A friend comes over for a visit. "I think I want to go to DisneySea", she says. "Could you show me some of that fancy Disney magic you're always on about?".
Well, I can certainly try.
So I might have gone a little overboard with this one (hah! See what I did there?), but it was a spectacularly memorable lunch. It was worth a rainy day visit to the park, and it seemed my guest was having a good time as well!
I had never been to the S.S. Columbia Dining Room before, so I was extremely excited. I booked us a table a couple of weeks in advance, as it's one of the park's more popular restaurants. Hence rainy day visit. But it was good! Crowds were non-existent, and the rain stopped during the day, so we had plenty of time to explore and enjoy everything.
This food, though. And the dining room itself! They have truly perfected the illusion of being on board a luxury liner. Bring all those repressed Titanic feels, and lose yourself in the atmosphere. The ship is landlocked, but we had a window table with ocean view. It felt like we would leave port any moment!
How far do they take the luxury liner theming? Well, apart from the immaculate look of the dining room itself, the menu also provides trivia and fluff to make the illusion complete.
There's really no need to add this page to the menu, but I'm so glad it's there!
And let's move on to the food porn, shall we?
S.S. Columbia are currently doing a slightly different menu for the Tanabata Days event, the menu presented below was what was offered during Easter.
I had the Chef's Special Lunch Course, which gives you a choice of starter, entrée, and a selection of two desserts (out of four total). The course also comes with a soft drink of your choice (free refills, you're allowed to change to different soft drinks during the course of the meal, and they specifically ask if you want tea or coffee with your dessert), and unlimited bread.
Appetizer:
Sea bram and quinoa with balsamic sauce.
This dish came out like a work of art. Am I the only one seeing the Baymax reference in the sauce?
The top right hand side of the plate had a thin layer of wasabi dust that I could dip the sea bram in according to taste.
Entrée:
Roast beef with whole grain mustard sauce.
It might look a little plain, but the taste was deceptively complex. The huge chunk of roast beef felt extremely extravagant, it made me very happy. Remember to pace yourself for this!
Dessert:
The waitress came over to the table with a plate featuring all four desserts. I felt it really added to the whole first class experience to be able to get a proper look at the desserts before selecting the two you wanted. I ended up with: acerola jellied dessert & lychee sherbet, and pistachio financier & vanilla-flavored mascarpone cream.
These were heavenly. The light fruitiness of the acerola jelly was the perfect combo for the heavier mascarpone cream.
The pistachio one was presented as the seasonal dessert at the time, though it seems all four options have been replaced for the current Tanabata menu.
The course was ¥3,760. It's pricy, but that's to be expected at one of DisneySea's fine dining restaurants. The food and presentation is impeccable, I don't mind paying a little extra for the fine dining experience. It's a perfectly reasonable lunch option for a special occasion or when you want to treat yourself.
It seems it's possible to order just dessert, if that's more to your liking, but I wonder if it's worth the trouble of going through the PrioritySeating booking just for dessert. I mean, I would do it, but....
I also noticed that they offer a "Light Cuisine" menu. It was a little pricier than the standard lunch course, but perhaps also a little healthier. The menu listed calories for each dish, and came in at a total of 533 kcal. for the whole course. It's definitely something I'm considering going back for at some point!
Leave a comment
Aaah, Tanabata - the story of two star crossed lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi, who are only allowed to meet once a year.
It's said that if you make a wish on this day, it might come true.
The Disney event for this Japanese festival is called Tanabata Days, and it lasts three weeks this year. One of the main attractions for Tanabata Days is the wishing place at each park. Cast members dressed in yukata hand out free Mickey-shaped tanzaku papers for everyone to write their wishes on. You're free to take these home with you to collect if you want, but then your wishes might not come true.
Tanabata hit me straight in the feels this year. I'm currently in a long distance relationship, and the thought of only being able to meet once a year (and only if it's sunny, I might add! Hang up all your teru teru bouzu for Orihime and Hikoboshi, please!), is absolutely heartbreaking. WHAT SORT OF A CELEBRATION IS THIS, JAPAN?!
See that girl bawling during the short 10 minute Tanabata greeting? Yup, that might be me.
The greeting "parades" (I use the word "parade" very lightly here, hence the """"") are short, but cute. They feature Mickey and Minnie as Hikoboshi and Orihime, at DisneySea you get a bonus pair, as Duffy and Shellie May are also dressed up in Tanabata costumes. And then there are all the various princesses with their princes. Aww. But the greetings really only last for about 10 minutes or so. The song is cute, it's a mix of Disney tunes and Tanabata-sama, a traditional children's song about, you guessed it, Tanabata.
Despite all this, I have a sneaking suspicion that the main draw at Tokyo Disney Resort during Tanabata are all the Tanabata themed food items. Yes, it's a three week event (previously even shorter, literally only days!), but it comes with its own special menus. The hotels join in too!
I went and tried the Tanabata cake set at Hyperion Lounge at the Disney Ambassador Hotel. It was basically an enormous éclair with mango cream, fresh mango and pineapple, and adorable decorations. The little straw across the top was an actual bamboo straw.
The odd contraption sticking out the side of it is a pipette filled with mango sauce. I was told to add this according to taste. Apparently people use it to draw cute Mickey shapes on their plate, but I'm not that creative. I piped it into my mango cream, and it was absolutely delicious.
The parks offer up some incredibly delicious soft serve shave ice jellies in the image of the two lovers.
I had the blue one at DisneySea and the pink one at Disneyland, only later did I realise that I'm the milky way in this equation. Very poetic, Tokyo Disney. We are all star dust.
Leave a comment
So let's be clear. There are no actual perks to being an annual passport holder at Tokyo Disney Resort. You get the keys to the kingdom, and you are free to enter whenever you like. But there are no extra perks. No merchandise discounts, no early entrances or late exits, no free use of the monorail, no secret menu options, not even free bicycle parking!
But you have the keys to the kingdom.
And with that there are a plethora of possibilities to make your own perks. It only takes a little imagination.
Like, early morning breakfast dates with other AP pals. What better way to make use of your AP status than to show up for breakfast, maybe a ride or two, and then go on about your day?
Pictured above is the new breakfast set at Center Street Coffeehouse in the World Bazaar area of Tokyo Disneyland. They recently renewed their menu to include this french toast set. Center Street Coffeehouse usually requires a Priority Seating reservation, but not for breakfast! Breakfast is served until 10am, which gives you plenty of time if you show up when the park opens.
The set comes with a cup of müesli yoghurt with fresh fruit, and free choice of drink (I recommend the coffee, which is served as black as your soul). The french toast were just right, not soggy, not dry, but just right. They were nicely sweetened, and served hot enough to melt the piece of white chocolate (Minnie's bow) so that you could use it as a spread. The berry dipping sauce on the plate offered some tartness to balance off the sweet. We were of course also given tiny mugs of syrup to drown our french toast in, if that's what we preferred. I think I liked the chocolate spread the best.
This french toast set was absolutely fantastic. I catch myself thinking about it frequently, especially on the days where all I have available for breakfast at home are sad-looking pieces of open cheese sandwiches....
I have to go back. And thankfully, with my AP, I can go whenever the fancy strikes me.
Leave a comment
With one week left of this year's Easter celebrations at Tokyo Disneyland, I want to take a look at their special Easter programmes. The little seasonal side quests you can opt to do if the crowds are too much.
I'll use spoilers as a convenient excuse for why this post is a billion years late. If you are still planning on doing the Easter programmes, consider this your one and only warning. The rest of this post gives it all away.
I feel I have to preface this entire thing by mentioning last year's Easter Egg Hunt. Last year's hunt was an attraction in its own right. You had to buy the maps separately (they were ¥500 each, as far as I remember, the Master one might have been ¥700. Don't quote me on that.), but afterwards you could easily kill several hours completing the maps, and it was a ton of fun! I completed both the Expert and Master courses on the same day (together with a friend), THIS TOOK US SIX HOURS. AND IT WAS AMAZINGLY FRUSTRATING AND WONDERFUL.
And thus I was more than a little surprised by what was offered this year. It just doesn't compare to last year's spectacle. At all.
This year, there were two options, both free. The Today guide came with a separate Easter themed pamphlet with two maps. One was a complete map showing you where to look for the different character eggs that are placed around the park for Easter. Some of them were part of last year's Beginner course, which was basically a stroll around the park identifying different eggs, no actual hunting or riddle solving involved. The eggs were placed in more or less the same locations this year. I like that they included the map, it gave me the opportunity to take pictures of all the character eggs. This was entertaining to me, but I doubt anyone with a one day passport would bother doing this. It took me a couple of hours at a leisurely pace. Most were easy to spot (with one exception).
The other option to escape the crowds this year, was an Usatama chase. In addition to character eggs, there were a bunch of different Usatama characters hidden around the park this year. They tie in with this year's Easter parade, they are eggs with bunny ears who have escaped from the Easter egg factory. One of them has stolen a key, and that's the one you want to find.
The map guides you to different Usatama, you then look for a letter in the vicinity of the Usatama and make a note of the letters. These letters spell out a word that will help you locate the final Usatama with the key.
Unfortunately, I had already found the Usatama with the key before reading through the pamphlet thoroughly. And that in itself spoiled the fun of the hunt. I was so clueless about what the Usatama chase was about, I even tweeted out a spoilerific picture (TWICE) before reading through the pamphlet (SORRY).
I still went through the motions of the chase, it was a nice time killer, but more aimed at kids than last year's version. I found the chase too easy.
The chase consisted of a total of five clues. It didn't take me a lot of time to complete them.
It's worth mentioning that there was also a hard version, but it involved buying merchandise and even specific food items, THAT STILL JUST LEAD TO THE SAME CLUES.... so I didn't go through with the hard version. I also discovered that it would have been impossible at the time, because the resort had run out of Easter themed shopping bags, and those were needed for one of the clues in the hard version of the Usatama chase.
My disappointment was real. So real, I forgot to ask for the prize at the goal. You're supposed to tell a cast member where the Usatama with the key is, and they'll give you a special USATAMA CHASERS sticker as a prize. I appreciate that the programme (and prize) is free, but I would rather pay ¥500-¥700 for a proper riddle-solving experience.
The Usatama chase might have been a disappointment to me, but I did thoroughly enjoy walking around the park photographing all 50 character eggs. I'm looking forward to next year's Easter events already, let's hope they bring the challenging egg hunts back!
Leave a comment
👻 2017/04
·
2017/07 ✈