jdhilger
Tokyo DisneySea Review: Disney's only truly modern and complete theme park
Cape Cod
American Waterfront
Tokyo DisneySea
[Warning: Lots of words]
Cutting to the chase: believe the hype.
The level of detail throughout is amazing. You'll find none of the blatant corner cutting that characterized early California Adventure. Each area of the park is fully realized and engrossing. Even the areas that are obviously meant to be cheaper to execute, like the kid-focused Mermaid Lagoon, are still lavish. Even better, the parts that are meant to impress do so in spades.
At the same time, there's no sense that things were left unfinished as one gets with Disney's Animal Kingdom. Make no mistake, the park is a full day park. Sure it doesn't have the sheer number of attractions that one will find at Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom, but that's hardly surprising considering those parks are building off over 55 years of momentum and refinement while Disney Sea is a spritely 10 years old. If one got lucky and came on the least crowded day and did some militant park opening to closing fastpass strategizing, then it's theoretically possible that one could experience every attraction, but even then you're unlikely to see the various shows (which will soon include Fantasmic), and you'll probably be hurrying by details and rushing through meals. The park is engrossing but tight, never feeling insurmountable yet never feeling small.
Side note: that this park chose to add Fantasmic rather than World of Color makes total sense to me now. This park is very much rooted in the distant past and is very story oriented: World of Color's technological spectacle with would have felt odd and out of place here.
Conceptually the park is a winner in that it lives up to its name. The park literally is a Disneyland that takes its thematic inspiration from bodies of water, effectively replacing the "land" with "sea." In a sense the Disneyland approach to theme parks is to represent idealized times and places, with the choice of which times and places characterizing the park as a whole. The classic Disneyland itself is hard to define in terms of an overall theme, but it somehow hits on a winning formula. Disney Sea takes this same approach but adds the overarching concept of the sea and the various incarnations it takes. In this regard one could argue that Disney Sea is a more conceptually cohesive park than Disneyland itself. I don't know if this cohesion make it better per se, but there's no denying that the message of Disney Sea is probably the strongest and clearest of any Disney Park (Animal Kingdom being a close second). Unlike California Adventure, the theme works throughout the park and you never have to jump through mental hoops to justify the presence of a particular area of the park. The sense of purpose is confident and adhesion to this purpose is total.
I didn't have a chance to eat much of the food during my not-quite-a-day visit, but I liked what I tried and was intrigued by what I didn't. Quick service meals (read: fast food) at Disneyland/Magic Kingdom parks range from okay to horrid, but Disney Sea seems to buck this trend in both variety and quality. I had quick service curry for lunch and it ended up being the best curry I ate while in Japan, and Japan is very fond of its curry. The Italian restaurant Ristorante di Canaletto seemed very nice for dinner, but it's hard for me to judge how it compares to other Italian in Japan. The other food options throughout the park certainly looked good, and that didn't even touch on the higher class food found in the hotels, an area where Disney World absolutely shines. It definitely seemed a step above Disneyland's/Magic Kingdom's less than stellar options and more akin to Epcot's culinary delights. We can't talk food without talking drink: we stopped by one bar in the American Waterfront located in a scale steam ship and themed after the life of Teddy Roosevelt. The place was opulent in a Club 33 sort of way, the drinks were solid and proper, and the ambiance perfectly fits the 20s chic style that's so popular in trendier areas right now. This place could make a killing in LA and is much nicer than the club-esque bar called Teddy's Los Angeles. In DisneySea you can go from munching popcorn to refined opulence one after the other. Disney Sea gets it: appeal to everybody and all sensibilities, from playful to refined.
The thing that probably struck me the most about Disney Sea was the quality of the rides. Each ride has that full-on Disney quality that you usually only get from specific AAA attractions in the other parks. Even when Disney Sea has a clone of an existing ride, it's better. Their Indiana Jones is more detailed, has more effects, and is just generally more impressive than the one in Anaheim. The Voyage of Sinbad is an almost Small World esque ride in theory, but the execution in terms of detail and technology makes it more akin to Pirates of the Caribbean. Stormrider is a simulator ride, a sort of hybrid of Soarin' and Star Tours, but Stormrider's effects and execution go light years beyond what at least the original Star Tours was doing. Hell, even their carrousel is a double-decker. Things are executed properly at Disney Sea, plain and simple. There's always some little bit that will impress you, especially if you're used to American parks. Everything is executed with 21st century standards. You don't have to tell yourself that a ride is kind of hokey but it's okay because it's a 1955 original: at Disney Sea the rides aren't hokey, and nothing feels like it was built in 1955. Disney Sea manages to feel as engrossing and "Disney" as Disneyland, but a Disneyland that doesn't rely on nostalgia to gloss over its weaker moments. Disney Sea is something Walt would build if he were alive today, not something he would build back in the 50s. The park's not perfect of course, there's still the odd quickie ride you can tell was put in because it was cheaper than something else, but even those rides seem to have leaps and bounds more care and wonder than their equivalents in other parks. At Walt Disney World you get a Dumbo Spinner for the umpteenth time, but at Disney Sea you get Aquatopia using a completely unique ride system and offering a simple yet uniquely enjoyable experience. This park just operates at a different level of expectation.
Disneyland is a unique event, an entertainment venture like no other that defined an art form. Its originality will likely never be duplicated, but Disney hasn't let that stop them from trying. When Walt's dream of the perfect city died with him they tried a new, more adult theme park with Epcot in 1982 and largely succeeded. While Disneyland has been cloned around the world, Epcot is a different conceptual approach to a theme park, high quality but nothing like any other Disney park. Unfortunately Disney has left that park in a state of suspended animation, never pushing the concept forward since 1982 and mostly making changes that seem to lose the park's focus. After that Disney has went back to spins on their Disneyland formula, but they all have various problems. The Hollywood Studios parks are conceptually ill-conceived, Animal Kingdom has yet to flesh itself out, and California Adventure was initially executed so cheaply it hardly felt Disney at all. That leaves Disney Sea: a fully realized, fully executed Disney park built in the 21st century. One of a kind, it's Disney's only modern theme park, building on their experience and winning formula, but starting from scratch in a modern age. It's definitely the best thing Disney has done since 1982, and arguably the best original thing they've done since 1955. Disney Sea is the lighthouse that should be guiding imagineering from here on out*.
If you're the kind who will carve out a couple of Disney World/land trips a year, I urge you to perhaps combine them into one trip to the Tokyo Disney Resort instead. You're only doing yourself a disservice by missing Disney Sea. If this review doesn't sell you then maybe this will: the whole day I was at Disney Sea I only saw one stroller and one ECV. Yes, you read that right: just one.
*Look at the photo: see what I did there?
Tokyo DisneySea Review: Disney's only truly modern and complete theme park
Cape Cod
American Waterfront
Tokyo DisneySea
[Warning: Lots of words]
Cutting to the chase: believe the hype.
The level of detail throughout is amazing. You'll find none of the blatant corner cutting that characterized early California Adventure. Each area of the park is fully realized and engrossing. Even the areas that are obviously meant to be cheaper to execute, like the kid-focused Mermaid Lagoon, are still lavish. Even better, the parts that are meant to impress do so in spades.
At the same time, there's no sense that things were left unfinished as one gets with Disney's Animal Kingdom. Make no mistake, the park is a full day park. Sure it doesn't have the sheer number of attractions that one will find at Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom, but that's hardly surprising considering those parks are building off over 55 years of momentum and refinement while Disney Sea is a spritely 10 years old. If one got lucky and came on the least crowded day and did some militant park opening to closing fastpass strategizing, then it's theoretically possible that one could experience every attraction, but even then you're unlikely to see the various shows (which will soon include Fantasmic), and you'll probably be hurrying by details and rushing through meals. The park is engrossing but tight, never feeling insurmountable yet never feeling small.
Side note: that this park chose to add Fantasmic rather than World of Color makes total sense to me now. This park is very much rooted in the distant past and is very story oriented: World of Color's technological spectacle with would have felt odd and out of place here.
Conceptually the park is a winner in that it lives up to its name. The park literally is a Disneyland that takes its thematic inspiration from bodies of water, effectively replacing the "land" with "sea." In a sense the Disneyland approach to theme parks is to represent idealized times and places, with the choice of which times and places characterizing the park as a whole. The classic Disneyland itself is hard to define in terms of an overall theme, but it somehow hits on a winning formula. Disney Sea takes this same approach but adds the overarching concept of the sea and the various incarnations it takes. In this regard one could argue that Disney Sea is a more conceptually cohesive park than Disneyland itself. I don't know if this cohesion make it better per se, but there's no denying that the message of Disney Sea is probably the strongest and clearest of any Disney Park (Animal Kingdom being a close second). Unlike California Adventure, the theme works throughout the park and you never have to jump through mental hoops to justify the presence of a particular area of the park. The sense of purpose is confident and adhesion to this purpose is total.
I didn't have a chance to eat much of the food during my not-quite-a-day visit, but I liked what I tried and was intrigued by what I didn't. Quick service meals (read: fast food) at Disneyland/Magic Kingdom parks range from okay to horrid, but Disney Sea seems to buck this trend in both variety and quality. I had quick service curry for lunch and it ended up being the best curry I ate while in Japan, and Japan is very fond of its curry. The Italian restaurant Ristorante di Canaletto seemed very nice for dinner, but it's hard for me to judge how it compares to other Italian in Japan. The other food options throughout the park certainly looked good, and that didn't even touch on the higher class food found in the hotels, an area where Disney World absolutely shines. It definitely seemed a step above Disneyland's/Magic Kingdom's less than stellar options and more akin to Epcot's culinary delights. We can't talk food without talking drink: we stopped by one bar in the American Waterfront located in a scale steam ship and themed after the life of Teddy Roosevelt. The place was opulent in a Club 33 sort of way, the drinks were solid and proper, and the ambiance perfectly fits the 20s chic style that's so popular in trendier areas right now. This place could make a killing in LA and is much nicer than the club-esque bar called Teddy's Los Angeles. In DisneySea you can go from munching popcorn to refined opulence one after the other. Disney Sea gets it: appeal to everybody and all sensibilities, from playful to refined.
The thing that probably struck me the most about Disney Sea was the quality of the rides. Each ride has that full-on Disney quality that you usually only get from specific AAA attractions in the other parks. Even when Disney Sea has a clone of an existing ride, it's better. Their Indiana Jones is more detailed, has more effects, and is just generally more impressive than the one in Anaheim. The Voyage of Sinbad is an almost Small World esque ride in theory, but the execution in terms of detail and technology makes it more akin to Pirates of the Caribbean. Stormrider is a simulator ride, a sort of hybrid of Soarin' and Star Tours, but Stormrider's effects and execution go light years beyond what at least the original Star Tours was doing. Hell, even their carrousel is a double-decker. Things are executed properly at Disney Sea, plain and simple. There's always some little bit that will impress you, especially if you're used to American parks. Everything is executed with 21st century standards. You don't have to tell yourself that a ride is kind of hokey but it's okay because it's a 1955 original: at Disney Sea the rides aren't hokey, and nothing feels like it was built in 1955. Disney Sea manages to feel as engrossing and "Disney" as Disneyland, but a Disneyland that doesn't rely on nostalgia to gloss over its weaker moments. Disney Sea is something Walt would build if he were alive today, not something he would build back in the 50s. The park's not perfect of course, there's still the odd quickie ride you can tell was put in because it was cheaper than something else, but even those rides seem to have leaps and bounds more care and wonder than their equivalents in other parks. At Walt Disney World you get a Dumbo Spinner for the umpteenth time, but at Disney Sea you get Aquatopia using a completely unique ride system and offering a simple yet uniquely enjoyable experience. This park just operates at a different level of expectation.
Disneyland is a unique event, an entertainment venture like no other that defined an art form. Its originality will likely never be duplicated, but Disney hasn't let that stop them from trying. When Walt's dream of the perfect city died with him they tried a new, more adult theme park with Epcot in 1982 and largely succeeded. While Disneyland has been cloned around the world, Epcot is a different conceptual approach to a theme park, high quality but nothing like any other Disney park. Unfortunately Disney has left that park in a state of suspended animation, never pushing the concept forward since 1982 and mostly making changes that seem to lose the park's focus. After that Disney has went back to spins on their Disneyland formula, but they all have various problems. The Hollywood Studios parks are conceptually ill-conceived, Animal Kingdom has yet to flesh itself out, and California Adventure was initially executed so cheaply it hardly felt Disney at all. That leaves Disney Sea: a fully realized, fully executed Disney park built in the 21st century. One of a kind, it's Disney's only modern theme park, building on their experience and winning formula, but starting from scratch in a modern age. It's definitely the best thing Disney has done since 1982, and arguably the best original thing they've done since 1955. Disney Sea is the lighthouse that should be guiding imagineering from here on out*.
If you're the kind who will carve out a couple of Disney World/land trips a year, I urge you to perhaps combine them into one trip to the Tokyo Disney Resort instead. You're only doing yourself a disservice by missing Disney Sea. If this review doesn't sell you then maybe this will: the whole day I was at Disney Sea I only saw one stroller and one ECV. Yes, you read that right: just one.
*Look at the photo: see what I did there?