Nick and I are both huge Disney fans, and spent the two weeks before moving in together fulfilling my lifelong dream of visiting Disney World Florida. So, whilst in Tokyo, we were really excited to check out Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea (the only DisneySea in the world!) The hotel we were staying in (Hotel MONday in Nishikasai, which I fully recommend! Read my previous post for more information) ran free shuttle buses to the parks every day, which was really convenient. We spent three days at the parks in total (one in Disneyland and two in DisneySea as it is a lot bigger and requires more time to do properly) and had a really wonderful time in both.
Things to know before you go
Unless, they’ve updated it since we were there, for some unknown reason, you’re unable to book tickets online unless you have a Japanese bank card. I have absolutely no idea why this would be the case for a tourist attraction as big as Disney, but there it is. This means that you’ll have to get to the parks extra early on your first day in order to buy tickets in person. We allowed loads of time for this because we were expecting massive queues, but we were actually really lucky and were able to purchase tickets without queueing at all. Although, it was raining very heavily on the first day we went, so perhaps err on the side of caution and get there early just in case.
As well as standard one-day tickets, and cheaper tickets that only provide you access to the parks at certain times (for example, if you only want to spend an evening there instead of the whole day), you can also purchase tickets that give you access to either of the parks for two, three or four consecutive days. We got the three-day ticket, which we used to spend the first day in Disneyland and the following two in DisneySea. If you’re wanting to visit both parks, I would say that you don’t need more than a day to do Disneyland, but you’ll need at least two in order to do DisneySea.
Their fast pass system needs some work. Whilst the fast pass system in Disney World is all done through an app, giving guests an allocated amount of fast pass tickets a day and allowing you to chop and change your choices as you go, the system in Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea is not as well thought through. In order to get a fast pass for a ride, you have to run to the ride itself; queue at a machine and insert your park ticket for the chance to be issued with a fast pass for that ride. If you’re successful in getting a fast pass ticket, you will be provided with a designated time slot, at which time you’ll have to return to the attraction to use it. Each ride only has a certain amount of fast pass tickets available per time slot and once they’re gone, you’ll be issued with a printed piece of paper telling you the time you can try again. If you are issued with a fast pass ticket, you’re not allowed to get one for another ride for two hours. It is a very laborious system that cuts down the number of fast passes you can use and favours the Disney aficionados who know how to play the system well, instead of being fair for everyone. Not to mention being bad for the environment with the amount of paper being wasted. They need to adopt the app system ASAP but, until they do, make sure you look up which rides you most want a fast pass for before you go and make a beeline for it as soon as the park opens to avoid disappointment!
Very little English is spoken. The biggest downside of this is that it means you can’t really go to any of the shows, which is one of the best things to do at Disney parks, and you can’t follow along with the storylines on some of the rides. The staff themselves also speak very little English, which meant that when we broke down on Journey to the Centre of the Earth and were left stranded on a rollercoaster deep below the Earth’s surface, nobody was able to tell us what had happened or why. More on that later.
As I mentioned in my previous post, there is no internet available in the Disney parks. This is weird because a) Disney ordinarily provides free public Wi-Fi in all of its parks and b) Tokyo seems to provide free public Wi-Fi absolutely everywhere else. I still don’t know the reason behind this, but if you’re planning a trip to the Tokyo Disney parks and want to be connected whilst you’re there, make sure you bring your own portable Wi-Fi with you.
As with all Disney parks, if you want to get the most out of your time there, you’ll need to be prepared to put in some long days. Nick and I did 12-hour days at the parks for three days in a row. Eat, sleep, Disney, repeat.
You can stay in the park (if you can afford it). Hotel MiraCosta is located inside the DisneySea park and serves as a full-scale reproduction of the various buildings of Portofino and Venice on Mediterranean Harbour. It comes with direct access to the park that can only be accessed by hotel guests, and the opportunity to watch the harbour shows and night time spectacular from the comfort of your hotel room. Of course, it also comes with a price tag to match, but if you can afford it, I think it would be a pretty amazing experience.
Tokyo Disneyland
Tokyo Disneyland is very similar to the Magic Kingdom in Florida, with some rides that are different, such as Pooh’s Hunny Hunt instead of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
Belle’s village, Rapunzel’s tower and Ariel’s grotto also aren’t there, which was a bit disappointing. However, unlike in the Magic Kingdom, you can actually go inside Cinderella’s castle and take a look around, which I really enjoyed.
Even though it rained for most of the day we were there, we still had an amazing time. It was the classic Magic Kingdom experience, complete with rides, parades, characters and Mickey-shaped food. What more could you ask for?
Tokyo DisneySea
The theming and attention to detail in Tokyo DisneySea is absolutely unbelievable. It consists of seven different areas: Mediterranean Harbour; Mysterious Island; American Waterfront; Port Discovery; Lost River Delta; Mermaid Lagoon and Arabian Coast. Each area is themed differently (and meticulously!) so every time you walk for more than five minutes, you’re transported into a completely different world. As getting immersed in the different worlds is one of my favourite things about Disney parks, I was in my element at DisneySea.
Of all the different areas, my favourite was probably the Arabian Coast, as this is where you can find a fully immersive reproduction of Agrabah! I’ve always thought that Aladdin is a bit underrepresented in the Disney parks (seriously, where is the Cave of Wonders ride?) and so it was great to explore a whole area dedicated to it. We were able to walk through the marketplace and the grounds of the Sultan’s palace; ride magic carpets around Jasmine’s fountain and even stand on her balcony. Everything was really realistic and true to the movie, complete with Abu, Genie and Jafar wandering around!
Close contender for my favourite area of DisneySea was Mermaid Lagoon, where you can go inside Ariel’s grotto. The area itself is aimed at young children, so there wasn’t much for us to do there except enjoy the amazing theming. The Little Mermaid is one of my all-time favourite Disney films and so getting to explore a life size replica of her grotto was like a childhood dream come true.
One of the most impressive areas is Mysterious Island, as it contains a fortress and a pirate ship, both complete with “working” cannons that you can fire. They were both strangely quiet whenever we visited them, as they are a bit tucked away and a lot of people wouldn’t necessarily know they were there. This made them even nicer to explore.
One of the coolest hidden areas we found in the park was a planetarium tucked away in the fortress. It was such a beautiful room and you could wind levers of an Orrery to move the planets around the sun! Having a fully operational antiquated planetarium hidden away in a room that most guests won’t even stumble across is the perfect example of the meticulous attention to detail Disney puts in to make their parks so magical.
Over in Mediterranean Harbour, we rode gondolas in Venice and had a fancy dinner in Zambini Brothers Ristorante, complete with a glass of wine and a beer (as Disney now sells alcohol in its parks!)
In terms of rides, our favourite was the Indiana Jones ride, even though I’ve never seen the film. It was definitely the most fun and, again, the theming was incredible.
One of Nick’s favourite rides is the iconic Tower of Terror, and we were excited to give the Tokyo version a try. In DisneySea, the Tower of Terror is called the Hightower Hotel instead of the Hollywood Tower Hotel and is set in the American Waterfront section of the park. The ride itself was similar to the Hollywood Tower Hotel, but we did lose quite a lot of its magic and enjoyment from not being able to understand the storyline.
The first day that we went to DisneySea was the opening of the Soarin’ ride and the queues were unbelievable – spanning all the way across the park with a wait time of around six hours. I have no idea who these people are that are willing to spend their entire day queueing for a two-minute ride, but we were just glad that we’d already been on Soarin’ in Epcot, and so didn’t feel like we’d missed out by not joining the obscenely long queue.
In contrast, when we were in Epcot, the Journey to the Centre of the Earth ride was closed and so we never got a chance to ride it. On our second day in DisneySea, we ran straight to Mysterious Island in order to get a fast pass. However, not long after getting on the rollercoaster, it came to a halt. A few minutes later, the animatronics stopped; the barriers surrounding them came up and the lights came on. I didn’t think anything could ruin the magic of Disney, but turns out that’ll do it. Announcements were coming over a Tannoy system… in Japanese. We were stuck there, held in our seats, for about half an hour with absolutely no idea what was going on. Eventually, some of the staff came down to get us, got us out of the rollercoaster and walked us out of the ride along the side of the track. Although it was a kind of scary and disillusioning experience, it was also so interesting to get glimpses behind the scenes at how it all works as we walked out. We tried to find out from the staff what had happened to make the rollercoaster stop, but couldn’t find anyone who spoke good enough English to tell us more than just “the rollercoaster broke.” Neither of us are trained mechanics by any means, but we’d kind of figured that much out for ourselves. The good news was that, as compensation for leaving us trapped on a rollercoaster for half an hour, they gave us another fast pass to go on the ride again when it re-opened. The bad news was that they gave the same fast pass ticket to everyone else stuck on the rollercoaster… and everyone else in the queue at the time. This kind of nullified the point of the fast pass system. When it re-opened, we used our “fast pass” tickets to queue for over an hour and eventually got to ride the Journey to the Centre of the Earth for the first time. After all this build up, it was predictably disappointing. But it was definitely a unique and memorable experience!
As I mentioned, we didn’t get to see many of the shows due to none of them being in English. One show that we did see was a pirate show that took place on the Mediterranean Harbour and basically consisted of actors hosing down and throwing buckets of water on the audience until they were absolutely drenched… something that I didn’t realise until we were already getting water thrown over us by a crew of pirates. Luckily, it was a very hot day and we soon dried off.
We were absolutely thrilled to find that the night time spectacular at DisneySea is our favourite night time spectacular from our time in Disney World… Fantasmic! The show itself wasn’t quite as good as in Hollywood Studios, partly because of the execution in the space available to it, and partly because we couldn’t understand the story telling. However, the actual experience of watching it was something really special… because we watched the whole thing whilst floating on the same harbour that the show was taking place on, in our very own pirate ship! It wasn’t the best angle to see the show from (unless, like us, you’re a big geek who likes catching glimpses at what’s going on behind the scenes) and because of this, we pretty much had the whole ship to ourselves. Stood on that pirate ship in Tokyo DisneySea with Nick, watching our favourite night time spectacular and the sky light up with fireworks, was one of the most magical moments of my life and such an amazing experience to round off our time at Tokyo Disney and of travelling the world.
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