Category: Uncategorized

If I would have guessed I would have guessed we would have spent 3 days in Disney Sea and two in Disneyland. I like Disney Sea better (if I had to choose, it’s just such a beautiful place) but Disneyland has more attractions so we were clear on spending our last theme park day on this trip in Disneyland.

After we rode Beauty and the Beast again we headed over to the Westernland Shootin’ Gallery. I saw them hand out a prize to someone and I wanted to investigate. Turns out there’s two badges you can win, a silver badge if you get 10 out of 10 shots. A gold badge if you hit the “lucky” target, a random one out of 62 targets that changes. I won two silver badges and Mike won a gold badge. I am still burning with jealousy.

We headed over to ride Splash Mountain one more time and had some fun logmates. Not sure what a ballaholic is but he and his girlfriend were fun to ride with.

We had the above little green men mochi the last time we were in Tokyo. I’m so glad we finally found them again. Each have a different filling, strawberry, vanilla and chocolate. Yum!

We wrapped the evening with one more ride on Beauty and the Beast. It was only around 7:45pm and we decided we were done.

What a glorious finish to an amazing theme park vacation.

Day 9 was our last Disney Sea day so we really wanted to absorb as much of this park as possible. It’s my favorite Disney Park dispute the fact it only has one of my favorite Disney rides.

We started here.

We were 20th and 21st in line for this ride, which for some reason is a huge draw for Japanese. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun game ride, and I almost always kick Mikey’s butt on it, but it’s a REALLY huge deal for the Japanese and if we didn’t ride it first thing we’re we’re likely not going to ride it at all. So we did.

And my score is on the left.

From Toy Story we went next door to Tower of Terror again and then rode the Electric Railway from the American Waterfront Port to Port Discovery.

We walked to the Lost River Delta and rode Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

The ride is very similar to the Anaheim ride with the exception of a smoke ring blowing effect that is terrific. The theming for the outside of the ride is a spectacular Mayan Pyramid. Here’s some photos from later that evening.

When we were here in 2017 we played some carnival games and won huge Chip and Dale stuffed animals. We tried again this year and didn’t win, but we loved the booby prize we got.

We attended a performance in The Magic Lamp Theater were a combo of live actors and 3D movies make for a pretty silly magic show.

We rode Sinbad again and somehow got our own boat all to ourselves. It felt very special.

we headed over to Mermaid Lagoon, a mostly indoor port, and rode some silly kids rides.

Even in a time-lapse video the Jumping Jellyfish are boring. We used it to scout out other rides.

We grabbed some lunch and headed back to the hotel for a nap. Here’s where we had lunch both days.

Refreshed, we returned and climbed aboard this steamer ship.

The views from the bow are spectacular. And I think this is the only place you can see the land in-between the park and the sea.

We walked over to Discovery Port to ride Aquatopia and Nemo again. We nearly had Aquatopia all to ourselves.

We discovered that Nemo is made like Star Tours where you get a slot machine of different scenes for each ride. We had a few different scenes this ride. It really enhance La the experience and Pixar is a master at a good story with perfectly timed comedy.

We headed over after that to ride Indy again, this time in the single rider line then Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage one more time before making our way slowly out of the park.

Tomorrow is our last day in the parks. See you then! Thanks for following along.

We took the monorail to Disney Sea around 7:15am.

This park is certainly one of the best theme parks in the world. When I describe this park from our 2017 trip I usually mention there’s not a place to stand in this park that doesn’t have a stunning view. Despite some scaffolding around a couple of parts right now, this is still true.

We started our day like the last time we were here, with the ride The Journey to the Center of the Earth.

A couple of things. First, Disney Sea is divided into “ports of call” rather than lands like a traditional Disney park, like Fantasy Land, Tomorrow Land, etc. In preparation for this trip I read the book Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. The port of call Mysterious Island is Jules Verne inspired. The book was…dated. But it did end with the adventurers being jettisoned out of the center of the earth much like happens at the peak of this ride.

To get to the ride vehicle you take an elevator down deep into the earth. (The elevator has fans imbedded in to the walls so it seems like you’re going down fast.) you then enter the ride vehicle which is the same technology as Test Track at WDW Florida and the Cars ride at Anaheim Disneyland. It moves quickly.

Inside you see bizarre flora and fauna as you traverse through caves. You finally see some weird large eggs and discover a huge underground monster mother of the eggs which you quickly race away from, shooting out of the volcano. Great ride.

Still early, we went over to Discovery Port and rode Nemo & Friends Searider. Think a supersized Star Tours virtual ride with the cast of Nemo. “New technology” allows the Searider to be shrink down to the size of a tropical fish in which you then explore the ocean reef.

This is a really fun ride. The last time we were here there was a Hank the Octopus hidden along a bridge. I couldn’t find him so I asked a cast member about it. She used a translator to tell me, “he used to be there. He must have gone for a walk.” Priceless.

Disney Sea is located right on the water, Tokyo Bay, and from many parts of the park you can actually see the ocean. It looks like it’s right on the water. In fact, there’s a monorail and road between the park and the water but they use some clever tricks to make it seem closer. like this.

This sea wall seems to be leaking from the sea but it’s just an effect to make it seem like it’s high tide.

Aquatopia was our next ride.

This is a ridiculous ride where you are scooted around on the water in trackless vehicles. The water is maybe 2-3” deep but looks a bit deeper from a distance. Silly ride.

From Discovery Port we took the Electric Railway, a little two car elevated trolly to the American Port.

This port is a combo of Long Beach from the 1920’s and Cape Cod. It is beautiful in its own way. We came here to do Tower of Terror.

This version is just fantastic. The story goes an explorer/collector, Prof. Hightower, has gotten a hold of a cursed idol statue. The idol takes revenge on Hightower…via a haunted elevator…? It’s better in Japanese. The pre show is super cool. Keep your eye on the idol…

We took a boat ride to Mysterious Island Port and then walked over to one of my all time favorite rides, Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage. Super catchy but not annoying song, great animatronics including a cute baby tiger Shandu, and terrific overall design. Best canal ride of any Disney park, hands down. If you’ve got 12 minutes to burn I got a pretty good video from our last ride. Here it is.

And some photos from the ride.

We also rode 20000 Leagues, a weird “underwater” ride kind of like submarines at Disneyland California but the water is just in the window of the vehicle. The little subs look like this.

We were both a little nappy so we headed back to the Disneyland Hotel via the monorail and took a nice long nap.

When we came back to the park we decided to grab seats for the Every Dream Has a Wish (every dream has a wish…? Must make more sense in Japanese…) water show. It was pretty spectacular. I have a video of it I still have to upload. I’ll insert the link when I have it.

Fireworks, music, boats and projections. Despite the corny line it was a fun experience.

We decided to grab a quick bite at an Italian restaurant before heading over and riding Sinbad again. We slowly meandered out of the park snapping tons of photos. Full moon.

A really fun part of leaving the park was waving goodbye to the people in the windows of the Mira Costa Hotel. They used their phone lights to wave at us exiting pedestrians and we waved back at them. They’d match the moves we made with our phones. A few made a heart with two phones so we did the same. Super silly and fun. We’re gonna try to catch some video of it tomorrow night.

Another great theme park day in a great theme park.

Thanks for following along!

I am overwhelmed where to start. I have over 180 photos and videos and we packed so much into today. This was one of the best Disney Park days I’ve ever had.

We check out of the Celebration Hotel and took the bus to the Disneyland Hotel. We dropped off our luggage and headed to wait at the gate to get early entrance into Disneyland.

The above picture is of the Beast’s Castle.

It’s the entrance to the latest ride to open at Tokyo Disneyland, Beauty and the Beast. This is where we started.

The queue is beautifully designed and you see the teapot and the candelabra arguing with the Beast (his shadow) in Japanese. I think they’re telling him to get his shit together. (I’m not super familiar with this movie. Not my fav.)

As the actual ride starts you enter the story at the feast (Be Our Guest song) then the a Beast and Belle are getting to know each other. The animatronics are top notch and the ride vehicles are trackless vehicles designed to look like big dishes.

At the end you dance with Belle and the now transformed Beast in a large ballroom. I enjoyed the ride. I’m not a big fan of this particular Disney movie but Mike is. I think I’d have enjoyed it more if I was a super fan like him. Still, it was fun so we did it again.

The sun was blazing so we stopped by a little shop and I got some sun protection beyond our sunblock. I got a Mickey towel cape thingy and Mike got a parasol.

We then headed over to ride Winnie the Pooh’s Hunny Hunt. This was a ride we were so excited to experience our last trip here. It was just as fun this time and we made some friends while standing in line. We also got stickers!

I just love this ride. Trackless technology again and wonderful design and animatronics.

Haunted Mansion had a short wait so that was our next stop.

Splash Mountain was our next ride. It was really special to ride this one since they’ve shut down all of the USA versions to make them into a Princess and the Frog ride. A couple of days ago they shut down the Anaheim Splash Mountain.

By this point it was time for lunch. We had a weird but delicious beef sandwich where the “bread” were two Mickey shaped rice patties. It was great! We also had a Kirin Lemon soda which was also delicious and our favorite! The crème brûlée churro we had was mediocre at best.

To allow our stomachs to settle after lunch we took in a couple of shows. The Country Bear Jamboree and The Tiki Room with Stitch from Lilo and Stitch.

A cast member came up to us in the tiki room and asked if we spoke English and provided us with translators for the show.

Star Tours had a 5 minute wait so we rode that. Always fun.

We headed over to the Jungle Cruise next, mainly so I could grab some pictures of hippos to post on Steve Haas’s Facebook Page.

Mike wanted to do the Baymax ride (just like the Mater ride in Cars Land at Disneyland Anaheim) so we hopped in the one hour line. We’ve seen videos of people dancing with specific dance moves to the five or so songs that rotate through. We danced on the ride.

I started to fade 15 minutes into waiting for Baymax (I always call it Betamax) so thankfully we headed back to the hotel to get our room keys and rest a bit. Our luggage was waiting for us in the room which was a nice touch.

After a well deserved nap we headed back into Disneyland and rode Thunder Mountain.

We were ready for dinner by this point so we went to Belle’s Village just outside the Beast’s castle and ate at Gaston’s Tavern. No photos (well one of the aftermath as a joke I took for Mike) but Mike had croissant with a sausage inside with a chicken bone handle, for some reason and I had a French toast sandwich. We split a Carmel apple churro.

We then went on a dark ride binge. Snow White, Peter Pan, Mickey’s Philharmagic, Pinocchio, and ended the evening with Small World.

We also took a bunch of pictures of the beautiful castle and our hotel.

And that is a wrap for today! I’ve been writing this while standing in lines at Tokyo Disney Sea. A good use of line time.

And since you stuck around this long, here’s a slide show of Its a Small World, without the song. Your welcome.

Thanks for following along!

Turns out the rain was worse than we thought. Massive flooding all over Japan. It stopped the Shinkansen trains all day Friday making the train station in Osaka crazy busy. Trains canceled and delayed.

Fortunately we left compulsively early to take the local trains to Shin-Osaka Station where the bullet train we had reserved seats on was to depart at 1:18pm. We still had to pick up reservation cards that proved we had reservations. The lines for this were really long. Mike stood in one while I stood in a shorter line to see if I could get them from the automated machines. While standing in line I saw someone push a “call” button and a woman popped her head out of a little hatch next to the machine to help him. (Think guard at the entrance to Emerald City.) When I tried everything I could and couldn’t retrieve our reservations I pushed the call button and…

…a woman popped out and helped me get my reservation cards. Whew!

Mike and I made it through the ticket gates in plenty of time to…wait for a delayed train. 🤣

Turns out everything was running late or cancelled due to the torrential rains.

We had time to grab our ekiban (bento box for the train) since our gate still hadn’t been announced.

We made it to the track and after another delay we found our reserved seats.

We read somewhere about folks who didn’t reserve seats having to stand the entire train ride. We are incredibly grateful we’d reserved as many folks (possibly from delayed or cancelled train from the day before?) had to stand for the 4 hour train ride.

We were feeling bold and energized leaving Osaka but tapped out by the time we made it to Tokyo so we caught a cab to our hotel.

We decided to spend one night in The Disney Celebration Wish Hotel. It’s the cheapest Disney hotel but it wasn’t too bad.

We grabbed some convenience store fried chicken thighs (remarkably yummy!) and some other snacks since we hadn’t had dinner. And we finally had our favorite beverage KIRIN LEMON!!

Now to bed so we can go to Disneyland tomorrow!

Thanks for following along.

The forecast said rain so Mike and I geared up with rain coat, parka and umbrellas. Little did we know…

It was raining so hard that rain was coming through our umbrellas. We went straight to Super Nintendo World and rode the Mario Cart ride again since we knew it was one of the rides we wanted to get to do at least one more time. It was just a quick 15 minute wait. We thought we’d do it again but the wait had jumped to 2 hours for standby and 1 hour for single rider. We didn’t want to do it again that bad. The crowds yesterday in Super Nintendo World we’re pretty heavy. Today it was insane due to the umbrellas.

We left SNW and decided to do do some of the indoor shows/attractions. The first we did was an Anime 4D movie (seats shake and squirt water at you) called Jujutsu Kaisen. It was interesting to see an attraction in the Anime style. The story was easy enough to follow despite the fact that it was in Japanese. Bad guy vs. good guys. Lots of fighting. Good guys win.

We hung out at Mel’s Diner to avoid the rain for a bit and had onion rings. Good ones, too.

We then stood in the rain for a bit waiting to get into Universal Monsters Rock and Roll Show.

It was a rock revue starring Beetlejuice as the host and Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Werewolf and Gay Dracula as the rock band. The songs were sung in English and the narration was all in Japanese.

Yes, Gay Dracula. Mike said the Bride of Frankenstein was the butchest one on stage. The werewolf howl was more like a little girl’s scream. The show was campy and fun.

By this time our shoes were filled with water and the rain kept coming down hard. (The forecast expected 4” of rain and possible flooding.) there was very little that we hadn’t done at least once in the park over the last two days and even less we wanted to repeat so we decided not to make ourselves suffer by just to get our money’s worth out of the tickets so we left.

We decided to eat lunch at The Sushi Diner again and were not disappointed.

We headed to the room and had a jet lag nap of a couple of hours. We spent some time using the room hairdryer to give our shoes a head start in drying out and then watched the final episode of Ted Lasso on Mike’s iPad. (Brilliant.)

For dinner Mike was conveniently craving Japanese food so we went back the the Tonkatsu place we’d eaten at on our first day. We took it back to the room this time and feasted while watching a steady stream of soaked people exit the park.

Not a bad day, all and all. Tomorrow we head to Tokyo.

Thanks for following along.

Not a bad 8 hours of sleep last night. Up a little early, but still, 8 hours! Today we plan on hitting Universal Studios Japan from open to close, 9am-8pm.

The hotel includes a pretty extensive breakfast buffet and the food was great.

We went to stand in line at the park entrance round 8:15am. We headed right over to the primary destination of the day, Super Nintendo World.

The land is meant to feel like you’ve walked into a video game. It certainly accomplishes its goal.

Watch this little slide show to get more of a sense of the theming.

We grabbed “power up bands” which allowed us to punch underneath blocks, play little challenges and ride the rides all to collect coins…like you would in a video game. The “score” was kept in a phone app.

There are two rides in this part of the park, Yoshi’s Adventure and Mario Kart: Koopa’s Challenge. The first is a kids ride that was pretty but thats about it. Mario Kart is where the fun was. Based on the video game of the same name this ride combines practical sets and virtual graphics projected in a small clear plastic visor you wear as you “drive” a cart racing against the bad guy, Bowser.

We ended up riding it multiple times. I believe I got the best score between the two of us. You’ll have to ask Mike. It’s a bit of a sore subject…

We spent over 6 hours riding rides, doing challenges and buying special popcorn holders. See Mike with his yellow star popcorn holder above.

We left Mario world and headed to the Jurassic Park ride which is a big water flume ride where you end up going down a substantial drop to escape the T-Rex. Fun drop, the rest of the ride is showing it’s age.

From there we went to a kids land featuring Snoopy, Hello Kitty, and Sesame Street themed kids rides. We did the spinning Hello Kitty Cupcakes and the Elmo Go Go Skateboard ride. Both were lame and fun at the same time.

We then did the most intense coaster at the park, The Hollywood Dreams coaster. No upside down parts but it drops from pretty high and goes damned fast. The reverse helix (see video below) nearly greyed us out. Good ride and you got to choose one of 5 songs to listen to while riding.

We were both getting tired so we thought we’d do one more go on the Harry Potter Ride if the line wasn’t too long. On our way there we saw that there was a wand choosing ceremony at Ollivander’s (if you’re a Harry Potter fan you’ll know what I’m talking about.) We went into Ollivander’s shop with 8 or 9 other people and a 7 year old kid was chosen to choose his wand, or really, to have the wand choose him. Like the book and movie the kid goes through a couple of wands before he finds one that makes the room light up (cue John William’s score from the movie franchise). The wand found the kid. And Mike and I both teared up.

After that we walked right on to the Harry Potter ride and then headed out of the park.

We didn’t eat dinner yet and I wanted to try this sushi restaurant I saw in a video on YouTube. You order from an iPad at the table and the sushi is delivered via conveyor belt to your table. (See the video below.)

It was fun and delicious.

We went to Lawson’s and got some Pocky for dessert. Stick some chopsticks in us, we are done.

Thanks for following along!

I slept some, Mike slept a little more. The room was very comfortable and the bidet made our home bidet look like something from the stone age. the seat even raises by itself when you walk into the bathroom. All these years I’ve been raising the seat by myself like a sucker.

We found the Shenkensen train platform and found a little shop that sold ekiben, bento boxes that you eat while on the bullet train. (eating on most trains is considered rude but long trips or bullet trains are the social exception.)

Inside was sort of a sticky rice with little dumplings, a small piece of chicken and some other little tasty tidbits. Mike got a karage ekiben that had some yummy chicken and rice. It felt very “Japanesey” to be eating one of these on the train to Osaka. Plus the green tea.

The Shinkensen train and a few local trains got us to the front desk of our hotel, The Park Front Hotel, at 10am.

Jet lag had me to sleep by 10:30am while Mike went on an adventure to find some allergy medication. I woke up at 12:30pm worried that Mike wasn’t back yet. Turns out he had come and gone and I slept through it. Oh, jet lag.

We grabbed a bite of lunch before heading into Universal Studios, Osaka at 3pm. Lunch was so good!

USJ is a clean cute little theme park and while it was pretty crowded it didn’t seem too crowded. Our half day park ticket had us there from 3pm until park closing at 7pm.

This park has two really popular properties right now, Harry Potter and Nintendo each of which have their own “lands.” We first made our way to Hogsmeade (the Harry Potter land.)

There we rode The Forbidden Journey of Harry Potter. We rode this in Florida back in 2012 and really enjoyed it. The dark ride smoothly flies you through a combination of practical and projected scenes all around Hogwarts Castle. It’s a remarkable piece of technology though some of the projected scenes are beginning to show their age.

There are multiple motion sickness warnings in the ride queue so I can’t see riding this one multiple times in a row. Perhaps that’s why we only had to wait for 25 minutes to ride it?

I was ridiculously excited about riding JAWS because a) I’ve never ridden this version before, I’ve only been on the “studio tour” in Hollywood Universal and seen the shark there and b) this is the last JAWS ride in the world. How to describe it…hmmm. Imagine if Disney’s Jungle Cruise ride took itself seriously and add a big shark. Plus add some universal style special effects (at Universal something has either got to catch fire or get you wet.) Despite its ridiculousness I loved it.

From there we walked around the park until we got to a land based on The Minions from Despicable Me. There we rode a Minions ride. Imagine if the vehicle from Star Tours was a convertible. The story tried to have the silliness of The Minions movies while also having the heart. It did pretty well, though my back was a bit sore afterwards. The ride vehicle really jerks around!

Our final ride was Spider-Man. Another ride with practical and projected scenes, this one takes you through on a ride vehicle similar to The Indiana Jones ride, and you have 3-D glasses to boot. The ride vehicle movement was pretty impressive, though the jerkiness didn’t help my back. The very dated projections really showed the age of the ride.

It was near closing time and we’d made it all around the park. There’s still a few places we haven’t yet visited but we got a good lay of the land look. Tomorrow we a will do a timed entry into Super Mario World, the land of Nintendo. Super excited about this!

We split a burger and fries from Shake Shack, conveniently located in our hotel. We were in bed by 8pm, asleep by 8:30pm.

Thanks for following along!