Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Tokyo Disney


Yes. We went. Tokyo city has lots of stuff but nothing that really captured our attention, we've seen shrines and gardens in many other places in Japan and while we were keen to see the large and busy streets of Tokyo, I really like amusement parks! There are two Disney parks in Tokyo and we'd been told by my friend Christine that DisneySea was the place to see. The problem was that on that night it was closing early, at 6:30 instead of 10pm. In the end we went to DisneySea anyway, which turned out to be a good decision because as a compromise to closing early, for an extra ~20CHF we could visit the second park in the afternoon (which we did). DisneySea was by far the better park, the views were amazing, there was so much work done on the details.

The rides weren't very exciting but very beautiful and creative. We liked the Indiana Jones and the Crystal skull 'ride' and the rollercoster beside it was also good, not very exciting but it had parts where they blew fog over the tracks so you couldn't see where it was headed. Again, it was the attention to details that made everything special. 








Our favourite ride was Journey to the Center of the Earth, on the tunnel into the ride they had pictures taken from the story, and a steampunk lab set up with 'specimens' and journals open on the desk as if the owners had just stepped out for a minute. The ride itself was mostly going through the tunnel in a car looking at various scenes from the book, but it ended with a fast but short drop and a bit of speed around the circle before the end.
 
We had a so-so lunch of amusement park fare, and tried a few flavours of popcorn throughout the park (never tried curry but we did have white chocolate flavoured popcorn). After we had ridden on all the rides we wanted to, and circled the park at least 20 times (it wasn't small, but we walked fast and constantly) we headed over to the second Disney park. It was similar to the one in Paris, although not as a detailed, and nothing compared to DisneySea. It was also busier and with more families.






We rode a few rides, SpaceMountain for old times sake (Paris SpaceMountain was much much much better), watched the light parade in the evening and the fireworks light show on the castle (also similar to Disney Paris but still nice). It seemed like the thing to do in Disney was to go with your friends and dress the same, perhaps Mini Mouse dresses, or the same hat etc.
At the end of the day, totally exhausted, we caught the train back to our hotel and fell into bed.

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