How was their haunted mansion in comparison to the ones you have been on?
After much delay, I am now finally continuing to post Tokyo Disney trip report. The delay in posting was caused by 1) me getting busy at work, and 2) the fact that I discovered a week after the trip that most of my photos had somehow disappeared off my camera’s SD card. After much work, I have recovered many of my pics from Tokyo Disneyland, but very few from Tokyo DisneySea. This is a shame, as DisneySea is the more beautiful park. My words and a few iPhone pics will have to suffice (mostly) for DisneySea.
Now, onto the trip report. I will start with a few general points about TDR.
First, I was a bit shocked upon arrival at TDR to note that all of the signage welcoming me to the resort was in English – ONLY in English. No Japanese. As I was to find out later, this is not out of the ordinary. Indeed, all signage, all over the resort, whether it be attraction entrances, props, safety warnings, menus, decorations, or anything else, is in English. When necessary (menus, safety) and a few other places, it is also in Japanese. But, if you didn’t look at the people, you could walk around either park and not realize you were in Japan. This, of course, made getting around quite easy (as long as I didn’t have to talk to anybody --more on that later). While one might attribute the English signage and props to theming in Westernland (their Frontierland) and the American Waterfront (a land at TDS) that argument falls apart in the rest of the parks, so this was clearly a deliberated choice by Oriental Land/Disney, one which they repeated at TDS.
Attraction audio is, however, with a very few exceptions, entirely in Japanese. This strikes me as an odd combination, because, in order to fully experience the attractions, you must be able to understand spoken Japanese and written English. Getting on an attraction was almost jarring a couple times, because the atmospheric decorations in the park and in the queues were all in English, and then the ride was all in Japanese. I’ll comment further on audio in relation to specific attractions, but the general rule is that all signage is in English, and little audio is in English, other than automated safety spiels.
The visitors to the parks when I was there, and, as I understand, in general, were about 97% Japanese, 1% Chinese, 1% Korean, and 1% other. I heard only about 20 other people speaking English in conversation during my entire 2 ½ days at TDR.
Cast members generally speak enough English only to direct you as needed to which line to go in (“Row 2, kudasai”), and perhaps, to give you a few hints if you are lost. There are a decent number of cast members that are more fluent in English, but don’t count on finding one quickly.
Directions on when to board, removing hats and glasses and bags, stowing things, etc., are all spoken by CMs in Japanese, and repeatedly. These announcements are made by a cast member every few minutes towards the front of queues, and then again as you board. There are tons of CMs at boarding. The announcements are accompanied by a series of hand motions that you will become quite used to. The hand motions are well-done and easy to understand even if the only Japanese words you can follow are conichiwa (hello), arigato (thank you), and kudasai (please). Indeed, those are about the only words I understand.
Hand motions are also the way you tell the CMs how many are in your party, and the CM will respond by raising the right number of fingers for what row you are to go to, along with saying the row number in reasonably good English.
Food
All restaurants have menus in English (as I mentioned – everything is in English), but CMs may speak only Japanese. If needed, at QS spots, they have a prop to pull out with pictures and English (as well as Chinese and Korean) captions, so you can point at what you want. Might cause problems if you want a special order, but it worked great for me.
Food is expensive, and eclectic. There are places in both parks for Japanese, Chinese, Thai, American, Italian, Mexican, and Mediterranean food. A typically QS meal with an entrée, side and a drink was around 10,000 Yen, or $13. I didn’t do table service, but the prices appeared to be in the 2,700-3,300 Yen area. The meals I had were all good, and I never waited more than 4 minutes to order and get my food.
Snacks around the parks are everywhere, and yet, many of the carts had huge lines. It would appear that Japanese prefer to grab and go rather than eat at a counter-service restaurant. This could not have saved them time, because lines for things like turkey legs, stuffed gyozas, hot dogs, etc. were 20-30 minutes long.
The equivalent to Dole Whip seemed to be freshly popped flavored popcorn, although it wasn’t only available in Adventureland – instead, there was a popcorn cart in each land, serving a different flavored variety. I saw chocolate, strawberry, curry, black pepper, caramel, spicy, and salted. I’m sure there were more. All that I tried were very good. Virtually every family was walking around with at least one big huge refillable popcorn bucket.
Characters
Characters were out quite frequently, and not only in specially built meet n greets. No matter where they were – lines were long. Some interaction was permitted, and several times, I saw characters run around an area shaking hands and high-fiving patrons without ever actually stopping for a photo set. It was nice, but odd as well because the character greetings in many areas were incongruous. Witness Goofy dressed as a wizard at Mysterius Island in TDS. Huge line of people materialized as soon as he did.
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Unusual characters were out as well. I high-fived Abu as he ran around, almost got run over by a group of people chasing after what I think was Phil (from Hercules), and caught this foul fellow mingling with the crowd.
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But no discussion of characters at TDL is complete without Duffy. Particuarly at TDS, he’s everywhere. At both parks, everybody had their Duffys in little outfits, some of which were clearly custom-made. He does meet-n-greets at TDS, and the line was 50 minutes (seriously, they had one of those “From this point, the wait is XX minutes” signs. The stores that sell Duffy stuff have lines to get IN them, let alone to buy things (I just looked in the windows). Duffy has a girlfriend named SallieMae as well – she’s just about as popular. They even have picture spots where you can set your little stuffed Duffy on a little platform and take a picture of him (not you and him – just him) with nice scenery in the background. No words can describe the length of Duffy-fondness that was evident. You must see to believe.
TDL is well organized. There are plenty of CMs everywhere – helping get fastpasses, load rides effeiciently, cleaning up, welcoming you places, directing traffic. Everywhere. If you can't find a CM, you must have your eyes closed.
It rains at TDR a lot, so most queues are covered and several other things (see further discussion) are arranged to deal with rain as well. Oriental Land has installed the latest technology to dry out public areas after it stops raining, too, as you can see in this pic from TDS --
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maybe they have a few too many CMs -- they were actually taking bath towels, laying them on pavement, and then walking over them to soak up water. Over at TDL, CMs were bailing out the explorer canoes with cups from a nearby QS restaurant.
Finally, before I get into the attractions and atmosphere of the parks, a word or two about the Japanese people, at least those at Disney. Polite to a fault. Helpful as can be. Although almost everybody in the place was Japanese, most people seemed embarrassed that they couldn’t speak English to me. They went out of their way to assist when needed. Almost invariably, lines were a pleasant, orderly function at TDR – no pushing and shoving, no rushing (with one exception at park opening – I’ll mention later because it’s important). WDW, DLR, and especially Paris would be more enjoyable if guests were as polite and helpful there as they are at TDR. That said, there were very few attempts at conversation. This was OK with me, but noticeable. And everybody, I mean everybody, was playing with their smart phones in queues, while eating, watching parades, etc.
And they love Disney. In addition to the remarkable Duffy-love I already mentioned, almost every family or group of young people had at least one stuffed animal with them. Many people, particularly (but not only) women, had furry hats with sort "tail arms" that hung down to their waist of some Disney character -- Pooh, Goofy, and the Princesses were popular in this regard. And quite a few people were in costume as a Disney character -- and we're not just talking little kids; adults as well. And stores, while not as busy as the Duffy stores, were generally mobbed. Anything small and cute was bought up quick. OLC must do a fortune in merchandise sales.
Ok, enough of that. On to the actual parks. Rather than give you a chronological blow by blow of my days at the parks, I’ll instead mostly talk about aspects of the park by theme or land. But park opening all three days deserves special mention. So, starting with Day 1.
This was my Tokyo Disneyland day. That day, TDL was to open at 9. I arrived by train from central Tokyo around 8:40. After checking into my hotel and dropping my luggage at the extremely convenient visitor center (see previous post), I was ready to head for the park by 8:50. From the train station, you can take the monorail one stop to TDL, or walk about 1/3 mile. I did the walk, as did most. As I passed by the Bon Voyage store (their equivalent of World of Disney, only about ¼ the size and with much less interesting merchandise) and rounded the bend toward the TDL entrance area, I was shocked at the number of people in the entrance area.
It was Thursday. There was no holiday and school was in session. It was cold (9 degrees Celsuis), and it was raining (an inch of rain that morning). And the entrance area outside the gate, which huge, is full of people. I would guess there were about 20 lines, each with roughly 250 people in them. Imagine the entire entrance area of the WDW MK, from monorail station to bus turnaround, from the gates to the water, completely full of people, and then double it. Kudos to Disney, as the size of the entrance plaza shows that Disney/OLC was clearly aware that the Japanese really do follow the advice of arriving before park opening, and kudos to the guests, who were calmly standing in line with rain slickers and umbrellas waiting for park opening.
After I got over the shock of the number of people, I needed to find a ticket window. My first attempt (Guest Relations, who only distribute prepurchased tickets) failed, and I was shown that the ticket windows were in between the huge mobs of people in line to get in. Short line at the window, and I purchased my 3 day pass. I could have purchased that pass at the visitor center at the train station had I had enough cash. However, while a few places other than the parks do sell Tokyo Disney passes, only at the park ticket windows can you use a credit card.
A few things about passes to TDL. They sell 1, 2, 3, and 4 day passes, in addition to annual passes. The 1 and 2 day passes are good at one park per day. The 3 and 4 day passes are one park per day for the first 2 days, and both parks the 3rd and (if applicable) 4th day. The days must be used consecutively – no breaks. And you must specify which parks you want the first 2 days when you buy the ticket. You can pick the same park the first 2 days if you wish. Tickets are on flimsy paper stock, easy to wrinkle, fold, and tear. They have a bar code for reading at the gate and for FastPasses. And they clearly have printed (in Japanese and English) which parks you can go to which days.
After purchasing my ticket, I made my way to the back of a line right at 9 am, and we started moving forward. As I had come to expect from my few days in Japan, the line proceeded quite calmly, orderly and efficiently. In fact, as we went under the bag check awning, everybody put down their umbrellas, only to raise them again for the 20 feet between that awning and the gate, whereupon we put down our umbrellas again, only to put them up 10 seconds later after clearing the gate. The Japanese are amazingly courteous.
Upon entering the park, all of the calm orderliness was gone immediately. Japanese people of every age and size set off at high speeds for whatever attraction they were running for. It was insane. I was always taught not to run while carrying an umbrella, but there was little choice here. As it turned out, the rushing and running was really apparent only in the first hour the park was open. Things were calm after that, but the initial rush was surprising.
TDL is very recognizable as the MK park. The castle is virtually identical to MK. The lands are roughly where you expect them to be and the attractions are generally where you expect them to be as well, with a few minor rearrangements and changes in name.
World Bazaar
TDL’s equivalent of Main Street USA is called World Bazaar. It looks, however, just like Main Street USA in terms of the shops and buildings, so I’m unsure why they gave it a different name. There are three big differences, though. First, the town square area doesn’t really have anything in it – there’s no train station, the parade doesn’t come through here, and the omnibus and horse transport don’t come down here either.
This may be due to the second difference, which is that the area of the shops and restaurants is covered by a huge sort of greenhouse roof. It does protect from the rain (a wonderful thing on the morning I was there), but also kills the entry view of the castle. Odd decision I think.
Third difference is that center street (the cross street) goes places. Head right off World Bazaar’s main street and you wind up in Tomorrowland, left and you get to Adventureland. Makes it easier to get around the park not always needing to traverse the hub. Also makes Tomorrowland and Adventureland huge, and gives room for extra World Bazaar storefronts restaurants on the backside – facing Tomorrowland and Adventureland. Makes for more room, but it also gives you the horribly jarring possibility to be on a walkway with Main Street-style architecture on one side, and Tomorrowland-style on the other. It does not look good.
The array of shops is familiar, including an Emporium, a Magic Shop, and ice cream parlor, the Disney Gallery, and other familiar things. The extra room means a few additional shops and more restaurants as well, but the shops still didn’t hold anything particularly interesting to me.
At end of the World Bazaar main street is the hub, which is HUGE. Really really big. The main street vehicles just go around the hub in circles. They are more like a ride than transport down main street. The parade route uses about 80% of the large hub on its route by coming in from one side of Fantasland, entering hub by passing one side of the castle and then exiting out around the other side of the castle and out the other side of Fantasyland. It's hard to explain, but there are good maps at the Tokyo Disney website in English that show it.
Fantasyland
Fantasyland is home to the things you expect, including Dumbo, Peter Pan, Snow White, Philharmagic, a carousel, etc. It also has Winnie the Pooh and the Hunny Hunt, which we’ve all heard is the state of the art dark ride. Well, I would say that what we’ve heard doesn’t do it justice. This is what all dark rides should be. The queue is richly themed, as you walk amongst huge pages of a Pooh story (in English, ‘natch – see the pic below). I amused myself in line reading the pages with a faux John Cleese/Sebastian Cabot accent, which amused the Japanese people in line around me as well.
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The cars (honey pots) in the ride aren’t on a track, but move independently with their motion controlled by computers, it would seem. The story hits the familiar blustery day, bounce with tigger (you can hear “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers!” in Japanese, as all audio is in Japanese despite the queue being all in English), and heffalump areas, but instead of just moving through them on a track, each car does a slightly different route and sees different things. It was wonderfully enjoyable, and I rode three times. This is the ride to get your fastpass to first thing. The line was upwards of 75 minutes most of the day, except early in the morning, and last thing at night. This is what all F-land dark rides should be like. Every one in every park should be redone using this kind of ride system.
The rest of F-land is generally exactly what you’d expect, attraction-wise, and a disappointment, atmosphere-wise. IASW is familiar and fun, and the Peter Pan and Snow White dark rides are what you’d expect (although I think you get a little closer to the scenes than at WDW and DL). Philharmagic, strangely enough to me, was completely in Japanese – I had assumed they’d just run the same version, but they didn’t.
For reasons I don’t understand, the Haunted Mansion is in Fantasyland, across from Peter Pan. The queue generally winds through the mansion grounds, but you can look across and see Dumbo and Peter Pan, and it looks odd. The attraction itself is the one you are familiar with, with old-style hitchhiking ghosts, and no interactive graveyard in the queue (headstones are there, though, and in English). Audio is Japanese, so I could not understand my ghost host, but the ride was still fun.
[/QUOTE]The main problem with F-land is that the rides are just sort of placed there with little theming of the area. For example, this is an actual pic of Dumbo, not a flying elephant ride a local carnival. It just looked bad.
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Tomorrowland
Tomorrowland, as I mentioned, is very large. It has Star-Jets, Star Tours, Space Mountain, Monsters Inc Ride n’ Go Seek, Buzz Lightyear’s Astro-Blasters, a theater, and lots of restaurants and shops. And lots of room to roam. As I would come to find out, Disney built lots of wide open spaces in TDL. I understand that this was to be starkly different than most of Japan, which is very crowded. They succeeded – there’s unused space in Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Westernland, and, as mentioned earlier, in the entrance area that would be town square -- lots of it. Unfortunately, other than a wonderfully themed area of Critter Country, most of the empty space is themed as empty space. It looks…not good. And tomorrowland has a big swath of it around the Star Jets, which look like the Astro Orbitor looked in 1971 (white and black with USA painted on the center), except that there’s no peoplemover station under them (because there’s no Peoplemover), so they are raised over nothing.
Actually, architecture-wise, this is your father's Tomorrowland. Other than the Monsters, Inc building, it looks like MK TL did in the early 80s. It looks retro, but not in a good way. No matter -- onto the attractions.
Buzz is exactly like the DLR version, from queue to ride experience. Indeed, I visited DL-Anaheim one week later, and confirmed that the queues are identical. This pic is from Tokyo, but could be Anaheim.
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Space Mountain drew a huge line most of the day – up to 150 minutes I noticed. I rode with a fastpass, but the line was down to 40 mins at night. The ride is very much like Anaheim’s, including the queue, although the space ship visible in the loading area is a more modern-looking design. However, there is no on-board audio (like Anaheim) or ambient music (like WDW).
I also went to the stage show here, called One Man's Dream. It was a remarkable menagerie of various Disney characters dancing and singing, along with a talented crop of performers as backing singers/dancers. TDL has no problem mixing characters from different movies, it would appear. Here, for exmaple, is a shot of an early number, featuring Turk and King Louie.
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Other numbers featured villains from various films all together, and a pirate number that included Captain Hook and Jack Sparrow. Overall, the number of characters in the 35 minute show was remarkably high. The tunes were the ones you one, but it was all sung in Japanese, except for the theme song of the show, "One Man's Dream", which was all sung in Japanese except the title, and the song "Hooray for Hollywood", which was sung in Japanese except for the title and the line "You could be Donald Duck!". Odd, that one. Good show, and it was nice to be back in a tomorrowland theater. No parking lot here.
Star Tours is still the original, so I got to ride it one more time, only this time, in Japanese! I did laugh in the queue when, amidst many announcements in Japanese, the unaltered "Kuchana Kuchana" played. Apparently, that needs no translation. The queue, the loading bay, and, especially, the exit ramp, are fare more detailed here than at DL and in the indoor part of DHS's version. Once they upgrade to the new version later this year, I'm sure this will rocket to the top of the crowd list, and they are well-equipped to handle it. One humorous note. Apparently, Japanese for "Light speed!" is "Wight-a speed-u".
The highlight of Tomorrowland for me was Monsters Inc, Ride & Go Seek. This is a great little ride. The plot is that Boo has come to visit Mike & Sully and they are going to play hide n seek in the laugh factory. You are loaded into a little car, which has flashlight in it, holstered like the guns in Buzz. You shine your flashlight looking for Boo and for friendly monsters hiding around the factory. It's great fun, and of course, at the end, you find Boo, but not until after evading Randall a few times.
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This is a fun ride with a great premise. Very different than both the WDW and DL Monsters, Inc. attractions. Humorous bit from this attraction. At the end, just like at the end of the DCA ride, you go past, and stop in front of, Roz. And she's interactive. She said something to my little group of three cars. Everybody but me laughed. Then she said something else. Everybody else looked at me and laughed. Then Roz turned towards me and said "Bye-Bye". So I was mocked by a Japanese Roz, and I don't have any idea what she said.
One further note is that I only knew the plot because I had read about it online. You can, however, stop at guest relations and get a packet of little flyers in English that explain some attractions. Most you won't need, but this one would have been helpful if I didn't already know about the ride. You can also find scans of the little flyers at several websites. Take the time to find them before you go -- big help here, and even moreso at TDS. I'll mention them again later.
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