4. It offers meet-and-greets with seldom-seen characters.
Whether you’re five or twenty-five, character meet-and-greets can make for a fun, silly way to pass time during any Disney trip. While the Fab Five and most of the princesses (as well as a few villains) draw long lines at nearly every park throughout the year, you’re far more likely to stumble across a rare character at DisneySea. In addition to Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, and their pals, guests can snap photos with characters like Thumper, Marie, Bernard, Bianca, Scrooge McDuck, Max Goof, Geppetto, and even Indiana Jones.
Granted, character meets are among the most popular activities no matter where you go, and DisneySea is no exception. Allowing for large crowds and long wait times means that most character interactions are much shorter than they normally would be, leaving guests with the opportunity to take exactly one photo with each character before moving on.
5. Superlative theming brings every port of call to life.
We’ve gushed a little about theming already, but it bears repeating: Even given Disney’s sterling-silver reputation when it comes to replica facades, intricate landscaping, and themed attractions, the buildings, eateries, and rides featured at DisneySea blow everything else out of the water.
It’s not just that DisneySea eschews centralized princess castles for an active volcano or the way it blends the studio’s oft-overlooked film material (The Emperor’s New Groove) with original-concept rides (Raging Spirits). Every nook and cranny of the theme park’s seven ports of call—Mediterranean Harbor, Mysterious Island, Mermaid Lagoon, Arabian Coast, Lost River Delta, Port Discovery, and the American Waterfront—feels like it was ripped out of a storybook from days gone by. In particular, the American Waterfront outshines EPCOT’s American Adventure, where guests are limited to a singular white-pillared colonial mansion, within which The Voices of Liberty sing a capella tunes in the lobby and Audio-Animatronics pontificate about American history. DisneySea, meanwhile, taps into the collective nostalgia of its American visitors with scenes from Industrial-Age New York City, where old Broadway theaters, classic delis, and corrupt millionaires rule the day. (And its immersive features don’t end with the American Waterfront, of course: even the latest-rumored lands are expected to be just as extensively themed, if the concept art for a pirate bay in Neverland, a glistening tower in Corona, and the ice-cold kingdom of Arendelle is in any way accurate.)
Whether you’re in Orlando or Anaheim or Tokyo, Disney finds ways to transport its guests to worlds fantastical and unknown. DisneySea’s blend of innovative attractions, varied and well-themed cuisine, and clever twists on classic Disney films and characters continue to top the charts year after year—and we’ve only just scratched the surface of all it has to offer.
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Have you crossed Tokyo DisneySea off of your bucket list yet? What did you like about it? What would you avoid next time?
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