We woke up a bit late today. After yesterday we were a bit tired. We made sure to get to breakfast so Gus could make his sandwich before we tackled Disneyland. With the criss-cross of train stations there are a few ways to get there. I had set my Google Maps to have the least connections when we got here. Getting on and off, walking for 5 mins, on and off etc was getting old. Because of this Google Maps chose a route with only one change but would be 20 minutes longer. That’s ok.

We get on the train from near our hotel and go on a clockwise loop of the city for 40 mins before we get off. Once we change from the JR line to a private line we wait for our train for 15 mins. It comes and it’s packed. There was an issue up the line and it’s all running late. I thought we’ll just wait for the next one. Every other line we’ve been on has the trains every five minutes or so. I didn’t check this one. It was 30 mins. My bad. We found a spot to wait and hopped the next train wasn’t as packed. We were in luck. We jumped on and made our way to the station outside Disneyland.

We walk to the gates, go through X-ray/metal detectors, and get into the park. It’s about 12:30 by the time we get in. I thought it was best to get Gus some food before we start. I had a look at the map before we left and saw there was only one restaurant marked as vegetarian friendly. We line up and thankfully wasn’t too busy. There were two options. The Christmas set menu or vegetarian set menu. We had one of each. Soup, pasta and desert. Gus liked his pasta! We finish up and try and decide where to start. The Disneyland app tells you the wait time for rides. Gus wanted to go on Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain. Space Mountain had a long wait, so we decided to go on a Star Wars ride. It looked tame. A moving platform 3D thing. We waited for 10 mins and got in. We squished the 3D glasses over ours and made our way into the room and buckled in. There was a little intro where CP30 talks about something then Darth Vader shows up and says something. Then my picture comes up on the screen. They all look in my direction and say something. Apparently, I had annoyed Darth Vader and Boba Fett was after me. Then the CP30 flies the thing we are in to try and get away. Now this thing was less than tame. It felt worse than a rollercoaster. Gus loved it. We get thrown around for a bit and then Boba Fett gets blown up. Something is said and it’s all done. I thought I’d get a certificate or something. Nope. Just some shaky legs and feels a bit dizzy.

Space Mountain still has long lines, so we walk to Thunder Mountain. The line of a 90 mins. I get a priority thing so we can skip most of the line for one ride. I turned out we skipped the whole line. Most of the time was taken up by walking to the front of the line. We jump on the little raft. Gus is a bit disappointed we’re not in the front. We start floating along and it all goes dark and down we go. I was expecting the big drop at the end not a heap of mini ones in the dark inside the mountain. I hold my composure and make it to the final drop. All done, photo taken finished. Gus said, “Let’s go again!!!”. I try to bust into line again, but the pass only works once in the hour slot they give you. I try and buy another, but it won’t work for another hour. We try Space Mountain again and the line is 60 mins. We joint the line (at this time it’s 5pm) but both know we don’t have it in us and bail. I go looking for snacks for Gus. I found a Toy Story restraunt that had little alien shaped dumplings with Nutella inside and little Christmas cake things with pistachio cream.

The park closes at 9pm so people were still coming in. We decided we’d had enough. I couldn’t deal with trains again today, so I got an Uber Black to take us straight to our hotel. A nice Uber here is a Tarago with leather seats apparently. It worked though. Nice, quiet, and cool. Only took 25 mins. When we got back, I saw an ice cream van near our hotel. I grabbed two for us. I started eating but Gus said he wasn’t a fan. I had a closer taste at the slushie stuff the ice cream was on. It had booze in it. I think it was rum. I thought it was a fancy blue drink. Well, I suppose it was just for grownups. I did my 7 Eleven run and got some Sushi triangles and snacks.

Because we had so much loot, I needed to figure a way to get it home. Japan won’t let you ship internationally without a permanent international address. I went in search of an extra suitcase (we only bought one) and went to the late night luggage store near Shinjuku station. I got a suitcase pretty much the same as the one I got at home but for half the price. You need to be careful now with the size of luggage you have if you’re traveling on the Shinkansen. If the dimensions are over a particular size, you need to have a booking for the back row of seats. They don’t check luggage in. It either goes behind the back row or overhead. They make the rules as people were putting large suitcases overhead and they could go flying as there isn’t anything holding them in. The new suitcase was in spec, so we were ready to go.

I needed to do some washing before we left as we were running low on gear. There are 4 washing machines in the hotel. You can see their status on the TV. If they’re free and how long they have left. Number three was free so I went down and throw all our stuff in while Gus packs the new suitcase. It was going to take two and a half hours to wash and dry. I set an alarm on my phone and leave the TV on the washing machine channel. I rested my eyes and Gus kept an eye on the TV. At about 11pm when our load still had 15 mins to go Gus gets my attention and says, “The times just started again”. I go down to the laundry and find that this couple had taken out our close early because they were “almost finished anyway” and put theirs in. Ours were still wet and now I had no way of drying them as all four machines were taken for at least 2 hours. FFS. I thought of hunting down a coin laundry, but I didn’t want to leave Gus alone asleep. I was tired also. I spread some cloths out around the room and hoped a few bits would dry for tomorrow. I’ll deal with the rest when we get to Nagoya.