Hi, long time no post. Thought I'd share my day at Disneysea with you all, took some pretty cool photos if I may say so myself!
Before I went, I knew that both Tower Of Terror and Journey would be closed throughout the whole of May. Seems odd that a park would close their two main rides at the same time, but I've been on them before so I wasn't massively disappointed. I went with my girlfriend who is neither a theme park fan, nor a Disney fan. She's been to DLP with me before (and a few other parks like Alton Towers), but she mainly just goes for me.
Started off in Shinjuku, the opposite side of Tokyo, at around 7:45am. Nice and early as I thought it's gonna be a massive queue to get through the ticket gates. Got to the park at 8:40am, just after opening, and there was no queue whatsoever.
This entrance never gets old, and the amount of times I've tried to recreate it in Rct is ridiculous. We went through the entrance, stopping at the various gift shops on the way (The real reason why my girlfriend agrees to come to theme parks). This is more so where it became a bit more crowded, with lots of people already sitting down ready for some show that wasn't supposed to be on for another like 5 hours.
We took a turn to the left and headed towards Toy Story Mania. Knowing that Journey and ToT were closed, Toy Story Mania is the logical first-fastrack-stop. We stopped on the way to take some pretty pictures of Venice that looks better than real Venice.
When we got to Toy Story Mania, it was already at 100 minute queue and the Fastrack was 19:15 - 20:15, so we grabbed the pass and went on our way. Gotta say that I love how this area looks though, and I knew it'd look fantastic at night by the amount of light bulbs everywhere.
We headed through the rest of America, taking pictures as we go of one of the most beautiful areas of a theme park ever created. It feels so real, or what I would have imagined it to feel like in 1900s/1910s America. I love the train overhead, the buildings look and feel fantastic and of course the giant ship is just the icing on the cake.
We eventually got round to the Port Discovery area and went on our first couple of rides. Aquatopia had about a 15 minute wait and was good fun. Would be great if they added a few more water features; more fountains, or sprinklers or something, just to make it feel a little more interactive. Still, was a good choice for first ride as this was the shortest the queue was throughout the whole day!
After this, we lined up for Nemo. I knew that there was gonna be at least one ride that we had to queue up for, while we could probably manage Fastrack for everything else, and Nemo ended up being the one. The queue was about 40 minutes in total, so not awful. We didn't have much of a clue what was happening with our broken Japanese, other than we could see we went into a fish and then got shrunk. After that it was a typical Disney simulator ride. Good fun, but nothing incredible.
After this, we headed up to the Lost River Delta, noticing along the way how pretty the park is no matter where you look. It really does go to show you the level of detail that Disney imagineers go into when building/designing these parks.
We got round to Indiana Jones/Raging Spirits and saw the queuelines, said nope, took some pictures and continued walking. The area is very much like half of Adventureland at DLP, with the dense foliage and basically the exact same rides in Raging Spirits and Indiana Jones at DLP. I think Indy at DLP is a bit more photogenic, Raging Spirts was hard to get any unique angles of.
The Arabia area was next, which we headed there purely for Sinbad. I had the app on my phone for queue times (Although it Japanese so it was a bit of a game trying to decipher it again) and saw it was walk on. We were both pleasantly surprised by it! It was great, the music was good, the animatronics were fantastic, the story was easy to follow and it had a feel of a more up to date Small World style attraction. Really good fun, and from what I've heard, it's always walk on so definitely worth a go.
After this it was time to nip back to Raging Spirits and get the fastrack for that, before heading round the rest of Arabia. I think Arabia was my surprise area of the visit. It felt much more immersive than I remembered, and while there wasn't much to do in terms of rides, we spent a lot of time just mooching around.
Next stop was Mermaid Lagoon, and another shock area. Last time I was here, I didn't go down into the area, so only saw the outside. My girlfriends reaction to this area is also the reason why I think no matter who you are, how much you like/hate Disney and/or theme parks, you still have to visit Disney theme parks. She was amazed by the colours and the smell and the atmosphere. The area is full of kids rides, so we didn't really do any of the rides, but we did see the show! Which was fun to see some overly happy Japanese guys running around dressed as the sea, holding puppets of Sebastian and Flounder while a ginger girl flies around the room doing somersaults.
When the show was done, it was time for Raging Spirits, so we headed back round there. The ride it's self was very nice. It sounds weird to say for the ride type it is, but it was probably the smoothest coaster I've ever done. It was like riding on a wave of butter through a temple of fire that only made the butter even smoother. I think the layout is identical to DLP, and again, good fun but it's more the theming around it that is incredible. From the outside, there's not many vantage points, but in the queue the whole thing looks amazing.
Some of the pictures aren't great, but the queue moved so fast I didn't have much time to grab better ones.
After this, we grabbed a fastrack for Indiana Jones and then completed our circle around the park by stopping at Mysterious Island. We did 20,000 leagues while we were there which was okay, but I think the one at Legoland Windsor is actually better. Still, the queueline theming was amazing.
After this point, I can't really remember what we did in what order, so I'll just quickly go through it. We went back to Indiana Jones at some point, and it was fantastic. Again, a ride I didn't do last time so didn't know what to expect. It was really unique with the ride vehicles and probably my favourite ride of the day.
We did a few more rides around, like all the transport rides to get some nice pictures, the Flying Fish coaster and a couple of little flats, as well as fitting in lunch at the Japanese restaurant in the American area.
We also had dinner at Magellans eating off the really fancy menu. It cost the equivalent of £100 for both of us, but it was pretty nice to be fair. Wouldn't do it again though. The only problem was we didn't realise that it'd take us like an hour and a half to get through the 5 course menu, so we ended up rushing a bit towards the end as it was coming up to 8pm, nearly time up on the Toy Story Mania fastrack. On the way to Toy Story Mania, we realised the night show was on on the lake, so we ended up saying **** it and just watched that instead. We did Toy Story at DLP, not in a rush to do it again.
We spent the last hour or so just going around and taking night time pictures. I wanted another ride on Raging Spirits, but it was back up to a 40 minute queue and couldn't be bothered.
Overall, a fantastic day. It was great to get back out to the park and not really queue for anything but still get around on everything at least once. I think it's a park every enthusiast has to visit some day, it just blows everything else out of the water.
Picture dump:
Thanks for reading! Sorry it wasn't too exciting, I just wanted to share some pictures moreso than anything.
Before I went, I knew that both Tower Of Terror and Journey would be closed throughout the whole of May. Seems odd that a park would close their two main rides at the same time, but I've been on them before so I wasn't massively disappointed. I went with my girlfriend who is neither a theme park fan, nor a Disney fan. She's been to DLP with me before (and a few other parks like Alton Towers), but she mainly just goes for me.
Started off in Shinjuku, the opposite side of Tokyo, at around 7:45am. Nice and early as I thought it's gonna be a massive queue to get through the ticket gates. Got to the park at 8:40am, just after opening, and there was no queue whatsoever.
This entrance never gets old, and the amount of times I've tried to recreate it in Rct is ridiculous. We went through the entrance, stopping at the various gift shops on the way (The real reason why my girlfriend agrees to come to theme parks). This is more so where it became a bit more crowded, with lots of people already sitting down ready for some show that wasn't supposed to be on for another like 5 hours.
We took a turn to the left and headed towards Toy Story Mania. Knowing that Journey and ToT were closed, Toy Story Mania is the logical first-fastrack-stop. We stopped on the way to take some pretty pictures of Venice that looks better than real Venice.
When we got to Toy Story Mania, it was already at 100 minute queue and the Fastrack was 19:15 - 20:15, so we grabbed the pass and went on our way. Gotta say that I love how this area looks though, and I knew it'd look fantastic at night by the amount of light bulbs everywhere.
We headed through the rest of America, taking pictures as we go of one of the most beautiful areas of a theme park ever created. It feels so real, or what I would have imagined it to feel like in 1900s/1910s America. I love the train overhead, the buildings look and feel fantastic and of course the giant ship is just the icing on the cake.
We eventually got round to the Port Discovery area and went on our first couple of rides. Aquatopia had about a 15 minute wait and was good fun. Would be great if they added a few more water features; more fountains, or sprinklers or something, just to make it feel a little more interactive. Still, was a good choice for first ride as this was the shortest the queue was throughout the whole day!
After this, we lined up for Nemo. I knew that there was gonna be at least one ride that we had to queue up for, while we could probably manage Fastrack for everything else, and Nemo ended up being the one. The queue was about 40 minutes in total, so not awful. We didn't have much of a clue what was happening with our broken Japanese, other than we could see we went into a fish and then got shrunk. After that it was a typical Disney simulator ride. Good fun, but nothing incredible.
After this, we headed up to the Lost River Delta, noticing along the way how pretty the park is no matter where you look. It really does go to show you the level of detail that Disney imagineers go into when building/designing these parks.
We got round to Indiana Jones/Raging Spirits and saw the queuelines, said nope, took some pictures and continued walking. The area is very much like half of Adventureland at DLP, with the dense foliage and basically the exact same rides in Raging Spirits and Indiana Jones at DLP. I think Indy at DLP is a bit more photogenic, Raging Spirts was hard to get any unique angles of.
The Arabia area was next, which we headed there purely for Sinbad. I had the app on my phone for queue times (Although it Japanese so it was a bit of a game trying to decipher it again) and saw it was walk on. We were both pleasantly surprised by it! It was great, the music was good, the animatronics were fantastic, the story was easy to follow and it had a feel of a more up to date Small World style attraction. Really good fun, and from what I've heard, it's always walk on so definitely worth a go.
After this it was time to nip back to Raging Spirits and get the fastrack for that, before heading round the rest of Arabia. I think Arabia was my surprise area of the visit. It felt much more immersive than I remembered, and while there wasn't much to do in terms of rides, we spent a lot of time just mooching around.
Next stop was Mermaid Lagoon, and another shock area. Last time I was here, I didn't go down into the area, so only saw the outside. My girlfriends reaction to this area is also the reason why I think no matter who you are, how much you like/hate Disney and/or theme parks, you still have to visit Disney theme parks. She was amazed by the colours and the smell and the atmosphere. The area is full of kids rides, so we didn't really do any of the rides, but we did see the show! Which was fun to see some overly happy Japanese guys running around dressed as the sea, holding puppets of Sebastian and Flounder while a ginger girl flies around the room doing somersaults.
When the show was done, it was time for Raging Spirits, so we headed back round there. The ride it's self was very nice. It sounds weird to say for the ride type it is, but it was probably the smoothest coaster I've ever done. It was like riding on a wave of butter through a temple of fire that only made the butter even smoother. I think the layout is identical to DLP, and again, good fun but it's more the theming around it that is incredible. From the outside, there's not many vantage points, but in the queue the whole thing looks amazing.
Some of the pictures aren't great, but the queue moved so fast I didn't have much time to grab better ones.
After this, we grabbed a fastrack for Indiana Jones and then completed our circle around the park by stopping at Mysterious Island. We did 20,000 leagues while we were there which was okay, but I think the one at Legoland Windsor is actually better. Still, the queueline theming was amazing.
After this point, I can't really remember what we did in what order, so I'll just quickly go through it. We went back to Indiana Jones at some point, and it was fantastic. Again, a ride I didn't do last time so didn't know what to expect. It was really unique with the ride vehicles and probably my favourite ride of the day.
We did a few more rides around, like all the transport rides to get some nice pictures, the Flying Fish coaster and a couple of little flats, as well as fitting in lunch at the Japanese restaurant in the American area.
We also had dinner at Magellans eating off the really fancy menu. It cost the equivalent of £100 for both of us, but it was pretty nice to be fair. Wouldn't do it again though. The only problem was we didn't realise that it'd take us like an hour and a half to get through the 5 course menu, so we ended up rushing a bit towards the end as it was coming up to 8pm, nearly time up on the Toy Story Mania fastrack. On the way to Toy Story Mania, we realised the night show was on on the lake, so we ended up saying **** it and just watched that instead. We did Toy Story at DLP, not in a rush to do it again.
We spent the last hour or so just going around and taking night time pictures. I wanted another ride on Raging Spirits, but it was back up to a 40 minute queue and couldn't be bothered.
Overall, a fantastic day. It was great to get back out to the park and not really queue for anything but still get around on everything at least once. I think it's a park every enthusiast has to visit some day, it just blows everything else out of the water.
Picture dump:
Thanks for reading! Sorry it wasn't too exciting, I just wanted to share some pictures moreso than anything.
