Japan 08/25 – Tokyo DisneySea
The following morning we flew to Tokyo, with the only real highlight being that the aircraft safety video contained Pokémon.
Train to the hotel was giving lovely weather reports on the screens, implying that the whole upcoming week was completely cooked. It included a safety rating system, of which we were on the highest (or lowest) as the heat was deemed a significant risk to human life. Can’t escape it.
Didn’t have much planned for the day, so wisely spent most of it in air-conned malls and trains, seeing some sights and doing some shopping.
In the evening however, I did have tickets booked for
Day 5 – Tokyo Disneysea
All business here. They had 3 new dark rides and we had 4 hours in which to do them, thanks to the fact that they now offer cheap entry after 5pm. Seemed like a fun idea and a good challenge. Wasn’t a huge fan of the Tokyo resort before, not least for their handling of other weather related incidents. But also a general soullessness, lacklustre versions of rides, busyness and overhyping.
Wasn’t overly pleased to learn that they now offer paid one-shot fast track on every major attraction and it absolutely tanks throughput for everyone else.
Powered straight through the park and into the new Disney Springs land then, past the iconic volcano in scaffolding and a closed Indiana Jones. Indy was in fact the main motivator behind choosing this particular day to visit. It was down for a long scheduled maintenance starting the following day, but had broken down today anyway, so that was another meaningless decision among many.
Mercifully all of the restricted entry rubbish that this place once had is now over and done with. Mental maths dictated that Peter Pan’s Never Land Adventure was to be up first.
Pre-show happened on these screens, introduced to the lost boys. Kid with the glasses needs saving from Captain Hook. Nothing new here.
Boarded the cool boat looking things and flew off around various stuff.
It’s an odd one, a 4D motion-based dark ride that marks a closer Disney attempt at a Spiderman/Transformers equivalent (not their own Spiderman, which might be their worst thing ever). The motions themselves are much less violent, inevitably, and thus it spends a lot of the time acting like a mini flying theatre in front of a sequence of screens. Great for an Asian audience in that regard, they love a flying theatre.
This is all well and good, just a little underwhelming amongst their later streak of attractions. The most effective parts for me were some interesting visual transitions into and out of the screens, to and from physical scenery. There’s about 15% of the Shanghai Pirates effect in there, in that it feels magical and disorienting but then the media was just quite boring and easy for me to check out on.
I just don’t know why it’s Peter Pan at this point. They have his ride over in the other park. There’s no new story, just repeating the same old classics. Walk the plank, crocodile, you can fly, you can fly, Big Ben. End.
Oh and it has glasses, which I had completely forgotten that until writing this, so they added nothing.
My most hopeful theory is that this is a testing ground for a much more violent and impressive version of the hardware that is yet to come. Maybe we can feel like we’ve had a few rounds with Thanos on it.
Alternatively people will just eat up anything in these parks at this point, so there’s no need to care.
Moving swiftly on, Anna and Elsa’s Frozen Journey had the biggest queue of course. The queue was extended out beyond the entrance and had staff members with signs to highlight >>>this is the back of the queue<<<, all that fun stuff.
Though I don’t consider myself to be the biggest of Frozen fans, it is from right about my peak era of consuming that type of media, enough to have seen it more than once and know and enjoy a number of the songs anyway.
As such there was a bit of a special moment for me shortly after joining the back of the queue and taking in the admittedly impressive surroundings, as the intro song from the first film hit in the background. Disney magic still exists, in places. Tastefully they continued to play instrumental versions of other tunes throughout the area and as we, eventually, headed indoors.
Queue contains an interesting collection of stuff, set mostly within the castle when they were kids. Then you get on some boats.
Then god damn.
I’ve always been spoiler averse, but additionally in my business-like mode of making decisions to visit theme parks currently – well they’ve got something new, guess I’ll go ride it – this attraction just wasn’t on my radar of things to get excited about. I’m not sure anything actively is these days.
Which can be a blessing when something comes and blows you away. This attraction hit for me on every level. Not only on visuals, songs, nostalgia, but the more geeky technical stuff of dark ride systems like the precision timing of specific show sequences, with boats.
It’s got wow moments, it’s got scary moments, it’s got aww moments and it’s everything the shoehorned Epcot version wasn’t. Loved it. I’ve got no specific data to back it up, but in my head it’s ‘top 5 Disney ride, that.’
With hours on the clock fading fast, there was just Rapunzel’s Lantern Festival left to do.
This is also of that era for me, so had a modicum of expectation to live up to, even though I knew it was supposedly the lesser of the attractions here.
It starts outside, drifting past a massive version of the tower with Rapunzel singing from all the way up the top. Sense of scale here is pretty impressive for a ‘dark ride’, even more for an outdoor portion of one, however that may work.
Then you go inside and get a lovely rendition of I See the Light, surrounded by all the lanterns and stuff. Then it ends.
Cute and all, but diabolically short. Glad the queue had reduced to almost nothing for the night and anyone who fast-tracks it for the same price as other rides should probably feel ripped off.
Mission complete and basically everything in the park was closed at this point.
Except Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage. The unloved ride of the park. Well I love it at least, it’s very much my thing. Goes on literally forever in comparison to what we had just ridden, while he contently sings variations on the same tune, in a happy tone, about all his crazy adventures.
It’s also just much more visually impressive than it gets credit for I feel. This ain’t no small world. Great ride, second best of the night.
And that was Disneysea. I do kinda vibe with the evening ticket idea, works well with the city location and is very good value for money. When Florida is trying to charge me £1100 a head to go back and force me to stay for a minimum of 2 weeks, popping out of Tokyo for £20 and getting some quality dark rides in is perfect for the seasoned visitor that doesn’t need to spend 15 years planning every second of their 15 hour day on park, hating both life and their bank account. Just wish the queues were better.