Tokyo Disneyland Truly Delivered: Day 4 of Our Christmas Trip
- Bryan Johnson
- Dec 31, 2021
- 8 min read
Before I tell you about our amazing trip to Disneyland, I have to start at the beginning, when Katie and I both neared nervous breakdowns trying to purchase tickets for the parks. While I was underway and before Katie traveled to Jamaica for Kelly & Jamie's wedding, Katie tried to surprise me with tickets to Disneyland. On the day December tickets were available for purchase, Katie sat on the Tokyo Disneyland website for hours reloading their homepage, and continually got the error message stating that the site was experiencing "high web traffic." After a few hours of frustration, Katie got through to purchase tickets, but every single one of our credit cards was declined. She learned later that Tokyo Disney has recently adopted some new credit card technology that uses an additional level of card verification to process payments, and American credit card companies haven't caught up with this new emerging tech. Great.
After two days of trying to get tickets, Katie passed along the task to me as she left for Jamaica. Once I arrived home from our short patrol, I tried and had the exact same issues. I even tried booking us a Disney hotel to guarantee us park entry, but my credit cards were also declined. I accepted the fact that we would not visit Disney during our trip to Tokyo in late December.
After our long drive back from Osaka, where I picked up Katie from the airport upon her return from Jamaica, I decided to give it another go while Katie was napping her jet lag away in the living room. This time, miraculously, the credit card went through and I was able to book a two-night stay at the Disney Celebration Hotel! The Tokyo Disney Resort Hotels guarantee you can purchase park tickets for the days you stay at their hotels, and since both parks were sold out for the days we planned to visit, we were lucky to get a hotel room. I didn't really care what it cost, we were going to Disney.
December 20, 2021: Arrive at Disney's Discover Celebration Hotel
Ok, now flash forward to the evening of December 20th. We are on the train heading to the Disney Celebration Hotel after another busy day of exploring Tokyo. As we head out of the train station, we check Google Maps for the quickest way to the hotel and find that we could either wait 11 minutes for a 15-minute bus ride or we could walk 26 minutes to the hotel. Katie and I, being the wise people that we are, decided to we could shave time off of our walk, so we decided to make the 2 km power walk down to the hotel. Man was that a mistake...after spending the last 3 days walking all around Tokyo, it would've been worth waiting the extra time just to take the bus. Just check out Katie's excitement at my decision to save $3 on that bus ride...
After speed walking with our two bookbags and a duffel bag, we made it to the hotel, where Katie jumped in line to check us in. Unfortunately, the hotel quit selling park tickets at 9:00 pm, so we had to wait until 6:00 am the following morning to get our tickets. Once she finished checking us in, we made our way up to our room, which was appropriately Disney-themed. Disney's Celebration Hotel is broken up into two separate buildings, each with its own theme: Wish, which is more princess and Alice in Wonderland themed, and Discover, which is more adventure, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Tiki Room themed. I booked our room at the Discover side, so our room had a mural of Splash Mountain and Tiki Room motifs covering the walls. After quick showers, we headed to bed around 10:30 pm, ready for a long day of excitement at Disneyland the next day!
December 21, 2021: Tokyo Disneyland
We originally planned on waking up the morning of December 21st at 6:30 am, but Katie being so excited for our visit, got up at 6:00 am and decided to get ready early and head down to buy our tickets. She purchased tickets for today's Disneyland adventure and tomorrow's Disneysea day, along with "early entry" passes for tomorrow at Disneysea. After I got ready, I met Katie in the lobby around 7:00 am to jump on the free shuttle bus that took us to the parks. We arrived outside of the gate around 7:30 and waited for about an hour or so before they opened the gates around 8:30. The park is scheduled to open at 9:00 am, but we weren't going to complain about 30 extra minutes of Disney magic!
I had read on a blog the night before that the two rides we had to hit at Tokyo Disneyland are "Monsters Inc. Ride and Seek" and "Pooh's Hunny Hunt." Once we made it to the gates, we added our tickets to the Disneyland app and scheduled our first fast pass for the Pooh's Hunny Hunt ride. We noticed that the Ride and Seek ride was closest to the entrance, so we went and jumped in line. "Monsters Inc. Ride and Seek" is similar to Buzz Lightyear Astroblasters, but instead of using a laser gun, you use flashlights to find Monsters Inc. symbols hidden in the dark along the ride.
Once we finished the Monsters Inc. ride, we headed towards the Pooh ride since our Standby time was soon approaching. Along the way, we ran across Beast's Castle, which is where the ride "Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast" is held. We wanted to jump in line to ride, but the lady marking the start of the queue informed us in broken English that the ride now REQUIRED a Standby Pass and that all of the passes were dispursed for the day. We were super disappointed that we weren't going to ride this trackless ride since it's only located at Tokyo Disneyland. We were blown away though that Tokyo Disneyland lucked out with two castles! This was a nice surprise and, while we were bummed we missed out on this ride, we took a few moments to admire this stunning castle!
We weren't going to let this small speedbump ruin our day, so we continued forward to Fantasyland and rode "Pooh's Hunny Hunt." This ride was pretty cool because it is also a trackless ride, similar to "Rise of the Resistance" at Galaxy's Edge in Disneyland California and Hollywood Studios at Disney World. However, if you have ridden "Rise of the Resistance," the Pooh ride is a bit underwhelming. It's still pretty cool that it's a trackless ride, but it's definitely meant more for children since it's Winny the Pooh-themed.
After that, we hit "It's a Small World," which we agreed was the best small world ride yet! It had the wider boats, like at Disney World, but had the Disney characters in their respective countries, like Disneyland. BUT Tokyo's "It's a Small World" ride had even more classic characters including Hercules, Pinocchio, and Aristocats!
You can't do Disneyland without hitting the classic Star Tours ride either, so we made sure to knock it out early in the day!
By this point, Katie and I were getting hungry, so we headed over to Gaston's Tavern for an early lunch...at 10:30 am. Katie had a french toast sandwich with chicken and cheese while I had a beef stew pastry, both of which were very good. We also had LeFou's Brew, the specialty drink for the restaurant which was a berry-flavored soda topped with whipped cream; it's supposed to resemble Gaston's favorite beer, which was great for washing down the apple cinnamon churro the two of us shared.
Following lunch, we enjoyed the rest of the rides at the park. They have the same favorite rides that we loved at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom: Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Katie and I had a particularly enjoyable experience on Jungle Cruise, where the cruise guide, speaking entirely in Japanese, made us laugh the entire time with his expressions and crazy acting. You have to watch the video!
Also, check out this short clip Katie took during Splash Mountain! You aren't hearing it wrong, the classic song is in Japanese!
We made time to enjoy the parades throughout the day, the first being "Dreaming Up!" where Katie and I got to watch all of our favorite Disney characters go by from our spot in Frontierland. We noticed right away that the Tokyo parks require people to sit down during the parade so that everyone can see! What a brilliant idea! No dads with small kids on their shoulders blocking our view!!! This made it great for snapping pictures of the floats as they went by. During the parade, we enjoyed some of Tokyo Disney's famous curry-flavored popcorn; this was an amazing snack and we will have to get it again tomorrow at DisneySea.
Later that afternoon, Katie and I enjoyed the Mickey and Friends Disney Christmas Parade; we grabbed our seats in front of the castle waiting for the parade to begin. Hilariously, the parade was only one float long...not really a parade, more just a quick float drive-by if you ask me. After the Christmas parade, we decided to take some photos in front of Cinderella's Castle (yes, it is the exact same castle as the one in Magic Kingdom).
Following our photo session, we decided to grab an early dinner before the crowds rush to the restaurants, so we settled in at Queen of Hearts Royal Buffet. Katie had the roasted chicken while I had the hamburger steak, each came with mashed potatoes on toast (I don't understand why that's a thing either), and we shared a side of rice, a Minney Mouse cupcake and a chocolate strawberry cake. Dinner was delicious and we were ready to tackle the rest of the evening.
We decided to ride some more rides and do some shopping around the park. Unfortunately, the shopping experience was not as great as the other Disney parks we've visited. The apparel was rather weird and the pin selection was also very thin. There were only five different pins with Tokyo Disney Resort written on them, and none of them were really as cute as we had hoped. No big deal, we still bought them to add to our pin collection! When in Tokyo, you get what you can! We were shocked by the key chain options though! There were walls and walls of key chains for sale...guess people collect those like we collect pins!
After hitting more rides and clearing all of the shops in the park, we found a great spot in front of the castle to watch the "Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade Dreamlights." This parade was amazing because every single float had really bright and colorful lights all over them. My personal favorite was the genie float, which was lit up so that he would be dressed as different Disney characters. Following the parade, Katie and I were very excited to see the fireworks show at 8:00 pm, but unfortunately, a PA announcement throughout the park informed us that due to inclement weather the fireworks show was canceled. Not sure what inclement weather they were seeing, because we had clear skies and sunshine all day.
Katie caught some of the floats on video, knowing the pictures just didn't do them justice! Check it out here:
We finished our day by hitting the last few rides before heading to the exit!
We jumped on the bus, headed back to the hotel where we hit the convenience store on the first floor; the store was stocked with our favorite snack, lemon chicken nuggets! I know that probably sounds odd, but trust me, they are delicious! We then headed to our room satisfied with another successful day and excited for a new experience at DisneySea!
--Bryan
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