Tokyo Disney Resort – May 2004 – Part 5
Day One – Tokyo Disneyland, continued
My legs were bothering me, so we spent a good half-hour hanging out in Westernland, sitting on a bench, people-watching and eating some caramel popcorn we bought in a Chip ‘n Dale bucket (cute bucket, excellent popcorn). We really enjoyed it, actually. The day was cool and pleasant and there was lots to look at.Eventually we got up and strolled from Westernland into Adventureland. All through this area I felt the landscaping was remarkable. Japan’s humid climate helps a lot, I’m sure, but the greenery is so lush throughout the park!
Just around the corner as you come into Adventureland is “The Enchanted Tiki Room: Get the Fever.” This attraction has many components in common with the US parks’ Tiki Room attractions, but there are a number of major differences.
The show starts outside, in a grotto that looks pretty similar to the one at the Tiki Room at Walt Disney World. The interior decor and seating also look like the Disney World attraction. There are singing birds, flowers and tikis in this show, just like its US counterparts. From there on, all similarities end.
The music in Tiki Room: Get the Fever is heavily Latin-influenced but also includes some American popular music styles. I have no idea why Latin music was deemed appropriate for a Polynesian attraction, but oddly enough, it works pretty well.
While you’re waiting outside, there is a short presentation with two birds rapping and doing a little comedy routine in Japanese. One of the “rapper” birds is named 2-Can. He wears a tiny bucket hat and gold chains and sits on a turntable! Very silly.
Inside the attraction, the four “lead vocalist” parrots are different from those in the Tiki Rooms in the US. At the Tokyo park there is a “sexy” white female bird called Lava; a colorful parrot named Danno who wears a lei; a bird wearing shades and gold chains who is called Scats; and a tuxedo-clad parrot named Buddy.Two of the numbers they perform are “Hot Hot Hot” and (not surprisingly, given the name of the attraction) “Fever,” with Lava taking the “lead vocals.” The audience really got into the music, much more so than I’ve ever seen in the US. Everyone was clapping along and seemed to be having a great time.
Despite the changed music, it is a fun, corny show in much the same spirit as the other Tiki Rooms. There’s a drum-heavy sing-along number that includes all the birds, flowers and tiki gods and the show ends with a snappy jazz/scat rendition of “I Wan’na Be Like You” from Jungle Book. I found myself grinning and humming along as we emerged from the Tiki Room.
Next we headed over to the Western River Railroad. Unlike the other Disney theme parks, Tokyo Disneyland’s railroad does not travel around the entire park, and it has only the one station in Adventureland, so it is purely an attraction, not a form of transportation.
I suspect there may be some sort of restriction in Japan that prevents the Oriental Land Company from operating trains for transportation purposes without charging a fare. For instance, the Mickey-themed Disney Resort Line monorail charges a fare of ¥200 per trip. (More on the monorail later.)In any case, the Western River Railroad meanders through Adventureland, Westernland and Critter Country. The Adventureland portion mainly features a lot of trees and some occasional glimpses of Audio-Animatronic animals that are part of the Jungle Cruise lagoon, which the train circles.
However, the Westernland portion of the ride has a few different vignettes, including a little Western-style station with a caboose sitting on a siding, and an Indian village with teepees. There is also a short version of the Primeval World dinosaur diorama, similar to the one between Tomorrowland and Main Street Stations on the Disneyland Railroad in California.
Pirates of the Caribbean is in Adventureland at Tokyo Disneyland. Although there is no official “New Orleans Square,” there is a row of New Orleans-style buildings with elaborate ironwork on the balconies. One of them contains the entrance to Pirates, which is a virtual clone of the California Disneyland attraction.We decided to ride it since it’s one of my favorites and there was no line at all. It was interesting to hear the dialogue in Japanese, but overall the Pirates attraction in Tokyo was a slight disappointment, because it was too brightly-lit inside. I could see the ceiling, plus the rails in the water were clearly visible, which took away from the illusion. (I realize only a Disney geek who has experienced this ride repeatedly would probably ever notice this!)
I had hoped to see the afternoon parade, as well as Minnie O Minnie, the new show that recently opened in the Theatre Orleans near Pirates. Unfortunately the timing didn’t work out, so we missed them. It was also starting to rain, so it seemed like a good time to make our move toward World Bazaar, since that is covered with a glass roof.
Naturally everyone else had the same idea, so World Bazaar was crowded. What I hadn’t realized until this point is that World Bazaar is T-shaped, unlike Main Street U.S.A. in the American parks. It is also home to four full-service restaurants! Clearly the Japanese are much more likely than Americans to sit down and eat a full meal, given that Tokyo Disneyland has seven table-service restaurants (including two that offer shows along with the meal), versus only two table-service restaurants at Disneyland in California.
The last thing on my list was the Disney Gallery, which is located upstairs, over a shop in World Bazaar. The current gallery show is a continuation of the 20th Anniversary exhibit for Tokyo Disneyland. If you are a serious Disneyphile and find all sorts of Disney trivia interesting, this will intrigue you. There are many enlarged photos of the various Tokyo attractions on their opening days and lots of displays of different theme park souvenirs from over the years.There are also “20th Anniversary Stamp Collection” folders you can pick up from little holders near the front of the exhibit. I was puzzled by the purpose of these and didn’t take any initially, but a Cast Member came over and put two of them in my hand, gesturing to indicate they were for Mike and me.
Eventually I discovered that you could stick your folder into stamp machines located throughout the displays. Each one makes an ink impression on your folder, with a different image of Mickey and the words “Tokyo Disneyland.” The stamp collection was the sort of thing I would have expected to see a lot of small children doing. Surprisingly, however, it seemed to be all young adults who were getting their folders stamped — and they were very exacting about making sure the stamps all came out perfectly and were properly centered on each page. Maybe it’s a collector thing. I stamped ours, just for fun, but I wasn’t terribly careful about making them perfect!
We knew we still wanted to visit the Disney Ambassador Hotel and get some dinner somewhere, and my legs were really hurting, so realistically, I needed to quit. We decided to call it a day and head out of the park.Ironically, I had thought one day at Tokyo Disneyland would be more than enough. As it turned out, I felt I had missed a few things I would have enjoyed seeing. I definitely hope to go back sometime!
On our way over to the Ambassador, we did stop at Bon Voyage, which is a large store outside of the parks that carries merchandise from both Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. It’s roughly equivalent to the World of Disney stores found at Downtown Disney in the US resorts. The architecture of the store is pretty interesting: the building looks like a giant suitcase and hatbox!
I had read that this is the largest Disney merchandise store in Japan and also the highest-grossing Disney store in the world, so I figured we could buy most of the items we had seen in the theme park here on our way out, rather than carrying stuff around all day. That turned out to be generally true. For any standard merchandise such as tins of sweets, lanyards, mugs, Buzz Lightyear toys, etc., you might as well wait and buy them at Bon Voyage.
However, there are specialty stores such as the Magic Shop in World Bazaar and the Tiki Tropic Shop in Adventureland that carry merchandise I didn’t see at Bon Voyage. If it’s an item that is unusual or heavily themed to a “land” in the park, you are probably better off to buy it on the spot. Also, not surprisingly, Bon Voyage doesn’t sell any food-related souvenir items (popcorn buckets, dessert cups, lunch boxes) that are sold at vending carts or in restaurants, so you’ll want to buy anything of that nature while you’re in the park.