Tokyo Disneyland

So I have approximately a million things to say about Tokyo Disneyland... I really wanted to write an academic comparison paper comparing it to the one I am familiar with in Anaheim (god, what has a liberal arts education done to me?). Andy kept mentioning an article he read about it in a book called Remade in Japan which I guess I'll have to check out now.

Anyway, in case you are not familiar with my relationship with Disneyland, I grew up in LA, and therefore have been to the original Disneyland quite a few times in my life. This summer, I went 3 times with different people, and had lots of fun! So naturally, I wanted to check out Tokyo Disneyland.

The first big difference was that TDL (as they call it) is really only about 30 minutes away by train from central Tokyo, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to access than the one in Anaheim, which in itself is a good distance away from LA (maybe an hour in good traffic) but you also have to brave the 5, a treacherous freeway, which when faced in rush hour can mean about 2-3 hours. But even with crowded trains, it was no problem to get to TDL, and they drop you off almost right in front of the park. I was proud of Tokyo for not renaming the stop to Tokyo Disneyland (it's 舞浜 Maihama).

They have Cinderella's castle at TDL, where we have Sleeping Beauty's, and I liked Cinderella's asymmetrical design a lot more.


Here's me being a snarky American in front of it. It's their 25th anniversary. We had our 50th a few years ago.

Probably our biggest mistake was that we were there during spring break, which is Japan's equivalent of summer vacation, so everyone in the world Japan was there. I generally avoid Disneyland at its busiest times, so perhaps it's that I'm not used to being there when it's crowded, but I've never experienced 2+ hour wait lines before. The longest we saw, as we were getting ready to go, were 210 minutes (that's 3 and a half hours, kids!) for Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, I think.

Another interesting thing was lines for snacks, which were absurdly long. I really wanted a churro but never got one because the lines were always too long. T__T Also, their flavors of popcorn ranged from very strange to delicious-sounding (soy sauce and butter, curry, honey, and caramel) and tons of people had purchased the fancy popcorn buckets shaped like characters.

We did eat something Mickey-shaped... it was this pizza, which did a really good job of tasting like American and not Japanese pizza.



I wish we had a picture of the Mickey-shaped manju (meat buns), because we decided that was the quintessence of Tokyo Disneyland.

While we were waiting to get on Pirates, a cast member dressed as a very convincing Jack Sparrow came through, and when he passed by us he patted me on the shoulder and said, "'Allo, mates." Future career options: cast member at Disneyland in Anaheim who speaks to Japanese tourists, or cast member at TDL who speaks to English-speaking tourists.

The crowd was mostly Japanese college students, I felt. Of course there were families, and high school/middle school aged kids, but I saw a lot of groups of girls and also couples (Disneyland is a popular date spot in any country, after all). There were only a handful of non-Japanese people, but I imagine it's the off-season for them... although what with cherry blossom-viewing season right around the corner, they'll probably show up soon.

Everyone was wearing their special Disney headgear, which changes pretty frequently from what I gather. The must-have item of the moment were little hats that are attached to hair clips, so they're comically small. Probably the weirdest one I saw was a girl who had a Stitch hood/cape thing that pretty much looked like you had skinned Stitch and made him into a cape... his head was a hat on your head, and it went down to his hands which were little mittens for you. Kind of weird?

One of the more strictly Japanese parts of TDL was the gift shop at the end. As we were leaving, the crowd in the gift shop for omiyage (presents you bring your friends and family after visiting someplace special) was enormous. The line for making your purchases was just as bad as for the rides. I was glad I bought mine ahead of time in Adventureland. The sheer variety of differently packaged boxes of chocolate, snacks, candy, etc., was also staggering... omiyage is such an important, crazy part of Japanese culture, one I have definitely not mastered. But I get cut a little slack since I'm a 外人... hopefully.

We had a lot of fun, despite it being mad crowded. I hope to go back someday when it's not so crazy.