Getting Down with the Sickness at Tokyo Disneyland (18/03/2024)

After our challenging first day at Tokyo DisneySea, I approached our day at Disneyland with a fair degree of trepidation. By this point in the trip, we were so used to getting up early after a late night, eating breakfast bought the night before at the conbini on the edges of our beds, and hauling ourselves out of our hotels at an ungodly hour for a holiday, that it felt like a (fun) work commute routine that we had got down pat. Our Disneyland day was no different, although it wasn’t our earliest start, as we only left the hotel at 7am (what a treat!) The day wouldn’t come even close to being the slog I feared, but it would involve the most gruelling queue of my life – and one that I blame for making me so unwell that I’m still dealing with the aftermath two months later…

My tonsils hurt just looking at this photo...

Fumbling Through a Strategy

Having joined the Minnie-eared throngs of guests waiting by the entrance a little before 8am, we made our way into World Bazaar, Tokyo’s equivalent of Main Street USA, just past 9am. Hot-pink polka-dotted banners adorned the elaborate ironwork, and a giant, equally hot-pink polka-dotted bow loomed in the distance, in celebration of ‘Minnie’s Funderland’ – an event celebrating Minnie Mouse that we were visiting on the complete backend of, in a tragic no-man’s land of merchandise offerings. Whilst the event was still technically running, it did slightly feel like we were in the office a week after Linda in HR’s retirement party and no one had bothered to take the decorations down yet because they sort of jazzed up the place anyway.

World Bazaar, featuring Minnie's bow.

Trying not to get too distracted by all of the magenta, we glued ourselves to our apps and called up the free 40th Anniversary Priority Passes, snagging ourselves Space Mountain for the earliest time we could get…3:30pm (oof). This didn’t feel like the flying start I had hoped for, but we at least had a major attraction locked down, and we knew we’d need all the help we could get, with two of the people-eaters Pooh’s Hunny Hunt and Big Thunder Mountain closed for scheduled maintenance. Knowing that The Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast – the newest ride at Tokyo Disneyland – was our must-do attraction, we power-walked over to the Beauty and the Beast area…and were immediately confronted with over a two-hour posted wait time just five minutes after official opening, and twenty minutes after early entry for hotel guests. Without hesitation, we opened up the app and our wallets and bought Premier Access (¥2000/£10.52) for around 11am, and it was a tenner brilliantly spent; when we walked past again later, the ride would be on a three-hour wait, and I have rarely seen such layers of misery on the faces of people in a queue as I saw emanating from the extended queue outside the Beast’s castle.

Monsters Inc. Ride and Go Seek!

With another ride secured, we backtracked into Tomorrowland, to brave our first big queue of the day: Monsters Inc. Ride & Go Seek!  Having joined the queue at 9:15am, we waited around 85 minutes for this ride. It didn’t however feel too strenuous of a wait as the queue line is relatively covered, so we were sheltered from the worst of the wind, which would cause havoc with the paper napkin supplies of the park’s restaurants throughout the day, sending them swirling through the air, like birds surfing the breeze. I really enjoyed Monsters Inc. Ride & Go Seek! despite being a staunch hater of shooting dark rides. If I had my way, they’d all go straight in the bin; I don’t go to theme parks to get a Repetitive Strain Injury, thanks. However, Monsters Inc is different because it doesn’t keep score, so the incentive to aim is discovery rather than a pathological need to be graded. I also think this ride does the film(s) justice, with its smooth animatronics and rich sets that don’t feel dated 15 years after opening. If we had had time, we certainly would have ridden this attraction again, but sadly and inevitably, we did not.

The inside queue for Monsters Inc. Ride and Go Seek!

The Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast

By the time we got off of Monsters Inc. it was 10:50am, so we hotfooted it to Beauty and the Beast for our Premier Access slot. Premier Access certainly doesn’t eliminate the queue entirely; in the end we queued around 15 minutes inside the show building, but I think this is a good happy medium anyway, as it allows you to experience the story built within the queue, rather than being palmed off with an efficient yet bland corridor. Gelatoni, who I acquired at DisneySea, joined us for this ride on my lap, as the gentle sway of the teacups you sit in was mild enough for a little lad. And what a lovely time the lad and I had! I think the best way to go into the Beauty in the Beast ride is recognising that it is essentially an opportunity to appreciate the songs of the film with appropriate theming to each musical piece – like a sing-along, but without the singing-along. If you are expecting constant changes of scenes, even on par with something like Haunted Mansion, you will likely be disappointed, as there are essentially four main scenes that almost play out like a beautiful, immersive (physical-set) screensaver that you glide and spin within. These scenes are: ‘Be Our Guest;’ the snowy ‘Something There,’ which smelt strangely herby rather than pine-y (providing further evidence to my assertion that no attraction knows how to provide a scent for snow); the beautifully executed Beast’s transformation; and the title track finale that sounds gorgeous in Japanese. I realise “beautiful, immersive screensaver” sounds like a terrible backhanded compliment, but I genuinely enjoyed the ride; it’s lovely to get to hear Alan Menken’s music given the time it deserves, although I do feel like ‘Something There’ could have done with another room to swirl into, as I’m sure there are a number of guests who end up thinking, “we’re really doing the second verse too, huh?” 

Overall, I would say that this is a very solid, polished ride; not on the same level as Shanghai’s Pirates of the Caribbean or Rise of the Resistance for technical ambition, but still understandably one of the bigger draws for the park and a perfect addition for Fantasyland.

The Beast's castle; massive queue out of shot.

The Worst Lunch of My Life

By this point it was 11:30am and we were unsure if we could manage another long queue without food, so we decided to stop off at La Taverne de Gaston. The queue was around 35 minutes, but we thought we’d seen a nice vegetarian option in a “French Toast Sandwich,” which looked like a grilled cheese, so we put up with the wait and the couple ahead of us playing Tiktok videos on their phone. The first red flag should have been the phrase “French Toast” but for some reason we decided that rather than actually being French toast, it was going to just be toast that was French. I don’t know, I think we were just seeing what we wanted to see by this stage. The second red flag should have been that the meal did not claim to be vegetarian. Readers: it was both actual French toast and very much not vegetarian. So overwhelmed was I by this truly repulsive mix of sweet bread and savoury yet bland cheese that I didn’t even notice in the first bite that it was also concealing a mystery meat (turkey?) Sadly, this meant that my pescetarian friend found out too late, and then had to extract the pale flobs of meat out of sheer hunger. I couldn’t cope with this gag-inducing excuse for a sandwich, so abandoned it and just ate my accompanying fries bitterly. Whoever created this meal option should feel bad.

The cardboard box the french toast monstrosity was served in may have said "Where dreams come true," but La Taverne de Gaston is actually where dreams go to die.

Star Tours: The Adventure Continues at a Reduced Capacity

Star Tours was actually quite high on my priority list despite not being a Star Wars fan, as I like a good motion simulator and didn’t get to do Star Tours at Disneyland Paris as a kid. We therefore decided a posted 40-minute wait wasn’t too bad. The queue was fine to start with, even though it was out of the main building, and we got to watch cast members trying to catch flying napkins in the wind, so we had entertainment. However, once we reached about the halfway point in the main queuing room, there was an announcement in Japanese. Due to at least one of the motion base cabins being out of action, we were advised that the wait time would likely be far longer than posted and to talk to a cast member for further details. No one seemed to react at all to this, so we assumed it would just add a little bit of time, but as the wait dragged on, it felt more and more depressing that it wasn’t actually possible to get out of the queue (or to speak to a cast member as suggested) without limbo-ing under row upon row of densely packed guests. We were committed now, but in the end, in horror, we realised we’d waited just under two hours for Star Tours – probably 70 minutes more than we’d been promised by the app originally. For a ride that typically has a wait time of around 20 minutes, this was galling. Thankfully, it didn’t feel quite like a two-hour wait, but the ride was still only fine. I should have realised I wasn’t going to be enamoured, given that – controversially – I don’t even care for Rise of the Resistance.

Gadget’s Go Coaster

Licking our queuing wounds, we wanted to get a ride out of the way quickly, so we chose Gadget’s Go Coaster – also partially because we feared the strong winds would close it if we waited any longer. I must admit, neither of us had a clue who Gadget was, which is not surprising because I’ve never been a Chip and Dale fan (I’ve never seen a child so disinterested in a character meet-and-greet as me with Chip as a four-year-old at Disneyland Paris.) But this didn’t matter, because the ride is adorably themed in a cartoon style in keeping with Toontown, and lovingly maintained as with everything in the park. Shockingly, the effect of the frogs that spout water as the train goes past still works after 28 years – we just don’t get that commitment to show in the UK. The coaster itself isn’t anything to get excited about and it is only 44 seconds long, but this would make a very cute kid’s first coaster, and I was fine waiting 35 minutes for it on a busy day.

Space Mountain and the Pizza Guy that Got Away

 

It was almost 3:30pm once we stepped out of Toontown, and time for our Priority Pass for Space Mountain. I was also too small for Space Mountain when I visited my only castle park as a child, so I was excited to finally experience an iteration of one of the world’s most iconic coasters. We felt wonderfully smug as we swanned up the moving walkway past the two-hour queue of plebs without Priority Passes. From joining the queue to leaving the ride, it only took us 24 minutes, and I was impressed by the efficiency of the cast members dispatching trains. Guests barely had time to whip off their ears before they were sent into the sparkling abyss. I hadn’t realised just how dark Space Mountain is, and it was a very odd sensation feeling forces but being surrounded by pitch black, save for some glittering ‘stars.’ I liked the ride well enough, but am still glad it’s closing in July 2024, to be replaced by a seemingly far-fancier Space Mountain in 2027, as it is certainly dated and lacks that wow-factor expected of a park’s headliner coaster.

In the nearby gift shop, I made one of my biggest regrets of the whole trip: I saw a plush of one of my favourite theme park characters, Tony Solaroni – the alien managing the Pan Galactic Pizza Port restaurant – and for some reason, I didn’t buy it. Tony is so goofy, so endearing, and so at risk of being chucked in the Walt Disney Archives when Tomorrowland gets its makeover. He would not have had room in my suitcase, but he would have had a place in my heart.

Me and sweet, sweet pizza man Tony Solaroni.

Pirates of the Caribbean

It was only at 4pm that we were freed from the third of the park we had become embedded in for the first seven hours of our visit – amazingly, we had yet to step foot in Adventureland, Westernland, Critter Country, or pre-Beauty and the Beast expansion Fantasyland. Seeing that Pirates of the Caribbean only had a 20-minute wait, we thought it would be rude not to ride it, although it ended up being 30 minutes. Pirates of the Caribbean is such a solid ride even after all these years; this too is an unpopular opinion probably, but I actually prefer it to Europa Park’s often-praised post-2018-fire version of the ride, Piraten in Batavia. Pirates of the Caribbean feels more intimate (and dare I say it, therefore immersive), and there’s a special quality to older dark rides; perhaps because of their age, they feel lived in (and, I’m going to say it again, therefore feel more immersive).

Dinner at Hungry Bear Restaurant

Not to brag, but we made an excellent choice for dinner. Knowing we were going to need all the energy we could get waiting around on a cold, gusty March evening for Splash Mountain, we stopped for an early dinner at 5pm at the Hungry Bear Restaurant. We chose this place not only because it served one of the only vegetarian options, a vegetable curry on its low-allergen menu, but also because, with Big Thunder Mountain closed, Westernland is a little dead and we figured it would have less passing traffic. Inside was fairly busy, but there was plenty of seating outside; despite the sun going down and leaving us in shade, the hot curry kept us snug. Hungry Bear Restaurant, which serves just Japanese-style curry, gets a lot of praise from international guests, but I would say that if you have had Japanese-style curry before, you might not be so excited by the flavour. It is tasty curry and well-priced (¥1400/£7.37 for a pork katsu curry, rice, and a soft drink), but it is exactly what you would get from a box of roux-block curry, which isn’t surprising as the eatery is “hosted” by House Foods, who are the largest manufacturer of Japanese curry. It hit the spot, but clearly wasn’t anything too stunning because I failed to take a photo of it.

Splash Mountain and the Great Sickness

Dinner only took 25 minutes, so by 5:35pm we were heading into Splash Mountain’s very extended queue. Before this, we paused briefly to soak up Westernland’s golden hour glow. The Mark Twain Riverboat looked beautiful against the blue evening sky, as did the Western River Railroad, and the whole area felt like a small oasis of calm within a generally heaving park. Golden hour is definitely the best time to view Westernland - I just wish we could have seen Big Thunder Mountain without the scrim!

We ended up waiting just under two hours for Splash Mountain, and whilst the wait was long, the real killer was the cold. By this point, the sun was down but the wind was still up, so my weather app was saying it felt like 3 degrees Celsius. We had both optimistically packed for spring weather – light jackets to be worn whilst sipping a cool beverage under a blossoming cherry tree, not fighting for our lives ten switchbacks deep into a ride queue in darkness. The Japanese girls in their school uniform miniskirts are clearly built different; I honestly don’t think I have felt so cold in my life. I’ve obviously been in far colder conditions, but never so unprepared clothes-wise or for such an extended period of time, and I genuinely could feel my core body temperature slipping. This is when I believe I got my Great Sickness. Practically everyone in Japan seemed to be sick in March, with dry coughs, phlegmy coughs, and all coughs in between filling the queues, and reports online of Japan’s Strep A crisis. It was a miracle we got through the trip to that point unscathed. However, I think almost reaching the point of hypothermia was the last straw for my put-upon immune system, and I was horribly unwell by the time I was back in London a couple of days later.

I adored Splash Mountain though - it ended up being my favourite ride in the park! I especially loved the tiny critter house doors and windows built into the trees in the inside portion of the queue line, and this was just one way in which the environments of the ride felt incredibly rich. I understand why Splash Mountain has undergone an overhaul in the States and my love for some animatronic critters and their teensy houses should not trump the discomfort of others when viewing the ride through the lens of its source material, Song of the South. But I do hope Splash Mountain can stay at Tokyo Disneyland. I’m sure Tiana’s Bayou Adventure will be fine at the very least, but I think one of the reasons I like Splash Mountain so much is that it doesn’t feel like it’s based off of an intellectual property. The characters are so unfamiliar to me, having probably only half-heartedly watched Song of the South once as a kid at my childminder’s house on a crackly old VHS, that they don’t read as part of the Disney empire, but instead as generic, endearing Funny Little Guys. Any ride that has Funny Little Guys gets my seal of approval.

The teensy houses in question in Splash Mountain's queue.

A Cheeky Little Haunted Mansion

Splash Mountain was going to be our last ride of the night, because we were truly broken by this point, but with Haunted Mansion posting under a 30-minute wait and right next door, we couldn’t resist. As a child I went on Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris (pretty much not seeing anything beyond the Stretching Room as I spent the whole ride with my eyes closed), but I’d never experienced the classic Haunted Mansion. In summary, I liked Haunted Mansion, but it’s amazing how ‘70s it feels, perhaps because it hasn’t had the same updates the American ones have gone through. It really feels like a time-warp, oddly in a way that Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t, both to its benefit and detriment.

The Final Ride: Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin

Haunted Mansion was really going to be our last ride of the night, but we saw that Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin was essentially walk-on, so again, we couldn’t resist. I don’t have much to say about this ride, other than that I am unsure why a ride for such an unloved film still exists, but I am glad, because it is a cute little ride. We never really worked out how to get a good spin, but it didn’t need it and would’ve been fine with just controlled turns. Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon, doesn’t have quite the same ring to it though.

It was now 8:40pm – 20 minutes before park close – so we stopped to take in a deserted Toontown for a few minutes, then considered the merch stores. Neither of us bought anything however; as I said at the start of the blog post, we were visiting during a merchandise dead spot, so there wasn’t really much of interest if you didn’t want generic character merch.

Final Thoughts on Tokyo Disneyland

I was surprised how good of a day I had at Tokyo Disneyland. Our first experience of a Tokyo Disney park was one of frustration at beautiful attractions marred by ridiculous queues, but somehow, Tokyo Disneyland wasn’t so bad. I think this can be put down to the nature of attractions at Disneyland compared to DisneySea. Excluding Mermaid Lagoon, almost everything at DisneySea is an E-ticket, high-demand attraction, so every queue you enter is a massive time commitment; there are no quick wins like you might have at Disneyland with Pirates of the Caribbean or most of the Fantasyland rides – unless you get lucky with single rider on Raging Spirits or Indiana Jones. I think mixing up your day with some long queues and some short ones is the only way to avoid physical, but mostly mental, fatigue, and Tokyo Disneyland kindly obliged even on a very busy day.

Tokyo DisneySea is still the more impressive of the two parks by a long way; even as someone who has done very little Disney in their life, the castle parks are so engrained in culture at large, that I sort of feel like I’ve already seen all they have to offer. But if you want an easy time, Tokyo Disneyland is the winner. Sure, there wasn’t a fire-spewing volcano, but it was a pleasant day at a beautifully maintained park, and sometimes that’s all you need. Could’ve done without the gross sandwich though.