Sunday. Another early morning, but this time I was prepared. I met Yumiko-san, Stephan and Satoko-chan at Meguro station, ready for an 8am departure, we changed through seemingly endless tunnels, at Tokyo onto the Keiyo line, heading eastward.
The music started as soon as we got off the train, there were discrete speakers hidden all the way along the bridge to our destination. The happiness was infecting us already.
There was a security check on the way in, as if I was going to Bomb Disneyland?
We made a run for Big Thunder Mountain, there was a ten minute wait by the time we got there, but there was plenty of space inside for a much larger queue. Then on to Splash Mountain. These rides, while kinda fun, leave me feeling that I should get more out of them, theres no adrenaline, no excitement. Its not like I don’t like them, just that they do very little for me. Besides, you know that any roller coaster they let you take a bag on is going to be rather tame.
Next was toontown, where none of buildings are straight and they react when you attempt to interact with them. The kids here were having a whale of a time (or wail of a time?), but we got bored quite quickly, and headed down to get some fastpass tickets for Space Mountain.
It seemed like a good idea to get lunch before going on the next roller coaster. That killed time until it was time for our turn….through the futuristic scifi corridors to the coasters station, escape pods all along the way for those whose nerve weakened during the wait. And suddenly it was over, we were whisked around in the darkness for something like 30 seconds, and all I could think was ‘was that it?’. I’d’ve been upset if I’d been queuing two hours for that, but the fast pass system makes it much less painful.
By the time we got back to the sunlight kids were setting up for Mickeys parade, we took the chance to go around Its a Small World before the parade started.
A gloriously American self-congratulatory motorcade of everything kids should aspire to be.
The only way to recover from that was to go to the haunted mansion, which started in a room with a moving ceiling and a story in Japanese, and then into cars for the ride itself. Again, a toned down, ‘Disney’ version of a haunted house, but still better than nothing.
Stephan was fading a bit, and needed some real coffee, “I don’t want that poncy stuff with cinnamon”, we found a little cafe. After a while a jazz band turned up and started playing some of the classic songs from the early cartoons, they were very good, but had some quite disturbing fans, a whole family of disney fans with glove puppets and a little row of Mickey and Minnie plushies watching the band.
We took a climb up the Swiss Family Treehouse, an artificial tree containing a series of bridges and ladders. We went on the cruise around the island. We went on a cruise through the jungle. We went to Endor and back (my first go in a ‘flight sim’, which was more effective than I’d expected but still a bit computer generated). Lots of things to do.
After a while we ran out of rides to go on, so we went to the Mickey Mouse Revue, which started out with a little film about the history of the mouse, then we were lead into a huge theatre where there were a number of automaton playing various songs. This was cleverly done, with different bits of the stage being different scenes from famous Disney films, but with the scenes changing while the curtains were down and the action was happening elsewhere on the stage.
Outside we got waved to a position along the parade circuit, for the electric parade in the darkness, another motorcade of brightly lit cars and costumes.
All in all, a fun day. A thoroughly manufactured experience, nothing there is real, but its about people having fun, and they are very good at making sure that happens.
Is it a bad thing to find Japanese girls with Minnie Mouse ears attractive?
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