getting on it? No. No it doesn't.

Pretty cool lookin' right?

Travel cat waiting patiently.

Ancient ruin and brand new 30th Anniversary Celebration hat!

The ride was awesome. It had everything it promised to have plus a smoke screen. It was a lovely roller coaster. (And, in case you don't know, I pride myself on being difficult to please on roller coasters. . .I love them a lot, so it takes a lot to impress me. . .roller coaster wise anyway...)

Same Indiana Jones ride, but decidedly better lighting.

Disneyland, which was right next door, for whatever reason decided to close at six, so our time of having the park pretty much to ourselves was at an end. So, we became a little more attracted to the attractions that had a shorter waiting period (like the ones closer to 30 minutes than 300 minutes. . .you understand.)

So, then we found StormRider, a 4D simulation ride (and also some strawberry popcorn) which was actually fantastic.

Where we were getting "briefed" and it was important enough to subtitle. We had to follow, fly into, and then blow up a storm. It was all very exciting. See all the hats??

We did, in case you were worried, succeed in blowing up the storm, but not before the storm blew our special bomb right through our hull making me jump right out of my moving seat! Anyway, fun. And by the time we got out, it was getting dark, and Disney Sea transformed into something even more beautiful. Take a look!

Slow shutter speed passerby ghost blur!

And the lovely volcano! I finally noticed that it was spewing actual fire all day!

Isn't it amazing??

Looks like it was all there just for us! :-)

Super ghost boat motion blur!

Amazing drill crashed into the side of the volcano.

The harbor from Cape Cod and the Tower of Terror in the background.

Cheese!

Where a billion people were all waiting to ride the Toy Story ride (like, 400 minutes. . .)

Downtown. Although most of the buildings didn't actually house attractions, they all had things going on inside that you could see or hear.

Toy Story ride! (And a box of popcorn. . .)

I think this one is my favorite. . .

The harbor and the Old World part.

Or maybe this one? I'm a little in love with the volcano. . .

Goodnight, Disney Sea!

Another interesting difference between Disney here and Disney at home is that the star of the show here isn't always necessarily Mickey but it's a completely unique to Disney Sea teddy bear named Duffy.

Duffy really is about as normal of a teddy bear as you can imagine but he's a HUGE sensation here. The regular sized bears are around $40 and there are sizes that go up to a lot more. In Disney Sea, not only were people dressed like Duffy, or covered in Duffy pins, hats, clothes, or whatever, but they were also straight up carrying sometimes armfuls of these bears all day around around the park. Some people had two or three HUGE (like carnival grand prize sized) bears in their arms and just hauling them around the whole day. The shops selling Duffy merchandise were always packed with people trying to pick up any possible accessory and perhaps just one more Duffy, or his new girlfriend, ShellieMay.

He is a cute little dude for sure.

Because Disneyland next door closed at six an completely emptied out into Disney Sea, we kind of had to pick and choose what we wanted to ride and the last big attraction we went on was The Journey to the Center of the Earth. This was a part animatronic, part roller coaster ride that toured inside of the volcano and at one point shot you right out of the side of the volcano (which was a complete surprise to me) and was, at the end of the day, one of the very coolest rides I've ever been on in my life.

Too. Cool.

Then it was time to go back to the fancy hotel and pass out, so we could get up early and do it all again the next day!

We wanted to get as early as start as possible on Disneyland, since it was Saturday and we thought it was possible that it would be a bit busier.
But, it was also supposed to rain all day.
Also, we just were antsy to get there.

So, we took the 7 am bus, arrived at 7:30, tickets in hand, to hang out and take in some sights before the park actually opened at 9:30.

However, even at this very early hour, we were already greeted by thousands of people waiting for tickets, or just for the park to open.

Lined up all around the park, everybody making plans, everybody ready to take over :-)

Our tickets!

We got a map and made our plan. At Disneyland you can get free fast passes that will assign you a time (with an hour window) to come back to the ride and go through a fast line and get on the ride much faster. You can get these all day free with your ticket. But, once you get it you have to wait two hours before you can get another one. So, we had to make our first move count. . .just in case.

The newest and most popular ride is a Monsters Inc ride. . .and even if Julie hadn't already known that, we would have been able to guess just based on the massive amounts of Monsters Inc gear on the backs of a giant percentage of the crowd :-)

So, we waited, and we planned, and it didn't look like there was even a chance of rain.

When the gates finally opened, the well behaved and extremely polite crowds from the day before didn't quite resemble themselves. Certainly, there was no shoving or shouting, but there was a LOT of running. And almost everyone was running to exactly where we were running to: The Monsters Inc Fast Pass line.

Monsters Inc was the first ride in the park, and we were in there as soon as the park opened. But, by the time we reached the actual ride, the wait time was already three hours and the fast pass line was really backed up. No worries, we have the whole day!

Fast passes started at between 9:30-10:30. By the time we got our fast passes, we had secured a spot between 2:30-3:30. Cool. And we could get another one at 11:30, and it was never too early to start planning.

The nearest ride to the Monsters Inc ride, there in Tomorrowland was Star Tours. You know what a sucker for Star Wars I am, so we got in line and waited to see what it was.

The ride is based on an interplanetary planet tourist agency. Inside the building they were playing different promotional videos for planets all across the Star Wars universe. It was amazing.

During the promos, there was the occasional advertisement for the Empire.

I believe them, don't you?

The attraction boasted 30 unpredictable story lines, which could have meant anything (many of those things I tried to predict while I was in line) but the basic story line was that you were en route to one of the planets or another and then, obviously, something unpredictable happens.

It was a 4D ride, and the whole inside of the ride was so detailed and so amazing, my little Star Wars heart was as excited as could be.

We were loaded into our special ship and briefed (in Japanese) by C3PO on our destination/mission, but wherever we were supposed to go was interrupted quite suddenly and rudely by Darth Vader himself, standing on top of a ship that was flying around in our hanger! Luckily for all of us, he wasn't feeling his best and we were able to escape his force grip and attacks, even in such close quarters, without much trouble, and then started a wild ride in and out of the atmospheres of Hoth, Cloud City, Endor, and many, many more.

Quite the tour.

After that, it was time to resume our love affair with popcorn. We saw on the map earlier that there were several new flavors that we hadn't seen at Sea. The day before we had been able to have anything we wanted with no waiting, so imagine our surprise when we noticed that the line for the popcorn was hundreds of people long. . .

We were shocked.

So, to get it straight, the day before we had tried black pepper, curry, corn porridge, strawberry, caramel, apple cinnamon and milk tea. And there were only a few new flavors to try there at Disneyland, but the one we really wanted was soy sauce and butter, but apparently everyone else in Japan also wanted it just then.

We waited in line for about 30 minutes before we went towards the front to see which souvenir bucket they were offering at this particular stand (I wanted the Star Wars one, Julie wanted the 30th Anniversary one) and when we got up there we noticed that we had been waiting all that time for butter popcorn. . .which we didn't even want. . .what were these people all lined up for for just butter popcorn?

So, we left and headed for Captain EO.

It's possible that I'm the only one that didn't know what Captain EO really was. . .Julie tried to show me a youtube version of this quite epic 4D Michael Jackson music video, but I have to admit, I thought it was pretty crazy.

In case you don't know what it is, here's Julie to tell you.

I have to admit, it was pretty epic.

I also have to admit, that no matter where we were I had ants in my pants just dying to see EVERYTHING.

Poor Julie.

BUT by the time we got out of Captain EO and got fast passes for Space Mountain, we were starving to death, so it was time to set aside delicious popcorn for just a second and get some real food.

Lunch. . .

. . .Disney Style! Fried egg hamburger!

Pork Cutlet sandwich!

An adorable little mango mousse dessert ^^

We knew we would have to wait for it, but Julie promised me that it was a can't miss ride in Tokyo Disney, so we made our way to the Winnie the Pooh ride.

But not before snagging some honey popcorn. . .you can't imagine with 100% of your brain how good irresistible the smell was. . .

So here's Julie to tell about where we were. . .

This ride also exists at Disney World, but apparently the story is completely different. While the ride is sweet and lovely in the American version, it is actually incredibly strange and a little dark in the Japanese version, but certainly very entertaining.

Waiting in line on an incredibly beautiful day!

The cover of the ride :-)

Inside the ride, you were in the pages of the book

Most of the book was there, and in English no less!

Almost time to get in.

The ride was very interesting, you were on a boat floating through the river floating through the story. Everything was lovely and sweet and like I remembered it from the story. But then, all of a sudden, you saw Pooh sleeping and then entered his dream. Now, I don't know what he ate, did, or took in order to fall asleep and have this dream, but suddenly everything was crazy, and dark and those elephants were everywhere and bizzaro mirrors and black lights and bright colors, and those elephants taking pictures of you. . .and it was crazy
and then suddenly over.
Then it was time to want everything that the gift shop offered.

I got a little adorable Eeyore. He's amazing.

We had to wait forever, so we were a little hungry again, and we had LONG run out of delicious honey popcorn, so we took a walk on the hunt. Also, it was time to cash in on our first fast pass! So back to Tomorrowland we went to check out the Monsters Inc ride.

Here it is!!!!

Then we found a bakery with plenty of fun snacks. Here's a Monsters Inc melon bread ^^

Amazing!

Oh, no! My eye!

Then, because I was dying to do it, we went on the it's a small world ride.

Here it is!!

Here's a panorama of the inside.

I wanted to take more pictures of the inside, but it was on water and dark and I actually just wanted to really enjoy it, so sorry. It was really fun. It's ENORMOUS! And really amazing!

Then, our second fast pass ride, one we chose very wisely I think, since the line was never under three hours. Even the line was amazing, even the fast pass line, and it had many, many opportunities to escape the line, which really built some suspense. . .I thought it HAD to be a pretty intense ride.

Loading dock.

Ghosts loading and unloading onto the ride.

I really didn't intend to give a play-by-play of everything that happened on all of the rides, but this one was really spectacular. It was simple as could be in design, but executed flawlessly.

I'm sure everyone already knows what Space Mountain is. But I didn't. I had no idea, really. It's a roller coaster that is all inside and is completely dark. Yeah, yeah, probably pretty cool. But they had the extra special effect of what I can only describe as a holographic field of stars that sat in front of your face and whirled all over the place in such a perfect way that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, much less use any sort of visual cue to figure out where you were, where you were going, or get any idea of what was happening to you.

Cool, so very, very cool.

After we got off of this ride it was pretty dark and the park was full to capacity. They were getting ready for the night time parades and we saw our last chance to hit one big attraction. We missed the Tower of Terror the previous day so I had it in my mind that we absolutely had to try the Haunted Mansion. Now, it wasn't until I was well into the line waiting for the Haunted Mansion that I remember my last trip through a "haunted house" where I almost crushed, but certainly injured Albert's hand as he led me through every ridiculous and startling spooky thing that jumped out at us (and then took their pictures with flash to give me some light and show me how stupid it all really was)
But, certainly, this couldn't be a hokey carnival haunted house. This was Disney! And then Julie began telling me about the story.

It's a big story that continues through waiting in line and then throughout the ride. She promised she would translate. And she, indeed, did.

Once you got into the main area, they loaded you into an elevator. The story talks about how there were no windows and no doors, and were the walls actually stretching or was it just our imaginations. . .?? Julie is telling me all of this in this crowded, small space. The voice continues that there is no way out. Then, the ceiling opens and there is a hanging woman, and then voice says, except for his way, and there is a scream, but before I heard the actual scream (which didn't actually need to be translated. . .) Julie lets out this big scream prematurely. And she thought it was very, very funny.

Anyway, the ride was very cool. It wasn't about things jumping out and trying to scare you, it was about a tour through a haunted mansion-turned hotel. There were a lot of hints of haunting and then more obvious ghosts and then entire fields of ghosts (all singing and dancing, of course) and I have to say, all in all, I was very impressed with the whole care and detail of the experience.

It was quite awesome.

So pretty.

We rode a lovely Pinocchio ride, that rode you through the story, and a Snow White ride that was a really lovely little ride. Then we got a bucket full of curry popcorn and took off to see some more of the park, fairly certain we weren't going to have time to ride another ride and still see Cinderella's Castle :-)

The Swiss Family Robinson Tree House

A particularly beautiful tiki restaurant

Maybe it was foolish not to think that you could go up into and tour Cinderella's Castle, but for whatever reason I didn't think about it. In the hallway through the arches of the castle the Cinderella story was illustrated in beautiful mosaic (that I may or may not want in my house someday)