Day 9
This was an exciting day for us as we would visit Tokyo DisneySea. Most people in the travel group had not visited a Disneyland theme park before (for me I had visited Hong Kong Disneyland more than 10 years ago), so everyone was really looking forward to the visit.
We had our complimentary breakfast at our Hotel Sardonyx Ueno before heading out for the transportation. We walked to Naka-okachimachi Metro Station (仲御徒町駅) and took the Hibiya Line (H) to Hatchobori Metro Station (八丁堀駅), transfer to the Hatchobori JR Station then travel on JR Keiyo line to Maihama Station (舞浜駅). Maihama Station will be the main gateway to the Tokyo Disney Resort.
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| Warm welcome from Minnie at Maihama Station |
Tokyo Disney Resort is a huge entertainment venue that comprise of the twin theme parks, Disneyland and DisneySea, Disney hotels (such as Tokyo Disneyland Hotel and Tokyo DisneySea Hotel MiraCoasta) and Disney partner hotels (such as Hilton Tokyo Bay and Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel). Do you know that while there are several Disneyland theme parks around the world, there is only one DisneySea theme park in world, and that is located in Tokyo, Japan! Tokyo DisneySea has also been rated as the best theme park in the world by many travel guides and blogs. This is the reason why we had chosen to visit DisneySea instead of Disneyland (due to the fact that we only have time to visit one of the parks).
At the Maihama Station (舞浜駅), it is still a distance away to our destination (DisneySea). The resort has its own rail line (Disney Resort Line) that brings visitors to different parts of the resort. The monorail runs in anti-clockwise loop, starting from Resort Gateway Station (short walking distance from Maihama Station (舞浜駅)) to Tokyo Disneyland Station, Bayside Station and lastly Tokyo DisneySea Station.
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| Way leading to Resort Gateway Station (left) and Iskpiari Mall (right) |
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| Easter special decoration at Resort Gateway Station |
The monorail ride itself was enjoyable, as we got to see some of the theme park attractions, hotels, and the sea view of Tokyo Bay while we travel to the last station.
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| Monorail of the Disney Resort Line |
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| Inside the monorail |
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| View of Tokyo Disneyland entrance from the monorail |
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| View of the majestic Tokyo Disneyland Hotel from the monorail |
Tokyo DisneySea
As we had already purchased the park tickets online and printed the e-Ticket Passports, we headed straight to the park entry gates to enter the park. Immediately after we entered the DisneySea Plaza at the entrance, we were lucky to see Disney characters (Minnie Mouse, Chip 'n' Dale, Donald and Daisy Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Marie) walking around on Meet and Greet session! Everyone was very excited and started to take out the cameras to take photographs of them, or with them.
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| Adorable Minnie posing a photograph |
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| Disney characters out for a Meet and Greet session |
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| Dale from the Chip 'n' Dale |
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| Donald and Daisy |
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| Marie and Pluto |
The entire park was very crowded (with majority being local Japanese), which we were very surprised as we were there on a weekday. But because it was during the spring vacation, we could see a lot of students and families in the park.
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| Passing by the Venetian Gondola |
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| Walking through the busy street at American Waterfront |
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| DisneySea Electrical Railway |
We walked towards the American Waterfront sector looking forward to the first ride of our day, Toy Story Mania!. When we arrived at the destination, we were astonished to find that the standby queue was literally hours long and even the FASTPASS for the day were sold out! That was only at around 9.40am in the morning!
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| Entrance to Toy Story Mania! |
The FASTPASS is a free service that is included in the ticket, which allows visitor to apply to return to the attraction at a later specific time. Visitor can then explore other parts of the park instead of waiting physically in the queue. As we assessed it wasn't worth spending hours in the standby queue for the Toy Story Mania!, we went to the Tower of Terror that is located just beside us. Even the next available FASTPASS ride there was at 5.35pm in the evening, sensing that this could be the same situation across the park, we decided to quickly apply the FASTPASS tickets at the ticketing machine.
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| FASTPASS tickets for the Tower of Terror |
Aquatopia
After we secured the FASTPASS tickets to Tower of Terror, we continued to explore the park further into the Port Discovery sector. We decided to join in the standby queue at Aquatopia, which wasn't that bad.
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| View of the Aquatopia ride while queuing outside |
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| DisneySea Electrical Rail passing in front of Mount Prometheus |
We managed to board the ride around 1 hour of waiting time. This is a watercraft ride within a water lagoon. The watercraft ride (which can accommodate up to 3 person) is trackless, will accelerate at times, spin and narrowly avoid obstacles and other crafts in the lagoon. Overall, it was a fun and thrilling ride.
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| Onboard the watercraft at Aquatopia |
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Next, we headed to the Mysterious Island sector. We had a short break and bought some Mickey and Minnie ice pops before joining the standby queue for the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
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| Mickey and Minnie shaped ice pops |
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| Lagoon at the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea |
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| Entrance to the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea |
This is a "submarine" ride (which carries up to 6 persons) to explore the depth of the ocean floor. The ride does not physically go into water, but there are bubble effects that makes visitor feels that the submarine is moving through water environment. After encountering a giant octopus attack, the submarine ventured into the legendary sunken Atlantis, where we can find native aquatic beings living there.
Lunch at Triton's Kingdom (Mermaid Lagoon)
After the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, we headed to the Triton's Kingdom at Mermaid Lagoon sector. Triton's Kingdom is a Little Mermaid themed indoor area that consist of kids friendly rides, shops and restaurant.
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| Sculpture at the entrance of Triton's Kingdom |
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| View of the indoor playground |
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| Souvenir shop in the whale |
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| Underwater world decorations can be seen everywhere |
As it was already lunch time, we decided to patronize the Sebastian's Calypso Kitchen for lunch. As expected, the area was packed with people. The queue to place the food orders was long and there were hardly any available tables. We decided to split into 2 groups, which one would go and secure the next FASTPASS tickets for The Magic Lamp Theater, while and other group helped buy the lunch. We bought the Easter special set lunch, which came with roasted chicken burger with egg, fries, and soft drink.
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| Menu from Sebastian's Calypso Kitchen |
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| Roasted chicken burger set |
The Magic Lamp Theater
After lunch, we toured around some of the souvenir shops at Triton's Kingdom, before heading to the Arabian Coast sector. Along the way, we were lucky to see "Prince Eric" from The Little Mermaid taking photographs with the visitors. However, Ariel was nowhere to be seen.
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| Prince Eric posing with a group of Japanese schoolgirls |
We arrived at The Magic Lamp Theater and waited a while for our FASTPASS timeslot.
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| Our FASTPASS tickets to The Magic Lamp Theater |
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| Entrance to The Magic Lamp Theater |
The Magic Lamp Theater is a stage cum 3D movie show, that stars a magician called Shaban and Genie from the Disney film Aladdin. To our disappointment, the entire show was in Japanese, thus we could only guess what was happening most of the time. Here's what I learnt online about the show after my trip. A pre-show started with a cobra telling a story about the magician (Shaban) and how Genie became his assistant, and over time locked him inside the lamp due to his jealously. The audience were then led to the seating in the hall for the main live-action stage show. After some magic shows, Shaban's servant Aseem released Genie from the lamp, which appeared on the screen. Genie eventually made Shaban disappear and eventually making Aseem as his new master. After the show, we were fortunate to find the characters Aladdin and Jafar outside the theater meeting and greeting the visitors.
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| Aladdin and Jafar outside the theater |
Sindbad's Storybook Voyage
After The Magic Lamp Theater, we joined a short queue at the nearby attraction, Sindbad's Storybook Voyage. The attraction is based on the story Sindbad The Sail, which is an indoor boat ride that was fairly long. The boat ride would bring visitors through Sindbad's travel adventure with his pet tiger, Chandu. The scenes include Sindbad's encounter with the Roc Egg thieves, the Green Giant, Monkey Island, and Whale. They were many animatronic displays in each scene that kept our cameras busy, which were very decorative and impressive.
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| Scene of Sindbad with a pile of treasures |
Tower of Terror
After our boat ride, it was already close to FASTPASS timeslot for the Tower of Terror. We made way back to the American Waterfront sector, while enjoying the sunset scenery around the Mediterranean Harbour.
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| Sunset view of the Mediterranean Harbour |
I wasn't sure what the Tower of Terror attraction was about when we applied the FASTPASS earlier. Only when I entered the attraction and queued inside, then I realized it is a ride that involves free fall! That was going to be my first free fall ride of my life! The attraction is housed inside a tall building, which is named as Hotel Hightower.
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| Tower of Terror |
The story goes by the hotel was cursed for over 100 years, when a statute caused the original owner Mr Hightower to mysteriously go missing after the elevator he was in crashed to the ground. The New York City Preservation Society now re-opened the hotel for "visitors" to view Mr Hightower's collection of treasures. The queue to the ride itself would bring the visitors through the treasures.
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| Exhibits along the queue inside the building |
At the end of the tour, visitors were brought to the 20-seater elevator ride. After we buckled our seatbelts, the elevator moved up the tower. Along the way up, we would encounter the cursed statue animation. After the statue casted the spell on us, the elevator would move to the top of the tower and the door opened. We would get to see the view of the DisneySea park from the shattered window. Immediately after this, the elevator suddenly dropped in a free fall! The elevator then moved up the tower again and repeated another free fall drop. Everyone in the elevator were simply screaming at top of our voices! After the thrill, the elevator was safely brought to the ground and the ride ended.
Dinner @ Ikspiari Kitchen (イクスピアリ・キッチン)
As we exited the Tower of Terror, the sky was already dark and started raining. We wanted to visit some of the souvenir shops but there were long queues just to enter the shops. We decided to call it a day at DisneySea as we were already exhausted after a long day of walking and queuing at the park, as well as the bad weather prevented us from exploring the park further.
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| Night view of fiery Mount Prometheus |
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| Night scene at Toyville Trolley Park |
We exited the park and took the Disney Resort Line from Tokyo DisneySea Station to Resort Gateway Station. Just beside the Resort Gateway Station is a large shopping mall called Ikspiari and we decided to search for a dinner place in the mall. We came across the Ikspiari Kitchen (イクスピアリ・キッチン) at the first floor, which is basically a food court selling Japanese, Chinese and Western food. We settled down and started ordering our food to eat, such as Japanese curry omelette rice, Ramen and chicken chop.
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| Ikspiari Kitchen (Photo from https://www.ikspiari.com/en/) |
As we finished our dinner and headed outside the mall, the rain had stopped and the night sky brightened up with the fireworks display from the Tokyo Disney Resort. It was a pity that we did not get to watch fireworks display with the magical animations and classical Disney music inside the park, as we thought the show would be cancelled because of the rain earlier. Nevertheless, we were glad that we could still watch part of the display from the mall.
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| View of Disney Resort fireworks from outside Ikspiari Mall |
In conclusion, we had an enjoyable day at Tokyo DisneySea and a dream came true for some of us. The experience was far from perfect due to the large crowd and long queues in the park that had excluded us from some of the popular attractions. Recommendation to others visiting Tokyo DisneySea in the future will be to do your research first and strategize the sequence of the rides and FASTPASS usage. If you have the time, plan for a 2-day visit to the park, as it is really a big park and unlikely to cover everything within one day.
With the finale of the fireworks display, we bid farewell to Tokyo Disney Resort and headed back to our Hotel Sardonyx Ueno, retracing the same way how we came here in the morning.
Follow the links below to the other days of my Japan tour:
Day 1: Ueno, JR Pass, PASMO, Nakamise-Dori Shopping Street, Senso-ji Temple, Tokyo One Piece Tower
Day 2: Shinkansen, Odawara, Hakone Free Pass, hakone Venetian Glass Museum, Togendai, Owakudani, Lake Ashi Sightseeing Cruise, Hakone Yuryo, Onsen
Day 3: Kyoto, Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Gion, Pontocho
Day 7: Hiroshima, Tram, Miyajima, Giant Torii Gate, Sika Deer, Itsukushima Shrine, Atomic Bomb Dome, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hondori Street, Okonomiyaki
