M-I-C-K-E-Y Too Many People for Me

So this adventure was all to get to the magical land of Disney. I will start by saying that there were a lot of people there. I mean...A LOT! I am sure that the park was at capacity (what with it being a holiday weekend). Evidently, capacity at Tokyo Disneyland is around 85,000 people. I am usually ok with crowds, but this was too much.  

 Waiting in line to get into the park

 This was still a half an hour before the park opened

...aaand they're off! As soon as the gates were open, people were running to get in line for the fast passes. Sprinting as though it were the Tokyo Disney Marathon. I quickly found out why...by the time we got to where we were going (Space Mountain), the FastPass line was telling us to come back at 3:30 in the afternoon.  

 We didn't actually get onto the line immediately because we had to wait to get our wheelchair thingy signed. Now allow me to back up: my friend Emily that I went with sprained both ankles a few weeks ago, so she was in a wheelchair. The wheelchair will be addressed shortly. 

 The castle and Halloween decorations. 

Looking back toward the World Bazaar (which is the Tokyo equivalent of Main Street USA). Everything in Tokyo Disney was almost identical to everything you would find in Disneyland.  

 Adventureland

 This is in line for the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room. 

The Tiki room is Stitch themed, and all the birds sing about Stitch, who comes out and sings with the birds...unfortunately, all the singing and dialogue is in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese, this was to be the theme for the day.  

They gave us these fancy subtitle things that were even designed to fit the motif.  

 The Halloween band dressed in orange. 

 I like the subtitles at the bottom.

The best ride ever. I loved this ride because everything was in English except the talking skeleton head at the beginning of the ride.  

 Here are some kids who did some kind of show in front of the castle. They were wearing sweet little swimmer caps.

More little swimmers. 

 More of the Halloween decorations. They had some stupid parade that went through the park every two hours, and the Japanese people would line up for the entire two hours making it impossible to get through to anywhere. 

 On the left of this picture you can see the line for turkey legs. I had heard the joke that Japan's national sport is standing in line, and I can say with confidence that that is correct.  

 My view for most of the day. See how many people?

Now I begin my rant about pushing a wheelchair through Disneyland. It may be that this Disneyland is more crowded than others, but I don't remember having so much trouble with pushing a stroller while we were at Disneyland last time. It could be that the Japanese don't look in the same place as Americans when they walk. I noticed that people don't look at me in the eye as I walk down the street. It could also be that I am an American. 

What makes this a problem is that it makes it next to impossible to move a wheelchair through the park without running over people. As a culture, the Japanese have a smaller 'bubble' socially. This also makes moving a wheelchair a nightmare. I had about 400 mini panic attacks anytime anyone would come near. Children would dart out in front of the chair, people would try to shoot impossible gaps between the chair and a wall, and they would just stop and no one would be moving in any direction for a solid 10 minutes.

All in all, other than the 3 1/2 hour lines that people were waiting in, it was a good. Very Disneytastic. I can honestly say that it was pretty much like the regular old Disneyland, but more Japanese stuff. 

Next post: Disney Food and the rest of the stuff I didn't bore you with this time!