Disneyland!

We got up the next morning and got ready, then went upstairs to check out our complimentary breakfast. It was a buffet with yogurt, juice, milk, fruit, hard boiled eggs, freshly baked breads, croissants and danishes. They also had salad, which Japanese people really like to eat in the morning. Having filled up our tanks with a good, hearty breakfast, we stepped outside into the overcast but extremely pleasant weather, and hopped on a bus to Disneyland. Because of the typhoon the day before, the temperature was a good ten-to-fifteen degrees lower for us.

Fifty's was a ten minute bus ride from Disneyland, costing us a paltry 300 yen each. Kelsey, who had been talking about Disneyland every day for the previous two weeks, was excited to see Mickey Mouse, and Minnie Mouse, and Donald Duck, and Chip & Dale, and Cinderella, and ... Yeah, I'll spare you the whole list.

Stef's research showed that this was the best time of the year to go, since kids were back in school. When we got to the park, there were thousands upon thousands of people lined up, waiting to either buy tickets or enter the park. Disney apparently realized that holding a promotion during this dead time would be a boon for ticket sales. At least I hope that was the case, as I'd hate to see what the park looks like during the Summer break.

With Halloween approaching, Disney redecorated the whole park with Halloween decorations. The non-human Disney character statues around the park all had jack-o-lanterns for heads, and they even changed the Haunted Mansion ride by installing millions of dollars worth of Nightmare Before Christmas animatronic robots.

Because of the Halloween theme, thousands of people came dressed in Disney character costumes. Japan is peculiar in that dressing up as cartoon characters is not out of the ordinary for twenty-somethings. It was tough at first to tell who was hired cast and who was visiting the park for Halloween. Eventually, we realized that paid cast is actually white. Even Princess Jasmine was a blonde girl with a fake tan and a black wig.

About 90% of the people there were in their early twenties, and I'd say that the vast majority of the people there were couples. There were very few elementary or junior high school aged children, if any. The Japanese take their schooling very seriously. The ratio of adults to kids was really quite shocking to me.

Because of the disparity between kids and adults, I was surprised to find that there were lines--often hour-long waits--just to take a picture with the characters. Grown adults waited to take pictures when they could have been going on rides. The waiting times for Mickey and Minnie were definitely the worst. I'm pretty sure that people here see the whole "take-a-picture-with-Mickey" thing as an essential tradition, much like viewing the cherry blossoms every year, or eating gooey multi-colored rice balls on a stick while looking in the moon during September (or is it October?). What else would explain lines of twenty to seventy year-old ladies waiting over an hour to take a picture with Mickey Mouse? Characters had to run between locations, aided by bodyguard-like park employees that did their apologizing for them.

Figuring that DisneySea, which we planned to visit the following day, would have characters in costume, we avoided waiting in line for pictures at Disneyland. We were there for the rides and the play areas. Stef spent some time a few days earlier researching which rides each of the girls could go on. She used her notes to mark up a park map and we set out to enjoy the park.

Our first stop was Toontown, where Kelsey and Mia got to run around and look at some of the characters' houses. They also had a few rides, including a Chip & Dale themed roller coaster called Gadget's Go Coaster, which was Kelsey's first ever ride at Disneyland. She was a little apprehensive at first, but after going on the first ride, she didn't want to stop. We worked our way around the park in the morning, going on the rides with short wait times.

The Peter Pan ride had a bit of a line (25 minutes), but I figured it would be worth it for Kelsey. As we approached the front of the line, the line stopped moving. They informed us that the ride was closed for "system adjustments", and to make it up, they gave us four fast passes (one for each of us) good for any ride in the whole park. Our crafty use of these passes made it the smoothest day we possibly could have had.

When you insert your ticket into a fast pass machine, it spits out a fast pass, which lets you use the fast pass line, which basically puts you near the front of the queue with only a few minutes to wait. You can only get one pass every two or three hours, and you have to come back to the ride after a couple hours to be able to use the fast pass line.

Because of the fast passes that I was given, I only had to get two regular fast passes the whole day. Here's how we did it. When you have to watch a kid that's too young (or too scared) to ride something while someone else in your party goes on the ride, you can get a babysitter ticket. This ticket is even better than a fast pass, because you enter through the exit and are escorted to the very front of the line, with no wait at all.

Stef used a single fast pass to get on Splash Mountain with Kelsey, and I had an employee write me a babysitter ticket while I was waiting for Stef. When she came back, I jumped straight to the front of the line and went on the ride alone while she watched the kids (Kelsey didn't want to go on Splash Mountain again). Amazed at the awesomeness of this plan, we did it for Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion. I thought that Stef didn't want to go on the Haunted Mansion, so I didn't request a babysitter ticket. I waited in a normal line for the spinning rocket pods in Tomorrowland while Stef used our last special fast pass to take Mia on the Haunted Mansion ride. It was basically the perfect set up.

The food at the park was great--churros, real pizza, American-size hamburgers; they had pretty much everything we wanted. While we were eating dinner, a Russian family with kids sitting near us drew Kelsey's attention. She ran around with the two young Russian kids while I finished my burger. I went back to find a bathroom, and when I got back, Stef told me that the Russian boy had just dropped his pants and peed against the Tomorrowland cafe wall outside. The mom did nothing to stop him. Hilarious.

At night, Stef decided we should watch the light parade. I'm not a big fan of parades, but I was tired and figured that the girls would probably love it, so I acquiesced. I'm really glad I went. Kelsey loved every float that went by, and kept shouting the names of the characters and waving at them. I'd have a ton of fun if I went to Disneyland by myself, but being able to enjoy it with my kids was really something special.

Kelsey loved the rides, even if some of them were a little dark and scary. While Japanese kids were crying, she was begging for more rides. Mia was either happy or asleep all day. We went home very tired that night, but with the great weather, great food, awesome kids, and short waiting times, it was pretty much a perfect day at Disneyland.

Planning a Trip to Tokyo Disneyland

Ever since we came to Japan, we've fantasized about visiting Tokyo Disneyland. We don't do a lot of traveling out here, partly because Japanese hotels insists on charging by the head instead of the room. With two kids (who are often considered adults in the eyes of the greedy innkeepers), travel costs spiral out of control pretty quickly. In order to save a bit of money, Stef and I decided we'd save our Disneyland trip for the weeks before we leave Japan for good.

However, when Stef did the research and crunched the numbers, she found that the busiest (and, consequently, the most expensive) time of the year at Disneyland is actually from July to August, when kids are out of school--and when I would be going home. The first part of September, according to Stef's online research, was actually the least busy time of the year; kids are back in school, so the attendance drops drastically. It's basically the same in America. So, we decided that we might as well check and see how much it would cost to plan a trip out to Tokyo in early September.

We found a good time to go, which just so happened to be the first possible day that we could book cheap airline tickets. Since I don't have a credit card in Japan, I had to run around like a headless chicken to get the reservations made (and make sure that I was getting the best possible price), and then make a mad dash to the convenience store (they call it a "conbini" in Japan) before midnight to make a payment on a confusing computer kiosk, all because that night just happened to be the last possible night that I could book the flight for the time frame we had set (you have to book at least 30 days in advance).

To make matters more stressful, I had to make sure right then that I could get decent hotel reservations for the same time frame, since it would be pretty pointless to pay out the nose for a place to stay for the sole purpose of saving money on a plane ticket. Hotels in Tokyo are not cheap. Any place near the park is absurdly overpriced. In my frantic rush to find a place for less than $650 (or at least the equivalent if the dollar were 1:100 yen like it used to be) for three nights, I even fooled myself into thinking that I might be overlooking great package deals from the resort hotels.

I saw the price per night at one of the official Disney hotels, and was surprised to see that they charged by the room rather than per person. Still, the $500 per night charge seemed outrageous. Then, I saw that there were rooms at another official Disney hotel for only $150 per night, and they charged by the room, too! When I got to the checkout page that asked for my payment, I realized that I had made a critical mistake--I didn't see the extra zero at the end of the total.

That's right--it wasn't $150 per night, but $1500 dollars. And the other, already outrageously overpriced room was actually $5000 a night. Five. Thousand. Dollars. This was not some luxurious penthouse suite, but a normal room at the official resort hotel. Who the heck has that kind of money?

I called Sayuri and asked if she could help me find a deal, and she gave me the name of the area in which I should be searching. I eventually discovered the website of a little place called Family Resort Fifty's for Maihama, which seemed close to the park, and only cost about $120 a night with breakfast included. I got the booking ready, and just as I was about to click the button to make the reservation, I remembered hearing that sometimes you can get better deals for hotels through other companies. I did a search for Fifty's on a few of the Japanese travel sites, and was pleased to find that I could get the same exact room for $89 each night. I booked the room at Fifty's for three nights for a total of $267--much less than the $600-$700 that all the other places were asking.

Having booked the room, I then ran to the conbini about an hour before the midnight deadline to pay for the plane tickets. We were going to Disneyland in a month!