Even though we were both exhausted from walking all over Tokyo the day before, we got ourselves up early and made it to Tokyo Disneyland an hour before the gates opened. As we walked down the ramp from the train station to the park, I had that childlike feeling of excitement building inside. We both walked faster and were joined by many people also making the trip to the park. We got in line for tickets, and waited about an hour for tickets. Then we got in line to go inside the park and we waited 45 minutes to get inside. By the time we got in, the park was pretty busy already.
The park was laid out similarly to Disneyland in California. There were some minor variations, but that just made it more interesting. The rides themselves were exact copies – I mean exact. Some small changes were made to allow for more or less real estate, but basically it was the same thing. The pirates spoke Japanese on the Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as the ghosts of the Haunted Mansion. There was some English on other rides, but for the most part it was converted to Japanese language.
We did a couple of rides right away, and the lines were relatively short to start with. As we walked around, though, more and more people came in and by lunchtime, the lines were ridiculously long. The caramel corn line was 35 minutes – no joke. We waited for 30 minutes for a fast pass to come back in a couple of hours, which was pretty handy.
After spending some time in Universal Studios Japan, a much more modern theme park, I could see a lot of room for improvement. Disneyland Tokyo has been around for 20 years, and how they handle crowds seems a bit antiquated. Many of the lines spilled out across major walking areas, so people couldn’t get through. Some lines were so long that people were getting in line without knowing what they were waiting for.
Despite the crowds, we managed to do all the rides that we wanted to except one, and we left the park around 2 p.m. On our way out we did omiyage shopping. The shops were designed for Japanese shoppers, with packages of omiyage, really cute character items, and plenty of different stores along the way to catch every last yen in your pocket.
We made the trip back to the hotel, and crashed out – and we didn’t wake up until almost seven o’clock. While we were sleeping it had started pouring rain, so we ran out to the nearest convenience store and bought an umbrella, and then together we walked the streets until we found a decent ramen restaurant. Afterwards we walked around a bit more, and then went back to the hotel to watch more strange Japanese TV programming and hit the sack.
