Since I was little I’ve wanted to visit a Disney theme park. Living in Australia makes that somewhat difficult. But recently I visited both DisneyLand and DisneySea in Tokyo! It was a whirlwind couple of days, and I had an amazing time!
I do have a controversial opinion though, that is that DisneySea is way better than DisneyLand… Let me explain…
The way I like to visit new places is to walk around and look at things, visit shows, and explore. This is the perfect way to visit DisneySea as there are many small shows, the sets are spectacular and detailed, and the way the pathways interlink with each other makes me feel as though everything is an adventure. I felt that DisneyLand is more about the rides than the environment, and for good reason, the rides are fantastic! But I’m less of a rides person and more of a wandering person. Plus Mermaid Lagood and Agrabah are both at DisneySea, and they were my favorite places.
We visited during the Halloween celebrations and got to see both Halloween parades. Being from Australia I’ve never really been into Halloween, but having visited Japan during October I get it now. I’m so glad we visited during Halloween!
So Disney Resorts Tokyo! We stayed nearby and took the monorail to get there. It was really convenient and the Disney branding all over everything really amped up the hype factor even before we arrived!
So much hype and excitement before arriving! And I wasn’t the only one. The morning monoroail was buzzing with excitement the whole trip to the parks. It was a fantastic atmosphere.
DisneySea
DisneySea was my favourite, but the weather was cold and rainy all day. It was a little upsetting to start with, but I was dressed as a mermaid, so after not too long it made me laugh! Eventually the rain cleared up and I could go exploring for real. There was so much to see and do!
The very first thing I did was buy myself some mouse ears. Because we attended in October the whole park was themed for Halloween, so there was so much Villain merch. Maleficent is my absolute favourite Disney Villain, so I went straight for ears themed for her! I then took as many pictures with Maleficent decorations as I could for the rest of the day..
The first villains parade on the water happened soon after we arrived for the day and it was spectacular! The villains all had their own themed boats and zoomed around on the water singing their song and being fabulous. And song was so catchy and was stuck in my head for the rest of the day! I made sure to come back to see as many of the shows throughout the day as I possibly could.
And that started me off looking for every show I could go and see throughout the park. There was a magical magic show in Agrabah, a fantastic aerial show at Mermaid Lagood and an amazing explorer show near the Temple of doom.
While looking for shows we wandered around the criss-crossed pathways and explored. There was so many beautiful things to see! We didn’t end up going on any rides, but we saw so may amazing shows that I don’t feel like I missed out on anything.
DisneyLand
If the weather for DisneySea was too wet, then the weather the very next day for DisneyLand threatened to give us heat stroke. Gotta love changeable weather seasons! But I was so excited to be at DisneyLand that I barely cared.
Before our trip I made a super cute Minnie Mouse style skirt, then I matched it with little cute little Minnie Mouse ears. Felt pretty cute in my outfit! And the swooshy skirt kept me cool all day and provided lots of opportunity for spinning around and having heaps of fun.
We soon discovered that DisneyLand was all about the rides as there was less in the way of gorgeous scenery to look at. But the rides were fantastic! my two favourites were the Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain. The Haunted Mansion had me cackling with glee the whole way through, it was so much fun to see all the awesomeness of the Nightmare Before Christmas brought to life. And Space Mountain was so exciting! I’m not hugely into rides, but I love space, so zooming off on a rocket ship amongst the stars was super exciting!
Not that there wasn’t anything to look at! Catching a glimpse of Cinderella’s castle for the first time took my breath away. Seeing it seem to step straight from the cartoon into reality was magical! Then there was Toon Town with it’s amazing funny displays that also looked straight out of a cartoon, but the kind where being blown up was only a minor inconvenience.
And of course the fireworks display was spectacular!
…so why?
I love Disney, and I was so excited to go to both of these theamparks. I had an amazing time both days! So why did I love DisneySea and feel comparitively luke-warm on DisneyLand?
Really it came down to my favourite thing to do, which is wander and explore.
Plus being October the Halloween celebrations need to be taken into account, and I loved that the villains had taken over DisneySea! The purple colour scheme and the huge presence of villains everywhere was very much to my liking!
I can’t wait to go back to Japan to visit both theme parks!
