A Date With Dumbo

Some of you may remember my Disney addiction? Well yesterday I fulfilled a long-held ambition and visited my fourth park (just one to go). I went with Yukari, one of my fellow teachers at AEON. We left after work on Saturday night, first going into Osaka on the train and then from Osaka to Tokyo on the bus. It wasn’t a bad trip, although naturally I didn’t get quite as much sleep as I would have liked, and we arrived at the park at around 7.15am. We went and put our bags in a locker and then made our way around to the gate. We had to wait until the park opened at 8am and I was amazed at how many people were there already.



When the gates opened we made our way inside and it was nice to see all the Christmas decorations up.

There was even a special Dumbo one, so naturally I had to get a picture.



Then we started in on the rides. The first one we took was Pirates of the Caribbean, since it is the closest to the entrance and a favourite for both of us. I was interested to see that the ride was in reverse order to the ones in the other parks. For those who are familiar with the ride the town and battle scenes came after the dead pirates. Then we lined up for Fast-passes to Buzz Lightyear, which took about 15-20 mins, but was worth the wait as the queue for the ride itself was already around 2 hours! I was amazed at how long some of the lines were considering that it’s winter, the Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mountain Railroad and Pooh’s Hunny Hunt were all over the two hour mark for most of the day.

We had some breakfast and then took a jungle cruise, and there were more elephants!



Then we went to a couple of the shows, the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Country Bears’ Playhouse. The Tiki room was pretty much all in Japanese but the Country Bears’ was a Christmas show so there were some English songs. In fact one was quite a humorous one but I did wonder if I was the only one in the audience who got it.

By then the sun had come out so we decided to go on Splash Mountain, however when we arrived at the ride I thought that my Splash Mountain Curse had come back into effect as it had broken down. So we decided to brave the line for the Thunder Mountain Railroad, we got on the ride in just about two hours, but luckily most of the time we were standing in the sunshine so it was quite pleasant.

Then we checked back at Splash Mountain, still no joy. So we lined up for Fast-passes to the Haunted Mansion. We were hungry again after that so had some lunch and then it was time to go on Buzz Lightyear. I managed what I thought was a pretty respectable number of laser hits but on reaching the end found out that I was only qualified as a trainee pilot… well I beat Yukari anyway!

Next we decided that the line for Pooh’s Hunny Hunt had gone down enough for us to join it and that was a very cute ride, complete with some Heffalumps, so that kept me happy. We then went on the Disney train, this was different again to the usual as it didn’t circle the park and make stops, it was almost like a ride in itself. While we were on it we went past Splash Mountain and discovered that it was working again so as soon as we got to the end we raced off to line up for it. We got some Fast-passes and then lined up to ride it as obviously not everyone had realised that it had reopened and so the line was quite short.

Once we’d ridden SM it was time for the Haunted Mansion. This was the only time that I really regretted not speaking any Japanese as the ride had been specially re-modelled just for Halloween and Christmas and although I could enjoy the décor the commentary was of course completely lost on me. The Tokyo Disney HM is different from the others both in appearance, as you can see it looks like a small castle but in the other parks like an old house, and in that the exterior is just a shell, you walk in underneath it whereas the others you enter through the front door.



We came out and it was time for our Splash Mountain Fast-pass, so off we went to ride it again and this time we were in the front seats (it sits two abreast unlike the one in CA) so I got a nice face-full of water, partially my own fault for throwing up my arms as we made the descent but really, that’s part of the fun!

Had another turn on Pirate’s as the queue was still very short and then it was definitely dinner time so we went and ate. After eating we were just around the corner from Buzz so we checked the line and since it was quite short decided to go on it again. We both improved our scores but I was still only ranked as a trainee. Obviously I don’t play enough computer games.

Did some quick shopping, and my self restraint was incredibly tested by the discovery of some Dumbo toys on sale, however I managed to resist and only came away with a Heffalump, and as you can see by the picture, he’s so small he barely counts!



Had one last go on Splash Mountain and then it was time to head for the bus. We were quite lucky in that the bus we came home on was a higher grade so we had more room. Got back to Kak at around 7.15am. Naturally went straight back to bed for a while. Overall it was great and we were very lucky with the weather, I never felt too cold and the sun was shining all day. Next time, Disney Sea!