The Disney day had finally arrived. We got up early and aimed to be there by 8am, a full hour before opening, feeling quite confident with our planning. On the way there, the metro was so packed that staff were physically pushing people in to fit more. We thought we had just hit rush hour. Little did we know, it was mostly the crowd heading to Disney. At the Disney station, everyone rushed out at once and it was pure chaos. That was the moment we realised that one hour early was, in fact, not early at all.
Antoine walked ahead to secure a spot in the queue while I went to get coffee. Unfortunately, that plan failed immediately because they didn’t accept Apple Pay and my card was in Antoine’s backpack. Defeated and uncaffeinated, I made my way to the queue. It was already massive, and I had to squeeze through crowds of people saying “sumimasen” about a hundred times just to find him. When I finally did, we celebrated with onigiri like we had just completed a mission. The queue felt endless and moved painfully slowly. After 1 hour and 40 minutes, we finally made it into Tokyo DisneySea.
We immediately rushed to our first ride, the Tangled. Thanks to a fast pass, we got on pretty quickly. It was pretty and well done, but we were already focused on our next target, the Frozen ride. Since Frozen is very popular, the fast passes for Frozen were completely sold out. The standby queue was already over three hours long, which felt like a lot, but we committed anyway.
Since we had so much time to spend in the queue, we turned it into a rotating mission. First, Antoine went to get potato churros while I held our place. He also came back with headbands, a Dalmatian for me and Baymax for him. It took him about an hour to return, partly because the park is huge and partly because every food stall has its own big queue. Then it was my turn. I went to get the Toy Story green alien mochis while he held the line. Naturally, there was another long queue, but at that point waiting had become our main activity. The mochis were actually really good.
Even after all that, we still had about an hour left to wait. After a total of 3 hours and 20 minutes in line, we finally got on the Frozen ride. It was genuinely impressive, with detailed animatronics and all the iconic songs, just in Japanese. We learned that Elsa sounds more like Erissa with Japanese accent, and it stuck with us for the rest of the day.
After standing for that long, our feet were completely done. We found a bench and had some lunch buns, which were surprisingly good. Thankfully, we had fast passes for a few more rides, although “fast” still involved waiting because the park was so crowded. It was a bit overwhelming, but we managed to go on three more rides, including a rollercoaster, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the Peter Pan ride. By around 6pm, we were exhausted and decided to call it a day and reward ourselves with a proper dinner.
I had been craving sushi since arriving in Japan, but it had been tricky since Antoine doesn’t eat fish. He found a sushi restaurant where he could order non fish options a la carte, which felt like a perfect compromise. I went for a sushi set, while Antoine ordered wagyu beef sushi along with mushroom and potato tempura. We both left very happy with the food. Our bank account, less so.
After dinner, I completely passed out at the hotel. Antoine apparently joined me shortly after, but I have absolutely no memory of that.