So Friday evening I ate my dinner, cleaned my apartment, and then showered and did my hair, basically like I would for a plane ride. Then I packed my bag, ran around the house three or four times, trying to figure out if I`d remembered everything I would need, and headed out the door just before 9PM. I got into Nagoya around 10:30, which was good because it gave me a long time to figure out where exactly I was supposed to pick up this night bus. Things I Don`t Recommend: Trying to find a highway bus meeting place in the dark, in a city you haven`t been to in five years, where they don`t speak English, and not having a really great description of this meeting place. But thanks to my broken Japanese, the Japanese printout of my bus ticket, and a nice station worker, I was able to find my spot with about fifteen minutes to spare. The problem was that this was also the meeting area for about five other bus companies, so you had to be really careful and listen closely to everything they were saying in Japanese in order to know when they were actually calling for your bus. But, I made it onto the bus, wired as hell, and proceeded to not really sleep for the seven hours we spent on the highway.
I got into Disneyland at about 7:15AM, and then waited for about half an hour to go through bag check because it bottlenecks like whoa. Ros had apparently had a great spot in the entrance queues with our tickets, but I persuaded her to get out of line and check to see if we could exchange our passes for a 2-day pass and get into DisneySea the next day (they were sold out when she bought the tickets in advance a couple weeks ago). I met up with her when she was at the ticket booth, the nice man in the booth said that was no problem, and there was excessive squealing, jumping, and grinning (from me; Ros just kind of smiled and rolled her eyes at me). Then we had to get back in the entrance line, much further back than Ros was originally positioned (WORTH IT), and wait for the gates to open at 8AM. We followed the throngs of people through the gates, got a locker for my overnight bag, and beelined it to get fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear. Once we grabbed those, we went and stood in the standby line for Star Tours. I got to do a version of the ride I don`t think I`ve done before, visiting Kashyyyk and an asteriod field before going to help destroy the Death Star. Good times. My favourite part is the wookie who is totally shaking his fist and telling us to get off his lawn as we leave the planet. I`ve decided to name him Carl. Carl the wookie.
We did a lot of back and forth across the park all day, due to the intense crowds and the times/availability of our fastpasses. I choose to believe this means we were totally okay to eat whatever the hell we wanted all weekend because we were wearing it off around the park. Anyway. From Tomorrowland we headed across the park to Adventureland, where Pirates of the Caribbean was, sadly, closed (that line always moves fast, and it was the first ride we ever did at Tokyo Disneyland, so it`s kind of a "must do"). The line for Jungle Cruise extended across most of Adventureland (not an exaggeration), so with an emphatic "Oh hell no," we instead elected to go over to the Enchanted Tiki Room. The Tiki Room at Tokyo is unique, because it`s been taken over by Stitch. They offer translation boxes into English, kind of like portable subtitles for the attraction, so Ros got one to test it out. It was entertaining to see which Hawai`ian phrases they would translate into English, and which ones they would leave in Hawai`ian. I think this is the first time in a long time that I haven`t wanted to bury my head in the sand following a Tiki Room experience.
Then it was time for the Christmas parade! Yaaaaay! This was significantly shorter than the ones I'm used to in the States, comprised of only five or six floats. But they were still very pretty, and full of characters. Ros was disappointed by the lack of Santa at the end of the parade (they made up for it the next day, trust me).
For anyone who cares, these are the same deer used in the Christmas parade at Disneyland in California (the ones at WDW in Florida look like moose and are vaguely terrifying).
After the parade we wandered a bit, did some shopping, and took so many pictures of lamp posts. ...Okay, I took pictures of lamp posts. Ros rolled her eyes like the long-suffering friend that she is. Lamp posts are awesome. We then trekked back to Tomorrowland (for possibly the third or fourth time at this point; I wasn't kidding about the back and forth) to use our fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear. I got my ass handed to me for the first time in a very long time.
That's Ros on the left with 43,100 and me on the right with only 14,200. I'm slightly ashamed.
In World Bazaar (Tokyo's Main Street area, which has a glass roof over it) we came across a man from Vancouver who can play the piano while riding a bicycle.
We went over to Splash Mountain and jumped on as single riders, so that we wouldn't have to wait in the ridiculous line (frankly, I'm surprised Ros even goes on this ride after we got relatively stuck in the line for three hours the first time we were there. I have yet to live that down). Then Ros decided that she wanted popcorn. You cannot possibly comprehend the lines for food this weekend. People waited in line for an hour for popcorn. I think Ros only waited maybe 30 or 40 minutes, though. Only. In the meantime, I ducked in and out of the shops in Adventureland. While I was waiting for Ros after I finished shopping, a boatload of pirates rolled up and started playing instruments. Literally. They came in on a boat on wheels with instruments. It was awesome.
We had fastpasses for Haunted Mansion (Nightmare Before Christmas holiday edition; I swear someday I'll ride that ride when it's normal), so we did that. Ros also thought that "it's a small world" had a special Christmas version, and it didn't really have a line, so we rode that. It did not have a Christmas version. It was the same torture it always is. We did some more shopping, and I got an early Christmas present in the form of an Elsa tiara that I kind of fell in love with (and a girl needs to own three tiaras, you know). Towards the end of the day, we headed over to Toontown to check out the holiday decorations on the characters' houses before parking ourselves by the Partners statue to wait for Once Upon a Time, a nighttime projection show on Cinderella castle.
Heffalumps and Woozles taking over Cinderella Castle.
We had a late dinner at Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall before I headed out early to check into my hostel. I was exhausted by this point, so I pretty much just signed in and went to bed, since I had to be up by 5:15AM the next morning anyway.
With my hair braided over my shoulder and my Elsa tiara firmly in place on my head, I was back out the hostel doors by 6AM, ready and raring to go for our day at DisneySea! Again, this mostly consisted of me running around like a madwoman, taking pictures of all of the Christmas decorations, especially those on lamp posts. I was convinced to let go of my desire to ride Toy Story Mania, because the line for getting fastpasses takes about an hour. Instead we headed next to it, to Tower of Terror, to get fastpasses for that instead. This day was a lot of back and forth across the park again, earning our meals while avoiding all of the craziest lines.
I got to do a few attractions I'd never done before, which was really cool. We accomplished a lot in that first hour of the day, when most of the park's population was waiting for Toy Story fastpasses. We did Magic Lamp Theater on the Arabian Coast (Agrabah), which is a combination live show-3D movie. Very cool. And easy to understand, even if you don't really speak Japanese! There was one point where one of the actors made a joke that I swear no one was laughing at except Ros and I. But we're used to that.
By doing copious amounts of walking and having Ros ask every cast member at every restaurant we came across, we managed not to wait for more than an hour for anything all day, including food. I was sort of set on the croquette sandwich they have at Mermaid Lagoon, because we have them every time we go there and they're delicious. But we got in line and then it just stopped moving. My blood sugar was getting low, and I was getting cranky, plus we had won tickets to an afternoon show in one of the theatres (hurray!), so time was kind of a concern. Ros convinced me that we could let the croquettes go, too, and we went to this sandwich place in the American Harbourfront. I now have a new favourite eatery at DisneySea. The sandwich I had was amazing. Smoked salmon and shrimp on a bagel with avocado sauce and cream cheese - yum!
The show we saw, Big Band Beat, was phenomenal. I'm a fan of old-style jazz (go away, Michael Buble), and that's all this show was, along with a Christmas segment that was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see, being at Disney for a holiday celebration. Also, Mickey plays the drums. Not even kidding.
We rode some more rides after that, including my personal favourite, StormRider. Then it was time to stake out decent places for almost an hour and a half for Fantasmic, which I've never seen in Tokyo. I stayed to guard our spots while Ros made a trip back to the American Harbourfront for hot chocolate and Olaf sugar cookies.
We grabbed some dinner at Horizon Bay (the character dining half of the restaurant was already closed, so we had normal dinner) and generally enjoyed being indoors and out of the chill coming off the ocean through the park. After that was a bit more shopping on our way out. Ros came with me to find my bus stop, and I boarded to head back to Nagoya overnight. I slept a lot more on this trip than the one there. I'm not sure if it was because I didn't have the excitement of Disney waiting for me, or if I was just so exhausted that I didn't care about my comfort and surroundings anymore. Likely the second one. We pulled into Nagoya just after 6AM, and I hopped on my train back home.
I'm definitely looking forward to my next Disney vacation already, but never on a long weekend again, and never without a couple dining reservations in place.
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