DisneySea’s version of the Indy
ride is almost exactly like Disneyland’s version, but with
the Crystal Skull in place of Mara and the ride architecture and
artifacts in the style of Aztec/Central American culture instead of
South Asia like the Disneyland version. There is slightly different
theming and details inside, but the ride layout and motion is virtually
identical. The opening room in the queue area, just after entering the
temple, is huge and spectacular—you really do feel like you’re
inside a South American temple (shown above and below).
The main chamber inside the ride itself has a huge skull with an ‘electric’
eye and instead of flames everywhere there’s a very cool blue-lit fog
tornado that goes from floor to ceiling. The funniest thing was hearing
Indy speak in Japanese!
After our thrilling Indy ride
we decided to keep up the excitement and ride our sixth ride, Journey
to the Center of the Earth, inside Mount Prometheus in
Mysterious Island (Tom’s favorite area, since he is such a big fan of
the works of Jules Verne). Just walking from Lost River Delta toward
Mysterious Island increased our appreciation of the clever design of
Tokyo DisneySea.
It’s obvious how much planning was put into the layout of the park.
The stacked perspective of buildings and the layers of vegetation help
create a perceived distance between each individual land, making the
park seem bigger than it actually is. The architecture and plants also
serve to block views from one land to another, making you really feel
immersed in the particular land you are in. This is compounded from the
intense theming of every last item in every last corner of the park. The
designers truly spared no expense in bringing out the details of each
individual area. We could have easily spent the entire day just walking
around investigating every detail within the park.
But, back to the adventures!
Journey to the Center of the Earth is
definitely the most popular ride in the park; again, I’d recommend
using Fastpass, or making it your first or last ride of the day. The
standby wait was 50-60 minutes in mid-afternoon. The queue enters the
bowels of the mountain, snaking past paintings of Captain Nemo’s
journeys, and highly-detailed scientific equipment, lava, and volcanic
rock. Eventually, we board elevators complete with realistic sounds and
dials indicating our depth into the earth that take us farther down into
the mountain. After exiting the elevators, there is another short queue
area before we board the vehicles that will take us through the passages
dug by the tunneling machine from Jules Verne’s book.
The vehicles themselves are similar to Disneyland’s Rocket Rods,
but they are completely covered and much more richly detailed, with 3
rows of padded seats that seat 6 passengers. Tall riders should note
that the leg room is limited; at 6’4", Tom had to sit sort of
sideways in the ride vehicle.
It starts out as a dark ride
that travels slowly down through scenes of smoke and fire, bizarre plant
life, and strange creatures. Then as you move into an area that seems to
be erupting, you encounter a spectacular, huge animatronic lava creature
that howls and screams at you. This is where the ride suddenly turns
into a roller-coaster type ride, traveling very fast around some turns
then up a steep hill and down the outside of Mount Prometheus.
This is a really fun and different ride, and for anyone who hasn’t
ridden it before, it’s a real surprise when the ride turns fast to
escape the lava creature. We thought it was a very original ride that
rivals Indy or Tower of Terror in its detail and technological
ingenuity.
CONTINUE
You can write Lisa at:
scarlett1214@ yahoo.com
