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Happy travels, Phill, Shellie, Bix, Brooke

Japan - Day 12 - Disney Sea

Japan - Day 12 - Disney Sea

Today, determined to not make the same mistake as at Universal Studios, we got up really early and headed to the Disney Sea theme park. This is the only Disney Sea location and I was excited to see a new park with unique rides and atmosphere.


The Crowd to Get In
I had pre-read about the crowds to get in, but as we approached on the monorail, I was shocked to see the sea of people (literally the first "Sea" at Disney Sea. There are two entrances separated by teh tram station and each already had probably 5,000 people lined up at 7:30 for a 9am opening time. As with most theme parks, I expected they would start letting people in by 8am, but no - not Disney Sea. The insane lines grew and grew until 9am and then we started going in.  I was at least another 30 minutes before we made it through the gate and there were probably already 20,000 people in the park.  

 

We had the Disney Sea app and we were watching the ride times go up and up.  As we always do, we targeted the best rides at the back of the park.  Toy Story Mania (which we did twice on our last Orlando visit) and Soaring (which we also did twice) were over 100 minutes wait time before we got in! I expected this and we had already decided to hit Journey to the Center of the Earth first. It was about 60 minutes when we got there but ballooned to over 100 during the day. It was a fun ride. We also hit 20,000 Leagues under the sea while we were in that area.


Disney Sea is set up as ports from around the world - there's a Mediterranean port (Italian), Arabian port, US Port, and others, like the port inside a giant volcano which was where the first two rides were.  Indiana Jones is in an Aztec area - not really a port, but different.


I was terrified to go on
Tower of Terror -
I always skip it, but I did it
and it was fun

The buildings and details at Disney Sea are the best I've ever seen at a Disney park - including Epcot or Animal Kingdom.  The buildings and props are super realistic and the lines have a lot of stuff to look at.  Half the fun of going to Disney Sea is just to look around at all the cool stuff.

I wanted to have a drink at the Teddy Roosevelt bar (go Roughriders! (my HS in San Antonio)) aboard the Titanic - a life-sized replica at the US port, but the wait time was over an hour. We settled for a really crappy lunch at the "New York Deli".  We should have gone over to the Cape Cod area and had fish and chips or eaten in the Italia area.






The other big food thing in Japan is popcorn - it is sold all over, but in the theme parks there are all kinds of flavors with stands dedicated to specific ones. Shellie tried milk chocolate at Disney Sea.

Throughout the day we hit about eight rides (never did Toy Story or Soarin') and then left early for home and a buffet dinner at the hotel, which was pretty good. On our way out, people were gathering in the main piazza to watch fireworks.  

I would recommend any visitors to Tokyo should experience Disney Sea. It's a beautiful park with interesting rides.  Just target a weekday.  






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