The Bounds Do Tokyo Disney - Day 2

[Melanie]

The Bounds Do Tokyo Disney

Cast of Characters -

Melanie (37) - that's me
James (37) - that's hubby
Josh (8) - oldest, loves Donald and thrill rides
Ryan (7) - youngest, loves Stitch and Goofy, and not too sure about those thrill rides yet


Day Two:

The first two days of our tickets required that we visit only one park per day. No hopping until the third day. Not sure why they do this. We let the kids decide which park they wanted to do first, and no surprise they chose Disneyland.

Disneyland opened at 8:30am, so we grabbed some pastries for breakfast at our hotel, and walked to the monorail station around 8am. The monorails weren’t too busy, and we hadn’t encountered exceptionally large crowds the day before while we were exploring, so we were hoping for smaller crowds at the park. Not to mention it was cold (in the low 50s) and it was a Monday. Hmmm, little did we know (again, I didn’t do my research), the parks here are crowded year round. They arrive by train and by bus and I guess that explains why the Disney parking lot in front of our hotel was never filled.

So we arrive at the park to this scene. Boy was it crowded! The gates had just opened. The first folks let in were sprinting to their destinations! I know that’s not allowed at WDW or Disneyland, but everyone was very respectful here from what I could tell. We waited in line about 15 minutes, and were finally in.

We took in the atmosphere of the entrance, then entered World Bazaar, or what we all know as Main Street. World Bazaar is covered, and I assumed it would be heated. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, but it does protect you from the elements, I suppose. The cover does give it a different feel than we are used to, but it’s still distinctly Disney.

The side streets in World Bazaar aren’t dead ends. They lead to the “lands”, so we cut off quickly to the right into Tomorrowland to get out of the crowds. First stop, Star Tours. My boys love Star Wars and this ride is exactly like WDW (except in Japanese, of course). No shop though. Next we want to check out Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters, but the wait is already an hour. Huh? This would be a pattern. So we grab our first FastPasses of the trip.

Next stop, the Grand Circuit Raceway, aka Tomorrowland Speedway. The wait wasn’t that long, maybe 15 minutes, and we had a very excited 7 year old who was now tall enough to drive his own car. Wow, Mom and Dad get to ride together! As far as I could tell, this is the same track layout as in WDW. And the Bounds clan had fun on it as always!

Next it was on to ToonTown. All the usual suspects were there: Donald’s boat , Chip ‘n Dale’s Treehouse, Goofy’s Bounce House and Minnie and Mickey’s houses. Also, just like in Disneyland California, was Gadget’s Go Coaster and Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin.

Gadget’s was our first real test of how Ryan was going to handle the “fast” rides. Last year at this time at WDW, he tried Test Track, Splash Mountain and Goofy’s Barnstormer and declared them all too fast. He assured us he wanted to ride all the rides this time, but we’d heard that before. Gadget’s went fine – he loved it! Whew, one down.

We meandered around ToonTown a bit more, then headed out to Fantasyland. We came to Pooh’s Hunny Hunt and saw the huge standby time, and since we already had Buzz FPs, we couldn’t do anything but pass on by. Pooh is supposed to be incredible here in Tokyo, so I wasn’t surprised by the long wait times. Next came It’s a Small World, and it has a pretty big façade, although not quite as big as Disneyland in California. I loved the color scheme – bright pastels! Very pretty. The wait wasn’t long at all, and we soon entered the very large loading area and took our boat ride with the dolls. It was the same ride we all know and love (well, most of us).

Kids are amazing! It’s 50 degrees and Josh wanted ice cream. Brrrr! Both boys got a cup of vanilla served in a cute little glass hunny pot with Pooh characters on it that we got to keep. Next up was the Mickey Mouse Revue. This is an animatronics show featuring some of the popular early Disney characters, which at one time was in WDW. I certainly appreciate the achievement of this attraction for it’s time, but I have to say it was a bit bizarre to me, with it being in Japanese and quite outdated. The Three Caballeros in Japanese was giggle-worthy. I couldn’t help it! Mickey’s Philharmagic would be an excellent replacement for this.

We saw our first characters of the trip, Peter Pan and Wendy. As luck would have it though, they were on their way out. Peter did talk to Ryan quickly though, and told him he’d see him and his funny Stitch hat during the parade that afternoon.