February of 2016, Brianne and I had vacation from work so we decided we needed to go big and go to Asia.  At the time my brother was teaching music at a school on an island in South Korea, so we figured that would be a perfect place to go. But first we decided we needed to make a quick stop in Tokyo to go to Tokyo Disneyland.  Since we were visiting my brother, and he had been over there for 2 years, with exceptions being the summer and Christmas, we felt it important that we bring my Mom along for the trip.  My Mom has never traveled outside of the country, so what better place to go than Asia?  We gave her a real culture shock.

We flew from Chicago to Tokyo, Japan to make the essential stop at Tokyo Disneyland.  I had been to Tokyo the year prior so I had some experience getting around, which proved to not help very much, because once we got to Maihama station (the Disney Subway station), we were utterly lost.  We wandered around the parking lot for an hour to two trying to find the transportation to our hotel, The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay. Turns out we could have taken the monorail from the station to our hotel and then walked right across the street to the front lobby.

We were extremely happy with the hotel. It was clean, close to the park, and the cot that I got to sleep on was actually pretty comfortable (Brianne and my Mom got their own beds).  But the best part of the hotel was the view.  We got a room facing the Disneyland park, and if you leaned over railing on the balcony you could see the other park, DisneySea.

Since we were just on a plane for 13 hours, took a train from the Narita airport to Tokyo Disneyland, and got lost for an hour, we were pretty exhausted so we decided go to sleep and hit the park bright and early the next day. Unfortunately, jet lag had different plans for us.

4 am, we are wide awake.

Usually I’m better at managing jet lag, but it didn’t work this time. Eventually, it was morning and it became time to go to the park.

We were able to buy our tickets in the lobby of the hotel, which was super convienent (and also pretty cheap, a 1 day ticket is 7,400 yen, approx. $65 usd). We did what we should have done when we arrived the night before, and took the monorail to the park entrance.  The monorail is really cute, with Mickey shaped windows and handles, and also featured cars of Duffy, ShellieMay, and Gelatoni (the mascots of Tokyo Disney, and they are a HUGE deal here, Brianne became obsessed over them).

Tokyo Disneyland was celebrating Frozen Fantasy at the time, and given that my Mom is a teacher of young children, she was tired of hearing “Let It Go” over and over and over and over…. None the less, it was really well done and we enjoyed hearing all the Frozen songs sung in Japanese.

Getting coffee was a must, so we stopped at the Sweetheart Café, picked up coffee and Mickey shaped muffins, unaware that the Mike Wazowski melon bread was so popular.

After getting our coffee fix, we were now able to enjoy all the things that make Tokyo Disneyland unique.  The moment you walk in there is a huge “awning” over Main Street, which is called “The World Bazaar” which was very convienent because it started raining. It also is set up a 4 way intersection rather than a single road that we are used to at WDW.  We went into some of the shops to check out the awesome Japanese merchandise.

They announced that they were starting their Frozen Fantasy parade so we ran to the front of the castle to find a comfortable place to sit.  Thankfully Tokyo Disneyland guests sit during the parade so we were actually able to see, instead of finding the perfect viewing spot between two peoples heads, which a behavior we really need to adopt in the USA.

Costumes at Tokyo Disneyland are on a whole different level – look how cute these kids are dressed!

After the parade, we got our pictures of the castle, the founders statue and the hilarious snowmen scattered throughout the park.  After the pictures, we walked over to Tomorrowland. The park was crazy busy so unfortunately we weren’t able to ride Space Mountain.

We had one goal during our visit to Tokyo Disneyland, and that was to get Green Alien Mochi.  It’s all I cared about and it lived up to my expectations.  They are 3 green little alien dumplings with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry custard. We all unanimously said that the strawberry one was the best.

After the green alien excursion, it started to rain pretty hard, so we made our way back to The Grand Bazaar and took the drawing class.  We love doing the drawing classes in all the parks, even though I have no discernable ability to draw.  The class was taught in Japanese, so we were kind of lost, but I think our drawings came out pretty well.

After the drawing class, we hit up a few more shops and Brianne bought a ramen bowl and spoon, which she uses to eat almost every day now.

(we attempted to make our own ramen at home)

The rain slowed a little so we went to the back of the park.  My Mom wanted to ride It’s a Small World because “she wanted to see if it was different from the one in America.”

It wasn’t.

I’m really not a fan of Small World.

After what seemed like an eternity, the ride was over and we could ride one of my favorite rides, The Haunted Mansion. The Tokyo Disneyland Haunted Mansion is pretty similar to the one at WDW with a few décor changes and narration was in Japanese (obviously).  But it was still the same great ride as the WDW one.

Another important ride for us to ride was Jungle Cruise, which was hilarious because it too was in Japanese, and we had no idea what was happening. The boat driver could have been making fun of us and we would have been none the wiser, so we just laughed whenever the rest of the boat laughed.

We got some popcorn after Jungle Cruise. It was really difficult to choose from all the interesting flavors they had. The flavors available were: salt, curry, caramel, honey, soy sauce and butter, corn potage, and salted caramel mix. We chose soy sauce and butter.

Our Disney day was coming to an end, and our jet lag was doing a number on us so we retired back to our hotel at 5pm.  We decided we were going to head back to the park to watch the fireworks, but by the time we sat on our beds (and cot) we realized we weren’t going anywhere. Instead we sat on our balcony and watched the fireworks from the comfort of our room.

Since this vacation was supposed to be a South Korea trip, we only got one day at Tokyo Disney.  We had to skip Tokyo DisneySea this time, but we are planning on going back in a few months.

The next morning we had to pack up and start the second half of our vacation.

 

-Kevin