12
Mar
Kai’s Birthday at Tokyo Disneyland
Topic: Japan 2007, Kai and Eidan
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Kai had a blast at Disneyland, and Maria and I enjoyed it too. Maria and I also enjoyed being able to do it as a day-trip: no airplane tickets to Florida or California to buy, and no hotel reservations to make. There was just the 320 yen (about $3) round trip fare for the 40 minute train ride to Urayasu, and the Disneyland tickets. This being Japan, the land of convenience, you can get Disneyland tickets at any major JR (Japan Rail) station.
From what I can remember of visiting the Florida Disney World when I was a kid (in 1982!), the Tokyo Disney has all the same attractions. I thought the Enchanted Tiki Room, which I had never seen before, was bizarre and really dated. I discovered why after I looked it up on Wikipedia: it was part of Disney’s contract with Dole in 1963 that it could never be altered. My favorite attraction was Star Tours - you’re put in a big flight simulator (one capable of delivering roller coaster-like twists and dives), supposedly for a quiet tourist trip to Endor, but you quickly discover your pilot is incompetent, as he almost crashes the ship during take off. Then he gets you caught up in a battle around the Death Star. For some reason I found it even more comical in Japanese, with the host robot profusely apologizing each time we had a near-death experience, “gomen nasai, gomen nasai!” I explained to Kai before we got on the ride that it was all pretend and just for fun, and he was doing fine until the Star Destroyers appeared on the screen, when he sought some reassurance - “this is all pretend, right Daddy?”
The Westernland section of the park is distinctly American, with the Mark Twain Riverboat and old West style town. The one concession they made for the local Japanese population was the food: we had lunch in a Disney-ified frontier era restaurant, and ate good ‘ol American…curry and tonkatsu. Something else that was distinctly un-American about the food was the prices - they were not extortionary. I’ve gotten used to paying exorbitant sums for mediocre food when trapped in any kind of stadium or theme park in the US, but here the prices were shockingly reasonable.
There were only a couple things that didn’t work out. One was the weather - the day started out cold and only got colder. I brought Eidan home around 3, as it was getting too cold for him, but Kai and Maria stuck it out all the way through the nighttime fireworks show. The other thing was the lines. We thought we were being smart coming on a weekday, but some of the rides still had waits of over an hour, so we ended up skipping some of the more popular attractions.
We plan to come back when the weather is warmer. We learned we can get “fastpass” tickets ahead of time for the popular rides, which allow you to show up at a designated time and not have to wait. Also, there’s the DisneySea Park, a separate park adjacent to Disneyland - it looks like fun, and it’s the only one in the world (my guess is that in the US, Disney decided to not try competing with Sea World).
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