A (2019) HalloXmas trip to Asia - Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo! - COMPLETED 5/1!!!

And Chip and Dale for Critter Country! (I realized now that there was nothing for Tomorrowland, but I guess that one was the least decorated for Halloween anyways.)


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Altogether, I loved the energy of this parade and show! I just wish I could have seen it closer.

Something else that is really cool is how you could get a different experience based on where you were in the Hub! Each float had its different dancers! Just so much work and awesomeness with the parade (and this was a common theme in Tokyo – they had the best parades at any Disney park.)


Coming up - More food and more decorations!
 
Oh, what a letdown having to view from afar! I love that you described all the little details and included the clips with the pics. So cool to see everything that goes into that parade! I can see why people would want to see it again and again, especially when you can get a new experience by sitting somewhere else.
 
That's always a let-down seeing a parade from afar when you're so used to being up close and in the middle of the action. It still looked super cool. Boo To You, who? I just love how even with the seasonal parades, Tokyo goes all out. I'm obsessed with Dreaming Up, but I'm sure I'd feel the same about ANY of their parades.
 


I just found your report and I am enjoying reading all about your adventures! Your photos are fantastic! I am a Duffy fan and I like seeing all the Duffy merchandise. Those sweaters a few pages back are so cute!

You are really brave to go on such a big trip alone. I envy you! :worship:
 


The parade does look amazing but the viewing situation sounds miserable.
Yeah, It was really annoying! (Spoiler alert) but I finally learned my lesson and would stake out my spot for parades for over an hour after this day!
Oh, what a letdown having to view from afar! I love that you described all the little details and included the clips with the pics. So cool to see everything that goes into that parade! I can see why people would want to see it again and again, especially when you can get a new experience by sitting somewhere else.
I really did love that parade! And the locals also love it - some of them even dress up as the dancers for their halloween costumes! And there were whole instagram accounts dedicated to taking photos of dancers with their crazy fancy cameras!

And really, if I was a local, I probably would have been someone grabbing a spot hours in advance anyways.
That's always a let-down seeing a parade from afar when you're so used to being up close and in the middle of the action. It still looked super cool. Boo To You, who? I just love how even with the seasonal parades, Tokyo goes all out. I'm obsessed with Dreaming Up, but I'm sure I'd feel the same about ANY of their parades.
Yeah, I thought I was prepared, but it just didn't work out for me with this parade! And yeah, Boo to You is cool and all, but doesn't hold a candle to Spooky Boo!

I think the parades (and shows) were my favorite experiences at TDL!
Super cool parade but wow sucky viewing situation!
Yup, you said it right, lol!
Wow....that's some parade...though I'm partial to the DisneyWorld, "Boo to You" parade...
I like Boo to You, but this one was just soooo gorgeous and detailed and full of energy!
I just found your report and I am enjoying reading all about your adventures! Your photos are fantastic! I am a Duffy fan and I like seeing all the Duffy merchandise. Those sweaters a few pages back are so cute!

You are really brave to go on such a big trip alone. I envy you! :worship:
Thanks! Welcome to the TR!

I didn't really care about Duffy...until I started planning for this trip and then I became obsessed, lol! I sort of realized if I have to wait for friends or family or someone else to want to go along with me, I would never get to do anything fun!
 
Part 3 – Halloween Hub & Toontown!
After the parade, I took advantage of being in the Hub and took some photos of the awesome decorations in there!

There is a display on each side with various ghosts – the Adventure/Western side

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And the Toontown/Tomorrowland side

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And in the center, another display with statues of the characters in their costumes from the Spooky Boo parade.

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I think my favorite were Chip and Dale and how they were smaller than the others!

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(You can see in those photos the castle was under refurb. It actually took until the lockdown until it was completed, but the scaffolding grew as I was there.)
 
And of course, food time, lol! I certainly did eat a lot this day, though Japanese portions are fairly small, and if I didn’t really love something I just didn’t bother eating it all. I just wanted to try it though!

At the Hub food booth (it doesn’t really have a name), I got the Assorted Sweets. The cake is Baumkuchen, which is a cake cooked on a rotating cylinder. Then there was a chunk of strawberry cheese cake. Both of these were just ok. But the Purple sweet potato cream mochi – delicious! This was a layer of purple potato cream surrounding a bit of custard! I really wish they had a chance to just get a set of 3 of these!

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I also got the Inari Sushi Chicken Roll with souvenir pouch. I wasn’t a big fan of this. There was a weird cheesy sauce with the chicken and then it was wrapped in some sort of tofu wrap? The wrap was really too soft so it was too many soft textures. I only had a couple bites before tossing it. But I do love the souvenir pouch design and use it as a pencil case, though it's insulated so you could use it in a lunchbox!

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Before I left the Hub I stopped at the Omnibus, who had a cute ghost driver! I think there may have been a cat or dog ghost on the back, but I didn’t know about it so didn’t get a photo (found out later via twitter)

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So, if you couldn’t tell, today did end up being a very busy day at the park. Turns out Mondays are also not good park days, as schools often have the day off. Most rides were at least 1 hr waits and I just didn’t want to deal with that! My next fastpass wasn’t until mid-afternoon, so I pretty much decided to focus more on the food, atmosphere, and entertainment until then, since I was going to have other park days in about a week.

Into Toontown, which is pretty similar to the version in Anaheim (though in this photo you can see the scaffolding for the Beauty and the Beast mini-land).

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Another food stop at Huey, Dewey & Louie’s Good Time Café. This was a longer line, but I just dealt with it. Also most of the seating was taken up, so I had to wait for something to open up. I got the special set, which was the Creamy Scallop Croquette on Chinese Bun with the Souvenir Lunch Case. I also got a set of candies and souvenir dispenser (they have these at various places throughout the park and always have seasonal options, as well as general designs; you can get them either with Tokyo Disney's version of Jelly Beans or M&Ms).

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I wasn’t sure what I would think about the sandwich, but ended up liking it for the most part. I don’t like lots of sauces, but I knew its not ok to customize things in Japan, so I just got extra napkins and wiped it off. The wrapping was also soo cute! I know it was meant to be used to prevent from touching and getting messy with the sandwich, but I wanted to save the wrapping, so I deliberately didn’t use it!

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While I was there I ended up being able to grab another fastpass, this time for Pooh’s Honey Hunt, though it wasn’t until the end of the day, at 9:05pm (the park closed at 10).

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I wandered a bit around Toontown and LOVED all the decorations! I just loved how the whole park was decked out for Halloween, and there was a consistent theme of the ghosts.

Goofy’s house

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Donald’s boat

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Mickey’s House! The Meet Mickey line was always INSANE!

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Minnie’s House

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Other decorations in the land, including a ghost CM at Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin!

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Some non-halloween topiaries

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I had wanted to try out the gauchpon machine in toontown, which had Halloween goodies, but the line looked like 30 minutes, so I skipped that!

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At one point I did stop at Toontone Treats to get the “Long Nang” – basically a curry roll in purple naan bread. It was decent. I don’t love curry, but I love naan, so I focused more on that! But at least it wasn’t spicy curry, so wasn’t too bad for me!

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I wandered a bit thru fantasyland, where I admired the dumbo pumpkin heads!

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Though I was underimpressed with Fantasyland as a whole. It was very flat and concrete, without a lot of trees or just “texture”. I think New Fantasyland (the Beauty and Beast area) will be so much better (and the theming does look pretty awesome from photos/video).

I did make a quick stop up into Critter Country, where I went to Rackety’s Racoon Saloon.

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I love how the napkin holders have a “bread loaf” cover!

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And I got the Halloween Critter Sundae – Pumpkin and milk soft serve, with corn flakes, chocolate crispies, purple potato sauce, and mickey churro. This was soooo good! I want to put corn flakes in all my sundaes from now on! (Normally this would have some sort of nuts on top, but since the person taking my order was also putting together the sundae, I didn’t feel bad asking them not to put the nuts on top – the other places the sandwiches came out from the kitchen premade so I just made ample use of napkins!).

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I decided then to go ahead and find a spot for the regular daytime parade, Dreaming Up. People had already started gathering, so I was a couple of rows back, but I was seated and able to relax for a bit and reassess what I wanted to do. I did start to really not feel it with this park (the crowds just zapped my energy)…and you can see my depressed attitude showing…

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I did observe some cute guests dressed as Cinderella’s mice! So many cute costumes there today, though I was a bit too self-conscious to ask to take many photos! (And more than a little annoyed at the local guests anyways.)

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Coming up: Dreaming Up parade!
 
Cute decorations, and food! Sundae looks yummy :D
So I thought Oct after golden week was supposed to be a quieter time.. clearly not, huh.
 
I don’t like lots of sauces, but I knew its not ok to customize things in Japan, so I just got extra napkins and wiped it off.
Is it "not ok" in the sense that it's not allowed, or is it just frowned upon like it's rude to ask? Just curious, especially if someone had a food allergy or something.

Love all the pouches and things you're collecting on this day with all the goodies you're trying! You're such a brave soul trying all these different things. I'm thinking I would starve :rotfl2:
 
Cute decorations, and food! Sundae looks yummy :D
So I thought Oct after golden week was supposed to be a quieter time.. clearly not, huh.
Yeah, me too! I think the Halloween celebrations have become such a big thing for locals, and this was the last few days, they just overwhelmed the park!
Is it "not ok" in the sense that it's not allowed, or is it just frowned upon like it's rude to ask? Just curious, especially if someone had a food allergy or something.

Love all the pouches and things you're collecting on this day with all the goodies you're trying! You're such a brave soul trying all these different things. I'm thinking I would starve :rotfl2:
I think more frowned upon. If you have an allergy, its more accepted. But they do cause a whole scene about it, since the kitchen tends to just make a bunch of sandwiches and put them on a tray for servers to grab. If you need something specially made, the manager usually comes over and they have to take extra time to make it. So, it's best to avoid unless you really need to eliminate something! (Also there was a significant language barrier for people who don't speak Japanese - while in Paris and HK everyone spoke English, and in Shanghai they usually stationed at least one worker who spoke English at a location, in Tokyo it was much more rare to find someone who knew English.)

Funny thing is, I'm actually super picky! Like, I'm a plain burger type of person and hate any type of spice! There was actually a good amount of things that sounded weird, but if you looked at the individual components, worked!
 
All the food sounds fantastic even when you said you weren't a fan since a lot of the things you say you don't like I DO lol I've always heard good things about the purple sweet potato mochi. Definitely on my list.

I'm loving all the ghost decorations! It's so cute. I kinda want them more than the scarecrows we tend to get at the US parks. The little ghost driver on the omnibus has to be the cutest.

OMG, DREAMING UP TIME!! For the record, I was on a podcast episode sometime in like May where we decided what the best parade soundtrack of all time is and we actually settled on Dreaming Up and it was down to that and PAINT THE NIGHT. So yeah, I'm hype to hear what your thoughts were. I hope it maybe lifted your spirits a little. I know I still cry whenever I watch videos of the parade :goodvibes
 
All the food sounds fantastic even when you said you weren't a fan since a lot of the things you say you don't like I DO lol I've always heard good things about the purple sweet potato mochi. Definitely on my list.

I'm loving all the ghost decorations! It's so cute. I kinda want them more than the scarecrows we tend to get at the US parks. The little ghost driver on the omnibus has to be the cutest.

OMG, DREAMING UP TIME!! For the record, I was on a podcast episode sometime in like May where we decided what the best parade soundtrack of all time is and we actually settled on Dreaming Up and it was down to that and PAINT THE NIGHT. So yeah, I'm hype to hear what your thoughts were. I hope it maybe lifted your spirits a little. I know I still cry whenever I watch videos of the parade :goodvibes
I did love the ghost decorations - especially because they were consistent across the park, but also geared towards the areas they were in!


Oh and Dreaming Up - I'm about to post, but I loved it! I think that and Dreamlights are my top 2 parades (yes, it beats PtN), and I don't have a fav between them since they are different types of parades!
Love all the Halloween decorations!!!
Yeah, they were so cute!
 
Part 4 – Dreaming Up


Now it was time for the Dreaming Up parade. I had seen some photos and clips online, and knew it was a good parade, but I had NO IDEA HOW AMAZING it would be! Like literally, this is my favorite parade ever! So be prepared for a boatload of photos!

Just the energy of the dancers and the colors and the happiness everywhere! It was infectious!


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I loved how they had random characters from Alice in Wonderland, including dancers as the flamingo and the march hare! Just so many details in the float too!

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Pinnochio was also just creative! I really could believe the dancers were puppets!

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