Tokyo Disneyland Part I (Disney Sea)

Let me spend some time telling you about a wonderful Disney experience: Tokyo Disneyland!  My brother David lived in Japan for 7 years before moving back home with his husband at the end of 2010.  On my second and last visit to him 2 years ago, it was my biggest wish to go to Disneyland (and Disney Sea, too!).  Well, that wish was granted and here are photos from that great trip with my brothers, David and Hiro!

Above is a map of the two parks--Disney Sea on the left and Disneyland on the right.  Below are two murals in the Disney monorail station:

Oh, and there were these straps on the monorails (sooo cute):

Our first stop was Tokyo Disney Sea!

We were there in July, just at the end of Spring Carnival.  This was a big flowers & fairies celebration.  Even the monorails were decorated for it!  Here's some of the balloons available (you'll notice if you didn't know already, Marie, the cat from Aristocats, is very popular in Japan!):

Here I am meeting Jiminy Cricket for the first time in any park!

 What a charmer! I wanted to say something when I met him again in Epcot in Disneyworld, but being the big celebrity he is I didn't want him to be embarrassed if he didn't remember me ;)

Here we are with an active volcano (well, Disney active)!!

Then there's Tinkerbell perched on my shoulder:

And of course Captain Jack Sparrow is a Frenchman in Tokyo...

There were a lot of cute things in the gift shops (I bought them instead of taking pictures, except for some things... like this chocolate pop!)

Tower of Terror! (David & Hiro went on.  I hung out and looked at the topiaries.)

I love me some Mickey-face treats!

They had flavored popcorn here.  And I mean all KINDS!  I think this one was cherry blossom flavor?  But every popcorn station you went to there were new and different flavors than before!

Even the popcorn box was adorable:

We got some great food, too, in this dark, indoor Little Mermaid-themed cafeteria:

Sebastian's Calypso Kitchen!  There were fish lights hanging from the ceilings:

And, if you couldn't guess from the name of the park OR the theme of this particular eatery, they mostly had fishy items on the menu.  Here's an adorable sandwich David got, shaped like a shell:

A little Asian packet of ketchup (a thin tube as opposed to a rectangular pouch), stirrer (with Mickey face) and spoon:

Mmm seafood pizza..

And my fish sandwich:

And my favorite Japanese soda, Melon soda!!  It's green!

Here we all are on Genie's carousel.  A highlight for me (well, what part of the trip wasn't a highlight?) because I LOVE carousels!  Especially old-fashioned, or out-of-the-ordinary, like this one:

Sure, there were horses... But there was also Genie!  Of course all the Genies get taken first!  (If you look at the pic above, you can see purple Genie on the left)

There was a whole Agrabah area along with the carousel!  There was this camel...

And the Magic Lamp theater (requiring 3D glasses.  I can't say I remember what the film was about but I'm pretty sure it was one of those 4D experiences, when they squirt water on you and emit wonderful scents).

 

I tried for quite some time to get a good picture of Ariel's castle at night.  The colors were as beautiful as the architecture, which reminded me of Gaudi's work!  Anyway this was the best I could get (I'd actually dropped my camera somewhere in Agrabah and worried about it the rest of the trip):

There was this great statue of Ariel I should have taken a picture of when the sun was still out:

There was also one of King Triton!

There were these great bubbles floating up in those windows in the background.  Here's one of the pillars of the castle that reminded me of Gaudi:

We ate somewhere called NY Deli which was pretty funny (being from NY and all)...  Oh and I found this Cheshire Cat doll with bunny ears (for the Spring Carnival) on the ground and looked around for who it might belong to, but in that crowd the owner was long gone.  To this day I still have it on my backpack :)

I found this great hat in one of the stores (I didn't buy it because where else could I wear it?)

Some nostalgic decorations:

We went back to our hotel soon after that, and got ready for our next big day: Tokyo Disneyland!!