When we first started planning our trip to Japan, Erica and I agreed pretty quickly that we wanted to celebrate our birthdays at Disney.
I’ve done the Orlando Disney parks, and Erica’s done both American parks as well as Disneyland Paris. So we decided to head to the DisneySea park instead of Disneyland Tokyo, as we thought it would be a bit different.
And I mean, we were right. It was definitely different. Because Tokyo DisneySea is absolutely not like any other Disney park you’ve been to.
Erica’s written a fab post about the main differences, if you want to know more about it in detail. But basically: it’s just not very Disney.
DisneySea is aimed more at adults than at children, and the ocean and legends theme means there are a lot less recognisable characters, and not much in the way of sparkles and magic. In fact, after about an hour, we were feeling a bit grey and gloomy, and kiiiinda wishing we’d gone to the other park instead.
We debated leaving early and paying extra for the evening ticket at Disneyland, but in the end we decided to just make the most of where we were.
And actually, once we got over the fact that it wasn’t what we’d expected, we jumped right in and had a BRILLIANT day!
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WHAT I WORE TO DISNEYSEA
T-shirt: Primark // Skirt: from a little shop in Harajuku
Jacket: New Look (old) // Shoes: New Look (old)
Glasses: RayBan // Ears: borrowed from Erica!
WHAT ERICA WORE
Dress: Everything 5 Pounds // Shoes: Love The Sales // Jacket: Forever 21
Bag & Glitter Bow: Daiso (a Japanese pound shop!)
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Forget the princesses and the old school cartoons we all know and love. Tokyo DisneySea is aaaaaall about Duffy.
Who is Duffy? Well. Yeah. That’s exactly what we thought.
Duffy is Mickey’s teddy bear. Apparently the story is that Minnie gave him to Mickey in a duffle bag, when he was going away to sea.
I’m not entirely sure if I’m just too old to be caught up on the Disney plotlines, or if this is just a Thing in Japan, but Duffy (and his friends) are HUGE in the Tokyo Disney world. Every other person we saw was either carrying a Duffy bear, wearing a Duffy backpack, or just out and out dressed as Duffy!
I can’t remember much about my trip to Disney in Florida, but I do remember there being a LOT of food. Turkey legs and ice creams and cookies and food carts on every corner. DisneySea is much more restrained in that sense.
We tried a couple of different popcorn flavours (my favourite was, surprisingly, the curry popcorn!). Erica had a pumpkin-maple churro. But other than that, we couldn’t really find any good snack places.
What we DID have was a really good lunch. We hit up one of the nicer sit-down restaurants and opted for the menu. We picked out starters, mains, desserts and sides (all Mickey themed, of course!) and because it was (the day after) my birthday, we also got wine. (Wine! In a Disney park!)
The food was actually really good, and the wine was… not the worst I’ve ever had. Our bill came to around £13 each, which I thought was pretty reasonable considering we’d had alcohol.
But our favourite part of the whole day were the Halloween festivities!
Apart from all the spooky decorations and brilliant Villains water parade, the Tokyo Disney parks also allow guests to dress in full costume on certain days during the Halloween season.
And people take it VERY seriously. It made for fantastic people watching, and we had an absolute blast spotting the different characters and shooting photos of everyone.
My favourites were the Duffy bear girls, Marie the Aristocat (check out that BAG!), and the full cast of Frozen, including Trolls!
Re-reading this back, this sounds like such a negative review! But honestly, despite the miserably grey weather, we had SUCH a fun day.
There was laughing and talking and twirling. We did several of the rides, including the Indiana Jones Temple ride, and a few of the smaller rollercoasters and twirly rides. Our lunch was delicious. We got to meet Minnie Mouse.
We got rained off at about 5pm, so we missed the evening parades and a couple of areas (like the Toy Story Mania section which I’d spotted on Carrie’s blog!), but I think we did a pretty solid job of it.
DisneySea may not have been what we expected, but I’m so glad we stayed, and I’d actually like to go back and do it again!
