Nrthwnd

Day 1 at TDLR ~ Tokyo Disneyland So much has been reported on the Disney Resort here at TPR, it's kind of hard to up with new "stuff" to show. But, I will do my darndest... This was also our first morning having breakfast at the Tokyo Hilton's great buffet spread (the previous morning we were way too early for breakfast there, heading to Fuji-Q; so we bag lunched it, lol). It didn't disappoint, with all it had available, including Japanese breakfast goodies. But we stuck to mostly western-style foods. Also, there was this wonderful display of marzipan food, animals and flowers at the entrance to the restaurant. Really beautiful creations. After breakfast, we headed out to Tokyo Disneyland. We had a four day pass for the parks, but with TDLS, the first two days are specific one day for each park. So Elissa usually gets us into Disneyland first, then Disney Sea the next day's visit. The other two days, we can park hop. It all works out great. Basicially, we started in Tomorrow Land, getting fastpasses for Monsters, Inc. "Go Hide & Seek", then up to "Pooh's Hunny Hunt"m and after that "Big Thunder Mountain". A good meal was had at the Queen of Hearts' Banquet Hall (wonderful themeing all around us, inside.) And we continued around to Adventure Land, took the "Western Railrod" attraction... And then decided this was the time to take a short break back at the hotel, and we came back to the park a few hours later, around the dinner hour. It was a great start to our days here at Disney Resort. Breafast first, at the Tokyo Hilton. My second trip to the buffet, I decided to get more carnivore about what I picked. And the salmon there was delicious! The marzipan display at the entrance to the hotel's restaurant. Just beautiful. A statue in front of the Wedding Chapel at the hotel. On the monorail, and almost there. It's the resort's 30th Anniversary! Looking back, into the World Bazaar. The only covered Main Street of any Disney Magic Kingdom! Besides the resort's birthday celebrations, there was a Japanese holiday being celebrated as well. And a LOT of notes were being written up and attached to and around this object/tower. Pooh's Hunny Hunt - still an awesome and fun ride. And one of the group, Erwin, managed to get a pretty good photo of the two of us in Huny Hunt's queue. Thanks Erwin! Photo at Big Thunder Railroad. (DbM) Ending this posting with a look at the footprint that Big Thunder occupies. It's amazing how they fit it all in, there. Taken by "someone else" and kept in a folder on TDLR I had. Thanks Someone Else!

Sorry to hear, the Parks Landing visit didn't work out. Again. (Except for dessert,) Everything else you guys had, looked great! Mmmm soft shelled crab sandwich. Tasty!

I think that's a perfect way to put things, Chuck. If fail Fuji-Q, Then there is no possible Disney tour for you. (my Fuji-Disney haiku)

And my little riding buddy was named Pedro. Keep it going Gary! Great report!

^ Naw, but it "has strings attached."

^ My "Fuji To do-List" consisted of Haunted Hospital (did it), the Thomas Land Dark Ride (did it), the "coffin attraction" (nope - removed and replaced with kids' fun/playhouse), Takabisha (done), and the rapids ride (not done - still too big a queue for it, at the time). And we did whatever David wanted to do in the park, which included The Hospital. Having gone through it now, it makes me wonder... If there were more scare actors in it, and the crowds going through it were bigger, might there be Total Japanese Chaos in there? The couple behind us, kept catching up bit by bit, and they sounded totally freeked out by it all, even without actors around. So we picked up our pace to lose them, lol. Maybe the Japanese don't need a lot of scare actors around to make them feel.... scared. I mean, there are all those "sound attractions" we kept running into. They definitely love their "atmosphere", heh heh. ^^ And thanks, Neil! (EDIT to add: I included a pic here of our own local Haunted Mansion at Playland {upcharge - $5}, which also includes only a couple of scare actors, and is a fairly long walk through. And it's just as intense for myself, as The Hospital was, even with no actors around us. It's a good one, IMhO even with the upcharge. Definitely worth a group visit. And before it turned into this, it was our original Laff In The Dark ride building!) I will only go through it, with at least one other person hanging on to my... belt, LOL!

^ Will this do for now, Elissa? In the doll flesh!

^ Great! Another Mexico TPR tour may be the only one I'll be doing, in 2015. But Bullet and Medusa will be worth the short vacation, lol.

I guess I've not noticed it before with these types of coasters (portable and non-) but I really like the light standards at the top curve of each side of Sand Blaster. Very cool design.

Now Jon, how could I possibly come up with a joke like that? Just being too-serious, worrying me, that's all.

Can I have a clone of this in my back yard, please? Definitely worth a re-visit to Selva Magica in the future.

In keeping with her determination to blend in with her surroundings, today Stella tried to hide in the front yard, again. But I found her, lol Found her! And she isn't too impressed with my discovery of her. Quick cat nap, nestled in the leaves... and dirt. General view, at the side of our house.

^ Lol. I took a look and agreed - it didn't really describe what I was talking about. So it's fixed.

Fuji-Q - the rest of the day... After The Haunted Hospital, David went up top on the mini-Fuji mountain in the middle of the park (and it was there in 1972, when I first visited Fuji-Q!) for some random park shots. I wanted to go into this "sound attraction" which involved coffins and being in them (!), but the attraction had been totally taken out, and a children's funhouse-type attraction now stood in it's place. It was actually well done for the kids to race around and use up pent up energy. But still - the coffin attraction was enticing... At one point, we had a meet up time near one of the ticket booths, to determine if we wanted to stay longer at Fuji, or not. Robb and Elissa also had a fistful of "front of line tickets" to still give out, so our meeting became a "who wants what" get together, lol. And somehow, the tickets for Takabisha appeared to be the hardest to give away. Hmmm... We did decide to stay a bit longer, which was fine by me. Everybody was hoping for a really clear shot of Mt.Fuji, but that rarely happened, if only for a minute or so, before more clouds rolled in at the top. There was a spot outside the park gates, which a few people trekked to for a "hopeful shot" of the mountain, but I don't know if they got one or not. So - an actual pretty good day at Fuji-Q Highland Park! (did I just say that?) And since in my lifem things seem to happen in 3's, here's hoping the next future visit there, will be the best of the three ('11,'13) visits. Knock wood. David at the top of Mini-Fuji. Been there since I was first there in 1972! (note all the clouds in the direction of the real thing) One of my photos from that small mountain. Where I came from, to get up it. Lots of greenery all around this area. And nothing else in the rest of the park. Except trees, which from time to time made for some nice shade from the sun. A shot of the park's rapids ride. What used to be filled with coffins, is now filled with stuff for kids to run all over and through. The last large room of the attraction, before exiting into the gift shop, natch. And then there's that whiite.... uh....thing there. No comment. Another view from Mini-Mt.Fuji Eejanaika. Once was enough for me back in 2007 (after a 3 hour+ wait), so I passed on this visit. Others got several rides on it, I heard. Still something to watch, when it's in action. David took a close up of the last drop. (DbM) A bite to eat, before we finally left the park. And note the Fujiyama Burger (omg). We just split an order of fries and drinks. Leaving Fuji-Q. Bye bye Fujiyama. See you next visit. And on the way back to our hotel, I took this random shot of the Tokyo Tower.

^ I think somebody mentioned earlier, that maybe they use less scare actors, according to the size of the crowds coming into the Hospital. I remember too that there were only a few actors we came across, or came across us (eek). But I didn't mind that, as the intensity of just moving through the building, built up enough anxiety for myself. David even bumped into me at one point, and I jumped at that, LOL! And yeah, all those stairs were very daunting. But why did they take away our flashlight, halfway through the tour?! Not fair, ghosts. Good to hear you found out what Eejanaika meant, Jon. I got a cap and t-shirt during the 2011 tour, and still never found out what the writing on them, meant.

Least favourite - our own bumper cars in Playland. Literally a small rectangle tent-covered ride, with barely enough room for any "free for all" bumping. And with one or more cars "down" and parked at the sides, it took away even more room to drive around in. Pretty sad. I think my favourite (for now) has to be the bumper cars we rode at Tivoli in Copenhagen, during the TPR 2009 Scandi Tour. The driving and bumping was so wild and intense, one of the group nearly bump-tipped another car over! Awesome bumper cars.

More Fuji-Q...More of the park After Takabisha, people started splitting up and touring around the rest of the park. David and I did a few flats, the smaller coasters like the "flying hamster" coaster (Great Fluffy Sky Adventure) and the kiddies' coaster in Thomas Land (Rock 'N Roll Duncan), which was actually a fast zippy little coaster to ride! The Sky Wheel provided us with several great views of the park and of Mt.Fuji, of course. We even had a bird join us ont he wheel for the few minutes, before taking off to somewhere else. We also did two walk-throughs, one which was okay. The other...well all i can say is INTENSE. The first one was a sort of "Prison Break" themed attraction, everybody starting out in jail cells, then being released and having only 10 minutes (we found out at the end of it) to gather imprints of different 'items' on a card we were given at the start of the attraction. Some of the slots to insert the card were pretty hard to find, even for the locals. And with it all being in Japanese, we could only follow others around, and maybe hope to find a few of those card slots on our own, which we rarely did. An interesting attraction, but once was enough (for me, for now). The other walk-through was the more anticipated one. And it did not disappoint me. Haunted Hospital has been at the park since before our first TPR tour in 2007. And at that time, line up were well over two hours wait! And there were no "front of line tickets" to be gotten, back then. So, for that tour, I skipped it. Then, when we came back in 2011, the queue wasn't too bad, at that time, but still well over an hour I remember. So, I once again skipped it, for another future tour... This time however, the Hospital was literally a walk-in for us. Which was great. And while we really got a kick out of all the time we spent touring through the building, it was a heck of a work out physically, especially all the stairs we had to keep going up and going down, and mentally, since you really couldn't tell when and where a scare actor would pop up, which of course, made it all the more intense. And I was really amazed at how 'dangerous' some of the room were to walk through, with all the equipment lying around, bottles and jars on shelves, nothing looking like it was locked up, etc. Nothing like this would ever work, or be allowed in North America, I was sure of that. It was great, totally exhausting for us, but well worth waiting to do a "visit" there. The two photos posted at the end of this posting are from the Prison Break attraction, and Haunted Hosptial. Not really "on ride" photos, but still a nice memory of two cool indoor attraction (yes, all things considered, even Prison Break was good in concept and themeing). General view of Fuji, with the Sky Wheel in back. And peddle boats were run in the water area here. David in front of the golden cats statues, part of the themeing for the raft ride in Fuji. They do like their kittys, lol! And me, placed where Card 33 (I love 3's!) should be along the railing with all the cat gods in view. (DbM) Our Sky W#heel ride. We decided to take the "Love Capsule" since we figured we could get better un-blocked shots of the park. Nobody blinked, when we asked for it. Our co-rider on the Wheel. A rainbow of colours in the wheel's center section. Looking down at the Mad Mouse. I really liked the layout of this mouse. I just wish it wasn't so darned....rough and jerky. Would be a great ride if everything were smoothed out. Looking through the capsule itself. Um...speaks for itself, hmm? Interesting themeing I must say, lol. Lunch - with beer! And it was good. (DbM) They even had a map to show where the smokers could go and light up. That was nice of the park. And - the Haunted Hospital facade. There was no way photos could be taken inside of it, except for their photo of you at the beginning of the "tour." And here we are - all calm and collected to tour the Hospital. Now honestly. Would you let these two out of prison? I wouldn't. At least, the one on the left I wouldn't trust. (o;

Been a while. So... This was taken at my surprise 60th birthday party, on March 30 of this year. I had just arrived back from the TPR Mexico Tour that morning - and everybody arrived at the front door, later that afternoon. I was tired, but happy, and very surprised LOL! Me and a couple of friends who came to celebrate me... or mock me, not sure which.

Here's a few new construction shots of Ratatouille, posted at Disney and More. The red tarp, covering part of what used to be (or still is, in part?) the costuming department, will now have a "Parisian store" there, as people walk into the themed area. View of the area, to the right of the Toy Story Land entrance. And a fountain will be ahead of us there, too! Overall view of the site. A bit closer. Gusteau's Restaurant in the left and middle sections; attraction entrance to it's right. Overall view, with the store at the right, where the red tarp is.

~ Takabisha ~ Well, we rode it and after two years of waiting to ride it, it was..... okay. There was a lot of roughness in the general layout and for myself, the only real "thrill" of it all was the over-extended drop, after the vertical lift. That was crazy. But...that was it for me. And one ride was enough. Although I haven't ridden Alton Towers' Smiler, this looked a wee bit like The Smiler, (to me) only pulled and stretched to fit a bigger footprint. Although it didn't (obviously) have the 14 inversions, it could have the same argument made (like Smiler) of being two coasters put together, with a launch at the beginning, and a vertical lift "launch" 2/3 of the way through it. Just my opinion... Here's a few photos taken of Takabisha, by me and David. At the loading station, was this plaque. Wish we'd ridden it back in 2011... I remember this being on the construction walls back in 2011. Now, they moved it into the station, itself. (DbM) You get a pretty good view of Fujiyama, across the Dodonpa launch track, from the Takabisha outside (covered) queue. How it looks from the sky wheel. A shot by David, from the "mini-Mt.Fuji" in the middle of the park. (DbM) Yeah, that IS quite the drop on it. Quiet intense feeling, when you're just - not - sure about "when it happens", lol. Some of the layout. And here's Elissa and myself (front row, left) "enjoying" our first and probably ONLY ride (for me) on Takabisha. On-ride photo coming (at the end of the trip report) to show our...uh... reaction to it... (DbM)

With plastic cutlery and a place setting? (I don't even know where this attraction was, in the park.)

^ I can't honestly answer that, as the only big coaster I went on, was Takabisha.That was basically a walk on, right when we entered the park. And then Robb and Elissa were getting us "Front of Line" passes through the day, so most of us were bypassing the lines, if there were any (ha ha, of course there were!). The only non-coaster ride I really wanted to try for my first time, was their "raft ride". And that was well over an hour for it, when I did check the queue wait time. In comparison to the 2011 visit, it felt pretty much the same for lines and locals at the park, although this visit all the coasters were open. (Eejanaika was down for maintenance in 2011). And the 2007 was the Ugly Visit (with 2-3 hours' wait on most big coasters), so we don't talk much about that any more. Maybe one or two of the group might chime in here, with what they found as far as coaster wait times went?

July 3 - Fuji-Q Highland Park And so, we finally had our day to head to Fuji-Q Highland Park, and for those of us who'd been there before, hoping it would be as good a day there, as it was, like our last visit, in 2011. Fortunately, it turned out pretty good for the day. All the coasters were open, including the new Takabisha which turned out to be less exciting that I thought it would be IMhO. Only a couple of years old, and it was already getting pretty rough in spots. But - the credit was got and that was that. And Robb and Elissa again helped everybody with 'fastpasses' for the various coasters. With the same silly set up for distribution of the passes (hourly, so many given out, etc.), so once again THANK YOU Robb and Elissa, for putting up with this "system", so that we could all have a great time at Fuji! I didn't go on most of the coasters this trip, as i really wanted it to be David's tour, and I know he wasn't going to even attempt riding ones like Eejanaika or Fujiyama, or even Takabisha. But we got our flying hamster credit (Great Fluffy Sky Adventure), rode the Thomas The Train dark ride, took it easy, and really enjoyed the day there... Where we started this day, from. Our hotel (for me and David, six nights there!) for the remainder of the tour. This was our view outside our room at the Hilton. Gotta love parking lots, right? But to the left of that shot, a bit of Tokyo Disneyland! With the Disneyland Hotel on the left, and Space Mountain on the right. And to the right, a bit of Tokyo Disney Sea. The back of the park, actually, seeing the show building of Indiana Jones, and Raging Spirits. And The Volcano. We had to get up so early for this day, we had to miss breakfast in the hotel. But the hotel provided us with a nice "something to eat" on our way to the park on the bus. And here's the staff, handing out our "bag lunches" heh heh. Our "map" to Fuji-Q. I am sure it's there somewhere . Actually, David took this at the park. (DbM) One our way to Fuji! I think Joli and Jon there are wondering what they've been given to eat, lol. And ..."my eyes". And I see you there Martin (at right) watching what I'm doing. We kept looking and looking for clear shots of the mountain. But it stayed pretty cloudy at the top of it. Well, we had most fo the day, to try, try again. (DbM) Closer to the park now. I see coaster! Closer still. Almost there. Random shot of.... A bus seat back! Looked artsy to me... We've arrived! And we were apparently first there at the park, too. Still, a bit of a feeling of "omg we're here again" came upon me. But it went pretty well, for the day there. The park entrance. And we were first! An ice cream machine outside the park entrance. One particularly interesting flavour... David beside a display board showing the attractions in Thomas Land, inside the park. Takabisha is testing for the morning, That's a good sign. And - we're heading into the park! With fastpass instructions from Robb....

^ The Shaka Shaka Chicken was moved from a previous feature spot on their menu board to the Value Menu. We found that out from one of the others on the tour, or we would have never found it ourself. And when you looked and found it, it was hardly noticeable up there. Edit to add: We did just ask the server for "shaka shaka chicken"? And she knew immediately what we wanted. So I guess you could have just asked for it, Jon. Unless you did just that, and they didn't have it available at that McDs.