Today we went to Disney Land for the morning, in the afternoon went to Cirque du Soleil Zed, and had dinner at Oceano in the Hotel MiraCosta.
The park was mobbed. I've seen it worse in America, but not by much. In America, typically when the park gets busy, all of the rides have long wait times. I've seen, MAYBE, a maximum wait time of 3.5 hours on a brand new really popular ride, but more usually the longest wait time, no matter how popular the ride, will be around 1-2 hours. Of course, the thrill rides or newest rides have the longest lines, along with the little kids rides, but the wait times are pretty uniformly high across the board. Not so here. To get on Monsters Inc. Ride and Seek, the wait time was always at least 3-4 hours, but over SIX at one point. However, you could always walk onto Star Tours, right next door. It looked like Star Tours had a line, but that was actually the Monsters Inc. line stretching past the older ride. More to come on this topic.
There weren't many differences between this park and Disneyland in
California, which is highly similar to Disney World in Orlando. The castle is the same as Orlando, though not as white, so it looks a bit more realistic. The Haunted Mansion is in Fantasyland because ghosts live in the realm of fantasy in Japan. They have the last Mickey's Musical Revue, and that was never full or had many people at all in it, even though it's going to be taken down in a month. Strange to hear all of the classic Disney songs in Japanese from Snow White and other shows. (Lee - I would go with creepy actually) I was not as thrilled with Disney Land as I was with Disney Sea.The Japanese apparently love to stand in line. They have very few snacks in this park.
No cotton candy, no candy apples, no Mickey shaped Rice Krispy treats, very few ice creams. There are Churros, gyoza buns (steamed dumplings) and popcorn. Lots of popcorn in lots of flavors. I wanted some carmel corn, but the lines for it were honestly too huge to even bother. The popcorn is themed by land, so there is carmel popcorn in many locations around Disney, but honey flavored near the Winne the Pooh ride, soda flavored by Buzz Lightyear (I don't get it either), curry by Arabian areas, chocolate in the American portion of Disney Sea, and salted near the Tiki room, black pepper in some places, and, the longest line (pictured), soy sauce and butter flavored, between ToonTown and Tomorrowland. These popcorn lines were longer than those for some rides.The biggest disappointment for me, something I still have not gotten over,
was the candy stores. They did have candy stores. Maybe more than American parks. The candy stores were huge. The main one on the way out had a room of registers alone as large as the Studios candy/Villain store, with ropes to form the queue to check out. However, the candy? It was not normal. The Japanese take candy, cookies, or other small treats in to work after going on vacation. Since they all do it, everywhere you go has prepackaged boxes of individually wrapped treats. Disney was no exception. The "candy" stores were full of cardboard boxes and tins of cookies, crackers, chocolates, sweets, nuts, and other things that were probably fish flavored. There were no cases full of chocolates and candies, no chocolate covered apples, strawberries, or fruits of any kind. No chocolate covered 
marshmallows on twisty Mickey straws. No fudge. Nothing but individually wrapped things to bring back to your office mates. I walked in to every single candy store, some multiple times, in complete disbelief. It's Disney - what do you mean I can't get my chocolate covered caramel apple? Lee was not nearly as distressed as I. Anyone who's been to Disney with me understands the level of distress I'm talking about here. I get a chocolate covered caramel apple every time I go to Disney, and usually get another to bring home too, sometimes with crushed Oreos or M&Ms pressed into the chocolate. Alas, there were none. (Lee - she's not kidding about checking them all, and multiple times, but I agree that these candy stores are aimed squarely at bringing candy back to your office mates, which is a super weak purpose for a candy store if you ask me)The last big difference is the pins. Pin trading is no longer allowed at
Tokyo Disney Resort, so they do not have a large selection of pins. In fact, they have no pins that say "Tokyo Disney Resort" on them. Lee suggested I start collecting pins to show that I've been at all of the Disneys, so that when I go to one I can wear them all like medals on a soldier. I wanted one to represent Tokyo Disney Sea and one for Land. There were none. They did have one for practically every ride or show, but I did not want one for Pirates of the Carribbean or Pooh's Hunny Hunt, so I settled for the most Japanese style pins, a Minnie in a kimono and a Mickey Taiko drummer.Pira
tes is the same, except for the modifying to the movie they've done (I think that's been done to all), Small World is the same, and we didn't do much else that day. There were a lot of lines and we did a lot of just walking around and taking it all in. We did get some pretty good burgers for lunch, and fries with odd looking ketchup packets. We didn't stay all day because we had to get back to the apartment and prepare for our spiffy night out at Cirque du Soleil Zed and Oceano, the pricey restaurant overlooking Disney Sea in the Hotel MiraCosta.Cirque du Soleil Zed was wonderful. We got good seats in our section, and were considering getting the wine or champagne with cheese and dried fruits, but didn't want to wait in the concession lines. The storyline is loosely based on the journey of the Fool through the major Arcana of the Tarot, but not so much that you have to know anything about it. The show wasn't cheap but they consistently took our breath away again and again across two full hours plus intermission, so I would recommend it to any and all.
After the show, we had a very good dinner at Oceano. I think one thing that would have made dinner there better is having a more American style menu with options, instead of the set course menu. There was lobster with sea foam, salad, creamy potato soup, and lamb or beef. It was very high quality, but extremely expensive and the service was uneven. We were hoping to catch the fireworks while at the hotel, but apparently it was too windy again, so there were none. I don't regret eating there once but I wouldn't do it again soon.
Packing all these things into the evening made it very late and we became concerned that we might have trouble getting back to the apartment. Luckily, the trains were still running, if less frequently. The exciting part was finding the front door of the apartment building locked. We were not sure what to do at that point, and were not sure that we could contact someone who would know what to do as the information with management's number and all was inside the apartment. We walked around the building hoping to find some way in (scaling the side of the building to the sixth floor apartment was out) and found an unlocked door on a lower level in the garage area. That was a major relief.
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