October 30 and November 4, 2019
As I mentioned before, we ended up going to Disneyland twice. The first time was for Halloween, so naturally we had to figure out a costume for Cody since only Disney related costumes are allowed. Our first lead was a Chewbacca onesie from The Gap that also happened to be on sale! Sadly, it wasn’t in stock in his size in any of the stores (I think we went to 6 or 7 stores … ). After hunting all over for some sort of DIY situation and trolling around Don Quijote (Donki) stores, we couldn’t find any children’s costumes. We decided to take one last chance at the Donki store in Shibuya since that’s where Halloween really goes off in Tokyo. Finally, we got super lucky and found a children’s Pluto costume that was actually pretty legit!
Next side story is that if you go to visit Japan, you’ll notice that all locals use their phones and wallets to get on and off the trains. There’s a card called Suica amongst others that can be loaded with cash and used almost anywhere. Not too surprising, right? With newer phones there’s also a Suica App that allows you to just use your phone to scan in and out. My cousin’s boyfriend Matt found out that they had just launched a Suica English App for the iPhone. This was a HUGE game changer for this trip. Japan is a cash society, so there’s not a lot of credit card use by locals. America is mostly a credit card society with points and cash back, etc. etc. The English App has to be connected to either a bank account (what the locals do) OR you can connect it to Apple Pay which allows you to load it with a credit card. This was a big deal for us. No more pulling out cash at ATMs. We could just load our Suica App and use it almost everywhere from 7-11, Lawson, some restaurants and stores, and even at some stores and vendors inside Disneyland!!
Final side story before some photos. You can buy tickets for things like Disneyland at 7-11 and Lawson. There’s a funny looking machine that some people think is an ATM that you can make your way thru the menus, especially if you have Google Translate on your phone. You can use the live camera to translate the menus and you can purchase Disneyland tickets thru that machine and pay at the cashier. That eliminates waiting in line once you get to the park.
So October 30 also happened to be the day that my cousin Stephanie and her boyfriend Matt were going to Disneyland as well. You know how we love to overlap with people on travels. Halloween happens to be Matt ’s favorite time of year (just kidding, he hates it) AND he had never been to Disneyland EVER. Anyways, we were able to meet up a few times throughout the day with them which was cool. With my brother and his family arriving later week, we also wanted to make sure that Cody would get to go with his cousin Riley too so we went back for a second round. It did end up being a good idea because we got to see the park in set up for Halloween and then for the holidays.
We weren’t sure how Cody would enjoy Disneyland, but I guess we shouldn’t have doubted the power of Disney. The day started out a little hectic because we were running late and Cody was tired by the time we arrived at the park. He had a quasi-meltdown within the first hour, but after we finally got him down for a nap the rest of the day was awesome. After arriving, we were desperately trying to find something for him to eat. We settled for a Mickey Mouse popsicle …
Everything is SO organized in Japan. People start lining up for the parades ahead of time (sometimes hours before) by sitting on the ground on little plastic mats that they personally bring or bought at the one of the shops. Everyone is very courteous and gives everyone else their own personal space, so no ridiculous crowding. Much to our surprise, Cody absolutely LOVED the parades.
It’s a Small World was one of the only rides we were able to get on with how crowded the park was during the day. Luckily, Cody loved it.
Later in the evening we were able to meet up with Stephanie and Matt and go on a couple rides together. Somehow, Cody was still going strong. Probably because we gave him an entire churro …
Last but not least, we stayed for the night parade! Also a Cody favorite.
Not a lot of photos from our second visit, which ended up being even MORE crowded than the first time. If you have plans to go to Tokyo Disney, make sure it’s not a public holiday. It was so crowded that we were only able to get ONE Fast Pass because by the time it was time to get our next one they were all gone for the day or super late at night. We still had a good time though.
Of course we had to get more popsicles … Side note, the food and everything else there is totally affordable and the food is really good!
Will we come back? Yea probably! Plus it’s only $75 USD per person vs. going to Anaheim Disneyland where a coke is probably $6 USD on its own!