TacoCat’s Travels #63 (Japan 2.0): Parading around Disneyland! 🏰

Hey Hive/Steemit!

If you didn't catch the last couple of posts, this series is about our trip to Tokyo (again) way back in August 2016, when we went there for a short international exchange program called Promoting Asian Leadership (PAL) with Keio University! The program was a week long, but we went there a few days ahead of time to explore and revisit our favourite places.

So last week, we started our day-long trip to Disneyland Tokyo (after a brief visit to Odaiba)! It was the height of summer and very warm and humid that day, so it might not have been the best idea in hindsight, but we tried to make the best of it regardless. So we stuck to air-conditioned, indoor rides and made sure we were well hydrated.

1 August 2016. Monday.

We just finished going on the Star Wars ride called Star Tours – The Adventures Continue! and ended up in the gift shop. And you know what that means! Silly hat pictures!

Tbf we were also just trying to enjoy the air-conditioning for as long as we could. 😅

It was also pretty crowded everywhere, so we hung around in the corner of the store for a bit.

Ironically, we got pretty hungry after taking this photo, so we decided to go out in search of some grub. We were currently in Tomorrowland, and headed to the nearest restaurant there.

Everything was pretty expensive, as expected, so we split a burger meal. We didn't expect the burger to be so small though. But it looked interesting! And the bun wasn't the regular sesame seed bun, it was like those Chinese steamed buns / baos!

It tasted pretty okay, but I think the bun didn't really match the fried chicken, since baos are steamed. But it was interesting and it wasn't bad.

After resting our feet for a bit at the restaurant, we decided to head out when the sun wasn't so bright. It was around 5pm at the time, so we figured it shouldn't be too hot then. And when we left we saw quite a few duckies resting by the pond!

The weather was much more bearable at this time, so we took the opportunity to walk around and enjoy the park. And we wound up back at the castle!

There were a lot of benches there for people to sit. I think there was a stage up front and there would be performances and stuff but there was nothing going on at the time. So we just decided to take some photos!

The sky was really blue at the time too, which was perfect for photos!

And coincidentally, the Disney parade started while we were at the castle!

The crowd soon gathered at the sidewalks so after taking a couple more photos we went to join them too.

To me, the parade is always a perfect end to a day at Disneyland. Which is why I was kinda disappointed that there wasn't one when we went to Disneyland Paris, but this makes up for it I guess.

I'm sure everyone's familiar with the Disney parade; various Disney characters will come walking down the main street, with some on special custom-made floats

And the floats will be blasting songs from their specific show, of course. The floats are always cool to see, especially at night when they light up. But it was only 5:30pm and still pretty bright out. But you can really see all the details on the floats and man, Disney is really rich with all the production value that goes into them.

And of course, the parade ends with Mickey and Minnie themselves, on the biggest float of them all!

After the parade ended, we resumed our walk around the park, taking in the sights we didn't get to see on our first walk since it was so hot and bright then.

We ended up going to Westernland and walking one round to Mickey's Toontown (a small-scale recreation of the Mickey Mouse universe where visitors can meet the characters and visit their homes which are constructed in a cartoonish style), where we saw another clique wearing Minnie clothes!

And we also saw a random stray cat sauntering by!

But we eventually ended up back at the castle again. This time it was lit up since it was getting dark!

All the lights were starting to turn on, so we decided to stay a little bit longer to see if there would be fireworks.

In the meantime, we decided to just go on one more random ride, which for the life of me I can't remember which ride this is. I think it might be Peter Pan's Flight in Fantasyland because you sit in “flying” pirate ships which are suspended from an overhead rail, and fly over miniature recreations of Neverland. It was pretty alright; kinda kiddy though.

By the time we were done with the ride, it was almost 7:30pm and it got dark pretty fast.

We headed back to the castle and it was soo pretty! The lights make it look totally different at night. I'm so glad we stuck around to see it.

Because not only was the castle beautifully lit up, but there was yet another parade!

Sorry for my camera quality btw.

There was a whole crowd of people flanking the main street, even more than the previous parade, so it was tough to get good photos.

Luckily the floats are all really huge and bright so the further we were the better. That way you could get a look at the whole thing.

It was also really warm with so many people there. So distance was much needed.

Here's a video of the Genie float which I thought was pretty cool, since its lights kept changing effects. And it was also blasting some Japanese dialogue, which I think all the floats were doing too now that I think about it.

And after Genie came Aladdin of course.

Followed by a couple of Princes and Princesses. I'm not sure which ones they were though.

And Tinkerbell and some of her fairy friends.

I did skip a couple of floats here and there of course, because there were quite a few of them and you get the point.

They all looked really nice and fancy and bright, with performers waving and dancing on them.

I wonder how they power the floats. It must take a lot of electricity or battery usage or something.

After the parade, there were still quite a lot of people hanging around, so we decided to call it a day early so we could avoid the crowd.

We quickly made our way back to the station, where there were already some people waiting for the train. I guess they had the same idea as us.

But thankfully, we manage to get into a fairly empty cabin.

And I also wanted to grab some photos of the special Disney train of course.

With the custom-made windows, man, they really sell you the Disney experience even before you enter the park. That's how you market a franchise. C'mon Nintendo you could be doing the same thing. I have high hopes for the Nintendo World at USJ that's for sure!

And that's it for our day at Disneyland Tokyo! We didn't really get to go on a lot of rides, because 1) it was the summer holidays and it was pretty crowded, and 2) it was hot as hecc and we weren't up for queuing in the hot sun. But it was still alright! We got to see the park and watched 2 parades. No fireworks this time, but we still had fun!

Thanks so much for reading! And I hope you're enjoying this series!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #62 (Japan 2.0): A Magical Summer in Tokyo Disneyland! 🏯

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