Kirkbrides in San Francisco: Tokyo Disneyland

Sarah, Robbie and I were supposed to head to Thailand last week, but work and expensive airline tickets conspired to keep us a bit closer to home. Instead of Thailand, we visited Tokyo Disneyland last Thursday.

Disneyland was celebrating Halloween, and the whole park was done up in theme: cobwebs, ghosts, and pumpkins abounded, not even the resident marching band was spared:

The band was really excellent. They (of course) played mostly themes from various Disney movies but the arragements were excellent, and the sound was tight. Robert had a great time watching and listsening to them -- so much so that he did not want to leave until they were through with their performance. We even caught them again in the afternoon on our way out because he seemed to enjoy it so much. I think we've got a future band nerd in the making -- not that he ever had much choice in the matter.

We rode a couple of rides, watched a halloween-themed parade, rode another couple of rides, ate some tasty food and rode a few more rides. Even on a Thursday the threat of rain in the forecast, the lines for the major attractions were 2+ hours long. Luckily for us, Robert didn't care about riding the "big" rides, (and probably was not tall enough for them anyhow) so we enjoyed riding some of the smaller attactions -- besides, the lines for those were only between 1/2 hour and 45 minutes long.

Right about the time Robert was winding down and heading toward a nap, the clouds opened up and it started pouring down rain. At this point we decided to take our leave of Disneyland, so we hopped the train back home. Door to door, the trip to Disneyland was not quite an hour, so it's definitely something we will do again. The world's only Disney Sea is also here in Tokyo. We will check it out before long too.

On Saturday we headed to the Ueno Zoo and visited the animals. On the way there, we ran into George Clooney -- or rather we ran into a billboard of George parking his Honda. Only in Japan. I can't decide whether the item in his hand is a remote ignition for the vehicle, or whether the car is a prop in some elaborate casino heist and he's got a hand-held detinator, ready to blow it to smithereens.