The Tokyo Disney Resort and the Not-So Perfect Storm Posted 3/30/05 - 8:12 PM
A family parked on a nearby bench was also killing time. They too had just come from DisneySea, the theme park next door. At the stroke of 6 PM, admission into the Magic Kingdom was half-off. While my traveling companion (AKA Shanna) paced back and forth in front of a disembodied Mickey Mouse head made of flowers, I struggled to sleep. The family and their young daughter, with nothing better to do, decided to stare at me. They whispered back and forth. There's no telling what they thought of my army cargo shorts or bright red "Che Guevara in a Mouskeeter hat" t-shirt. I was a haggard culture oddity and, aside from the weather, their only source of entertainment for the next 45 minutes. The sky overhead had grown dark grey but we were still over an hour away from sunset. I grew up in Portland, the heart of cloud country, but I've never seen a fleet of cumulus like this. All day the rain had been clicking on and off and, judging by these clouds, something nasty was on the way. Waves of locals were heading through the turnstiles, jogging with strollers back to the Monorail. Like fools we were about to buck the tide. This was our only shot at Tokyo Disneyland and we were going to take it, monsoon or no monsoon.
DisneySea is the counter opposite of the debacle in California. It's a three billion dollar wonderland filled with incredibly-detailed landscapes and attractions that rival even the classics in Anaheim. Like it, DisneySea is sub-divided into five "lands."
It also looked yellow. As I stared at the milk, which may or may not have come from a bull, a film crew was shooting an in-house ad. A girl in front of the camera was repeatedly jumping up and down in the front of the camera while screaming excitedly. Each time, the director quickly cut her off and forced her to begin again. Apparently, she wasn't using the right amount of perkiness. The crew must have been on the 27th take as we headed in search of something to toss us around like rag dolls.
The carts are similar to those used in "dark rides" like "Pinnochio's Daring Journey" in Fantasyland. A simple lap bar was all that was going to protect us from whatever was waiting in the ride's subterranean depths. We entered a cavern filled with jewels and animatronic critters. Then the cart suddenly sped up and shot us through pitch darkness and a series of hairpin turns. After a minute or so we stopped at the feet of an animatronic lava monster. As he swooped in to rip us to shreds, the cart plunged down the side of the volcano and back to the queue. Across the lagoon lied the entrance to "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," an update of the classic Disneyland attraction. We boarded a mini-submarine attached to a gondola over a dry dock. After we jumped in, the sub "dived" under …er, the windows filled with water to give the illusion that we had just slid into the ocean. The ride carried us through a series of undersea gardens as meters around us kept track of our oxygen and battery pack. A Japanese Captain Nemo began screaming through a speaker as we encountered a life- size recreation of the squid from the movie. After wasting our battery on electrocuting the ornery invertebrate, we were dead in the water. Fortunately, a gang of mermaids were cruising by. In the rides final scene, they "pushed" our sub through the lost city of Atlantis and back to the surface. Click here for a full ride description. After serving as accomplices to the frying of a gigantic squid, we were feeling hungry. Instead of serving hot dogs and nachos like stateside theme parks, DisneySea's carts cook up meat buns. The one on the Mysterious Island sold Gyoza buns, which were filled with pork.
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