Tuesday March 16, 2004
Today was our first visit to Tokyo Disney Sea, an amazing park full of lots of details to keep you busy for hours. Our first stop was the Journey to the Center of the Earth attraction in Mysterious Island (yes, that’s a volcano that shoots fire out at regular intervals). Journey is an amazing ride – based on the Test Track ride system. It felt short, and I think I would have liked an additional 30 seconds of ride or so and it would have been perfect. we spent the whole day just going all over and taking in the sights of the park.
Our favorites (besides JTCE) were Sinbad’s Seven Voyages, Aquatopia (a neat simple GPS controlled attraction where the vehicle pilots itself over water) and Stormrider (for how over the top the guy doing the overview at the beginning was as well as the actual attraction). We also loved their Indiana Jones attraction – it’s not better than the Disneyland one, but we appreciated the subtle small details that made it different (smoke rings instead of fire and the queue).
The Mermaid Lagoon area was full of off-the shelf rides similar to ones offered at Disney’s California Adventure, but who knew they could be so much fun?? The theming here at TDS is far superior to the similar rides in Flik’s Fun Faire or Paradise Pier at DCA and I’d certainly take the Scuttle’s Scooters over Tuck and Rolls any day.
Another fun attraction (that we didn’t have a clue what was going on) was the Magic Lamp Theater which showed the story of Aladdin using 3D black light effects. It reminded me of Animagique at Disneyland Paris. On the other side of the park, the Cape Cod and American Waterfront were again very nicely themed. Daniel and I enjoyed that you easily get a plain hamburger at the Cape Cod Cookoff! The Donald’s Boat Builders show was also very fun while we were eating.
In American Waterfront, we watched the Encore show which was your usual good quality Disney Theme Park show – some challenging lip synching by a few of the performers, but overall a great time. Around the lagoon we caught DisneySea Symphony towards the end of the day. Like all of the pyro nighttime shows we watched, it was pretty quickly paced compared to the US nighttime spectaculars.
We left the park exhausted via the Monorail back to the JT line to head back to the hotel. I love the Monorail design here with the Mickey Mouse windows and handles inside the trains. You can also walk completely through the whole train and made it seem more like a regular commuter train than a theme park attraction.
Off to bed and back tomorrow!
