Beard Family Trips & Vacations

Tokyo from March 15 - 24, 2008

Tokyo - March 22:  DisneySea

website:  http://www.tokyodisneyresort.co.jp/index_e.html

Address of the location (from the website):   1-1, Maihama, Urayasu-shi, Chiba 279, Japan

We were given this guide and schedule in English:

• DisneySea Guide  (PDF)
• DisneySea Show Schedule   (PDF)

The DisneySea Plaza is the entrance to the park through which all visitors must pass.  You first go through the landscaped entrance gates.

You are then in a large landscaped area with a fountain and an earth globe with the Tokyo DisneySea MiraCosta Hotel in the background.  The hotel is actually within the park.

The plaza allows for character greetings and marching bands.

The Mediterranean Harbor is on the other side of the Plaza and contains many of the shops of the park.  You must pass through passageways to go through the hotel into the harbor area.  This location is used for several water shows throughout the day.  You can see the fortress and Mount Prometheus on the other side of the harbor.  Boats are used to ferry people throughout the park.

This is the harbor side of the MiraCosta Hotel.  Shops and restaurants line the first floor.

Here is one of the shows as seen from the fortress area.

Looking across the harbor from the fortress area.

The American Waterfront is a New York City waterfront type area that houses a set of shops, restaurants, a show, and the Tower of Terror.

The S. S. Columbia in the American Waterfront area has several fine dining locations and bars within it.

The show in this area is in the Big Band Beat as if it is on Broadway.

The big ticket ride here is the Tower of Terror.  We ended up getting a fastpass and returning to this in the afternoon.  The ride is similar to the other Tower of Terrors in the U.S. parks.  However, the building is obviously designed differently.  The story line is also different; here you have an adventurer, Harrison Hightower III, who stole an idol on one of his expeditions and inherited a curse from it.  This idol took Hightower and all the guests (riders) of the hotel into the Twilight Zone (though it is not called that).  This ride is in the Japanese language only.

There is actually an exhibit of the destroyed elevator and a restaurant menu.  The picture of Hightower and the idol is a poster that I was told afterward was not supposed to be photographed.  They did not want any pictures taken of the pre-show area, which is a lot different than the other Tower of Terrors.

The idol is the main part of the pre-show and you see it during the ride later on.

The electric railway goes from the American Waterfront to Port Discovery.

We first took the walk from the American Waterfront to Port Discovery and saved the electric railway until later.

If you haven't figured it out, Mount Prometheus is the central point of the park, similar to the castles in the Disneyland parks.  This is the view of it from Port Discovery and there is an entrance into it from here.

The first ride in Port Discovery that you reach is Aquotopia.  This is a small two-person boat ride that follows either one of two pre-programmed routes on either side of the boarding platform.  The wait for it was only twenty minutes, so we went ahead and did it.

The other ride here is the StormRider.  This ride is a simulator ride that goes into the eye of a storm.  Since it was similar to other simulator rides we have ridden, and the wait was over two hours, we decided to put this off until we had done everything else.  We never did find the line shorter than that, even at the end of the day.

This building houses the Horizon Bay Restaurant.  We ended up eating supper here at the end of the day when we checked on StormRider before leaving the park.  It is a buffeteria that had good food, but was a little slow in getting people through the line.  In many of the restaurants, we found that you were not supposed to clear the tables yourselves; they have service personnel whose job is to do that.  Also, no tipping is permitted in the Disney parks.

The Lost River Delta holds two of the highly desired rides in the park.  The first reached was Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull.  Even though the building and exhibits are not similar to the other parks, the ride is the same as the other one in the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim.  All of the character interaction is in Japanese.  The line was very long and we did not want to "waste" our limited fastpasses on it, but we did ride it later as single riders.  We were able to get in within less than 15 minutes by doing this.

Only three rides in this park allows single riders.  Indiana Jones, Raging Spirits, and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.  If the line is long, and you are willing to ride with people you don't know, this can be the way to go.

The Raging Spirits ride is next to Indiana Jones.  It is a roller coaster with a distinct archaeology theme for the Yucatan Peninsula; thus the Yucatan Base Camp Grill in between the two rides.   There was a 100 minute wait time for standby at the time we were there.  We wanted to ride this one, but was not able to get fastpasses at this time.  We decided not to do the single rider option, so waited about 80 minutes total time to get through it.

Here it shows three lines: the left is for fastpass riders, the middle is the single rider line, and the one of the right is the standby rider line.

More coaster pictures:

There are warning signs about the ride in several places.  This is mainly for the loop in the middle.  You see the car start on the upside of the loop on the left.

Hits the top left of the loop and then the very top.

Starts to come down the right hand side and disappears into the fog.

The loop from the other side.

The lift area as the ride start.

The unloading are after the ride finishes.

With the warnings on the ride, we anticipated a fast, rough coaster. This was based on experiences of riding over 100 different coasters throughout the United States.  However, it turned out that the coaster had a mediocre ride and was very smooth.  It was a little disappointing; especially after that long wait.

Lunch was at the Yucatan Base Camp Grill.  While Wanda waited in line and ordered the food (see crowd shot at the counter area below), I went over to the Journey to the Center of the Earth ride in Mysterious Island and got a couple of fastpasses for it for later in the afternoon.

It even has a bar area:

The Arabian Coast was the next area visited. 

There is a 2-story carousel in this large structure.

The Magic Lamp Theater is a combination live action and animation show that features the adventures of Aladdin and the genie of the magic lamp.  It is an entertaining show that is done in Japanese, but there is supposed to be a way to see English or Chinese subtitles if you ask one of the cast members.  We didn't do that, but enjoyed the show anyway.

The Mermaid Lagoon is the children's area of this park.  There is a small coaster, Flounder's Flying Fish Coaster, and another ride called Scuttle's Scooters in the outside area.  The other part of this area is Triton's Kingdom, which is an inside area that is themed as an underwater area for children.  Inside Triton's Kingdom is three rides and a play area for the children. 

There is also a musical production in the Mermaid Lagoon Theater called Under The Sea featuring Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid.  This is a live action show with special effects, costumes, and props in the fashion of the Voyage of the Little Mermaid in the Hollywood Studios park at DisneyWorld in Florida with a twist of Cirque du Soleil to it.  This show is in Japanese and has a lot of action going on all around you.  We made the mistake of sitting toward the center of the theater.  If possible, it would be best to sit toward the rear of the middle section across from where you enter the theater.  Definitely worth seeing; even if you don't have children with you.

The last area in the park is Mysterious Island, which is in the middle of Mount Prometheus.  The volcano will make noise and erupt periodically, so watch for that.  Since we had fastpasses to the Journey to the Center of the Earth, but it wasn't time yet, we decided to do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as single riders.  The single riders line for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea starts as part of the standby line, but splits off later on when a sign points the different directions.  The cars of this ride contains two seats facing toward the left, two seats facing to the front, and one seat facing to the right.  Wanda and I were both put with groups of four and sat in the single seat in each of our cars (research submarines).  The ride reminded me of the old 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea rides at Disneyland in California and the Magic Kingdom at DisneyWorld before they were removed.  Of course, this one is better themed, on a smaller scale with the vehicles, and higher quality special effects.  The single rider is the way to go for this if you can do it and there is a long line.  All speech is in Japanese.

The last ride in this area is Journey to the Center of the Earth.  This is a fast moving vehicle that takes the visitor through mysterious caverns.  All speech is in Japanese.

After the last ride, we went over to eat supper at the Horizon Bay Restaurant in Port Discovery as mentioned before.   We left the park soon after finishing our meal.

This site was last updated 04/02/08