A Date with Disney (Part One)

We had arranged to spend our second full day in Japan experiencing Tokyo Disneyland (after briefly exploring Tokyo the previous day). Tom had actually visited when he was a child, on holiday in Japan with his mother. It was to be my first ever Disneyland experience. We'd had conflicting advice from people at home. Some people's faces just lit up at the mere mention of the word 'Disneyland'. Others tactfully suggested that we spend that time seeing the "real" Japan rather than quasi-American fake Japan.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, we eventually decided to just go with it, knowing that Japanese crowds would be a sight to behold at Disneyland, and figuring that observing them in that environment was a cultural experience in itself. And after all, who wouldn't want to go back to being kids for a day?

And so, we hopped on the free shuttle bus at our hotel again, this time actually using it as it was intended - i.e. to take us to Disneyland, not just the train station. We arrived at about 8am, and hopped in line. The one thing we'd already learned well was that the Japanese are extremely good at  queueing. In a polite, orderly fashion.

And within about half an hour, we'd reached the front of the queue to be able to exchange our little booking slips with actual Disney "passports". Then we had the pleasure of moving to the back of a different, much longer line.

We occupied ourselves perusing the map of the park and attempting to copy all of the Disneyland afficionados surrounding us by formulating a park-exploration strategy. Not knowing what to expect, I got a bit overwhelmed and gave up, instead taking pictures of the Mickey-themed train passing by to keep myself amused.

Within half an hour or so, the park opened, and we joined the extremely excited crowds teeming through the gates. Here's Tom pretending to run like all of the super-keen locals.

I chose a slightly more sedate approach, and instead attempted to schmooze my way into Roy Disney's heart. Unfortunately Minnie Mouse got in first.

And so began the wonder that was Disneyland. I have to say we were both pretty overhwelmed, the minute we got inside, and the crowds sprinting past us had us completely shellshocked.

Of course, all of that anxiety was mitigated in part by the persisently cheerful music from the resident band, positioned cleverly in front of the Disney castle.

After attempting to absorb it all for a while, we decided that we needed to take a bit of a rest and re-fuel.

And what better way, than a hearty (if you can call a Japanese-sized portion hearty) breakfast?

One look at the Mickey Mouse pancakes, and I was feeling much more Disney.

We decided to just tackle the park bit by bit, and nominated the 'Cars' ride as our first target.

We almost didn't care about the ride itself, since watching the dedicated stroller parking attendant at work was pretty entertaining in itself.

And the geishas in line were good fun too.

But as we made our way closer to the front of the line, we started arguing about who would actually get to drive the car.

Since we do not make a harmonious driving team at the best of times (often Tom as driver and me as passenger involves a lot of sudden gasping and clutching of the dashboard - and not from Tom), it was decided that I would take the wheel. I was happy with that.

But decided to play it up a bit. Those cars certainly looked scary, right?

It was good fun. Unfortunately the girl driving the car in front of us was clearly struggling with the concept of steering (and accelerating for that matter), so we kept getting abruptly stopped by the magnetic sensor-ey thing that slammed on our brakes every time we got too close to the car in front.

This sign was particularly hilarious for two reasons: 1) Because it was impossible to actually get close enough to the car in front to crash that dramatically; and...

2) Because the succesion of shots Tom took included this photo of me looking like a crazy driver immediately after that sign.

This photo more closely represents our feelings about the "Cars" ride. Over-acted enthusiasm. It was good fun, but only because we were deliberately being idiots. I think the ride might be aimed at a lower age group. Surprising? Probably not.

Our next stop involved the all-important Disney-fying experiencing. In other words, buying overpriced Disney paraphernalia to be worn as headware. And loving it.

Tom's Disney character fashion parade speaks for itself.

You can see the "this is the one!!!!" grin that Tom's wearing in that last Donald Duck photo, right? I'm hoping that was his expression when he first saw me, too.

It only took me one try, and I was certain about my Disney-fying choice.

And that's how we spent the rest of the day. Disney-fied and loving it!

Tom (and Donald) enjoyed the stroller-parking joke again in the designated parking spots.

Somewhere along the line (I think it must have been before we went on the Cars ride), we'd been smart enough to get a "Fastpass" ticket for the Space Mountain ride. "Fastpass" tickets were genius. You were only allowed to have one active in a two-hour period, but it basically involved printing out a little ticket at a machine near the ride that gave you a one-hour timeframe to come back in, meaning you could skip the line, and jump almost straight to the front of the queue, as you long as you arrived at the time specified on your Fastpass ticket. You just couldn't do it for more than one ride at once, basically. So, having lockede in our Space Mountain time earlier, we eagerly shot to the front of the line. Here's Tom's "ooh I'm scared" face. Convincing?

The ride was great. It was actually our favourite ride there, in retrospect. It's basically a rollercoaster, but inside a building which is mostly pitch black, with only little pin-pricks of stars visible on the ceiling. The fact that you're in the dark going round and round at high speed and can't see what's about to happen to you makes the whole experience much more exciting.

We moved on from that, got ourselves a "Fastpass" ticket for the other mountain-themed ride, "Splash Mountain", which is obviously the most popular ride in the place, because our designated time wasn't until 5pm, and it was still only maybe 10:30 or 11am at that stage. So, we had to figure out what we planned on filling that time in with, by wandering.

The castle's pretty, there's no denying it. Loch Ness monster and all.

The rear was pretty spectacular, too!

You've got to love the spirit. Put a chirpy orchestral Disney-music soundtrack to it, and you can see why it's the happiest place on earth. Although all that happiness does start testing your patience after a while!

May I remind you that it's extremely hot in Japan in the middle of summer? Disneyland was certainly no exception. Even as tropical Brisbane residents, we were suffering. Tom got very excited when he spotted some water spraying out of a random garden feature. I stayed in the safe zone with the camera, but I'm told it was very refreshing.

We made a brief stop at "Pooh Corner". Tom got quite a kick out of the silliness of that name. What can I say, we'd made the decision to be kids, and kids we were!

And in keeping with that theme, we then paid a visit to Toontown.

I have to say, it was probably one of the most entertaining areas of the whole park.

Who doesn't love a good post-fight scene?

Particularly when you can subtly insinuate yourself in it and make excruciating facial expressions?

The excruciating facial expressions continued when I tried to get someone to open this extra small door. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Probably just as well. It may not have been good for my ego to have to attempt to get through it.

But the excruciating facial expressions stopped when we discovered Tom's favourite thing, as clearly evidenced by his face. Free water!!!

We'd been assessing our food options as we'd been wandering (not just through Toontown, but through the rest of the park), and hadn't found anything theme-park-ish enough to tempt us to hand over our Yen. Particularly in that heat and humidity, the prospect of Japanese curry in the guise of some kind of Western cowboy fare just didn't appeal.

But Toontown solved that problem for us. Pizza in a Mickey Mouse shape? How could we refuse! As a rule, I prefer to only ever consume food if it matches my outfit perfectly, so this was right up my alley.

A burger with buns in the shape of webbed duck feet, where have you been all our lives?

Sustained by that little extremely nutritious snack, we moved on to 'It's a Small World'.

Ah the cheerfulness. You just can't beat it! You have to join it.

Even the gates are excessively cheerful!

The best part? The room was air conditioned. You can see the resultant expression of bliss on Tom's face.

With an introduction like this... "Welcomes you to the magic kingdom of all the world's children", we were excited to see what came next.

It was good fun, although certainly one of the less exhiliarating experiences of my life. Not surprisingly, the little boat cruise contained views of a whole bunch of little mechanical dolls dressed up in various national costumes from countries around the world, singing "It's a small world" on a loop. It was very cute.

Any guesses as to which country this was?

No guessing required for the girls on the left! What about the right?

We hit the hot and humid outdoors once again, wishing that someone had written a few more verses to that song, and desperately trying to get the one verse out of our heads. And we changed pace a bit, moving on to an impressive replica of the Swiss Family Treehouse.

We actually couldn't even tell that the tree was a fake until we went up and tapped one of the trunks, and found that it sounded hollow.

I can't say the furnishings are in my taste exactly...

But the view from the top wasn't bad! Plus the breeze was just what we needed after climbing all of those stairs.

And on the topic of just what we needed, we decided that a snack in the form of soy sauce popcorn would be our next adventure. It was... interesting.

Then, with our popcorn in hand, we settled down to watch the "One Man's Dream" Disney show.

And that's when we got our real taste of the Disney brand of happiness.

Mickey wooed Minnie...

The all-singing, all-dancing princesses twirled around the stage...

There were A Bug's Life can-can dancers (sort of)...

Peter Pan rescued Wendy...

Donald Duck showed off his diversity in Hollywood, and perhaps more importantly, found Daisy...

And Mickey and Minnie brought the show home with a flourish of gold streamers.

It was pretty darn entertaining, even for someone that didn't actually watch most of the Disney movies until I was in my teens (I had a sheltered childhood).

But all of that glitz and glamour on stage was just a taste of the next item on our agenda, the afternoon parade! We managed to find ourselves quite a good little spot with a view to the castle, and settled ourselves in for the fun. This little girl was less willing to settle in, and entertained the crowd with her princess dancing in the middle of the street.

This post is too long already though, so I'm going to split the rest of the day into another post. Stay tuned for that tomorrow! We stayed until after the spectacular night parade, so there's plenty more to come! Ooh the suspense!