I didn't ride these - I feel like I'm too old to do so without children lol:
Oh, and then the photos at this end of the park sorta run out. So, I did end up riding Indiana Jones again. I handed over my fastpass to the CM, but they then told me that because I was a single rider, I didn't need it. So she didn't even take it from me, she just pointed me down the line. So I got to keep that one
And then I had to hustle back down to American waterfront to make the entry to Big Band Beat. I remember walking into the lobby of the theatre and being completely bewildered about which entrance to go through to find my seat (there were a few different doors and stairs off the side). And the lobby was almost completely empty, so I couldn't find anyone to ask and got a little panicked given how close I was coming to show time. Turns out it is just one big room and I just had to enter through the main doors.
I found my seat, which was maybe only half a dozen rows from the front, and off a bit to the right. So I was very happy! CM's come walking through the rows prior to the show starting and ask everyone to take off their hats / Mickey Ears / Minnie bows, etc hahaha and then the show started. It was incredible! It was also Christmas themed, so was mostly made up of English language Christmas tunes. I remember lots of glitz and glamour, and a few fancy jazz dance routines. And of course, Mickey on the drums! And...*spoiler*...snow!!! Ok, it was confetti, but it felt very, very special!
And then I thought I'd take a break and head back to the hotel, so back out through the entrance:
Where the beach themed characters were meeting and greeting:
I should mention that, just prior to my trip, Nintendo came out with a new 'game' WiiU Fit. With this you could buy a sorta pedometer that measured steps, distance, altitude, etc. I had been carrying it with me all through my trip, curious about just how much I was walking. It just clips onto the edge of your pants, like most pedometers.
So, sometime during this morning, I was walking along and noticed a sound like something plastic dropping around me. I looked around, but couldn't see anything, but didn't check if I still had the pedometer. It was a little while later that I realised I had lost it. So, on the way out of the park, I spotted Lost and Found. I thought my chances of finding this were pretty remote, but I figured I'd give it a try. Plus, I had another few days for something to turn up. I talked to the woman working the counter, and tried to explain to her that it was a black, round device that counts steps. She fills out a form and then walks out the back. At this point I thought she was just going to file it away, but she returns to the desk and hands it over to me. I am absolutely stunned! I had only dropped it just a few hours before, and yet it had already arrived at the L&F office! I was very grateful and quickly marked it up in my mind as another great experience with the people of Japan
After a quick ride on the monorail, I was very excited to see my hotel is - literally - across the road from the monoroail. The Sheraton and Hilton are on either side, so maybe another five minutes away, but for Hotel Okura it was probably at most a five minute walk from the monorail station up the long driveway:
I hung out here for a few hours - I doubt I actually slept because the bed was just that.bad. Honestly, I'm reluctant to call it a bed. It was more like a series of springs wrapped in fabric. To this 'bed', padding and any semblance of comfort was a foreign concept. On the plus side, the room is huge. Ridiculously large! It had two queen sized (I think) beds (both as uncomfortable as each other) a small table and a couple of padded chairs, and then just ample, ample space all around all of this. The bathroom was equally as large, with a spacious shower, a separate bath that could fill in just one minute, and double sink with lots of bench space. To me, this still didn't make up for the state of the beds.
A few minutes after arriving in my room, there was a knock at the door and a woman was delivering my bag. Well, she was trying to! I think I've already mentioned that at this point my bag was almost at bursting point. And it was very heavy! Probably 25+ kilos. And this woman, and her commitment to customer service that seems to be in the DNA in Japan, was doing her best to keep a professional appearance while struggling to drag my bag off her trolley and into my door. I quickly tried to relieve her of the burden, as she was just an average sized Japanese lady, which is to say slight, and really didn't look capable of lifting something that heavy!
So I knew what I needed to do post hotel break - find a solution to my luggage situation, which was only going to get worse with a few days at Disney! I had weighed up a few options. Dragging two suitcases and carrying a backpack on the monorail, then on two trains to my last three days in Japan, which would be in Ueno, would be impossible. A taxi to this hotel would cost somewhere around $150-200. I even considered a taxi to one of the train connections, but still, I had read that many subways in Japan are accessed by stairs or escalators, and don't have a lot of elevators (although, my experience was different) so didn't want to chance it.
The other option was a luggage delivery service. I had read about these, even contacted the main company who provides this service, Yamato Transport, but still hadn't sorted it out.
I should probably explain - luggage delivery services will pick up your suitcase from a location and then deliver it directly to an airport (and vice versa). As I was planning (and quickly shopping my way towards!) two suitcases, I only needed one with me, with clothes, toiletries, etc. The other suitcase full of trip spoils could go on ahead of me. The only thing standing between me and
fulfilling my extreme shopping destiny was how to get my extra suitcase *to* Yamato.
I spoke to the concierge about this, and they explained that they can do it, but the delivery service they use only delivers to Haneda airport, not Narita (where I was flying out). So, scratch that option. So this Tuesday night was spent walking around the different places to try and track down somewhere that would deliver my suitcase. This included Bon Voyage (they only deliver to addresses in Japan, not airports), the convenience store right next to Maihama station (they don't offer the service), and Ikspiari (they suggested Bon Voyage or the hotel). I will put the solution in a separate post because it's such a handy piece of info it deserves to sit on it's own.
So I'll finish off this post with photos that I took of the night, including the light display out the front of Hotel Okura:
And a couple of pretty shots through Ikspiari (even to this day, I read that as Ick-spee-arr-ee, lol, but it's actually pronounced like 'experience' without the 'ence' - ick-spear-ree).
Now, I have read a few trip reports where people rave about Ikspiari and how amazing it is. This wasn't my 'ikspiari' at all. I have to say, I was at the point in my holiday - I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this happen - that you've had so much interesting and exciting things going on, and have had to make so many decisions about what to do, where to eat, etc, that you kinda get a bit over it. It's almost like you need a day of boring routine to reset your perception lol so this night, when I wasn't trying to find answers to my luggage problem, was spent trying to decide where to eat. And I was tired and sooky and couldn't make up my mind. I ended up wasting a lot of time walking from one place to another and not deciding on what to do.
I should add that Ikspiari is one of those shopping centres that is laid out a bit funny, where you can only access this area by going down stairs at one end of the centre, and if you want to get to the other end of this floor, you have to go upstairs, walk to the other end, go downstairs again. At least, that's how I remember it! Yeah, clearly I was having holiday burnout lol I didn't find the stores in the centre all that exciting. Pretty much any department store or shopping centre I had been through in Japan at to this point was more interesting that what was offered here.
In the end, for dinner I bought some kind of flavoured potato balls from a food van being 'driven' by a large stuffed dog (only in Japan!):
and then went back to my hotel:
yay, first full Disney day finally done!!
I'll be sure to keep including details on the food haha
the Official hotels are just as convenient as the Disney hotels.
So that's how we conversed. I would text English that would translate to Japanese, hand the phone over to him, he would speak Japanese that would translate to English and hand it back. And this took a good half an hour at least! Even though there were other people coming and going in the store, he never acted like I was a nuisance or just tried to get rid of me. He was committed to seeing this through haha
