Part 1 - Breaking Disney Rules.
Jared had to catch a train from Hamamatsu (where he was spending the week working) to Tokyo Disney on Saturday morning. He obviously wanted to get to the park as soon as he could after opening (which was at 8:00am) so he left Hamamatsu at 6am. If you aren't sure where Hamamatsu is, it's about half way between Tokyo and Kyoto, on the water. It took Jared about 1.5 hours to get to Tokyo Disney from there and he arrived just after 8:30am and was in the park by just before 9:00am (he had to store his luggage first as he was headed into Tokyo that night before flying home the next day).
He had already broken Disney rule number one, arrive BEFORE opening. This is especially important at Tokyo Disney because the locals all show up at least an hour before opening and know how to use Fastpass (FP) effectively (and as a result FPs are often all gone by lunchtime or early afternoon). On top of this, it was a Saturday (weekends are apparently nightmarishly crowded at Tokyo Disney). On top of that is was summer. The
crowd calendar we use to gauge when to visit the Tokyo Disney Resort also stated the day would fall into the busiest category possible, black. (FYI if you want to use this crowd calendar effectively you can find instructions about it in my pre-trip report for our last Tokyo Disney trip
here). All in all, I was a little nervous for him and how he was going to manage to navigate the park, knowing he'd get in about an hour after opening, and have to deal with such huge crowds!
So, did breaking the Disney rules pay off? I'd like to say "no", it's always a good idea to have a plan, show up early and follow it. And yet.....Jared had a morning of #winning at the park (yes, I know that's corny but there is no other way to explain it!). There were a lot of people around but waits were no more than 90 minutes for most rides throughout the morning, and only 50 minutes when he arrived. I say "most rides" because there were exceptions, but I'll get to that in a minute.
Anyway, knowing it would be busy Jared's plan was to knock out a number of rides out first thing and then concentrate on exploring the park and taking pictures for the rest of the day. Tokyo DisneySea is, without a doubt, the MOST beautiful theme park on the planet, and we both could easily spend all day just wandering around it and not doing anything!
The ride plan was this:
- Get Journey to the Centre of the Earth FP
- Ride Indiana Jones as a single rider
- Get Tower of Terror FP
- Use Journey FP
- Ride 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
- Get Finding Nemo SeaRider FP
- Ride Tower of Terror
- Ride Finding Nemo SeaRider
Amazingly this all pretty much went off without a hitch and Jared did not wait any longer than 20 minutes for any of the rides, plus got all the FPs he needed easily! The only hitch was that Journey to the Centre of the Earth went down during his FP window. When it finally came back up it was early afternoon but Jared just happened to pass by JUST as it opened, and got on easily with his FP (which they honoured even though it was well past the return window). As he got off the ride, the FP line had gotten crazy long. To top it off, the standby wait wasn't even open but the park was honouring all FPs that were obtained before the ride went down and so it was LONG! So he definitely had good luck getting there just as they were reopening it!
Anyway, though the crowd calendar predicted that crowds would be INSANE (and I was expecting 5-6 hour waits for most things by mid-day) it wasn't really that much busier than when we visited for the first time with middling crowds in November 2013. I wondered how that could be, after all Tokyo Disney was known for it's awful crowds, particularly during summer and definitely on weekends. Where were all the crowds...
Well the answer was..... in this line:
It turns out that, though advertised to open on the 23 July (and it was the 20 July), Tokyo DisneySea's version of Soarin' Over the World (called Soaring, Flight of Fantasy) was either opened early or in soft openings. The waits were around 3 hours most of the morning, and the line snaked its way from the front of Mediterranean Harbour to Mysterious Island! The ride ended up closing mid-afternoon, so I'm guessing it was more a soft opening. Between that, and the line for Toy Story Midway Mania (which never gets much under a 2 hour wait), Jared had finally discovered where all the crowds had gone.
We are never that sad to miss Toy Story in Japan, as it's an identical copy of the version in the US parks (which we will be at in 63 days!!! So excited). We have experienced Soarin Over the World (at Shanghai Disney) and will see it again at WDW and
Disneyland (again, in 63 days....soooo excited....if you are interested in my pre-trip report for that trip you can find it
here). I have since watched an on-ride video of the version at Tokyo Disney and it is the same, expect the last 2 scenes, which have you flying over Tokyo followed by Tokyo DisneySea to watch the fireworks.
Anyway, the point of all that rambling is that Jared wasn't fussed about missing those attractions. And he was very happy that those two attractions drew such crowds that it made everything else in the park easy!
So back to the order of the day....There won't be many pictures here, as Jared was mostly riding rides and snapping up FPs!
First up was the Journey to the Centre of the Earth FP. When Jared got to Journey at about 9:00am the standby wait was 50 minutes but the FP return was from 9:40am - 10:40am!! Why you'd stand and wait for 50 minutes when you could get a FP for 40 minutes later I cannot understand, but that's what was happening (normally the Japanese are so good at using the FP system)!
Anyway, after scoring a very easy first FP, Jared made his way to the back of the park and rode Indiana Jones as a single rider and got on in no time at all. For whatever reason, the single rider lines aren't advertised or (in our experience) really USED at all at Tokyo Disney. They are available at a few attractions, Indy being the only one at Tokyo Disneysea. All you have to do is go to the FP line and ask "singaru rida" and you get a card to go in the single rider line. In fact Jared didn't even need to ask "singaru rida" on this occasion, the cast member simply saw he was on his own and handed him a single rider card! Anyway, the single rider line at Indy had only 7 people in the line. When the standby wait was 50 minutes! Jared was on the ride in no time.
After Indy and getting a Tower Fastpass for 10:55am - 11:00am (standby wait was 55 minutes), Jared headed back to ride Journey to the Centre of the Earth. It was down and this was the first mishap in his day of #winning! Even still he was pleased as Fastpass distribution was, at that point, up to 1:30pm. He decided to do the standby queue for 20000 Leagues under the Sea, which was advertised at about 25 minutes but ended up only being about 15. This is a super cute dark ride, sort of akin to Finding Nemo Subs at Disneyland (which I have still never been on) but better (as judged by me, who hasn't ridden the Nemo Subs - only seen videos of them
). The ride queue is fairly basic but it does have it's moment:
The ride is VERY dark. Jared was testing out our new 50mm prime lens and managed to get one shot of the Atlantian creatures that inhabit the ride....it was tough going apparently though (again, it's VERY dark and fairly fast moving)...
I had only given Jared a few specific shots to try get on the attractions, as we'd captured them well on our last trip. I was really happy with the shot above as it was one of the pictures we really hadn't conquered last time. After 20000 Leagues Jared tried to ride Journey with his Fastpass, but it was still down. He killed a little time in Mysterious Island taking pictures, hoping it would come back up....it didn't!
Before showing you these pictures I should mention, it was a HORRID overcast day at the parks. All day....It was depressing Jared quite a bit but he persevered. And I enjoyed photoshopping skies into the pictures so they would look halfway decent!
Jared decided to have a quick break before his Tower of Terror FP become available. He also wandered over to see how long the wait for Soaring was, it was posted at 140 minutes at that point (2 hours 20 minutes). He also went to grab a FP for the Finding Nemo SeaRider. He rode Tower of Terror with no issues and enjoyed escaping the curse of Shiriki Utundu.
Next up Jared secured a FP for SeaRider and then thought he'd check on Journey again. It was still down. So he decided to have lunch at Vulcania. Sadly, the lines were crazy long, so he instead stopped in at the Dockside Diner in American Waterfront. After lunch he checked Journey again and, you guessed it, it was still down!
So, since he was already in the area Jared decided to do something that we had, up until that point, never experienced on any of our trips to the Tokyo Disney Resort, Fortress Explorations. I had put exploring the Fortress on his touring plan because I knew that it had some really beautiful visuals, and I figured it would be something that could be done pretty easily even when the park was crowded. I was right that the Fortress had some stunning visuals, and I'm so glad Jared got to tour the fortress (even though I still haven't managed it).
He started inside:
And then headed outside to look at the views of the harbour from the Fortress battlements:
After that he headed down to the ground level for a few more pictures:
Captain Jack Sparrow appears to have commandeered the Fortress ship!
After he was done with exploring the Fortress, Journey was finally back up again! As I mentioned earlier, he discovered this fact at exactly the right time before the line of people returning with their expired FPs got crazy long. There was one photo I really wanted him to take in the Journey queue, of the cars whooshing past on their way out of the loading station. He managed to get the photo, but in the process broke another "Disney rule". Well I should say this is a "Tokyo Disney rule" because the CMs there are, for some reason, very fierce about people taking pictures in the rides queues with DSLR cameras. I've seen plenty of people taking pictures with their iPhones and that never seems to cause them concern. It's very strange because sometimes you can get away with it and sometimes you can't! We always put the camera away as soon as we are told, but always try if we can. Our pictures aren't disturbing anyone (we don't use a flash or anything like that) and are only for our enjoyment....Still this is the second time at Tokyo Disney we've been told off for taking pictures of a rides queue (the other was of the Tower of Terror queue on our trip in 2015). So if you plan to go and take pictures in ride queues at the Tokyo Disney parks just be aware you may, or may not, get away with it!
. Anyway, here are the results of Jared's "rule breaking" in the Journey queue:
On ride pictures were a bit trickier. He tried to take some shots on journey but the 50mm lens didn't really work well on it. It's too fast and it's too close in...He did get this one decent shot though:
We actually had better luck with pictures on ride at Journey on our last trip!
After Journey was done Jared went to use his SeaRider fastpass. This attraction is something I haven't experienced as it was still being constructed during our trip in 2015, and on our first trip in 2013 it existed as the StormRider attraction. I didn't think much of the StormRider attraction. It was a dodgier version of Star Tours and the story of the attraction, whatever it was, was all in Japanese, so that didn't help add to the experience. I do recall there were a few cool effects in the show room simulator, in particular lightning effects. But other than that I wasn't that sad when it went away. I asked Jared what he thought as SeaRider as a replacement. He said it was cute, and the visuals were better, but that it was a little childish. Other than that the ride experience hasn't really changed much (and the ride system is a bit antiquated) so he wasn't that fussed by it.
Continued in Next Post....