Friday, January 9--Rain on Our Parade

We couldn’t have picked an uglier day to go to Tokyo Disney. A big Disney fan, Jenny really wanted to go to the theme park while she was here. Since the park often sells out (they limit the number of guests they admit each day) and you could be turned away at the gate if you wait to buy tickets when you arrive, we purchased tickets in advance to guarantee we would be able to get in. The drawback to purchasing advance tickets is that you are locked into visiting on that specific day or forfeiting your tickets. So even though today was cloudy, cold, and rainy, we gamely bundled up and headed to the Magic Kingdom (which is located right on Tokyo Bay, so the sea breeze did nothing to improve our comfort level).

Now, I admit that it has been a LONG time since I’ve been to Disney (we went to Disney World in Florida before EPCOT was built), and my opinion of the park may have been influenced by my size and perspective all those years ago, but Tokyo Disney is very little. There are very few rides for adults…I don’t know about kids’ rides because we didn’t venture through that section of the park. The good news about the weather…lines for rides were very short! Guess what, Mom? I made it through the whole “Haunted House” without crying (maybe it was less scary narrated in Japanese?), and not once did I get down into the floor of the boat when we went through “Pirates of the Caribbean” (even though I did yelp when the cannonball hit the water right next to me). The one ride I truly wanted to experience in Japan’s version of Disney, “It’s a Small World,” was closed for renovations. I don’t know how to explain why I wanted to go on that ride…I guess it’s the idea of being halfway around the world and finding something familiar from home. Proof that it is indeed a small world.

We did witness something at Tokyo Disney that I am fairly certain would never happen in the U.S. parks. Any time there was a break in the rain, an army would emerge to remove all traces of the bad weather. Squeegee-wielding maintenance workers chased all of the puddles from the sidewalks, while jovial, poncho-clad employees dried every slat of every bench with chamois cloths. Since many of the benches were under rain-laden trees, I truly expected to see individual leaves being dried as well. Inevitably, the rain would start again, and the army would retreat from whence it came, but as soon as there was another break, the troops began their assault anew.

We had intended to stay and close the park (at the very family-friendly hour of 7 p.m.) but by four o’clock we were numb with cold and soggy to the bone, and had really run out of things to do, so we gave up and headed back to the train station. We did miss the electric light parade, or whatever they call it these days, but for all I know it would have been cancelled anyway lest Mickey and Minnie be electrocuted in the rain.