Having been given a pamphlet of the Disney amusement park
earlier, I remembered to have viewed it disinterestedly, not knowing that it
would be my saving grace later in the day.
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Automated
Monorail to DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan.
Apr. 27, 2014
|
Before jumping to the excitements I had in the amusement
park, I want to tell you a little about the location of our hotel Sheraton
Grande Tokyo Bay. The speciality of Maihama town was that it housed two world
famous amusement parks; one as I had known Tokyo Disneyland and the other, I
had not known about being Tokyo DisneySea. It also had many famous hotels like
Sheraton and Hilton. Conclusively, now I could say that Maihama must have a
large area to accommodate space for two separate amusement parks and the hotel
resorts. It also had its own monorail (automated) which for some odd reasons
excited my father. Everything was designed to be likeable to a child; almost
everywhere you turn, you would see mickey or the Disney insignia. What creeped
me out was, Mickey’s voice speaking in Japanese in the hotel shuttle buses. It
was too high pitched, that might be the reason for my liking.
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Automated
Monorail to DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan.
Apr. 27, 2014
|
Well then returning to my visit to DisneySea, the first
thing we did as we entered the amusement park other than taking pictures was ‘eating’,
as the time had been 2.30 pm when we entered.
The hotel we chose was Spanish in style and taste, and our
choice of food was rice with a touch of sauce with sea food topping. It was
simply delicious.
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Lunch:
Spanish food at DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan.
Apr. 27, 2014
|
After the lunch, we started making our way to Mysterious
Island through Mediterranean coast. It had the most obvious ride with a large
well designed but fake volcanic mountain called, Mount Prometheus. I must state
this now, please do not expect much info about the rides, as I was not
interested in getting on, on any rides and neither were my parents. As a whole,
we only went on three rides which itself had consumed most of our time. The
other problem disregarding disinterest was that, the long queues and waiting
times for the attractions ranging from thirty minutes to one hour and sometimes
two hours. I think, one whole day is hardly enough to enjoy all the rides and
attractions!
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At DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan. Apr. 27, 2014
|
Again before skipping to that, let me give a brief overview
of what we did, as I first said, we made our way to the Mysterious Island and
from there to Port Discovery, where we took the ‘DisneySea electric train’ what
was called the American Express to American Waterfront. There was a long queue
for this particular express train and I still haven’t come upon a reason for it;
from my point, there was not much excitement.
At American Waterfront, we walked toward the big what seemed to be a
real ship named ‘S.S. Columbia’. I’m
pretty sure that everyone knows about S.S. Columbia, except me. It seemed to
have a ride inside it, so we went ahead and joined the long queue. The queue
was moving dead slowly and took nearly one hour to enter into a theatre inside
the ship (I’ve concluded, it’s only a model ship..!).
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A view of the Mountain Prometheus at the backdrop. At
DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan.
Apr. 27, 2014
|
In the theatre, we watched expectantly for something to
happen, eventhough by then I had an idea as to what was to be. What greeted us
on the screen was the animated sea turtle from “Finding Nemo”, speaking in, you
guessed it, yes, Japanese! I was fine
with it because I was able to understand a little of what was being said. On
the other hand, my parents, I think, were disappointed. Actually, the name of
the show was, “Turtle Talk” in which the turtle on the screen had a real-time
conversation with the audience. It was really amazing to watch. The turtle was
pretty good at making jokes from what I understood or more appropriately poking
fun at a person in the audience. The saying from what little I understood went on
in this format,
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A night view of S.S. Columbia at DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan.
Apr. 27, 2014
|
“Hey, you , young man there,” the turtle called out only to
be replied with a hand pointed at himself in the universal sign of ‘me?’ by the
mentioned young man.
“Yeah, you! What’s
your name?”
The young man had if I remember replied stating his name as,”Tanaka
desu”.
After hearing the name, the turtle changed his name a bit
and made everyone laugh (excluding us..!).
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“Turtle Talk” show in S.S. Columbia at DisneySea,
Tokyo,
Japan. Apr. 27, 2014
|
The turtle then called a girl and said, ”What is your name?”
The girl replied with her name, which unfortunately I
forgot. The turtle then proceeded to ask her with a surprise as to who gave her
that name. After the girl stated that it was her father who had given her the
name. The turtle further asked her, where her father was seated. Her father was
seated at the last few rows far away from his daughter, which of course, gave the
turtle another opportunity to poke fun. Well I’m sure, you understand the
basics of what happened after doing all these, he apologized for having to
leave and left after biding goodbye to everyone seated.
Though the final result was a bit disappointing as the
conversation carried out was all in Japanese, the amazing thing in the show was
the technology. It seemed as if the turtle chose the people after looking in
the crowd and could hold a conversation looking directly at the person. Atleast
that was the statement made by my father.
After this show, we came across another attraction on our
way out of American Waterfront. This particular one was odd the reason I call
it as such is that it had consisted of several dancing with dressing (make-up) like
vegetables. But even though my interest was picked, we did not stay long as my
parents were bored.
We then returned to Port Discovery where me and my mother
joined a water ride called, Aquatopia which earlier my mother had pointed out. There
was a long queue, after half an hour only we could reach the rider. The ride
was fine; I would suggest it to people who do not like extreme movements.
After this particular ride, we decided to head Lost River
Delta, but on our way, my parents got distracted with a building which I had
then supposed, had a ride in it. The name of the building was Storm Rider and
my parents tried to buy Fast Pass for it.
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“Aquatopia” water ride at DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan.
Apr. 27, 2014
|
Okay, what is this Fast Pass? Let me explain. For most of
the regular attractions, DisneySea offers Fast Passes. We should look out for
the Fast Pass machines near the attractions and get one for an attraction. The
machine will scan your park entry ticket and give you a pass for the selected
attraction if you are lucky. This Fast Pass is attraction-specific and
time-bound. Yes, the Fast Pass cannot be used for another attraction and the
Fast Pass holder is not allowed to have another Fast Pass before the expiry of
the time mentioned on the pass. Once we have the pass, we can join in the
fast-track queue which moves relatively faster than the regular queue.
My parents failed to get the Fast Pass for the Storm Rider
as the previous one we had bought was still pending and we could not have a new
one until the previous pass was expired. So we left for the next zone, thought
of visiting the Storm Rider later on. The zone we visited next was Adventure
land and the decorations it had were interesting with a broken plane lying
aside the river bed and a bridge nearby. My father liked this zone and we came
upon a ride which interested us soon enough. But the waiting time was 140
minutes so we left for that time being at least.
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Storm Rider at DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan. Apr. 27,
2014
|
Making our way back to Storm Rider, my parents on trying to
get the Fast Pass stumbled on a problem that they were getting the same copies
of one ticket; however, with the help of a park assistant nearby we somehow managed
to get the Fast Passes.
Storm Rider was fun. It was a 4D simulator ride. This ride
gave us a thrilling experience of riding in an aircraft which was flying
through a strong, dangerous storm and diffused it by detonating a bomb (videos
are available on YouTube). Frankly speaking, it was a spellbound experience!
Next, we made our way to the ride we had our eyes on
previously, and lined up seeing as the waiting time was much more reasonable.
It was only 60 minutes or so. But still it was a long time, especially the
distance I can even exaggerate with reason that we nearly walked 1 km.
The name of the ride was, Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of
the Crystal Skull. The theme is simple; we take a tour on a truck in a jungle
in search of the “Fountain of Youth”, escaping from the unexpected attacks of the
Crystal Skull, the guardian spirit of the fountain. This ride was also fun, I enjoyed it. It was
a roller coaster like ride only, not as extreme. The ride passed through places
which resemble scenes from Indiana Jones. I was smiling widely and loudly for the
entire ride!
By the time we
finished this ride, the clock had already struck 7 pm. And so we moved onto the
next zone, The Mermaid Lagoon. It had a large castle within which was numerous
rides; not that we rode them. It was amazing with a theme of interior
facilities (or attractions) of Titan’s Kingdom. After taking pictures there, we
moved on to the last site which was Arabian Coast. I loved the designs in here,
especially the castle which was similar to the one in the movie Aladdin. Inside,
there were many rides as well, but since we were running short of time, we left
after taking pictures.
It took half an hour to find the exit even with help. We
were all tired and hungry by then, so we went to the same restaurant where we
had our lunch earlier.
As the clock struck nine, a water-laser show (a simple form
of this is being played at Sentosa Island of Singapore with t a theme of, “Winds
of Time”) was held right outside the restaurant. It was really spectacular as
the characters from Disney films appeared and danced or played dramas on huge
water screens with laser, lights and flame bursts (pyrotechnics). For God’s
sake, don’t miss it..!
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Water-laser show at DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan. Apr.
27, 2014
|
We watched the laser
show and left for our hotel. Returning to the hotel was fairly simple as we had
to just board the automated monorail, of course, not without tickets.
By the time we reached the hotel it was nearing ten and as
soon as we settled down in our hotel room, I was disappointed, not because of
the day. It was because of the toilet, an area of utmost privacy did not have a
lock; yes, it was a kind of shared restroom and washroom – typical Japanese set
up!
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