The Proposal & Tokyo Disney Trip Report
A Day at DisneySea
I felt this deserved its own post because this deserves a mini-trip report.
I had always joked with Kevin that I would refuse a proposal unless it was at Disney. We both knew it was going to happen when we decided to go to Tokyo Disney together when Kevin came to visit me for the first time after a year apart. Neither of us is super good at romance or being spontaneous, so it felt nice to have a little bit of structure to our plans.
Kevin arrived in Japan Saturday August 8th. After all the airport hugs, and I-missed-yous. We began the journey over to Tokyo Disney.
Super long tunnels, heavy suitcases, his jet-lag, and my exhaustion from taking an overnight bus made this part of the journey painful.
Exhausted, we arrived at the Hotel MyStays Maihama. It is close to the parks, without being on-property, and a much cheaper price. We could walk to the parks in about 10 minutes, and had a view of Disney Sea from our window. Amazing! We rested up for about an hour, then went over to the shopping area in front of the park for a bit. Ikspiari is huge and we had fun looking around, we debated over food before settling for a food court in the lower levels (it was a nice one). I wanted some western style food and Kevin wanted to try something more local, so it was a good compromise. We went to bed early to prepare for tomorrow. Our day at DisneySea!
The next day we got up super early to make our way over to the park. Tokyo Disney still uses the old style fastpass system, so we knew we wanted to get there before opening. Kevin was in charge of running to the Tower of Terror to get our fastpasses. (
I had to push my way through the mob lining up for the Toy Story Mania! ride’s fastpass, New Yorker-style.) I had to run to get our dinner reservations set up (I’m the only one of us with any Japanese skills so I handled most of this kind of stuff.)
I chilled around waiting for him to show up and then we got in line for Journey to the Center of the Earth. Even though this was still within 15 minutes of opening, this ride had the longest line of our trip. It was nicely themed and air-conditioned, at least.
The ride was amazing and I really want to ride it again someday. The animatronics were top notch, a little silly looking but interesting. I haven’t read the book in years, so I can’t say how accurate it was, but it felt very imaginative. The ride at first is pretty slow, just going through caverns, but it's dark and you know something is going to happen. The whole time the girls in the car with us kept saying “kowai, kowai, kowai” (scary, scary, scary) in anticipation. Eventually the ride picked up and went fast and we went past the Lava monster, the best animatronic. He looked really fluid and cool, wish I had a pic of him… Then the ride did a drop down the outside of the Mount Prometheus and it was pretty much over.
Afterwards we ran over to our fastpass at Tower of Terror. We had mixed feelings on the ride.
I’m a big fan of ToT in Hollywood Studios. I almost always ride it multiple times when we go to that park. I’ve had arguments with my mother, who prefers Rockin’ Roller Coaster, over what ride to reride. The intro story was cool
(despite not being Twilight Zone themed) and the loading area was nice. But we both missed the creepier atmosphere of the American ToT, and the bellhops here were so friendly, perky, and nice. I found myself longing for the creepy dark humor I was used to. There was also no part where the elevator moves forward? The drop itself was fun, but we might have just gotten a bad pattern. I’d say it was fun, but we enjoyed the American version way more.
After that ride we decided to make our way around the park a bit. We went up from American Waterfront towards Port Discovery. We looked around a bit there, but Stormrider had a long outside line (it was super hot) and the fastpass machine was down. So we went back towards the Mysterious Island area, got a fastpass for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and went to Vulcania for lunch.
Vulcania is a cafeteria style lunch place. It's still a little pricey imo, but the food was good and the atmosphere was amazing. It's all in a cave with cool architecture built around it. We got the chilled noodles, spicy tofu, and dim-sum platter to share. It was pretty tasty. I also tried one of the special wines they offered, but wasn't a big fan.
After that we went on 20,000 Leagues. It was very cute, and I had fun translating the audio guide for Kevin. He had to duck a little as the pods for the ride weren’t meant for someone tall as him.
(Curse my Irish blood for making me tall and broad-shouldered!) The line for this ride wasn’t very long, so it might have been a fastpass waste, but oh well.
We then wandered up to Lost River Delta to ride the roller coaster Raging Spirits, and Indiana Jones Adventure. Both were fun, and I laughed a bit at how the Japanese voice over on Indiana Jones called him Indie Jones the whole time. Raging Spirits had a single rider line that we took advantage of. It’s not an amazing coaster, but it was fun and single rider made the line super short.
After that, we walked to Arabian Coast, which was beautiful! We rode the Caravan Carousel first. We were getting hot and tired around then, so we looked for a snack. The whole time we were there we had been on a search for a very specific snack. Kevin and I are huge Kingdom Hearts fans and knew that the inspiration for the Sea Salt Ice Cream came from here. We found it at last in this area and bought a pair to try. It was super tasty, but that might just be because of the KH fan in me
, salty and sweet.
Then we went to the Magic Lamp Theater. They have some English translation help here, it was like a little ipad that gives a vague English translation of most of the dialogue. (
Some of the live-action part seemed a little ad-libbed, so I missed out on some of the jokes.) The show was fun, and a nice mix of video and live action.
The next ride was one that became our favorite. There was almost no line here and it looked a little unassuming. Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage is the best, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. Its adorable, a nice relaxing indoor river ride, like It’s a Small World, but way better. The music was so good and the way it passed from room to room was neat! (
Each room has one section of a much longer song, so the music builds off of the previous rooms and ends with a huge finale that has aspects of all of the parts!) You don’t need to understand Japanese to get the story, as it's all very clear. The characters are cute and endearing and I love it so.
We didn’t really ride any other rides after that, we were getting exhausted so we walked around and just sat for a bit. Normally we don’t like to stay so long in the parks without a break back at the hotel. But because we were only going to be at Tokyo Disney for two days, we stayed the whole day.
The Proposal
Dinner was at Magellan`s, we scheduled it during the fireworks because they weren’t busy then and it gave us some privacy. We ordered our courses and had a lovely time for the most part, Kevin was dealing with a little culture shock at this point, and I was getting antsy because he hadn’t proposed yet. I was scared he forgot how shy I was, and was going to do it in front of a lot of people.
(We had the whole room to ourselves!)
Dinner was amazing, pricey, but amazing.
My meal was...
An appetizer mixer with a chilled vegetable soup shot, ratatouille, and there was another item I forgot because I ate it before I took the picture!
Then a green salad with selection of cheeses.
A main course of roast beef with fruit sauce and mashed potatoes.
Followed by a dessert of raspberry ice cream and cheesecake
After that we walked outside and we started towards the front shopping area, where the huge crowds of people were. He started looking around and I felt myself go into a panic and just tugged on his arm and said “no.” I have bad social anxiety that gets worse when I’m tired, and it’s much worse here in Japan because I’m always having to be a good example as a foreigner and a teacher. He took me over to a quiet spot and proposed there. It was still a little awkward because some girls were looking at us and I was on the edge of a panic attack, but looking back now I find it sweet. (
The reason I wanted to do it there was because it was night time, so the lights in the Mediterranean Harbor looked fantastic from across the water. I was trying to be romantic but my nerves combined with Katlyn’s anxiety, it ended up being awkward and rushed.) I feel bad it wasn’t magical as we hoped, but I’m going to make sure the wedding makes up for it!
Here's the ring! (I wonder if anyone will get the reference?)
Oh and before we left I went back to the store to pick this guy up!
This post is getting long so the second, and last day will be next post.