A day at DisneySea in Tokyo

Japan – March 2018

A big thing on our wish list of places to visit in Tokyo is the DisneySea theme park. Along with DisneyLand it’s part of the Tokyo Disney Resort. Neither Tina nor I have been to DisneyLand before, and after talking about it to my friend Marina we can’t get it out of our minds. Located only 1 hour by train from our hotel in Akasaka, it makes for a great day trip. We buy our tickets online and take public trains to Maihama Station. There we switch to the Disney Resort monorail which takes us around the whole resort and grants some sneak peaks of what awaits us.

At the entrance to the park a japanese clerk awaits us, demanding our tickets to scan the QR codes. To her disapproval, we show her the tickets on our phones. She gets out a notebook filled with translations from japanese to various languages and points to a line which reads: Tickets must be printed. We quickly understand that arguing is no option and ask if there is any place nearby where we could print them. The lady points to another line in her little book which explains that there is a printer at the monorail station. So we walk back to the station, pay two bucks to print our tickets and return to the entrance. Seeing the paper in our hands, the lady kindly smiles at us, scans the codes and wishes us a happy day.

Having mastered this hurdle, we have a look at the park map and decide to first check out “Mysterious Island”. The area is dominated by a massive volcano which looks just as real  as every other part of the resort. While walking through the “Mediterranen Harbour” we notice how many couples there are – and they’re all wearing matching outfits. But not only the couples dressed up for their date, many groups of young people are wearing similar clothes too. And of course, most of the visitors carry some kind of Disney apparel. So Tina and I don’t only stick out because we’re foreigners, but also because we didn’t get the memo for the dress code..

Nevertheless we are granted a ride on the submarines of “20’000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Journey to the Centre of Earth”. Still blown away by the amazingly real looking attractions, we buy a little snack at one of the many vending machines and head to the “Lost River Delta”. The stone temple of the “Raging Spirits” roller coaster caught our attention on the monorail and even makes us accept the 2 hour waiting time. We join the queue of patient japanese teenagers and veery slowly progress towards the front of the line.

The first 20 minutes we spend thoroughly analyzing the jungle scenery around us. Then follow another 20 minutes of us complaining to each other about the long waiting time. Tina finally offers to go buy some hotdogs to ease the pain. While she’s away, I admire the patience of the other visitors. The guy in front of me checks his Instagram, takes a phone call, chats with his friends and generally looks very content with the whole situation. About 25 minutes later Tina returns and seems even more frustrated than before she left. She tells me how she had to queue again at the food truck and that the lady there didn’t speak much English. We devour our hotdogs and I tell her about my observations. We decide to follow the other guys example and try not to think about how long we still have to wait.

It turns out that time passes much faster if you don’t focus on it too much. After an exhilarating ride on the “Raging Spirits” roller coaster the whole waiting thing is forgotten and we continue on to discover the rest of the park. A brief stop at the “American Waterfront” transports us to New England. From there we walk across a bridge to a massiv model of the Titanic. And then we’re already back at the “Mediterranean Harbour”. We watch the couples on the Venetian gondolas while enjoying a pretty decent gelato.

In need of a bit more action we head to the last unknown part of the park. The “Arabian Coast” is one of my personal highlights. Being a big fan of Aladdin, I would not have been surprised to see a magic carpet flying over the beautiful medina with a grand mosque. We enjoy a show at the “Magic Lamp Theatre” and a boat ride on “Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage”. While those are magical experiences, they don’t really manage to still our hunger for a bit of action. And so we return to the “Lost River Delta”.

This time we skip the, still incredibly long, queue at the “Raging Spirits” and continue on to Indiana Jones’ “Temple of the Crystal Skull”. Arriving at the entrance, we notice the separate queue for single riders. We decide to give it a shot and walk past the rest of the queueing visitors. At the end of our line there are only about 5 people waiting for their turn when a car isn’t completely full. And about 4 cars later, it’s my turn already. The ride is amazing and frightening at the same time, with special effects waiting behind every corner. While I wait for Tina, I do the one thing theme park operators hate most. Instead of paying for my picture which was taken on the ride, I take a picture of the screen with my phone. Then Tina arrives and we immediately go for another round.

We end our day at DisneySea with a sunset walk to the “Castle Experience” and through Venice. 

Read more travel stories about Japan here.