On 海の日, 07/16, we took a Dartmouth-funded trip to Tokyo DisneySea! Tokyo Disney has two parks - DisneyLand and DisneySea. The LSA+ students this year chose DisneySea unanimously. DisneySea tends to be more popular among adults compared to Land, as it has rollercoasters and serves alcohol. However, we still saw many small children there. While there are also Disney-based attractions in the United States, DisneySea and Land are a bit different and reveal parts of Japan's culture. For more information, I would recommend the reading that the DA from two years ago recommended called "Bwana Mickey': Constructing cultural consumption at Tokyo Disneyland".
All the Dartmouth students except one, who took advantage of the three-day weekend to visit relatives in Korea, went to Disney Sea. Another Dartmouth '21 who studied Japanese at Dartmouth and is spending the summer in Japan but not on the LSA+, Maxine, joined us, making us a group of 12. We met at 9:30am at Maihama station, and once we all arrived, we took a picture of our tickets and entered the park.
The first thing we did was get fast-pass tickets for Tower of Terror. Fast-passes work a little different in Tokyo Disney. For one, you do not pay extra money for it. Instead, you scan your ticket and get a pass for a ride with an hour time slot you can line up in a much shorter line. You can only get a fast-pass around once every 2 or 3 hours. Once we got fast-passes, we split up to look around shops near the entrance, and some of us ate lunch. After eating, we caught the end of the Disney's special summer event show - "Disney Pirates Summer."
Afterwards, it was a scramble to get headgear (cute ears! bows!), as well as fast passes for the rides Raging Spirits and Temple of the Crystal Skull. We wandered around the whole park between 1pm and 5pm, taking plenty of drink breaks (on Dartmouth) and stopping in gift shops with AC. I found it interesting that while water was not a given at every drink cart, tea was. We also lined up for rides with shorter wait times like Sinbad's Storybook Voyage, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Jasmine's Flying Carpets. There were many couples in the line with us.
We tended to have no idea what rides were like until we rode them. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a shock - a fun one, and Aquatopia was also a fun surprise. There were two lines for the Aquatopia ride - one being a "Get Wet" one. We were unsure which one we lined up for until the ride started... and everyone walked out of the attraction looking like they fell into a pool. It was very fun though, and the sun dried us off quickly.
Afterwards, some people had a snack while more and more students acquired Disney headgear. We wandered freely, planning to meet up at 6:15pm for the Tower of Terror ride. One student bought a Danish pastry, and was about to eat it when the wind blew it on the ground. However, a worker nearby saw and got her a new one for free! I am always impressed and touched by the hospitality of workers at Disney. The cleaners there would nod or say hello, and the shopkeepers were very friendly.
Afterwards, everyone decided to go on the Tower of Terror except Maxine. I might have hyped it up a bit, as I couldn't remember much from two years ago except that there was a scary backstory, but the ride itself was not that scary. However, a student criticized the backstory for exploiting native cultures as a fear tactic, and suddenly it was not that scary anymore. People still seemed to enjoy the ride though.
We went on one more ride afterwards, and by then it was 8pm, so we stuck around for the fireworks show they play every night. It was my first-time seeing it, and the Dartmouth students seemed pretty excited.
We went for dinner in a mall nearby Maihama station and finished around 10pm, right as the food court there was closing. Everybody went home tired... right before a big test on Tuesday. (Majority chose to have DisneySea on Monday instead of Sunday though, because it was predicted to be very crowded on the Sunday before Umi no Hi.)