I am going to go ahead and admit that I am the worst ever gaijin (foreigner) and that Tokyo Disney Sea and Disneyland were my favorite part of our Japan trip. They were just so Disney. Also so Japanese. It. Was. Amazing.
First off, we stayed at the swank
Ambassador Hotel. Our room was huge, it was pool view, the hotel was gorgeous and decked out for Christmas. It was a top caliber Disney hotel but let's be honest. The best part was all of the Disney toiletries.
I mean, just look at these.
We ate dinner in the hotel the first night and the finale was this dessert where everything on this plain white plate was edible.
The next day, breakfast was decidedly more low key as we sat in weird picnic lines and waited to be the very first to be let in
Disney Sea early.
Because of the population density in Tokyo and the crowds at Disney, it's a big deal to be let in the park early so tons of people camp out early in the morning. We were those people. Here's how excited I was to have those early entry tickets.
Also, I totally saw a Japanese dude taking a selfie with his early entry passes like that, so of course I had to do it too. Okay, so we got into the park and we were the first passengers that day on Tower of Terror!
For those of you who like the American version of the ride, this one had to be thematically different because I think Old Hollywood and Twilight Zone wouldn't really make sense in Japan as a theme, so there was a weird explorer/tiki theme and the effects were spectacular.
One of the lands we really loved was Little Mermaid Lagoon.
We saw this young Japanese couple checking out the restaurant in the Lagoon and the girl was fawning over these burgers with buns made to look like shells and her boyfriend just gave us a look like, oh jeez, chicks be crazy about Little Mermaid! Truth (just wait until you see my blog post coming this Friday).
We also really loved Mysterious Island, which is designed around Jules Verne novels (of which we are big fans.)
They also had gondola rides through fake Italy complete with singing in Italian, but jokes about gondolas in Japanese.
The next day we did
Tokyo Disneyland. Here I am waiting in the early morning line picnic with my sandwiches!
The second day we were the first riders on Space Mountain, the absolute very first! The weirdest and most Japanese part of that was that when the opened the gates for the ride, we were led in (the whole way) by a Japanese woman who politely let us know where to watch our step and where to turn. The most amazing part, though, was that either intentionally or unintentionally they didn't have all of the lights actually turned on yet for the roller coaster. Let me tell you, it feels about 10x faster when there are not as many visual references in the room.
So the thing about Tokyo Disneyland is that it is pretty similar to the American parks, so we didn't actually take many pictures that day other than Eddy in front of the castle,
and me with my new BFF.
Nicci + 2 of hearts forever!
Next up: Hiroshima.
