Unfortunately I probably spent so much time Thu night planning the DisneySea outing that I couldn't sleep well and ended up waking up waaaay too early and not being able to go back to sleep. So I was running only on a few hours of sleep by the time I decided to just get up and get ready to go. It was going to take about an hour to get all the way out there so I wanted to leave the hotel by 6:30 since almost every blog I read said it was crucial to get there before the park opened at 8. We grabbed 2 big umbrellas from the hotel (this was a lifesaver). Hannah had packed a small umbrella for herself and Christopher had a rain jacket. We also packed snacks since they didn't seem to have rules on outside food.
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| Disney Shuttle Decorations |
I made a list of things I wanted to do for sure and they were:
- Soaring
- Tower of Terror
- Indiana Jones
- Journey to the Center of the Earth
- 20,000 Leagues under the sea
- Fortress Explorations (which was an area)
- Mermaid Lagoon (which was an area)
The great thing about DisneySea was that a lot of the rides are indoors so the rain shouldn't affect things too much. Unfortunately Journey to the Center of the Earth was closed which was a real bummer.
We got to the park around 7:40 and the line seemed okay. I was actually glad we didn't get there at 7 like some websites were recommending. It was cold and lightly drizzling. Once the gates opened, I pulled up the wait website to see if it was worth running to get the Soaring FastPass and I was surprised to see it said FastPass return 2:30pm (some sites had said all fastpasses would be gone within 30 minutes). I told Charles to take the kids to Tower of Terror and I sprinted away to Soaring. There were tons of signs telling people not to run so my sprinting was really power walking. By the time I got to the fastpass machine, it had already run out to 5:30 pm return as I grabbed 4.
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| Line to enter |
I then started walking to Tower of Terror (I also realized that I actually didn't tell Charles where Tower of Terror was but figured he would figure it out). The line said 50 minutes but it probably ended up being more like 80 minutes. In my head, I was trying to work out if it would have been better to do Indiana Jones first since as I tracked wait times, I realized that ride didn't get long lines since the location was at the very back of the park and we would have only had to wait 15 - 20 minutes. On the Tower of Terror ride, the other riders started screaming the minute we started goiing up which puzzled Hannah. She was like "but nothing is happening yet". I gotta say the Japanese LOVE these rides. After Tower of Terror which Christopher did not like at all, it was starting to rain heavily so we opted to ride the electric train which took us over to the Nemo area. Since it was already around 10:20 at this point, I could get another fastpass and I could even see it happening in realtime that everyone was running around getting their second fastpasses of the day as FP return times started going later and later. I ran for Indian Jones and got a 4pm FP return.
I found Charles and the kids sitting at a table back near the Nemo area and we were getting really wet and cold despite umbrellas. It was the wet sneakers that were the problem. I just wanted to sit in a warm place and dry off a bit. The kids were already starting to say they were hungry. We ended up standing in a line for lunch which was way earlier than I was expecting. You would think that at 10:20 there would be no lines for lunch but as I was discovering, the Japanese had a lot of patience for waiting in lines... for everything. When lunch was over, the line to get into the restaurant was out the door and it was raining so I was pretty happy that we decided to eat early.
After lunch, we headed to the Sinbad ride which had only a 5 minute wait and was similar to the It's a Small world ride at Disneyland. This rain was really a bummer though since all the areas around these rides were so amazing looking but we couldn't appreciate them since we were cold and wet. After Sinbad, we grabbed popcorn and went inside the Ariel Mermaid Lagoon which was completely indoors and PACKED with families. All the small kid rides were here and I was happy to be warm. Lots of parents were just sitting along the ground eating. We found the playground area and the kids were off. Charles and I sat down while the kids happily ran around. This place was great despite the overwhelming nature of it all. Hannah did want to ride one of the kiddie rides but when I told her the wait was 40 minutes she changed her mind. This also ended up being a terrible place to try and go to the bathroom, as you can imagine the line for that was insanely long.
One cool feature the kids discovered by looking at the playground map was a grotto/cave thing where you used the flashlight feature on your phone to draw on the wall. That was so awesome!
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| Drawing on the walls (not sure what they were trying to spell) |
It was almost 12:30 at this time and I could get another Fastpass so I went out of the Ariel Lagoon and next door to 20,000 Leagues under the sea but FP return was around 1:45pm. I was momentarily speechless by the Mysterious Island area that this ride is located in. It was immersive and just amazing. It also was very uncrowded. When we came back to ride the ride, the ride itself just involved sitting in submarine and looking out a window and you feel like you are underwater. But like all rides it was short and now it was 2pm and I was eager to check out Fortress Explorations. We saw the sign that said you could get the map and scavenger hunt information but I had read it was all in Japanese so it wouldn't help. This area was not crowded either and was a series of rooms with activities. I did wish I had the map since I'm not even sure we found all the rooms. The kids enjoyed the one where you could drive the boats around. I would have wanted to wander around more but when it was raining, the desire to find everything was minimized.
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| Christopher steering his boat |
At this point, we still had time to kill before we could ride Indiana Jones at 4pm so I made everyone stand in line for the Nemo ride. It was under shelter at least but the wind picked up and everyone was shivering. I did wonder if we were all going to fall sick from this weather. This line took a whole hour. It may have been more optimal to fastpass this ride vs the 20,000 leagues one since the standby wait for 20k was not very long at all. When we got on this ride, I was pleasantly surprised that this was an entirely different ride than the Disneyland version. It was a 4d theater experience and it was a nice change.
Now, we were able to go to the Indiana Jones ride but turned out Christopher was too short so Hannah and Charles went in first and then I rode it again with Hannah. Because Christopher was too short made Fastpass the right decision here because we could use the fastpasses to get through it quickly. At first Christopher and I were standing with umbrellas just waiting for C/H to return but then I realized a smarter choice was to wait at the exit where they would come off the ride which was completely sheltered.
We were starting to fade in energy here and I also realized that we hadn't really been eating much but the kids weren't complaining but we were probably all getting a little hangry. We started heading back to the front to get ready to go on Soaring. On the walk over there, I saw people starting to stand around to watch the Fantasia show but I felt conflicted. Charles didn't seem to want to stand outside for 10 minutes to wait to watch the show so we just headed to Soaring.
I hadn't been on the Soaring above CA ride in California adventures in a while but this ride had pre-show interactions that were really magical. Everyone gasped. Then we got the heck out of the park. We thought about getting dinner at the mall that connected to the disney monorail but we couldn't find seating at the food court or there were lines so we gave up and just headed back to Roppongi and ate at the noodle place there.
The hot shower I took that night was the most amazing one ever.
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