Once again Tokyo Disney Sea has proven beyond any doubt that it is the far superior Tokyo Disney theme park.

If you have only one day to experience Disney in Tokyo, do not even think about going to Disneyland. Do Disney Sea.
If you have 2 days for Disney in Tokyo, seriously consider doing Tokyo Disney Sea twice.

Many people consider it to be the best Disney theme park in the world, and every time I leave, I can see that this opinion could very well be accurate.

Even though Disney Sea opened 30 minutes earlier than Disneyland, we set the alarms for the same time today for a few reasons. The first is that we were probably there a little too early yesterday. 2nd in line was bordering on us being a little too efficient. The second reason is, I don't think any of us could have managed to get up any sooner. I’m surprised we were out of bed before midday.

Again, for breakfast we decided to forgo the hotel breakfast. We ate there last time we stayed in 2014, but there was not enough time to do it this year. So to the Lawson convenience store again for breakfasts.

Slim pickings, again. Once again the Disney patrons / locusts had stripped the convenience store bare the night before. As with any Japanese convenience store however, there is always something good to be found.

Once again we got the 7:10am bus to Disney Sea, getting us to the park at 7:30am. This time however, in contrast to yesterday, instead of a segregated "Special 15" VIP area for hotel guests, the Special 15 hotel guest queue was a single queue around 100m long. Easily a few hundred people in front of us.

Our concerns were somewhat offset when our queue started moving at around 7:45am, shuffling us through to a separate inner sanctum of extra queues, this time putting us at around 10th in line in our particular queue to enter the park. Typical of Japanese punctuality, at exactly 15 minutes before opening time (to the second…I checked) our gates flew open and we began streaming into the park, much to the annoyance to the “regular” patrons on the other side of the queue segregation barricades, who had no doubt been lined up for much longer than we had.

Staying at Disney hotel is effectively a fast pass for entering the park. It’s a very nice bonus which takes some of the hassle out of the most stressful part of a Disney day, being the actual logistical nightmare of entering the park in an efficient manner, and not wasting the first hour of your day just queuing to get in, or battling the masses just to get your first ride.

If you’re visiting Tokyo Disney and the costs of staying at a Disney hotel are comparable, as they were for us in the Disney Celebration hotel, I’d definitely recommend it.

Upon entry, in typical Disney day fashion we had a plan. Charlotte, being the quickest of us all, and the least likely to pay attention to the attendants begging patrons to “Slow Down!!!”, she ran to Tower of Terror to grab fast passes, while Angela and I headed to the middle of the park, beneath the volcano to the Journey to the Centre of the Earth ride. We didn’t need to rush because for some reason they didn’t open the bridge to that section of the park until 8:30am (opening time) anyway. Not sure why, but not a big deal.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is an incredibly well polished roller coaster, based on the movie. While not particularly thrilling, it does offer some decent action, albeit very briefly, but what I enjoyed about this ride was the attention to detail of the visuals. Without photos to convey it, it is difficult to explain, but the lighting, the audio and the quality of the scenery and monsters that you pass through on your way through the roller coaster course is fairly mind blowing. I found myself admiring the effort which went into the visuals around the roller coaster track, more-so than the roller coaster ride itself.

This ride is one of the premier attractions at the park, with among the longest wait times of the day. Thanks to our early entry VIP status, we rode one of the first rides of the day (it may have even been the first run of the day). We then got off the ride, exited, ran straight back around and through the empty, snaking queue path and jumped back into the ride in the same carriage. 2 rides within 15 minutes is a rare accomplishment for this ride I would imagine.

We could have even made it a third, but after 2 rides in quick succession we were ready to move on.

While Veronica and Isabelle went to check out the more tame rides, Charlotte, Angela and I made our way around the park checking out the other more adventurous rides.

Next on the list was the ride Charlotte has wanted to tackle ever since the last trip, Raging Spirits. She went on it last time, and being only 10 years old was so scared she shut her eyes for the entire ride.

Nagashima Spa Land has a lot to answer for. After riding Steel Dragon 2000 and the other high speed, high g-force rides all day a few weeks back, ordinary theme park rides feel, well, ordinary.

Raging Spirits was quite frankly, pretty dull. It has an interesting section where the coaster does an inverted 360 loop, but sadly without having a theme or something of interest, the mild thrills it offers just aren’t sufficient to make it memorable. I think had we not done Steel Dragon at Nagashima a few weeks ago we would have appreciated it more.

Biggest surprise for me for the day was the Indiana Jones Adventure ride. This ride, which was closed for maintenance on our last visit to Disney Sea, was a new experience for me. Once again, while the ride wasn’t all that thrilling, the attention to detail and the quality of the visuals and the audio in the ride were jaw-dropping.

Riders are loaded into a carriage modelled like a car, which bucks and tilts as it makes its way through the ride to feel more like a car than a train, to good effect. The ride then passes through typical Indiana Jones scenarios like snake pits, across a rope bridge, past a huge stone head which shoots a “fireball” at the car, which is just a huge ring of orange smoke, and into a booby trapped hallway lined with stone heads shooting poisonous darts at the car, in the form of sharp bursts of air accompanied by sound effects, which make it feel like darts shooting past your head.
Finally, the car enters a tunnel with seemingly no escape as a huge boulder comes rolling head-on towards you, before your car drops through the floor under the boulder to safety. On our way out we grabbed another fast-pass for that ride for all of us (Veronica and Isabelle included) because we knew we had to do that ride again.

The food highlight of yesterday's Disneyland day was the Little Green Man dumplings. To my delight, I found that this park also sells them, just from a little anonymous cart, which I was immensely happy about, since I’d previously thought were only for sale at Disneyland in the Tomorrowland section. Apparently not. These things are superb, and are worth the price of admission to Disney just to try them. Ok that’s an exaggeration, but they’re good.

The morning “parade” at Disney Sea was a “Fashionable Easter” show. A little underwhelming, this show involved a bunch of boats with Disney things on them dancing around to music, while jetskis tore around the harbour in a well synchronised formation, and in several groups around the park, a bunch of performers danced in big groups all dressed up in a variety of costumes, which I think is where the “fashionable” bit comes in. Like yesterday’s day parade at Disneyland, I think this lost a little bit in translation, since it left me with more questions than answers.

On the plus side, we did watch the show while eating Little Green Man dumplings, so it improved it immeasurably.

Lunchtime, and being Disney fare, almost not worth mentioning, aside from the weirdness. I had a prawn “roll” which was a white and purple doughnut shaped thing, which was dumpling bread stuffed with prawn mince. Weird, but surprisingly very very tasty. Another snack was had at a Mexican diner, consisting of some expensive, but still tasty chicken and beef quesadillas.

Most of the restaurants were full, or unappealing, so we wandered around to Triton’s Kingdom, a kids section of the park modelled with blue lighting and coral to give visitors the impression of being under water, which it generally does very well. To our surprise, there was another dining area down here, relatively uncrowded, which did really excellent food. Easily the best Disney food we had on either day (aside from the Little Green Man dumplings).

Excellent chicken burgers, and sausage pizza that Charlotte said was amazing were the picks of the meals here. If you’re looking for somewhere to eat at Disney Sea, the restaurant in Triton’s Kingdom is definitely a hidden gem.

With most of the rides we wanted to do covered by mid-afternoon, the remainder of time until sundown was just spent wandering the park exploring. We would have liked to go on the Toy Story Disney Sea ride, but it was consistently a 90+ minute wait all day, so we decided to forgo it. Veronica and Isabelle rode it though using a fast-pass, and it was Isabelle’s favourite ride in the park.

Disney Sea continues to amaze me with its attention to detail. Other theme parks rely solely on their rides for their appeal (i.e. Nagashima Spa Land). Others trade on their reputation (i.e. Tokyo Disneyland). Disney Sea however seems to go the extra mile to really immerse patrons into an experience. Yes it has good rides, and good shows, but what amazes me most about this park is the design, and attention to detail of every aspect of the park.

In a normal park, fences, benches, gardens etc are all well maintained and functional, but in Disney Sea, absolutely every aspect has been designed, not just created. Every rock in every garden, and every piece of infrastructure has been carefully selected and crafted to integrate with everything around it. Lighting has been carefully designed and placed to give maximum dramatic effect to everything it illuminates, and it does it so well.

In the Lost River Delta section of the park, you feel like you’re in a jungle setting. Around the harbour area, you feel like you’re in an American waterfront setting, or in Venice, or in a southern American steamboat pier, depending on which part of the park you’re in. In the mermaid section of the park, you feel like you’re in an underwater world, especially so in Triton’s kingdom. It all works so well, and is hard to explain if you haven’t seen it for yourself.

Sundown however is when Disney Sea really comes alive. During the day it is pretty. At night however, it becomes clear that no expense was spared in the design and creation of the lighting of the park, and the entire park is simply stunning. One could enter the park at dusk, and just walk around the park just looking at the visuals, and it wouldn’t be money wasted. Actually I’m sure some people do just that.

Crowning jewel in the nighttime visuals is the already picturesque volcano in the centre of the park, which is lit up with purple and green hues, while its crater glows bright orange, continually smoking throughout the night. Occasionally, for dramatic effect, the volcano will erupt, with a huge explosive boom echoing across the park, sending flames shooting into the sky above the volcano.

Around 2 hours before the evening show was scheduled to begin, the sky darkened as threatening clouds rolled in. After last night we expected the worst, and awaited the announcement that the nighttime show on the harbour, and the fireworks, were cancelled. Around 45 minutes before the show started, we staked out a position on “Lido Island”, one of the premiere harbourside positions to watch the nighttime show, and waited.
The position that we selected was so good we actually had one of the Disney attendants come over, and we expected to be told that we had to move since we were somewhere "off limits". Instead the attendant smiled and explained in his best broken and struggling English that the spot we picked was “stunning” and the best spot to see the show from.

We were warned however that we “may get wet”. To me, that’s a positive, since it meant we were close enough to the action. If there was no risk of getting wet, then it might have meant there was somewhere closer or better available to see the show from.

So with the perfect position staked out and selected, we mentally prepared ourselves for the crushing announcement that the night's festivities had been cancelled. I debated internally whether, when the announcement came, I would throw myself, or just my camera, into the middle of the harbour.
But the dreaded booming voice never delivered the bad news. Instead, we received the excited "In just a few moments...." message, first in Japanese and then English, which confirmed that the show was going ahead. Nothing would be thrown into the harbour that night!
And with that realisation, the park lights dimmed, and boats began silently rolling out on the harbour, for the light, water, laser and fireworks based show to begin.

On our original visit to Disney Sea in 2008 we watched a show where Mickey battled a Dragon on the harbour, and tonight’s show was an updated version of that.

The show was pretty incredible. Lights, lasers, flames, coloured water jets, fireworks and loud booming audio combined to make for a really stunning 30 minute show. Indeed the spot that we chose to watch from was absolutely perfect too.

Following on from the show, almost immediately was the customary Disneyland fireworks show. As far as fireworks goes, this one is very tame, and only goes for 5 minutes or so, but it’s a nice touch. Better than being told that there is a bit of breeze so we’re not doing it tonight, as was the case last night.

It always amazes me how, after the fireworks are let off, the park seems to clear out. People just go home. What it means though is from about 8:35pm until 10pm is the ideal time to go on all the rides that you want to do before the park closes, with minimal wait times. We went on all of the rides again, with the exception of the Toy Story ride which still had stupidly long queues. In some cases multiple times. It was by far the busiest 90 theme park minutes of my life, and involved more running than I care to admit. These days, one is not built for speed, yet I found myself running several kilometres all over the park trying to keep up with my 2 eldest girls for the last hour of park opening time.

We rode Journey to the Centre of the Earth (the rollercoaster) a few more times with zero wait times, before deciding at 6 minutes to 10pm that we should try to get on the Indiana Jones ride one more time. I think it was just more of a challenge to ourselves to see if we could make it.

So off we went again at a full run to try to get there, and onto the ride, and seated, before the last car left prior to 10pm. The attendants were looking to close the ride, at 9:58pm, but fortunately they let us on, and stopped the group of Japanese teenage school kids which were 50m behind us, by closing the velvet rope behind me. Those kids should have run quicker. Amateurs.

We actually set off on the ride after closing time, and since we were in the last car, we were the last people to ride Indiana Jones for the day, and I suspect we were the last people to ride a ride at Disney Sea for the entire day, since all of the other rides had closed down also, and were silent by the time we exited our ride.

Indiana Jones is at the very back of the park, so we had a 15 minute walk to get to the gate, accompanied by happy music, clearly exhausted but still smiling and waving Disney attendants thanking us and telling us to come back soon, and the odd announcement over the loud speaker that the park is now closed. Didn’t stop me taking my time and getting photos of the abandoned and beautifully lit park on the way out though. Because of our massive hike, we were among the last patrons out of the gate.

Contrary to previous courtesy bus rides, Mr Bus Driver San was very diligent in checking that we were who we said we were, and looked up our name and room number on the hotel’s guest information register, before he’d let us onto his bus. We suspect that there has been some instances of others, possibly Disney employees, using the bus services after closing time to get a free lift to the area around our hotel.

In the last piece of hilarity for the night, we had a few minutes before the bus left, so since all of the Disney Sea shops and stalls seemed to shut after the fireworks, and buying a drink was impossible, we were all desperately thirsty. Me especially, due to all of the running.

So near to the bus stop was 2 vending machines, so I ran over to one of them to buy drinks. The other of the machines was being refilled by a vending machine restocking guy who had the front door of the vending machine open, while he stood behind the door with his head in the machine filling it with drinks.

A woman from another bus stop, who obviously had a similar idea to me, ran over to the other vending machine and started filling it with coins. Not sure how she didn’t realise that something was odd about her vending machine, since it’s front door was sticking out at 90 degrees into the pathway of the bus stop. I suspect she was just in too much of a hurry to buy a drink before her bus left.

Still, it didn’t stop her, and the look of surprise and confusion on the face of the poor guy restocking the vending machine was priceless, as the drink the woman had selected fell from the machine, onto the ground, and rolled past his feed and out onto the road. He looked at me and shook his head with an exasperated look of disbelief on his face which sent me into hysterical laughter, before he put his head around the corner of the machine to explain to the woman what I can only imaging to be that he was currently refilling the machine, so now was probably not the best time to be ordering drinks from it.

Disney again, is done for another trip. An exhausting and expensive, but fantastic few days, which I’m sure will be the highlight of the trip for the girls when they look back on their memories of the trip in coming years. I think that’s what makes the Disney trips worthwhile. If it was just Veronica and myself, we wouldn’t bother, but for my girls it gives them memories they’ll keep with them for the rest of their lives, and hopefully share with their kids one day, which makes it all worth it.

No doubt we’ll see you again in a few years time Disney.