And We Are Back

Well in case you all were wondering, Wifi is pretty hard to come by in Tokyo or indeed Yokohama. I was working from my ipad (well when I say working reading blogs and checking facebook but anyway) which does not love LAN cables. I did have the best of intentions about using hubby's computer but then he kept taking it into work for some reason. All in all not a great blogging effort. However, we did have a wonderful holiday.

I have several posts worth of photos and I am really wondering where to start. I figured I might just go with Disneyland as most people love a good theme park. 

To tell the truth the day started with us all pretty exhausted. We flew through the night on Friday and had quite an active day wandering around Odaiba on Saturday. I do not generally sleep on planes and in spite of it being a really good flight I still stayed awake for all but about 15 minutes. We slept well on Saturday night but Miss S was up at six Tokyo time so that combined with no coffee made for a rough morning!

Our hotel had a free bus to Disneyland so we hopped on and were deposited at the front gate at around 9 am.

The closest resort to Disneyland. Maybe next time....

Tet and Scarlett just inside the gates

If you think it looks a little cold you would be right. It did not rain but it was hovering around 4 degrees and windy all day. After leaving Singapore with a temperature of 30 degrees, it was a rude shock. We were well wrapped up but eventually were compelled to buy Scarlett an extra layer.. her wooly hat, coat and scarf just were not enough.

A warm Mickey filled bun helped sustain us

Chip n Dale's Tree House

The Mouse himself...

Piglet

As we expected the queues to have your photo taken with the characters were enormous - wait times of 90 minutes - certainly not a starter for a just turned two year old. Scarlett did barge right into the Piglet area though as shown above. Oops!

Minnie Mouse's House

We knew that there would be quite a lot of things that were too old for Scarlett so we headed to the village of popular characters' houses including Minnie, Mickey and Donald Duck's boat. Scarlett especially loved Minnie's house with a fantastic kitchen with working dishwasher and fridge.

Minnie's kitchen

Minnie's oven with a self inflating cake

We then moved onto a few rides that Scarlett liked the look of. She had a great time riding in the tea cups and even had us spinning quite fast at one point. She loved the giant horses on the carousel and the It's a Small World ride. The good thing about the day being very cold was that the crowds were pretty light and we never queued for longer than about ten minutes. We certainly bypassed a couple of activities because the waits were over an hour but there was enough to keep us happy for over nine hours without having to wait for long.

Riding the teacups

On the giant horses with Daddy

We wondered if Scarlett would be too excited to nap but all the running around tired her out and she slept in her pram for 90 minutes which gave us the chance to grab some pizza for lunch and warm up a little. We had grabbed a Fast Pass for the Toy Story ride that we had to use between 2.10 and 3 and like a star Scarlett woke at 2.10. We grabbed her some food and then tried the Buzz Lightyear ride. We did not realise it was a shoot em up style game but Scarlett did the driving and we did the shooting. She loved seeing all the Toy Story characters larger than life and loved turning the steering wheel as we moved through the ride. It was a lot of fun!

Scarlett, wrapped in her Minnie Mouse cape, sleeping

Hanging with her alien friends

We finished the day trying out the paddle steamer ride on the Mark Twain and we also tried the steam train and the jungle explorer ride on little boats. We saw some great animatronic animals on the final ride. We were having too much fun to take any photos though. 

The Mark Twain taken from the steam train

Ganges Gertie - our boat of adventure

We left the park at about six but not before having stocked up on a swag of Disney bento supplies for Scarlett's lunches and a Minnie balloon for Scarlett. She was adamant that was the gift she wanted. Minnie was left behind for Aunty Mirei when we left Japan 8 days later so it was a pretty good balloon.

We had a great time. It was nice not to have to pay anything other than admission and for any souvenirs or food we wanted. It was definitely a great time to go in terms of crowd size. There were a number of areas that we did not really look at this time around and we can certainly see us going back again when we have our annual Japan trip. Scarlett really enjoyed herself and seeing her delight on the carousel and inside Minnie's house certainly made it worthwhile. There is an adult oriented Disney Sea park in the same location so we might have to see if Scarlett's uncle might like to baby sit her and let us try that out next time too.