Tag Archives: theme park

Enchanted city: Tokyo DisneyLand

Enchanted city: Tokyo DisneyLand
Enchanted city: Tokyo DisneyLand

After a day of grazing on vendor snacks in DisneySea, we decided on more substantive fare and booked seats at the Sherwood Gardens breakfast buffet. “Breakfast” seemed like a misnomer – besides the usual selection of pastries, eggs, and bacon (from the West) and rice, miso soup, and salad (from the East), the endless countertops offered noodles and canapes, egg salad decorated with a tomato rose, hamburgers and fries for littler guests, not to mention enough fish, meat, and cakes for lunch and dinner besides.

We launched into our tour of the flagship park with a few eclectic rides: Star Tours, a drone-populated airport terminal so realistic that it roused unpleasant flashbacks to hectic travel; and the Pirates of the Caribbean. This water-based ride utterly immersed us in a bayou-like landscape as we drifted past candlelit tables — other DisneyLand guests, in fact, dining at the attached restaurant. Next we sailed right through a exchange of cannon fire, with a pirate captain to our left firing on the beleagured town to our right.

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Twice charmed: Return to DisneySea

Twice charmed: Return to DisneySea
Twice charmed: Return to DisneySea

My sister adores classic Disney even more than I do, which propelled the Tokyo theme parks to the top of our sightseeing wishlist. Expecting massive crowds for the national holidays later in the week, we arranged tickets for Monday and Tuesday — including a stay at the exquisite, art nouveau style Disneyland Hotel.

As I enthused extensively about DisneySea last year, I’ll recap only briefly before focusing on our maiden voyage to DisneyLand: a vintage park celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The first morning of our adventure, we rose early to savor a surprisingly gourmet buffet — never before has a breakfast menu offered me sashimi! We splurged on a taxi to the park, where the staff conducted us through the well-oiled machinery of depositing luggage and purchasing passes.

Emerging at last into the Renaissance harbor that so beguiled me, my sister and I plunged into the park’s kaleidoscope of imagined worlds.

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