Visited the park on 9 July 2026
This review is about two months late because, frankly, I was so disappointed with my own planning that I couldn’t bring myself to write it until now 😂
I reached DisneySea at 8:30am on a 9am opening day.
Which, by Disney standards, is already late. By Japanese Disney standards? Fatally late. I failed.
#disappointment1
The queue just to enter the park was already really long, and I died a little standing under the hot sun. I eventually made it inside at around 9:30am.
While queuing, I also saw a non-Japanese couple zig-zagging through people and cutting the queue all the way towards the front. Super frustrating. To be fair, some of the gaps appeared because people were glued to their phones and weren't moving forward with the queue, but still… watching someone take advantage of that was annoying.
I digress.
Once I entered, I quickly tried to snag a pass for Frozen while walking towards 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
By the time I reached, the queue was already around 100 minutes. And for some reason, I thought: Yes, I will queue. Giant mistake. Poor decision-making.
#disappointment2
The wait ended up being more than 120 minutes, so by late morning I was already exhausted from queuing and had basically lost half the morning. Thank goodness most of the queue was indoors and air-conditioned.
In hindsight, I really should have spent that time walking around, taking photos and enjoying the park atmosphere, then tried to get a paid pass for 20,000 Leagues later at 10:30am (1 hour after my Frozen DPA).
As for the ride itself? It was cool, but also surprisingly short. The more thrilling section ended so quickly that after waiting two hours, I was basically thinking: That was it?
Next, I went for the single rider queue at Raging Spirits. That took around 40 minutes, which wasn't exactly fast, but it was still much better than the regular queue. I was grateful I managed to ride it.
By this point though, I was already feeling pretty defeated.
I tried walking around and exploring, but the heat made it difficult to enjoy myself properly. Eventually I escaped into Mermaid Lagoon, and honestly, it was as pretty as I remembered from my visit more than 10 years ago. That part made me happy.
Then it was time to use my 40th Anniversary Priority Pass for Journey to the Center of the Earth. Cool ride. Definitely showing its age though, it was ok for me.
At this stage I decided I needed to make up for lost time, so I bought a paid pass for Tower of Terror.
Best decision of the day.
I've ridden Tower of Terror once before at Tokyo DisneySea and once in Anaheim, and it remains one of my favourite Disney rides.
Then came Anna and Elsa's Frozen Journey. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but… I preferred the Hong Kong Disneyland Frozen ride.
I don't even know exactly why. I just came off the Tokyo version feeling slightly underwhelmed after all the hype.
After that, I used the single rider queue for Peter Pan, which somehow also took close to 40 minutes. It was nice, and I can see why people enjoy it, but personally I didn't find it that impressive.
By around 6pm, I was completely burnt out from the heat and the queues and decided to leave. I didn't even have the energy to stay for the nighttime show.
Ironically, two of my favourite parts of the entire day were the ¥800 Kirin beer and ¥900 turkey leg.
Sitting down with those after hours of walking and queuing felt absolutely glorious.
And by the end of the day, I came to a slightly sad conclusion:
I don't think DisneySea is really for me.
I completely understand why people love it. The park is gorgeous, the theming is incredibly detailed and some of the rides are excellent.
But for me, the combination of very long queues, intense heat and fewer of the classic Disney characters made the waiting much harder to justify.
At Disneyland, even when the queues are terrible, I still enjoy simply existing in that very “Disney” atmosphere — seeing familiar characters, cute decorations and all the nostalgic Disney stuff around me. That helps make the downtime between rides feel like part of the experience.
Arriving earlier and being much more aggressive with the various passes probably would have completely changed my day. But I won’t known