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Last Disney Post

sorry for the random posts.  for some reason typepad is blocked here now, so i can't see things.

here is the conclusion:

we had an awesome day the first day in disneyland.  after figuring out the layout and the fastpass routine, we were able to ride 16 rides/attractions this day.  we had lunch and dinner in the park and got to see a great halloween parade.  at about 8:30 we limped back to the hotel after 12 hours in the park.  we passed out pretty quickly after arriving home.  

we awoke the next morning at 6:30 to rain...and it stayed with us all day.  good thing amy packed panchos, because we needed them.  we survived, but the combination of the rain and a park more designed for older kids (their top 5 rides were to dangerous for caroline to ride on), left us wanting to return to disneyland.  the day was fund and we made it to 7:30pm...but we knew we would return to disneyland the next day and had our fill of disney sea.

the next day wasn't nearly as rainy, but we did get some rain.  we crossed all of the rides off our list and were able to even squeeze in a nap in the hotel in the afternoon.  we did not get on the monsters, inc ride, because at literally 10 minutes after park opening, there was a 2 hour line for the fastpass...so we passed.

after these three days, we had our fill of disney.

we decided to spend the next day exploring tokyo.  we took the subway to the tokyo tower and then went to a famous temple and shopping area.  it was fun but exhausting.  the subway system is really complicated, but we mde no mistakes. we ended the day with a nice dinner with one of my dad's business partners...it was nice and the kids were behaved quite well.

the next day we relaxed in the morning and headed back home.

a few reflections about japan:

1)  the banking system totally sucks - getting to an atm is really hard, and my chase card wouldn't work at all.  this place uses more cash than i would have thought, so the atm problem was exacerbated

2)  you can definitely tell that the japanese are more well off because the kids and women are much, much fatter than chinese kids and women

3)  my visa in my passport has a high res barcode, while both the us and china have old school stamps

4)  for some reason there is an obsession with taking elevators for people who don't need it...for those in wheelchairs or double strollers, this stinks as you wait in line behind able bodied people waiting for the elevator when an escalator is 10 feet from you

5)  maybe a function of their stagnant economy - no one is in a rush anywhere - except getting the monsters inc fastpass

6) people are super nice

7) i was surprised about how many chinese characters are in common, but the pronunciation is so different...its as if you saw apple and someone told you it was pronounced shish kebob.  but the meaning is close...very strange

we had an awesome time, but we were glad to get home.  the kids will have very fond memories of this trip as will we.

Disney in Japan part 2

funky things happening with the blog software, so i will break this update up...sorry for an incoherent narrative

Disney in Japan

we arrived safely back from japan last night at about 11:30 to a quiet beijing.  after a little holdup at immigration (i've lost some weight, so they were giving me a hard time about my passport photo), we cleared and hopped into a cab home with three very tired kids.

I'll post video and pictures later, but here is a little about our trip and some observations about Japan.

After a relatively uneventful flight, we arrived in Narita and cleared cutoms with no problem on september 30th.  We opted for the bus transfer to our hotel and after killing an hour at the airport pizzaria, we headed to the hotel.  

Driving on the roads seemed very civilized.  They are left side drivers. we saw many more less expensive and flashy cars than in beijing.  Also they drive slower and seemed to follow laws.  After about 75 minutes we arrived at the resort.  Checking was uneventful and we were able to distract the kids in two different lobby playrooms while we sorted everything out.  

We were escorted into our two adjoining rooms and we quickly unpacked.  I checked my blackberry and no signal???  I have an international plan and this has worked all over europe and other parts of asia...oh well.  I plugged in my laptop so i could connect to the internet and that would be our tool for communication, but  I kept on getting a battery charge error.   OK so no internet, and no blackberry...aren't we in a technology hub...well at least there is a starbucks downstairs in the lobby - i will use my iphone for internet...nope - 5 days in japan and not a hotspot found.  I don't want to start this post with a big complaint because we had a really nice memorable trip and i will soon forget about this, but this technology/interoperability gap really sucks.  My solution for communication was to use a coin operated machine in the lobby for a once a day gmail check-in.

After getting settled, we went to go have dinner in one of the hotel's restaurants.  food was decent, but wow it was overpriced ($200 for 5 people).  We went back upstairs and went to bed (but not after a nice view of the evening fireworks in the park to whet our appetite)...mickey called for an early rise.

Tokyo is only 1 hour ahead of us, so there were no major body clock adjustments.  The sleeping arrangements had the boys in 1 room and the girls in the other.  We awoke around 6:30 and went downstairs for breakfast in the hotel (again way too expensive - $100) before heading to disneyland.

Disney in Japan has two parks - one called Disneyland with all of the traditional rides, and one called Disney Sea with a hybrid of water and adventure themed areas that cobble together epcot and maybe a universal studios.  We bought three day passes that allow for 1 day in each of these two parks and the third day is a pickem between the two.  On Thursday we went to Disneyland.

We arrived at 8:45am and strolled right into the park.  We started walking around to familiarize ourselves with the park and to pick our first ride.  Amy had done alot of research, so we had a good sense of what rides we wanted to do.