JAPAN 2024 - Tokyo Disneyland (May 27)

 AA and Lola were up well before 5am this morning, not being able to sleep any longer.  They spent some time on the couch, where AA read his book and Lola watched a movie on her iPad. Once others had awoken, AA made himself single serve coffee and AA had some green tea that was powered.  We both enjoyed our drinks.

We all got ready and headed to Tokyo Disneyland Hotel for Breakfast at Sherwood Garden Restaurant. B was sure excited for the Buffet!  There was a variety of food, including soups, pastries, rice, potato casserole, steam buns, and so much more.  We all tried some different dishes, and enjoyed the meal. Only a few things were left on the plates after sampling many things.

Once done we headed to Tokyo Disneyland for our first park day!  It was right outside the hotel we ate breakfast at, and we had  Happy Entry as we are hotel guests, so we got to go in a shorter line.  There were sure a lot of people there.

Once AA got his bagged checked, it started to rain.  We walked with the crowd so we could see the castle.  It is sure pretty! For once we didn’t have a “plan” of what we were going to do when.  So we looked at the wait times, and headed to Pooh’s Honey Hunt.  This may have been my favourite right of the day. It is nothing like the Winnie the Pooh ride in America.

Then we headed to Pinocchio’s Daring Journey. This ride had some new and old elements, but most of us hadn’t been on the ride before so it was a new experience. After this one we headed to It’s a Small World. This ride was also a crowd favourite, and felt like a mixture of Disney world and Disneyland California.

It was fun to see all the Disney characters. And the colours were amazing.

Then we went to Snow Whites Adventure.  MBMell and DD had been this ride before on their honeymoon in Florida, but the rest of us hadn’t.  It was another cart ride travelling along with the story. Each cart had a name of a seven dwarf, and it was funny because we were trying to guess which one AA and DD would be in… Turns out it was Sleepy, very fitting.

We went off to Tomorrowland as we bought a premier pass for The Happy Ride with Baymax (as we didn’t want to wait over 2 hours in line for this ride and it was a must do, as this ride will be down for maintenance when we come back a the End of our trip.

We all enjoyed the whipping around, and the music of this ride, but not sure we would have felt the same way if we would have waited so long.  Near this ride there was a cat vending machine.  It was pretty cute.

We left Tomorrowland and headed to New Orleans for the Pirates of the Caribbean.  This was a fun game, To my Mom.  It was very similar to Disneyland California.

We then walked to the enchanted tiki Room: Stitch presents Aloha E Komo Mai!  This was modified to include Stitch, not just the tropical birds and tiki walls signing. Oh I should mention majority of the signing and voices on all the rides are in Japanese.  This one was hard to follow the story, but still catchy tunes with the birds and Stitch signing away.

We mobile ordered at Grandma Saras Kitchen.  It was very busy, but eventually found a table. Lola at the allergy item of vegetable curry with rice, while the others had the chicken plate with 3 types of chicken, 1 piece of broccoli and rice. DD tried the seafood plate, which he wasn’t impressed with.  3 of them had cheesecake which was a debate of weather it was vanilla or lemon. 

After we refueled, we were all feeling the jet lag, but really tried to power through it. We waited in line for over an hour, but chatted about school, books, libraries and many other things while waiting for Haunted Mansion.  General census was that it was a little scarier than the others we have been in, but still a good ride.

The lines got longer in the afternoon, so DD gave the kids his phone to play connect 3 to pass the hour wait for Monsters Inc, Ride & Seek!  We got flashlights and could sign on the hard hats to make things move up and down.  

We then found a spot for the special parade Quacky Celebration * Donald the Legend! The respect of the people watching the parade was amazing. Everyone stayed sitting, put down their umbrellas when the parade started and were very respectful.  People brought their own mats to sit on and even took off their shoes on the concrete ground.

Kids got their Churros.

The parade had so many people dressed like ducks.  We didn’t know there could be so many variations of duck costumes. We were a little confused when Pete came by and there was a long gap in the parade, but then the parade came back the other way.  The song was catchy “oh oh we love Donald Duck”  “he is our favourite duck”.  It was pretty good.

Off to tune Town to get some food for Lola, as the options aren’t great and we had to get there before it closed.  She enjoyed 2 sausages on a “stick” which was actually a real bone from what animal, we don’t know. 

We headed back across the park to catch The Country Bear Theater, Vacation Jamboree.  This was Lolas favourite show of the day.  The songs were so catchy and the bears were so themed, and we didn’t hear all the clicking of the eyes like in America.  The songs were American but language was in Japanese. It was so fun!

Back across the park again, we went to Tomorrowland Terrace.  Everyone enjoyed their Baymax burger. The kids were crashing hard, but made it through.  DD and T headed back to the hotel, while the rest of us waited for the Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade.  It was amazing.  The millions of lights were so vibrant, and changed colour and was just brilliant.

The 4 of us headed back to the hotel, where AA noticed we found a bus that would take us to the hotel.  It was so nice to hop on a bus and not have to walk all the way back.

We stopped at the front desk to get tickets for tomorrow as well as get a few snacks and some really dry beer.  

The weather was raining off and on today, but we had a great day. It was about 24 degrees and partly sunny.  

We had a great day!