Mickey’s Magical Kingdom

Happy Independance Day! We spent our July 4th weekend in Tokyo Disneyland AGAIN! We spent last year’s holiday doing the same trip, but with the park being only and hour away I couldn’t resist going again! Jonathan has grown so much over this past year, which meant we were able to do a lot more rides all together since he met the minimum height cutoff. It was such a blast experiencing the park with them. Japan has had some earlier than normal super hot weather but we lucked out with some cloud coverage and mostly avoided the rain and the blazing sun.

We started with an early morning drive to the hotel where we could pre check in and buy our tickets, then we jumped on their shuttle and headed straight to the park! We were able to get there right after opening.

The park was a little busier than last year when there were really no lines at all. This year, the longest lines were around 20 to 30 minutes, but most of the smaller rides were basically walk ons. The really popular rides like Beauty and the Beast were 60+ minutes wait times in the morning but later in the day it shortened a little bit and we were still able to ride. Still a favorite for me! The boys did great through the lines and Disney does a good job to add entertainment through a lot of the lines. We spent some time in Toon Town this trip which we completely skipped over last year. They had a lot of little kids rides in this area and Jonathan rode his first roller coaster! He is a much more expressive rider than Jeffrey’s stoic joy. At first we thought Jonathan’s shrieks were of fear but they were mostly out of excitement! He wasn’t a big fan of Splash Mountain though. Jeffrey was brave and rode Big Thunder Mountain and loved it! We did sandwiches and pizza for lunch at Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s Good Time Cafe, and we did curry (the boys’ favorite) for dinner at the Hungry Bear Restaurant. I thought both were tasty and it’s always fun to see Mickey in everything. We were also able to make the Club Mouse Beat show and the boys really seemed to enjoy that seeing their favorite characters on stage.

We ran into a parade and Jonathan was super into it. He’s a waver! Jeffrey was falling asleep in the stroller.

It’s always extra special to me to see the park in the evening when it is all lit up. We were able to stay for the Electrical Parade at the end of the night. The boys were so amazed by it all. It was absolutely adorable to watch them experience it. Jonathan was literally hands to mouth in shock and then they were waving and pointing at all their favorite characters!

Another magical day!

We stayed the night at Disney’s Celebration Hotel Discovery. It was all explorer and adventure themed. This year the boys fit in the cute pajamas the hotel provided. I couldn’t handle the cuteness.

We did the breakfast buffet at the hotel and shuttled to Disney Sea the next morning. We were prepared for the little bit of rain. Thankfully id didn’t last too long though!

We got there a little after park opening and a lot of the larger rides had long lines so we started with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Jonathan was not happy about going underwater, but he cheered up when we went under the sea at the Mermaid Lagoon. Their favorite ride of the day was here, Flounder’s roller coaster. (I rode it five times with Jonathan. He couldn’t get enough, even started putting his hands in the air)

We we went to The Arabian Coast next for the two story Carousel and Sinbad’s Voyage. We saw Princess Jasmine and she was so sweet. Jonathan was waving at her and then got shy, so she played peek-a-boo with him.

We ate chicken and fish at Yucatan Base Camp Grill and it was really good.

Taylor rode the Indiana Jones ride next. I went back to this ride later to ride and it broke down in the middle of my ride…kinda awkward…I had a nice view too. It was interesting walking through the actual ride to exit, like a behind the scenes look at the ride. I even saw animotronic Indiana Jones just wiggling in place.

We also did Aquatopia, a Nemo ride, a gondola ride, and to Jonathan’s delight the Electric Railway Train!

Soaring is a really popular ride here. It had a 90 minute wait time when we entered the park. In the afternoon, it was down to 30 minutes so we thought we would give it a go. I went with Jeffrey and Taylor took Jonathan back to the Flounder coaster (they rode it 3 more times!). Then we did the nice kid swap feature Disney does so Taylor could skip the line. He went with Jeffrey again while I got a treat for Jonathan while we waited. A sticky, drippy popsicle may have been a bad idea but he sure was happy about it. I was glad I brought some wet wipes.

At the Jon’s request, we did curry again for dinner at Casbah Food Court. Pretty good indian style curry with rice and naan.

We left after dinner for our quick drive home, but we had a lovely time.

The boys napped in the car and when we got home Jeffrey woke up and earnestly said “Dad, I had a really great time.” Oh my heart. It was a great weekend.

BRB, Out to Japan – Jackie