Long time no see, everyone. Apparently one post a year is the average I’m working with. Last year I started Hobonichi journaling and that took more time and energy than I had imagined, but I think I’m going to try and post more over here again. Famous last words…
Since the last time we chatted I’ve been to the U.S. parks twice, went on my first Disney cruise, had dinner at 21 Royal, and booked another trip to Hong Kong Disneyland for this fall. I didn’t expect to become such a world Disney traveler, but it’s been a lot of fun! If you want to catch up on what I’ve been doing, my Instagram (@tokyodisneylorien) is probably the best place to do that.
Anyway, on to today’s main topic: Soaring! That’s right, it’s not Soarin’ it’s Soaring: Fantastic Flight! Tokyo DisneySea opened their own version and I got to ride it for the first time over the weekend. If you’ve ever been to Tokyo Disney Resort you probably know how obsessive and dedicated guests can be. I love TDR as much as anyone else, but I do draw the line at waiting for 350 minutes. Thankfully my friend is a trooper and agreed to wake up at 4 am to rope drop DisneySea with me. We did end up waiting 150 minutes, but I’d rather wait for the park to open in a (somewhat) chill atmosphere than in a constantly moving line for an attraction. Does that make sense to anyone else?
We went just under a week after Soaring opened and I had been seeing that FastPasses went really fast. We’re talking about a 12 ~ 15 minute window to snag a Soaring FP. We got in the park within 6 minutes after opening at 8 AM and our return time was for 5:25 PM. How crazy is that?!
We spent the day trying some Pirates Summer snacks and Soaring snacks while we waited to use our FP. I’m gonna be honest and say I wasn’t a fan of the pirate foccacia bread. Mainly because I had no clue what the black goo was on top of it. I really hope it was colored cheese.
The Soaring lychee tapioca drink and pineapple churro were pretty good. Make sure you give the drink a good mix though and possibly let the ice melt a little because I found my first sip to be sickeningly sweet. The drink was 450 yen and the churro was 400 yen. Both can be found at Zambini Brothers Ristorante.
Finally, after a long hot day of waiting it was time to use our FastPasses! We used the new mobile app to get them and it was so quick and easy. We also found that you can just scan your ticket to get in so no need to worry about your phone battery dying on you!
I’m going to be sparing with the spoilers, but as an avid Soarin’ (Over California and Around the World) lover I will say that the DisneySea version did not disappoint. For those of you who are not huge fans of the ride, maybe wait until the initial crowds die down or try to snag a cancelled FP on the app. (Spoiler: It’s basically Soarin’ Around the World with a new ending that includes Tokyo and DisneySea.) I didn’t get to see the queue line that everyone is raving about because the FP line takes you to the pre-show room pretty quickly, but maybe I’ll brave the standby line in a few months to take a peek.
That brings me to the end of my Soaring: Fantastic Flight adventure. It was so much fun riding a newly opened attraction with a group of people who had never been on it before. It reminded me of the first time I rode it 4 years ago when I made my first visit to California. What about you? Have you been on Soarin’ or Soaring? Do you love or hate it? Let me know!
ABI
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