It would beckon to me though, from outside the windows of the Tozai subway train; the Tower of Terror looming in the distance.
Then at my school you could see Space Mountain clearly from the top floor, and for a time when I taught in a different school the nearest train station was just outside Disneyland. I would walk between effigies of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck each Thursday morning to get to work.
Yoko had been suggesting we go to Disneyland for months and with only one more full day left in Japan it was now or never. If that wasn’t enough build up already then I’ll point out that I had never been to Disneyland before. All in all that’s about 15 years of waiting from when I first heard of Disneyland to finally walking through its gates.
Yoko was there too, but also Kizuna (friend and manager of guesthouse/ Yan’s girlfriend) and Kosuke (friend and lived in guesthouse too). On the way to the park Kizuna commented on how boring Mickey Mouse really is; all the other characters have got something special about them, but Mickey Mouse is just a gimmick. Also, she proposed that he and Mini Mouse are infertile as they still don’t have any kids of their own despite being a couple since 1928. I still propose that they’re secretly related, I for one would never get into a relationship with someone who looked exactly the same as me except for a dotted red bow.
We were going for the 3000 yen (£15) evening tickets available after 6PM when the park is at its quietest. There was a nice Summer evening light on everything as we walked through the gates and I got my first view of what it’s really like in Disneyland.
It was like a big fibreglass European town square with a large globe standing in the middle.
All in all this was much better than I was expecting, I thought the place would be a corporate brainwashing camp where armies of Mickey Mouses stalk the grounds converting kids to a lifetime of watching cartoons, buying merchandise and procreating in order to bring their own offspring to Disneyland in one big money making cycle.
Speaking of which, Kosuke and I tried on some Disney hats.
First ride was The Tower of Terror, a generic name for a ride that goes up vertically and then down like a falling lift. The thing about Disneyland is that the rides are all quite lame but they look really good. More adult theme parks will have their Tower of Terror just standing exposed for all to see, but Disneyland builds a giant haunted house around it, adds a story and special effects.
The story is something to do with a Japanese explorer stereotype, though he had an English name for some reason. He set out to find an ancient wooden idol belonging to some tribe of voodoo witch doctor stereotypes. Anyway, the idol drove the explorer mad and he locked himself in the tower. What the story doesn’t explain is why the mad explorer built a theme park ride in his house, but I suppose that’s being pernickety.
The queue for the ride takes you through a large ornate room with pillars, candle sticks, cobwebs and a real sense that you’re on a film set. Eventually you’re taken to a room where the door shuts behind you and a voice explains the story while a video plays. You see the mysterious idol sitting on a plinth with a spotlight on it but, right at the end of the story, it disappears.
There’s no flash while a mechanism removes it, there’s no smokescreen, it just fades away and you realise that it was never actually real at all. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s damn impressive.
The ride wasn’t great; the best bit was when you feel yourself going up but don’t know how high until you reach the open air at the top of the tower. Below you can see the rest of the park and views of Tokyo in the distance while the cold wind blows through your hair. Then comes the down, then the up, then down and so on like a yoyo.
The scariest thing about the ride was Yoko’s reaction. She had said many times that she doesn’t like rides but we managed to persuade her onto this one. Once it got going she seemed to curl up into a ball in her seat with her head disappearing inside her body like a tortoise. She stayed like that for the whole duration not making a sound and even when the ride stopped she didn’t move for a few seconds. I was scared that she’d gone into some kind of chrysalis.
We all nudged her and told her it was over and slowly her head emerged from wherever it had been and she smiled.
Another ride we rode was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, where you sit in a jeep type carriage that goes through underground tunnels. Occasionally the jeep stops and an animatronic Indy Jones acts out a scene from the movie; introducing whatever terrible collision the jeep will narrowly avoid next. The animatronic Indy Jones looked considerably younger than the real one but their acting was about the same.
My favourite ride was the least dramatic, it was an underwater adventure where you sit inside a tiny submarine and stare out the windows. Each window had a torch that you could direct outside to see further into the mysterious depths.
Not really being underwater the ride cheats the effect with water inside the windows and air pumps to produce bubbles. But even with this obvious cheat the journey the submarine took was quite mesmerising.
First there’s your usual rocks, treasure chests and fish, but then you see a strange creature waving some long stick at you. The submarine moves past more of these creatures as you enter their underwater civilisation. Further on an enormous octopus tentacle comes right up to the window like its going to attack. A moment later and you see the rest of the thing, a huge animatronic red monster living in the murky darkness.
The thing about this ride was that it was set in a different sort of world and that somehow made it more convincing. It wasn’t trying to take you through canyons or on the flight of a jet, it was just a gentle journey under the sea and it worked brilliantly.
At about 9PM the fireworks started. Disneyland is well known for having fireworks every night, which must take away the magic of fireworks for the staff. Anyway, at the centre of the park, where the fireworks were going off from, was this.
It’s a dragon, quite a beautiful one at that.
During the fireworks the dramatic music played and the dragon reared up its head and flapped its wings. At certain moments it breathed fire into the air and sparks showered from its wings.
The fireworks and music accompanied the beast as it danced its piece and then faded back into inanimacy. Everyone clapped, including me.
When the park was closing we walked back through the maze of different areas, passing through all the distinctive zones. There were the European town, Egyptian, jungle, marina, scary, volcano, futuristic areas and finally the exit gate. Walking through the park at speed made me appreciate the design of the place; it’s surprisingly well done with no tackiness or Mickey Mouse robots at all.
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