We started our day with our morning dose of electrolytes. I don't usually pay much attention to such things but when you are drinking 4 to 5 liters of water a day to stay hydrated, washing too many electrolytes out seems like a real risk. Plus Kerry's "Let's Go Mum" Facebook group recommended them and they seem to know what they are talking about. As you can see they come in many flavors to choose from. I think Kerry has been mixing them quite strong because they taste vile but it's a good way to walk up in the morning before we head to the park.
This was a special day. 40 hours of Callie's birthday.16 hours of Japan birthday plus the 24 hours of her Canada birthday. This is the third time that Callie has been able to celebrate her birthday at one of the parks. It helps that her birthday is during the summer. Poor Carter will probably never get to have his birthday in a park. September is not a convenient travel month. Callie even got a birthday call. It was in English but I think it would have been more fun to hear Mickey sing Happy Birthday or some equivalent in Japanese.
Our first ride of the day was "Soaring: Fantastic Flight". It's effectively the same as the one in California but I liked the outside of this one a lot better. I think it's themed around a Leonardo DaVinci view of flight. Everything is stone and the planes look like something he would have designed. The ride itself had many of the same scenes but included a different ending where they fly over Tokyo Disneyland. They didn't have Patrick Warburton giving instructions but I feel if they had asked he would have learned Japanese. This ride had enough English to understand but other rides we've had an attendant bring an iPad to us English speakers to make sure we understand.
Next up was "Journey to the Center of the Earth". You start at the base of the volcano and this was our longest line up at the parks. At 60 minutes the estimate was almost perfect with us getting on the car at 59 minutes. The ride itself is a roller coaster but you're in a Jules Vern style train car that includes full sides and a roof. I really don't like the down bits of roller coasters so I did a bit of research in advance and the description I liked was "not as intense as Splash Mountain". The ride is mostly slow until the end where they send you down a hill. Callie realized there is an elevator at the start that must take you up and not down because we never actually had to go up when we were on the ride.
On our way to the Tinkerbell ride we passed through the "American Seaside Town". It seems that every time you turn a corner in this park you find something new. I didn't even know this was here and it is definitely the idealistic view of an American sea side town. I was a bit disappointed as once again Disneyland has chosen not to have "Fish-n-Chips" in the most obvious of locations. My other example is the San Francisco area of California Adventure where they used to have a dedicated truck. The fun part about this town was the flood barrier in the distance that was appearing to leak water. I think the ocean is just outside but I'm not sure how high the water actually comes to.
After our afternoon nap, we headed back to the park for Callie's Birthday dinner. We stopped on Main Street to get souvenirs and there were some plates that were in the style of what I was looking for but I decided that if I was going to bring anything back from Japan I'd rather it wasn't Disney themed Japanese. We only have so much space in our bags. Dinner itself was at the Rain Forrest cafe. We reminisced about all the past visits to this restaurant where it seemed like one kid or the other was always in a bad mood. We managed to make it out unscathed and they even took a birthday picture of the family and printed it for us.
We did Beauty and the Beast and Pirates again and then I headed out of the park while the rest of the family did Big Thunder Mountain one last time. I managed to catch a portion of Tokyo's version of the electrical parade.
Disneyland Paris was a good mix of the same but different. My only observation was that they seemed to make a conscious decision to have the paths easy to clean vs a more natural mix of surfaces. I prefer the way the other parks do it. Disney Seas was probably one of my favorite parks. The only drawback was that it is so big. I would recommend both.
No comments:
Post a Comment