A Very Cheery Cherry Blossom Trip Report!

April 12th, 2017

The next few posts are going to be photo heavy, sorry not sorry. :)

I still get a kick out of a covered Main S... I mean World Bazaar!

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No time to go straight though - since Pooh's Honey Hunt was under refurbishment it was straight to the right for us! When we got to the fastpass machine for Monsters Inc though I realized my error... they were not distributing yet! What! I then realized that the announcement at the gate wasn't what rides were closed but must be what were OPEN. I should have listed more attentively... at least I knew where to go now instead - straight to Astro Blasters! Having been thoroughly trounced by my husband as usual (at least I kick his tush at Midway Mania...) I ran back to the machines, barely making it just before 9 to a bit of a line though nothing like Midway Mania had been. Right at 9 on the dot the machines started spitting out FPs.

Random pic of the area:

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FP in hand, we then jumped over to the standby just in time for me to take a movie of the stampede of regular park guests from the entrance when I realized a CM was gesturing wildly at me and shouting out in Japanese that my ticket was the same as for that ride. I proudly yelled back that I knew in Japanese and he... kept coming. WHAT! He said again it was the same ride this time in English and I said again I knew in English... but but... it's the same ride ma'am! YES I KNOW. WE DON'T HAVE IT IN THE US OK, lol! He finally accepted that we knew what we were doing and went back to the entrance of the line... that's the first time I have encountered a CM so intent on helping guests that they chase one down through a queue! :D

Inside area of the queue:

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Detail on the dome ceiling:

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I thought it was adorable and was glad we would get to ride it again later! I tried to take a picture of Roz but she came out way too blurry.

There was no wait at Star Tours either so that is where we headed next.

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Also pretty blurry.. I think I will have to take my phone in to get looked at. :(

We then started walking towards Fantasyland... this is from the second floor of a restaurant area I think that somehow ended up our walkway.

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Where were we headed? Well I REALLY had my heart set on getting a Pooh popcorn bucket but when we got to the honey cart...

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He was nowhere to be found?! :( I showed the woman working there a pic of it on my phone and she said they sold out of them and were not making them anymore. Oh, pooh (GET IT?). I was so bummed I didn't get any popcorn at all... I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. There had been a lot of people walking around with Pooh and it was on a website showing all the buckets so I had just assumed he was still there.

While I thought about it we wandered Fantasyland a little.

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We decided to skip both the teacups and dumbo since we have them in the states. I saw these little cuties at a cart... now that I am home I wish I would have gotten all four of the mascots but I still don't know what I would have done with them. Oh well! :)

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April 12th, 2017

We continued wandering past the Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall and I asked Kyle to look at the menu and make sure it sounded OK to him.

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Vending machines for Fantasyland.. I love how steam comes out of the spouts but you can't see it here.

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For Easter they had "eggs" of the characters scattered all over. There was a scavenger hunt (only in Japanese) on some of these displays where if you figured out a code word and told the CM at specific spots you could get a sticker. We didn't do it as we aren't really sticker people (and its meant for kids) but I did love finding them all over the park. There were something like 50 of them!

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Peter Pan by now had a bit of a wait... somewhere between 20 & 30 minutes. It's a must-do for me, and Kyle was OK with waiting so we hopped in line and waved to Tinkerbell.

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When we were done here I happened to find a fastpass for Space Mountain on the ground..! I looked around but didn't see anyone it could have belonged to, nor did I see a CM to give it to. We had passes for 10 minutes before it already so we really didn't need it... oh well... continuing on!

People were staked out for the first parade.

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We went across and rode on the Haunted Mansion when it came by... everyone walked very sloooooowly through the outside queue while the CMs tried to get us to move. ^^;

Then it was time for a snack as we went back to use our fastpasses.

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I liked these flavors better than the aliens over at Sea personally!

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I was able to get a little better shot of Ros this time since I knew she was coming! :D

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WDW has Tangled, TDR has Pinocchio?

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It was still early but we decided to eat lunch before it got crowded in there.
 
Loving following along!

Quick question about Big Band Beat - when there are 2 of you, do you enter the number of persons as part of entering the lottery? (I assume you can't do it individually or your party might not all get in?)
And do you use both of your park tickets to do this? Or do you each get a go so you effectively have 2 shots at the lottery?
 
I can't remember exactly, but it asks you how many people and then you scan the corresponding number of tickets.

Then you cross your fingers and hope for the best!
 


Wow. I can't believe someone actually wins at the Big Band Beat lottery! I never see anyone win and we've never won.
It does happen! My brother and I won back in January; we pulled around noon for one of the 2 or 3 o'clock shows. (Can't remember exactly.) I heard you have better luck if you try for later shows, or if you go right before they stop distributing for the next show since they may have seats to fill. But who knows!

Quick question about Big Band Beat - when there are 2 of you, do you enter the number of persons as part of entering the lottery? (I assume you can't do it individually or your party might not all get in?)
And do you use both of your park tickets to do this? Or do you each get a go so you effectively have 2 shots at the lottery?
You don't actually choose the number of tickets, just pick what time you're going for, then scan each ticket in your group. When you're done scanning tickets, hit the accept button and the lottery begins! You only have one shot per ticket per day, but the standby line is an option if you don't draw.

Loving these pics! I especially love all the promo pics they were doing at Disney Sea in the morning :D I wonder how often that happens?
 
Loving following along!

Quick question about Big Band Beat - when there are 2 of you, do you enter the number of persons as part of entering the lottery? (I assume you can't do it individually or your party might not all get in?)
And do you use both of your park tickets to do this? Or do you each get a go so you effectively have 2 shots at the lottery?

AS Kyjin said you scan your tickets in so it knows how many people you are trying for. You could try seperately, but then yes, you'd risk not getting in to the same show (nevermind sitting together).

I have a theory as to why we won that I will cover soon...!

It might be a couple more days before I keep going... DCL is doing a staggered release their fall 2018 cruises currently and I've been banging away at keeping the opening price thread up to date (with Camcolt's help!) so I didn't have time to write up more. Tomorrow is another round and then Wednesday yet another before its opened to the public and I can stop. If it's not very active I'll squeeze this in too...! :sad:
 
It might be a couple more days before I keep going... DCL is doing a staggered release their fall 2018 cruises currently and I've been banging away at keeping the opening price thread up to date (with Camcolt's help!) so I didn't have time to write up more. Tomorrow is another round and then Wednesday yet another before its opened to the public and I can stop. If it's not very active I'll squeeze this in too...! :sad:

I just wanted to say thanks for all the work you put into the Cruise board!! Keeping those opening day threads up to date must be a lot of work!

I will wait patiently for more about TDR, I really love what you have written so far. I love all he detail and info you put in. It really helps me to get an understanding on what to do when we are going to be there.
 


April 12th, 2017

Well, I was gone far longer than I expected (long enough to go on ANOTHER vacation, whoops!) but I am back now and eager to finish up! Only a couple more days left!

We had an early-ish lunch around 11am at Queen of Hearts banquet hall.

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At one point I was asked 'rice or bread?' and assumed I needed to pick one but no, it was extra and kind of a lot of rice. Whoops! I wasn't that hungry but lets face it I'm a rice fiend anyway... I ate almost all of it, lol.

I planned to get an 'unbirthday' cake but just couldn't imagine taking it down even with Kyle's help. Plus the plate here was very cute (they give you some bubble wrap for it too) so we went with a more modest desert.

We chose to sit with some friendly looking folk:

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They weren't feeling very chatty though.

Lunch accomplished we headed out and popped into Haunted Mansion! Apparently this is the only picture I took there. ^^;;

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Reason was, the Easter Parade was coming by! I took several rather crummy shots before being shooed away by a CM (the whole line had stopped to gawk). When we came out it was time to head back to Space Mountain to use a fastpass.

Whats this? The parade was coming back! Kyle was thrilled! Just kidding... he went to go sit in the shade while I joined the crowd to watch. He isn't big on parades and especially isn't big on me constantly changing directions willy nilly in the parks.... a habit I just can't seem to shake.

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I have videos and pictures of the whole thing - I really liked the parade! They aren't must dos for me usually, and I had no plans to try and catch this one but gosh it was such a catchy song, the costumed dancers were great and just a little weird (some of them had usatama's getting washed as if it was a boutique... and does anyone else notice that egg is DEFINITELY on the menu there? No wonder they are running!) that it was worth the detour. I found Kyle again and we were back on schedule towards Space Mountain. Here is the crowd sometime between 11:30 & 12:30 according to the FP picture I have:

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Their ship really looks a bit like a squid to me here...!

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April 12th, 2017

From Space Mountain we decided to make our way back through the hub and over into Adventureland. On the way I made sure to stop and take some scenery shots (finally!)

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On the other side were several kiosks selling popcorn, ice cream, and other goodies. I thought about getting some popcorn but wasn't ready quite yet... i was still bummed I couldn't have a Pooh bucket even though there were tons of people carrying that one from previous visits and I hadn't decided which one I would get instead - or if I'd even be getting one since I had "wasted" a whole day of not having popcorn yesterday hoping to get it today. We only had half a day today and tomorrow.... was it worth it? Well, maybe I'd get a Minnie Bow... more pics while I hemmed and hawed!

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I decided since I wasn't hungry anyway it was time to go on one of my favorites!

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I'm always surprised how many people don't like this attraction... its easy and fun - I almost always hear a new joke or two but then we only visit the parks once or twice a year (and usually not the same park which helps. We go back and forth between DL & WDW). Maybe if we always went to the exact same one it'd be a different story, but they are all unique from each other in various ways. Well, not the iconic ways...

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Have I mentioned what a champ Kyle was this trip without understanding much of what was going on? I think he played a little movie in his mind for each scene here from previous trips because there is no way he was gleaning much... time to treat the patient husband! This was really good... I wish they had them in the states! :) While we pulled over and munched it (which took awhile - it was rock solid!) Panchito and Jose from the three caballeros came by~! I did not see Donald but there was also a monkey from the Jungle Book. I thought about saying hi but I dislike trying to jostle my way in a crowd so ended up just admiring them from afar (and only getting obscured photos).

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Side note - by now it was getting hot out! A huge departure from the rain yesterday! Almost all the locals were still in their coats and long pants (stubborn? Or just not done?) but I threw in the towel and removed my long sleeved shirt and went to just a T. The horror! ;)
 
April 12th, 2017

Confession time... its been too long guys. I don't remember what exactly we did from here. ^^; It doesn't help that my husband and my cameras took to the time change differently so our pics are out of order from each other. It appears we wandered into frontier land and I do remember we had a brief bathroom stop because I wandered through some of the shops there without Kyle while waiting.

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They were really funny to me - seeing what Japan considered appropriate 'western' stuff to have there. It was pretty cowboy & indians in them... lots of cowboy hats, eagle feather & turquoise jewelry and such!

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I am fairly certain we rode BTMRR but I don't have pics of the queue. We may have just grabbed a fastpass - I do remember I was waffling between this and Splash Mountain... I did NOT want to get wet with jeans on and when I ride it in the states I get SOAKED. Down to my panties soaked. I hate it even though I LOVE the ride so its a shame I end up skipping it most trips. I used to never get more than a few drops but in the last decade its been very consistently bad. :confused3

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I then decided even though I still wasn't very hungry I HAD to have a special Easter treat while we were over by Rackity's Raccoon Saloon so we headed towards Splash Mountain. We paused here to make sure Kyle thought it sounded good for dinner.

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I took some more scenery shots here too while I waffled re: riding Splash... I got a little turned around looking for the Saloon and we ended up going back the wrong way because I thought this was just towards the entrance to Splash.

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I realized I could see the logs from here and tried to tell how wet people were... nope, too far away. The ladies were freaking out pretty well like in the states so I told Kyle I wanted to go back towards the exist to get a better look at how wet they really were. Luckily that is also where the Saloon was..!

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here is my heart's desire..! Complete with Mickey Churro. :cloud9: It was really good and would not be the only one I would have this trip..! Who knew corn flakes could be so darn tasty?

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April 12th, 2017

While we shared the ice cream and an iced coffee even MORE characters piled out to say hi! I was truly impressed already with the number and variety we had seen today!

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Note the train on the left side there... they don't have a train that goes all the way around the park, but they DO have a train through the area.

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Though I didn't play it as a game for the stickers I really did enjoy seeing all the egg characters around the park too. I took this before I saw them "in the flesh"!

There were also some celebrities out and about today... there was a mini camera crew filming while we were sitting that we had run into before also. Everyone was crowded around waiting for someone to come off the ride but we of course did not recognize anyone. Now that I think back on it, I wonder if they were just shooting some promo videos that day... if so it would be neat to see the end result sometime!

I debated dragging Kyle to see this also, but I wanted the vacation version and I wasn't sure if they always ran that one or just in the summer or what. I decided against dragging him to another show... well, this show. :) Perhaps we rode BTMRR here if we hand't earlier... I'm not really sure. I know we also rode some of the Fantasyland stuff too at some point but I don't have pictures so I don't know... I DO know wanted to go back and see the Tiki Room more than the country bears though...

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On the way we stopped and I finally got a popcorn bucket. In the end I decided to go with the Dumbo version because it was more 'interesting' and I wanted to try the milk chocolate popcorn which is what they had there. It ended up being my favorite..! We tried milk chocolate, soy sauce and honey on this trip. I am not sure we ever tried caramel.. I think I decided to get milk chocolate again the next day instead. We ended up throwing the soy sauce away... I cant remember if I mentioned it earlier (we got it earlier in the day before I got a bucket).

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I thought this was a cute alternative to the traditional version at home... I did not enjoy the WDW version years back with Zazu and Iago FWIW.

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April 12th, 2017

It must have been about 3 or 4 now because we headed out of the park and back to the hotel for a breather and to see what kind of room we ended up with!

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My husband took a covert picture of this almost life size Duffy being carried around... he was even dressed for the season! o_O;

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Unlike Miracosta I had never seen inside the DLH before. I really liked it! Very bight and airy and lots of England stories/characters utilized in a pretty obvious but unobtrusive manner.

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Some indoor fountains too!


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Off to one side is a 'fancy' elevator shaft. I never did try to use this one - I'm not sure if its appearance is the only special thing or if it leads somewhere in particular.

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I checked in while my husband wandered around taking pictures. They verified the info I had written down the day prior at Miracosta (they even had the sheet I had filled out) and also asked me to have a seat. Her English was superior to the ones over at Miracosta - we had no issues at all. There was a CM handing out water with infused fruit to those waiting and we took a seat for maybe five minutes, tops before we were approached by a bellhop who led us to our room.

I am not sure if he was new, but he had a little memo book where phrases were written down in English as a cheat sheet and you know, it worked perfectly, lol! He had to keep reading from it but still we had no problems - having already checked into Miracosta it was the same conversation after all! We had booked a Grand Theme Park view, and were taken up to the 8th floor with just a short walk to the very end of our offshoot hallway.
 
April 12th, 2017


OK ok just a couple more lobby pics:

Under the chandelier by the round seats you can see a carousel (from Mary Poppins?) at the top!

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I know it looks dark here, but really there was plenty of light. The palm trees made it feel like a conservatory!

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There is a Minnie statue too but I've already put up way too many pics of this gorgeous lobby...

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Obviously no touching this doll house, but the backside shows many different rooms, each devoted to a character thematically.

OK ok, on to the room!

We. Loved. It. So much more than the room at MC! I mean, look at this view!!

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Using zoom on the camera we could clearly see different characters greeting in the hub from here. I hadn't thought logically about direction and realized we'd be able to see Disney Sea also either, so having the tower, volcano etc all right there too (even the dome of the Arabian coast!) makes this a no brainer for us - we will be staying here in this hotel next time. It was nice looking into DS, and I'm not saying I would never ever stay there again, but thematically we loved it over here so much more. Walking to DL takes a couple minutes at most - just on the other side of the train station - and if you enter DS at rope drop you need to go to the main entrance anyway so the hotel entrance is NBD at that time of day.

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I still have no idea where the switch between park view & grand comes into play but I was so glad we were off center enough to see so much of the castle and high enough to see everything beyond. Unlike the room at MC I was able to book a double so this room only had one bed that was more than big enough for the two of us to snuggle up at night as we do at home which was also nice. It was cheaper than MC and we also had a nice little frosted window in the bathroom that let in natural light from the main part of the room.

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I really liked that here the small table is in front of the window instead of off to the side (because it is not as tall) and that it did not have the little dots on the glass to get in the way of pictures either.

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Overlooking the DL park meant when we opened the window we got the disneyland park music here versus the (also lovely mind you) music from portofino. The pajamas were a generic yellow pair instead of embossed pajamas and the slippers had mickey sorcerer heads instead of "normal" mickeys which was cuter IMO. Oh, and there was no hard liquor in the mini fridge - just a few sodas, kirin and two bottles water. The convenience store here is a full sized proper one though, so it may be just a question of ease of access versus the complete lack of options in that regard over at MC.

If anyone has questions about the room please ask away..! Im not sure what all I should say about it. :) They had pictures of some 'live action' character designs for cogsworth and lumiere and the wardrobe from the animated version is on top of the TV stand. There are other small details of mickey heads, Cleo and the Rose on the frosted glass doors to the bathroom & toilet and even in the hallways... did I mention I really liked this hotel? ;)

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We could see pretty far along the monorail track too.

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April 12th, 2017

We took a bit of a break and I went down to the shop to peruse... the variety here is WAY better than over at Miracosta's tiny shop and I bought many things to bring home for my Mom (and a couple more treasures for myself). Kyle amused himself by taking about 1,300 pictures of the monorail it seems...! The weather was slowly getting cloudier and cooler as we made our way back into the park.

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We made our way back into Frontierland to pick up where we left off - I really wanted to go see Camp Woodchuck as it was an entirely new land for us!

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The area is really cute (and the dining area is HUGE with two levels) with the restaurant, shop & a meet and greet around the side. We decided not to meet The Ducks as my husband isn't into characters though. We also thought about getting waffle sandwiches here.

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I had my heart set of eating at Grandma Sara's Kitchen so that is where we headed instead.

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I got the special set for dinner but I can't remember what Kyle got as we didn't take a picture of it.

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After dinner we decided to hop on the Mark Twain for a spin which I haven't done back home in awhile... it was basically the same but with a Japanese voice over. We saw this cute little usatama on top..!

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April 12, 2017

Almost none of the pictures I took came out... Kyle had left his DSLR in the room again. It would seem he had no interest in taking pics this trip which still bums me out all these months later. I'm not even having to shrink the pics I took they came out that low quality. >_<

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After riding Mark Twain we also hopped on the Western River Railroad. At the very last second a CM opened our door back up and had two more ladies squeeze in... they smelled very strongly of cigarette smoke which was annoying (not even the breeze as we rode was enough to help) and I didn't take pics so I wouldn't annoy them.

We wandered through the pirates shop but could not ride it since it was down for refurbishment. This bummed me out since we were unable to eat at Blue Bayou which I definitely would have done if we were able. This and Pooh's Hunny Hunt were both shut for our trip this year having closed just a couple days prior. Had I known they would be, I would have gone earlier in our trip but what can you do.. by the time it was announced we'd already made hotel reservations everywhere. Next trip...!

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Maybe 'A Pirate's Life For Me' doesn't translate well...?

It was already getting late and we had ridden everything I had wanted to by now (that I could) so we continued to wander and do a little shopping. Just trying to kill time before the fireworks. People really do mean the shops get nuts in the evening... we were SLAMMED in the shops in World Bazarr (though the pirate's one had been empty to be fair).

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The evening had gotten very windy and most people had left. Something was announced but I couldn't understand it. We continued to mill about as more people left around us waiting until the fireworks were supposed to start just in case. I noticed there were a couple lines of people up in front of a railing looking towards the castle so my hope was alive...

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Hardly anyone compared to the States... right?! Suddenly the fireworks DID go off, despite the wind. I am not sure if it was a limited or full show, but I was really happy to catch them after we missed out on Fantasmic the night before! :) We then went back to the room... everyone else seemed to be leaving as well, even huge school groups at this point.

Facepalm. I guess they do a projection show on the castle... oops. It slipped my mind! I had just followed the herd of people leaving thinking the park was done... It had been going for a bit when we got back to the room, but I was able to sit at the window and watch it a little with the window open. I wouldn't have noticed at all if not for these huge pyrotechnics!

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I am sure it's AMAZING from in front of the castle... where I had been mere minutes ago. Sigh. For just a moment I thought about running back over there but we were so tired and I could see it just enough to stay put for the night. We slept very well here... I was wishing we'd booked another night as I just wasn't done yet but this was Kyle's first trip to Japan and I had already stolen a couple days for this. I should be counting my lucky stars....
 
April 13th 2017

Last morning at TDLR! Originally I had planned to go back to whichever park we wanted as we had park hoppers but in the end we both wanted more time in DL more. Not once did we end up park hopping... oh well. I called down and had a bellhop come grab our luggage and then headed down to check out. We popped into the shop for breakfast and found it entirely picked over. There was only one type of onigiri left and most of the pastries were gone - they had been hit HARD it seemed. When we checked the night before there had been tons of options and we decided to get it in the morning so it would be 'fresher'... big mistake. Lesson learned!

By the time we got to the park we had pretty much missed the early entry but still went through the hotel guests entry as there was no line to speak of there versus the gate... it may have still been a couple minutes prior to open? The park sure FELT empty...!

I also noticed I had not been keeping track of the cherry blossoms so I made sure to snap this on the way in.

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Lots of leaves coming in, but still very full of lovely blossoms. :cloud9:

I'm pretty sure we rode Space Mountain again, and did some things in Fantasyland, picking up more popcorn along the way to snack on. The only area we hadn't wandered through was Toontown so we headed over that way and took some pictures, choosing not to ride the kiddie coaster or go through the meet and greets.

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I meant to try the Donald Burger but never did... we decided to go ride Big Thunder again and have that waffle sandwich we passed up the night before.

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April 13th 2017

We had gambled just once more this morning... this time for One Man's Dream II and wouldn't you know it.. we won AGAIN! Maybe I have a tin foil hat but I wonder if these spendy hotel park hoppers were doing the "trick" for us since this was too easy. We even had great spots dead center. They made a big deal about arriving on time but the show started late for the people who were slow to arrive. It was really cute but not as "good" as Big Band Beat. I took TONS of pictures as there were a lot of characters you don't see in the states. I didn't put up pics of them so it is a surprise...! It *almost* made up for not taking any pictures with them. :rolleyes1

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We wandered taking more pictures and winding down... we bought more milk chocolate popcorn since that was my favorite so far and decided to go through the castle. Inside it is a bit of a gallery with some dioramas and pictures on the walls - some of them more Grimm than Disney. At the end you have photo ops with her slipper and a throne. It was a little crowded and hard to take pictures plus the throne had a long line... we kept moving but I was able to snap a pic between groups.

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At this point it was still fairly early but I didn't want to force my husband to stay longer. He was just humoring me and to be honest I was getting nervous about the transfer to our next Airbnb since we were going back on the metro with all our luggage. We decided to grab a snack and then head out because I still had something in particular I wanted to try. We wandered back to the Sweetheart Cafe in World Bazaar.

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I loooove melon bread and how cute is Mike? :D I couldn't resist the mickey pudding either as the bottom layer was passionfruit... one of my other weaknesses. In the hub was a gaggle of characters being swarmed... I don't think I have ever seen so many meet and greets at once! I snapped pics happily as we went back to the hotel to get our luggage and convinced Kyle to take a quick jaunt through the Alice in wonderland garden.... ok ok NOW I was done. :ssst:

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On the way out we stopped at the rail station so I could trade in my cards for the pin having gone out of our way to get extra validated tickets even though we had free ones and found out it was no good. Apparently the campaign had ended and wouldn't start again until 4/15... shoot. I was NOT happy and was pretty cranky for a bit after this. Deflated and defeated we continued towards Akihabara and our next (and last) lodgings - another Airbnb apartment. At Maihama Kyle saw me looking at some capsule machines with a pooh figure and other Disney characters and encouraged me to try my luck... I ended up with sleeping Minnie which was the last one I wanted from the set, lol. But she is on my work desk now and it does cheer me up to see her there so I guess he was right to get one. :thumbsup2

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I wasn't as happy with this airbnb but it was OK... the beds smelled kind of musky and we were only on the 2nd floor looking out to an alley with no skyline. I was also starting to feel a little sick so I took some medicine to try and knock it out and we watched a little TV for our afternoon break.

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I seriously wish I could watch Japanese TV in the states...! :rotfl:

We started chatting about dinner and I mentioned I wasn't feeling well and Kyle said he was surprised we hadn't had much ramen yet so we decided to go to Ramen Street at Tokyo station.

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We hit it fairly early so we had just a couple minutes to figure out what we wanted from a ticket machine and were seated quickly.

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