Some TDL Love!

On our last night in Tokyo (for all 4 of us together) we went out to Tokyo Disneyland for the night. If you go out there after 6pm then it is only $30, as opposed to close to $60 for a full day pass. To be honest, I probably couldn't have lasted a whole day and night out there - too many screaming kids, though being Japanese kids they didn't really scream that much!

Basically we arrived at 6pm to make the most of our starlight pass, and rushed to a couple of rides after admiring the Disney Castle. Actually, TDL is an exact replica of the original Disney Land in America, so TDL is the 2nd happiest place on earth! We went on a Wild West rollercoaster, and then the Pirates of the Carribean ride - some of the animatronics were amazing!!!

After that the plan had been to find dinner - around 7.15pm by this time - but the queues for the parade were building up, so we grabbed a spot. Being Japanese, all the families had brought tarps to sit on. We, being foreign, had not, so a TDL staff member rushed over with maps of the park for us to sit on, rather than sitting on the clean ground. The best part about the parade was that everyone stayed seated! It meant that we could all see really easily, and that it didn't get too hot!

The parade is called 'Dream Lights' - all the floats are covered in thousands of LED lights so everything sparkles! The characters' costumes are also covered in the lights, as were the costumes of the dancers who were dancing in between each float. Where the character was played by a human being they spoke English - usually the actors are foreigners anyway - but the mechanical creatures that spoke talked in Japanese. It was so funny listening to Winnie the Pooh and Nemo speaking Japanese.

As the parade drew to a close we got up and RAN to the queue for Big Thunder Mountain - in the end we only had to wait 20 mins - we had checked out the ride before the parade and the queue was at least 80 minutes! After that ride we ran some more, pretty much across the park, to get to Space Mountain, where once again the queue was tiny - this time way less than 2o mins.

So in 4 hours we managed 4 rides and to see the parade, so I think we did pretty well in terms of getting value from the pass. Of course on the way out we had to do some shopping! The shops were so full that as people were taking things from the shelves there were staff members restocking the shelves! insanity! Katie and I bought Minnie Mouse ears!