Japan - Day 4 - Tokyo Disneyland & The Ambassador Hotel
* Apologies if this post comes out a mess, i'm feeling pretty ill at the moment but want to make sure I get this post ready and scheduled as I have a busy week at work starting tomorrow!
After an earlyish night last night, we were woken up by our 5am alarms ready to quickly get some breakfast and get dressed before finishing off our packing and heading for the train to Maihama via Shin-Kiba.
I had left my fiancé in charge of two things on this trip - the money, and the PASMO cards, so of course, we got to the train station early to top up our cards for the journey, and ! they're not in his wallet.
He has an annoying habit of emptying out his wallet when we get back to the room - his reason is his wallet gets fat and doesn't fit in his pocket comfortably - but that doesn't explain why he takes things out that we need and doesn't put them back!
So, off we rush back to our room and pick up the cards, arriving back to the station after our originally planned train had already departed, but thats fine, they come every few minutes, the only problem was, this now meant we were going to have to cram onto a busy train of school kids and salarymen who obviously weren't too pleased that between us we had two backpacks, and a big DSLR bag taking up space. Pretty much everyone got off a few stops before Shin-Kiba though so at least we could breathe for around 5 minutes!
We had a short wait at Shin-Kiba before our train to Maihama arrived - and WOW! you can really tell the difference between summer and off season! last August when we got on this train i'm not even sure my feet touched the floor as the entire platform glided into the train to Disneyland, but this year? there were still empty seats when we got on!
A few minutes later, we arrived at Maihama station and walked down to Disney's Ambassador Hotel - at this point DisneySea had recently opened and there was still over half an hour before Disneyland was due to open so we still had plenty of time to check in to our new hotel.
Disney's Ambassador Hotel is half way between the station and the MyStays Maihama where we stayed last year so we knew where we were going and it wasn't long before we were walking into the amazing lobby, greeted by this amazing ceiling display.
We checked in, dropped off our bags and bought our Park tickets - if you stay on-site you can buy tickets at the hotel which allow you to park hop from day one, on a regular ticket you can't park hop until day three!
And then we walked to the park, despite there being a free resort bus just arriving as we set off!
We wanted to take in the entire thing again, like last year - from the station, right along the path to Disneyland they have Disney music, statues and even the Disney Resort Liner going along, not forgetting the sea of excited park goers walking along side you!
We got in just after park opening and to be honest, we didn't really have a set plan! So we wandered around, before ending up on It's a small world as it was showing a 5 minute wait then heading back to the main section of the parade route, by the castle, as they had just announced a programme reminder - Halloween POPn Live was due to start! Even though the programme states that it doesn't officially start until the next day! But there were a lot of, I suppose, Press (maybe bloggers?) around today, they even had their own section for the parade - facing the castle so they were obviously here to get the first snaps of Halloween before the season officially started the next day.
And WOW! This has to be the best Halloween parade EVER!
I'll be posting a video of the parade on YouTube next Thursday at 12PM UK time!
After an earlyish night last night, we were woken up by our 5am alarms ready to quickly get some breakfast and get dressed before finishing off our packing and heading for the train to Maihama via Shin-Kiba.
I had left my fiancé in charge of two things on this trip - the money, and the PASMO cards, so of course, we got to the train station early to top up our cards for the journey, and ! they're not in his wallet.
He has an annoying habit of emptying out his wallet when we get back to the room - his reason is his wallet gets fat and doesn't fit in his pocket comfortably - but that doesn't explain why he takes things out that we need and doesn't put them back!
So, off we rush back to our room and pick up the cards, arriving back to the station after our originally planned train had already departed, but thats fine, they come every few minutes, the only problem was, this now meant we were going to have to cram onto a busy train of school kids and salarymen who obviously weren't too pleased that between us we had two backpacks, and a big DSLR bag taking up space. Pretty much everyone got off a few stops before Shin-Kiba though so at least we could breathe for around 5 minutes!
We had a short wait at Shin-Kiba before our train to Maihama arrived - and WOW! you can really tell the difference between summer and off season! last August when we got on this train i'm not even sure my feet touched the floor as the entire platform glided into the train to Disneyland, but this year? there were still empty seats when we got on!
A few minutes later, we arrived at Maihama station and walked down to Disney's Ambassador Hotel - at this point DisneySea had recently opened and there was still over half an hour before Disneyland was due to open so we still had plenty of time to check in to our new hotel.
Disney's Ambassador Hotel is half way between the station and the MyStays Maihama where we stayed last year so we knew where we were going and it wasn't long before we were walking into the amazing lobby, greeted by this amazing ceiling display.
We checked in, dropped off our bags and bought our Park tickets - if you stay on-site you can buy tickets at the hotel which allow you to park hop from day one, on a regular ticket you can't park hop until day three!
And then we walked to the park, despite there being a free resort bus just arriving as we set off!
We wanted to take in the entire thing again, like last year - from the station, right along the path to Disneyland they have Disney music, statues and even the Disney Resort Liner going along, not forgetting the sea of excited park goers walking along side you!
We got in just after park opening and to be honest, we didn't really have a set plan! So we wandered around, before ending up on It's a small world as it was showing a 5 minute wait then heading back to the main section of the parade route, by the castle, as they had just announced a programme reminder - Halloween POPn Live was due to start! Even though the programme states that it doesn't officially start until the next day! But there were a lot of, I suppose, Press (maybe bloggers?) around today, they even had their own section for the parade - facing the castle so they were obviously here to get the first snaps of Halloween before the season officially started the next day.
And WOW! This has to be the best Halloween parade EVER!
I'll be posting a video of the parade on YouTube next Thursday at 12PM UK time!
We then headed over to Tomorrowland and had our first ride on Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters before heading for food at Tomorrowland Terrace.
After food we headed over to the Haunted Mansion - which has now been transformed into Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare! And, i'm just so glad! When it's in its full-Haunted Mansion glory I jump! Honestly, it made me jump last year. Scariest Haunted Mansion in a Disney Resort I would say.
We then headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean before doing some souvenir shopping befor heading back to the hotel to check in properly - I really couldn't wait to see our Donald Duck room!
Now, this is where my notes for the day end, and my notes for tomorrow are even worse so there won't be too much detail here.
We headed back to the park after unpacking, taking the resort bus this time.
We got some food - from Tomorrowland Terrace again and, I honestly can't remember what we did after that! It wouldn't surprise me if we did more shopping!
I know we did head back sort of early to have an early night ready for DisneySea in the morning with it opening earlier than Disneyland, but we checked out some of the Halloween decorations all lit up in the dark first!
I'll be posting better photographs from our trip, including Disneyland, DisneySea and parade photographs over on my photography blog.
<- Day Three Day Five ->
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