Well we had been extremely lucky with the crowds for all of the trip with the last few days picking up due the holidays we were expecting the last park of the trip, DisneySea to be busy...but we couldn't have foreseen how much. As an indication of the crowds that it took one hour on the coach to get from the entrance of the resort to the coach park.
The organisers were a little stressed when we got there fearing we wouldn't be able to get a ticket, but we did just. They stopped selling them shortly after we got there.
This is the queue for ticket holders, this took 30 minutes to get through and this is still outside the park.
Inside the park was even more mental. Fortunately I had been here before and the only addition was the Tower of Terror ride, which was being built on the previous visit. So that's all I had on my must-do list.
Plenty of Halloween theming and easily the best of the trip so far. This is hardly a surprise when you realise that this park has as near to a endless supply of cash. They spent $4 billion dollar in building the park and the money does pour in.
The beautiful centre piece of the park is the Volcano, replacing the usual castle that Disney usually relies on.
People starting to queue for one of the stage shows, which wasn't due to open its doors for another two hours.
This is the wonderfully themed Tower of Terror attraction. It has a similar system to that in the other Disney Parks but as The Twilight Zone isn't so well known in Japan it's had a revamp and new theme.
Here's the queue for the ride. Note that the queue has actually run out of the usual queue area, not because the throughput isn't being managed properly but because the numbers were just vast. The good news is the park coped, the bad news is we were in the queue for 3 hours. Our conscience is clear as we queued properly. Some of the group hopped the queue if they saw another club member up ahead, and these are the people who moan when people do it to them. Tut tut hypocrite! :D
The theming, and the girls in the queue line kept us occupied for the duration of the lengthy wait. I've only ever queued for one ride longer than this one and that was Volcano Blast Coaster in Virginia and that was 3 hours 45 minutes.
Inside the hotel the theming was just as stunning. The theme of the ride here is around an aristocratic treasure hunter called Harrison Hightower who has amassed a large collection of treasures from around the world; most of the treasure is stolen. He comes across a cursed african totem that causes his demise in an elevator accident from which his body is never found. (Note that the Aztec temple in the mural is the one from the other side of the park)
People visiting the exhibition come across the African totem which comes to life and then vanishes (an amazing effect). We then get to ride the elevator which also becomes taken over by the curse.
The ride itself was superb and easily my favourite of all the Tower rides. The theme works really well and the effects are brilliant. The disappearing totem had people gasping in astonishment. The drop sequence itself was great. 3 hours queue for a 30 second ride. Was it worth it? Absolutely!
It wasn't just the rides that had queues. Food stands were 30 minutes and I think you needed to predict when you would have to go to the toilet as they had even longer queues. So we didn't eat that much and held off going to the toilet so that we could get around everything.
The queue watching the main show on the lake.
With the Indiana Jones ride we took advantage of the single rider queue, which isn't that obvious to find. So here's the tip. Enter the main queue line as normal and at the first turn to the left look for a little gate on the right. Go through that to join the single rider queue. Usually you can walk straight to the gate. On the day we were there we had to queue for 15 minutes to reach it, then 45 minutes or so to get through the queue. But again, totally worth it.
The Arabian part of the park. We didn't go to it but I recall there being a cool Aladdin 4D show.
The beautifully themed kiddy area in the park.
Final ride of the day was the Journey to the Centre of the Earth. A stunning ride that uses the same ride system as the Test Track attraction at Epcot in Florida but themed around a descent into the Earth's core. This queue was also 3 hours long and with less to look at in the queues we kept ourselves entertained with some very silly games of charades. Again totally worth it.
However when we got out of the ride night had fallen. That's how long we'd been queueing for. I took the opportunity to get some long exposure shots of the park using some wonderful improvisation to keep the camera still. Basically I wrapped the strap around random railings then put weight on it to lock it in place. It worked a treat.
My favourite picture of the day...or should that be night.
DisneySea is easily my favourite themed park in the world. The rides are not world class but they look so good you let it slide. I said last time that I could happily spend a day at the just taking photos and my view hasn't changed. Sure it was bad timing to hit the park at it's busiest. That wasn't the fault of the organisers as the Tokyo days had been added at the eleventh hour. I think however that it was great to be in the park when it was mobbed. We got to see how well the park run their rides. 3 hours is a long time to wait but when you've got 80,000 people in your park waiting has to be expected. The good news is that the rides were being run properly and eating the lines up.
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