First Disney Park…check!

Let’s throw a hypothetical situation out there for everyone to ponder. Imagine that you are in a strange, foreign country where you can neither read nor speak the language. Let’s further imagine that you are lost in the maze of car parks outside a major theme park, that it is really dark, freezing cold and you have just missed the last bus back to your hotel. Quick, what do you do?

If you are anyone else you probably don’t get into the situation where you’ve forgotten how to get back to the correct bus stop and you have probably allowed plenty of time to get there anyway. If you are me you grab a wandering security and find that he is the only person in the world who hasn’t ever seen an aeroplane and doesn’t understand the frantic miming as you pretend to have wings while saying “airport” repeatedly.

Then, if you’re me, you take 20 seconds to ponder the situation before jumping on the Disney monorail to the Disneyland Hotel which is the last stop on the buses route before it heads back to the airport and manage to catch it with seconds to spare. Then you sink back into your seat and ponder the “no one else would get themselves into this situation” end to your day.

But let us return to the beginning of this saga.

A really early morning, bitterly cold and a quick trip to the airport on the hotel bus where I am going to catch the Limo Bus to DisneySea. (Just a little side note; if you are going to Narita airport you need to show your passport at the gate, even if you are not catching a plane.) I purchased my ticket from the counter in the terminal and headed out to the appropriate bus stop. The reason I had decided to take the bus rather than the train was purely for convenience. The bus ran from the airport straight to the gates of DisneySea and would be the same back. The train involved connections in Tokyo station and I didn’t want to waste any of my potential time in the park by getting lost or taking the wrong train.

The orange Limo Bus pulled up to stop number 7 exactly on time, something to note if you are coming here and something I appreciated because it was only 3.8 degrees .  When the bus is due to leave at 8.10 it leaves at exactly 8.10. and if you find you are going to be 30 seconds late catching it then don’t bother, have a coffee and wait for the next one. I climbed onboard, found a seat and leaned back into warm, padded, leg roomed bliss. No chickens or goats on this bus. No one standing in the aisles, hanging from the doorway or sitting on the roof. Just a white gloved driver who stands at the door and bows at you when you get on. Instead of blaring Hindi music, the screech of evading tyres and constant horns there is just a few polite messages over the pa, both in Japanese and English, informing you at exactly what second you can expect the bus to arrive where you want it to and apologising in advance if traffic conditions mean you will be a minute or two late. So this is what culture shock feels like?

The trip itself only took an hour and passed fairly quickly given that there really wasn’t much to look at. Before they built the airport the area around Narita was apparently farm land and there are still a number of fields lining the road now. They all looked brown and cold and fallow as I stared out the window and they eventually turned into the standard industrial areas that line all highways leading into cities. Eventually, off to my left, I got glimpses of the bay and shipyards and docks but I spent most of the early part of the drive trying to figure out why Japanese cars have licence plates that only have 4 digits. 4 digits mean that there can only be 10,000 cars in the country and that just doesn’t seem to make sense. There must be some meaning to the Japanese symbols on there but since I couldn’t read them I chose to ignore that possibility and continued to ponder.

A little less than an hour later we pulled off the highway and immediately a Disney bus drove past. How did I know it was a Disney bus? The fact that it looked like it came from the 1930’s and it had windows shaped like Mickey ears. We stopped at a couple of the Disney hotels first and then pulled up at the stop for Tokyo DisneySea.

For the uninitiated (or should I say “not sad”) Disneyphobes I better explain what I mean by DisneySea. There are two parks in Tokyo, both Disney, next door to each other but completely separate and requiring their own tickets. There is the traditional Disneyland Park which is themed the same as the other Disneyland parks around the world. Then there is DisneySea, which is exclusive to Tokyo and has…wait for it…a sea theme. I had chosen DisneySea because I only had one day to do a Park and it was unique rather than along the same lines as I’ve seen elsewhere. And here ends the Disney lesson.

Walking from the bus stop to the Park entrance the first thing I saw was the queues. This may have been a mistake on my part, looking at the queues rather that how to get back to the bus stop, but I was outside a Disney Park and looking for magic not mundane. Besides, the queues were impressive. It was now about 15 minutes after the gates had opened and there were still tens of thousands of people waiting to get in. Unfortunately for me I had to join another queue first and change my voucher for an entry ticket but this gave me an opportunity to look around at the other people.

In that queue I had the first inkling of the revelation that would gradually come to me over the course of that day. That revelation was that I would not make a very good Japanese girl. This may seem odd given my amazing ability to blend seamlessly into any crowd or situation but it’s true. Looking around I realised that I would never be willing to freeze my vitals purely for the sake of fashion. I’m sure that everyone has an idea of what young Japanese girls supposedly dress like and I can say with some experience now that what you think you know probably doesn’t come close to the reality. My idea of fun at a Disney park does not include a freezing wind up a really short skirt but I suppose it’s all in the name of being trendy.

Having gotten my Park ticket proper I joined the other queue, now mercifully much shorter, and made my way into the park. I’m not going to bore all the Disneyphobes with intimate details of the Park and what I did, I’ll leave that for the Disney forum, but a few things are worth mentioning.

The crowds were huge. I mean in number, not stature. It was probably the most crowded I’ve ever felt in the theme park and all I can say is that I’m glad I wasn’t there for the rides. I went on a couple I managed to get fast passes for but the idea of spending 3+ hours standing in line was not my idea of fun. Mostly I just walked around, took photos, marvelled at the Disneyness of it all and ate.

Eating was odd compared to American parks. In America you have to have advanced bookings if you want to eat in the sit down restaurants but you can usually grab snacks to take away or things from the carts with only a short wait. America is the land fast food after all. But here it was the other way around. The first time I noticed it I was wondering what ride the line of about 300 people was waiting to go on when I figured out they were just queuing to get popcorn. This was the same at all of the snack places. If you wanted a drink or an ice cream or a churro then the wait was horrendous. Strangely I just walked into a sit down, character lunch and was high fived by Pluto (while ignoring Mickey) as I ate my grilled salmon.

The Park itself was nice. That may not sound as gushingly enthusiastic as you might expect but I would have to put DisneySea at the bottom of my list of Parks to go back to although maybe I was put off by the crowds. The themeing was excellent, as good as you would expect from Disney and there was certainly plenty to keep me entertained and occupied but I continue to compare to Walt Disney World and it was not as good.

One place where it was really let down was in the merchandise. All I wanted to buy while I was there was a fridge magnet and a pin. I could not find a magnet anywhere and there was only one desultory stand of pins in one shop in the entire park. For the first time in my life I walked out of a Disney Park without a single souvenir. Maybe there is a greater selection in Tokyo Disneyland and if I had another day to visit the other park I would have found what I was after and had a better overall impression. But I have Hong Kong Disneyland to visit in a couple of day’s time and Paris Disneyland in a few months time so the Disney odyssey continues.

Not much to say about the ride home that I haven’t already except for something that happened in the airport terminal. When I got back to the airport I ducked downstairs to the train station to get some info on the train I planned to take the next day into Tokyo. While I was there I had need of the facilities so ducked into the gents. I’ve already described the toilet in my room here but it only has little characters on the buttons to explain what they do. The train station one had an instruction sheet on the wall. Feeling really nervous and wondering how I would explain exactly what I was doing I quickly took a photo so I could quote the instructions exactly. So here they are, in button order, the instructions as they appear next to a picture of the appropriate button…the squeamish should look away now.

Title on sheet: Equipment to cleansing the buttocks with warm water.

Stopping: Rear washing stopped.

Washing: Washing the rear.

Water pressure adjustment: Weaker with (-) Stronger with (+)

Extra Deodrizing: Increased absorption strength for removing odours.

And on those words I’ll end my day in Tokyo DisneySea.