Japan 2015 Day 1: Arrival in Japan & Disney Sea

Sorry that it took so long to write my first blog post about our Japan vacation. But I've been really enjoying my time in Japan as a student, with way more of a social life than I'm used to. While I could write a whole chapter about that you'll have to wait for a post about my experiences as a student in Japan, as I will finally be sharing my vacation posts :D

Usually your worries begin when stepping in the airplane, "did I turn of the lights?", "I hope we have a smooth flight", etcetera. For me the worries starting a day before take-off. KLM managed to delete me from the flight, which not only meant I lost my pre-selected seat, but I was also not on the plane anymore. After a lot of calling and driving all the way over to Schiphol they finally managed to get me on the plane again, though on a different seat (long story short I would advice anyone against flying KLM if they are expecting any kind of service fromt the ground personnel).
The flight itself went smoothly, and the inflight personnel is not short from awesome. We ordered the special menu so we had a delicious meal.

We arrived at Narita airport in the morning, where I had to get my ID pass. This went easier than expected, so we were on our way to get a ticket for the Limousine bus way earlier than expected. The Limousine bus service goed almost directly to the Disney Resort, where we had to get off at the Disney Sea stop.

After arriving at Disney Sea we went straight to Miracosta, this is one of the 3 official Disney hotels and the hardest one to book a room for. Th hotel is located on the border of the park, so you can actually look into the park from certain rooms, it also has its own entrance to the park.
Because we arrived way too early for check-in we did an early check-in, which basically means you complete the normal check-in procedure and get your key, but you won't be able to use it till 4:30pm.
After the early check-in we got ourselves 4 day park hopper tickets for the two parks, the 4 day parkhopper is also a special perk for hotel guests, normally only the last 2 days allow park hopping.
Now we were finally ready to enter the Disney Sea park!

Yes, it was raining, and it would keep on raining for another 2 days, I will come back to that in a later blog post.
We walked around Disney Sea for a while, but our feet were starting to kill us. We decided to find somewhere to have lunch, easier said than done. Japanese people have an irritating habit of occupying tables for unnecessarily long times, so it seemed almost impossible to get a table anywhere. Luckily we found a place at New York Deli, where I got the special Halloween set which came with a souvenir bag, a red sandwich and fries with cheese sauce. We also got the famous alien mochi with a matching souvenir container.

As we still had some time to kill we decided to go to the Indiana Jones Adventure ride. We were all getting pretty tired and we had to wait in line for quite a while. I actually fell asleep a few times, that has never happened before :o
Though the wait was a bit hard, the ride was totally worth it. You basically ride a jeep through the temple of Indiana Jones, I won't reveal too much because it is just something you should experience for yourself ^_^

After the ride we could finally enter the hotel room, thus we quickly returned to Miracosta. The room was completely amazing, it was renovated really recently so everything looked brand new. We had a room on the venetian side of the building, so we could see gondolas row by. The theming of the room is amazing, everywhere you look you see Disney characters integrated in the decoration, even in the ceiling. Furthermore, the room is pretty big, especially by Japanese standards. There are 2 normal beds and a turnstile bed, which is pulled out under one of the "normal" beds, but do net be deceived as this bed is just as great as the other two. There is a hallway with a big closet and a safe, facing the hallway is the sink, with on one side the entrance to the toilet and on the other side the entrance to the badroom.

After a short nap we went back to Disney Sea for dinner at Ristorante di Canatello, where I had made a priority seating reservation (yay for more hotel guest perks ;) ).
We got the option to side inside or at the covered outside area, and while it was raining the temperature was pretty high. So we decided to sit outside, where you could see the gondolas row by while we were having dinner.
As starter we order bread and assorted cheese, while both were pretty delicious we were blown away by the cheese. It was some of the best cheese I had in all of Asia.
For our main dish we all ordered pizza, my parents chose the margeritha and I the seafood pizza. The margeritha pizza was pretty tasteful, but in no way near as awesome as the USJ pizza (see my 2014 trip report for reference information :p). The seafood pizza on the other hand was nothing short of delicious. I'm always a bit scared when ordering seafood pizza that the seafood will have too much of an overtone, but not this time. While there was more than enough seafood on the pizza to make it an actual seafood pizza, the ingredients were balanced absolutely perfectly.
Finally, as desert we ordered the gelato and assorted desserts plates. Just a small tip, order everything at once, they expect you to order your starter, main dish and dessert in your first order, but it is no problem to order later on, you just have to ask for the menu again. Back to the desserts, they were both heavenly!
One of the great things of this restaurant is that you get free refills with your drinks.

On our way back to the hotel we passed a small crowd gathering in front of the harbor. It turned out that Fantasmics, a show, would start in 30 minutes. We decided to wait for this show and acquired a really awesome viewing spot. The show consists of a variety of techniques, ranging from boats to projections and it is something that should be pretty high on your to see list if you go to Disney Sea.

All photos can be found at my flickr page