The day FINALLY came for us to wake up early and catch a flight from Busan, South Korea to Tokyo, Japan! Ever since we began our expat assignment in Korea a year ago, we'd been planning on taking a family trip to Disneyland & Disney Sea (the only one of its kind in the world!) in Tokyo. Being patient is so hard sometimes, but it's such an amazing feeling when the day rolls around for something you've been waiting on for so long! :)
The boys did so well on 1 1/2 hour flight! Connar has been a pretty good little traveler for a long time now, but Parker is starting to come around. He definitely still has his moments, but we're miles from where we started on his first plane ride last summer. It's a maturity thing, so I'm praying that he'll be even more mature the next time we have to make the looooooong flight back to the U.S. later this summer. Also, Connar has no problem wearing his headphones on the plane, but Parker is just not having it. I'm not sure if it's uncomfortable for him because of his glasses or what, but I wish I could figure out a way to get him to wear them to spare the other people on the plane from listening to the same scene in Chicken Little 15 times. :) I packed each of their little backpacks (you can see P's dog backpack in the picture below) with things to keep them entertained as well as their favorite snacks. This worked out perfectly!
He was so excited to land in Tokyo!
We grabbed some lunch at McDonald's. It's a good thing we converted money to Japanese Yen before leaving Korea, because the McD's in Narita airport didn't accept credit cards.
C begged to go look at the magazines at the newsstand. As you can see, they're all in Japanese, but that didn't matter one bit to him. He wanted to look at the pictures. :) This is the same newsstand where we bought him a book about airplanes the last time we were in this airport, and he still loves to "read" that book before bed many nights.
After collecting our luggage and grabbing lunch, we quickly made our way to the bus ticket counter to purchase tickets for the bus that will take you directly from the airport to Tokyo Disney. For many reasons, we chose to pay for the direct bus ride (2400 Yen per adult & 1200 Yen per child = around $73) over taking the subway or a taxi. Once we had our tickets, we made our way outside to wait on the bus to pull up.
The bus ride from the airport to Disney was like an hour and 15 minutes. It was on a roomy, super clean bus with a/c and even a restroom in the back of the bus. We weren't sure if the bus would be full of people, but, as you can see, it was not. It was more than half empty, and it actually ended up being the same on our way back to the airport from Disney a few days later. I can't recommend taking this bus highly enough. Not only was the restroom an awesome bonus for a 3 year old who can only hold it for so long when the urge hits, but we knew that the bus was going directly to Disney and we wouldn't have to worry about getting lost on the insane Tokyo subway system (might I add that it's the busiest subway system in the world!) or having language barrier issues with a taxi driver. It was the perfect way for us to get to our destination and worth every penny. We were so pleased that Narita Airport and Disney offered such a service.
On Japan Airlines, the flight attendants offer each child a variety of choices for a flying gift. So sweet, right?! Parker chose stickers, and Connar chose this model airplane. It had to be assembled, so it gave him and Talton something to do on our bus ride.
We also ate our McD's,
played on the iPad,
and tried to relax. I say "tried" to relax, because that was kind of hard for us to do knowing where we were headed. :)
We knew we had arrived when we saw the Disney monorail out the bus window! Talk about feeling like a kid in a candy store! We were thrilled to finally be there!!
As the bus dropped people off at various Tokyo Disney Resort hotels around the park's perimeter, we continued to get more and more excited as we saw little pieces of Disney here and there.
When we arrived at our hotel, Hilton Tokyo Bay, the boys played while Talton checked us in.
Check out the four smaller beds pushed together to make one gigantic bed! The boys had a ball jumping and rolling from one end to the other, and it actually turned out to be such a great sleeping arrangement. Everyone had plenty of room to sleep comfortably.
Then it was time to head out to Disneyland for the remainder of the day! Woo hoo!!
