We spent Saturday at Tokyo DisneySea, the "other" Disney park in Tokyo. Whereas Disneyland focuses more on the original Disney characters and is extremely kid-friendly, DisneySea is supposed to be a bit more older-kid-oriented and focuses more on the Disney Princesses and adventure/discovery rides. DisneySea was literally shoulder-to-shoulder packed most of the entire day. Needless to say, we didn't get to ride as many rides as we did in Disneyland, but it was still fun.
Our first stop was Mermaid Lagoon Theater where we watched the spectacular live musical production "Under the Sea!" It was reminiscent of a scaled-down Cirque de Sole performance with wire work and acrobatics. The fish and jellyfish (a whole colony!) were constructed from beautiful brightly colored kite material. It was actually so good (and the line for it was reasonable) that we attended it twice during the day.
We really enjoyed the Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull ride! Although animatronic Indy spoke fluent Japanese, Brandon got our entire car full of Japanese riders to laugh when he yelled, "Save us, Indy!" at a very tense moment in the ride. Lots of fun!
When we walked by the Raging Spirits 360-degree loop roller coaster, the Castmembers there tried to convince us to ride. I explained that we thought Brandon was too tall (the map had said there was a height restriction of 6'5"), but she thought he'd be fine if he took off his Stitch hat. When he took off his hat, he was still tall (hehehe) but she had him stand against part of the structure to measure him against a crossbar and was shocked that he was too tall to ride the ride. We really wish there had been a sign saying, "You must be THIS SHORT to ride this ride," but alas, just a nondescript crossbar. Ah well.
StormRider was the ride we stood in line for for a little over 2 hours. The description was "descend into the eye of a storm aboard an advanced flying laboratory and experience the wild turbulence of powerful winds." It was definitely an experience. It was the first Disney ride we've ever rode that ended up with our death. Yup, you read that right. We did manage to save the world from the "storm of the century," but in the process, we sustained heavy damage to our ship and ended up in a flat-spin down to the ocean. Lovely. A very Japanese ending, but not quite what we were expecting from a Disney ride.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea took us on an "undersea" adventure we were both glad we got FastPasses for. :) (There was a long line in the "standby" line.) They had decent special effects to make you feel like your pod was truly underwater and we both agreed we didn't want to get stuck on that ride...claustrophobia would have set in rather quickly. That's as close to being 20,000 leagues under the sea as I want to ever get. :)
Our favorite ride (or at least the one with the shortest line and one we enjoyed so we rode it four times) at DisneySea was Sinbad's Storybook Voyage. It was similar to It's A Small World, but even better. Evidently they redid the ride about 1 1/2 years ago from a noisy, chaotic, creepy ride to the fun, wonderful music-filled, happy ride we experienced. We're very glad they updated it. :)
We had a lot of fun in Tokyo DisneySea, but overall, we'd have to say we enjoyed Tokyo Disneyland more. Either way, lots of laughter and fun to be had by both of us!
---Arielle
