Tokyo Disneyland Winter Trip Report – Part 7

As you might recall from the previous installment of our Tokyo Disneyland Winter Trip Report, we won the Frozen Forever lottery, which some people in my group didn’t consider a huge “win.” Once push came to shove and we took our place in the reserved seating, everyone was pretty hyped.

These seats for Frozen Forever were pretty good; 5th row and slightly off-center. I was pretty pleased that we won the lotto for this, as I knew convincing the others to watch this again would be a tough sell.

The show was significantly better with all of the effects running. In addition to the standard pyro and lasers that are also present in Once Upon a Time, this show starts out and ends with a cool “Northern Lights” effect. For all of us, this Northern Lights effect was the highlight of the show.

Otherwise, it was a so-so effort. The decision to make this a CliffNotes version of the movie was a poor one. I can think of virtually no instances of Disney doing this that I can get behind, as these offerings bring little (new) to the table, and feel phoned in.

That’s how most of Frozen Forever feels. There’s no emotional heft, and although some of the visuals are cool, the show ends up ringing hollow. Even World of Color – Winter Dreams (which basically was a de facto Frozen show) did a better job tying montages together with Olaf as a narrator–and that was far from a great show.

In the end, Frozen Forever gets an A- for its technical visuals and effects and a D for story and substance. Displacing the incredibly popular Once Upon a Time for this–even for only a few months–is an interesting decision…

With that said, I do have to give Tokyo Disneyland credit. When I first heard about the Frozen Fantasy concept, I thought it was a weak idea to cash in on the popularity of Frozen. Sort of like what the U.S. parks have done with Season of the Force for Star Wars and Frozen Summer Fun. To be fair, in the first year Tokyo did Frozen Fantasy, I think that’s exactly what it was.

Now in its third year, Frozen Fantasy seems reasonably fleshed out. There’s some substantive entertainment along with a strong slate of decor, making it a worthy “seasonal” offering where there previously wasn’t much of anything (besides a series of one-offs).

Qualitatively, it’s nowhere near on par Easter, Halloween, or Christmas, but it’s also not an actual holiday like any of those. Each holiday has stand-alone meaning and lore outside of the parks from which inspiration can be drawn. Frozen Fantasy has a single movie and a short.

It’s far from my favorite movie and I think some of the entertainment in Frozen Fantasy suffers as a result of limited source material, but I have to give credit to Tokyo Disneyland for creating a viable seasonal celebration out of it. I certainly wouldn’t plan my first visit around Frozen Forever, but for a repeat guest, it’s a nice change of pace.

After Frozen Forever, we raced back to Camp Woodchuck to meet Donald or Daisy in their Junior Woodchuck attire. We had checked throughout the day, and were hoping to find a short(er) wait than the triple-digit times it had been earlier. Unfortunately, it was still 45 minutes. We decided to just do it…

This was a huge mistake. We had heard that Tokyo rules for formal/structured meet & greets are pretty tight with regard to photos, but we didn’t realize just how tight. It’s a strict 1 photo per group policy, and you are pushed through quickly, with only a few brief formalities in the way of the process.

It was uncomfortable and unpleasant, and the end result of our one photo was not good. I guess demand dictates this, but it makes me have no interest in doing a meet & greet there again.

That was pretty much it for us for the night, and thus, for the trip. We wandered the park and did a couple of additional attractions, but not a whole lot. Most of our remaining time was just spent savoring the ambiance of Tokyo Disneyland at night…

Our last chance for snow was the following day, which was showing a 10% chance of precipitation midday through our trip. The initial plan was to go into the city our last two days, allowing for an audible if snow seemed likely Friday. By the end of the trip, we knew that was not going to happen. (As such, we spent Friday in the city.)

Going into the trip, I knew that snow was improbable. I knew to keep my expectations low, but this didn’t stop me from compulsively checking forecasts before and during the trip. I was disappointed that we missed out on snow, and I’m not letting this discourage my hopes. The “problem” is that we’ve now seen the post-Christmas winter seasonal events at Tokyo Disney Resort, so I don’t really have any justification for another January trip aside from snow.

About the only thing that would be plausible at this point is spending a few months living in Japan. We could not afford to study abroad in college, and we regret not being able to have that experience. While we’ve arguably made up for that (and then some) in the intervening years, there’s still a lingering desire to live abroad like locals.

We could do it now, but our window closes for a while when/if we have kids. We can work anywhere in the world with an internet connection, and we could spend 90 days in Japan without any sort of visa. We’ll see, though…

All things considered, we have no regrets about the trip. The first few days were absolutely dead crowd-wise (far lower than the winter “off-season” has been at Disneyland), and that was wonderful. Our last day was significantly busier, but by that point, we had already done every high-demand attraction that we wanted to do, so there was no issue enjoying the ambiance and doing less-popular things.

If you’re thinking of visiting Tokyo Disney Resort for the first time, I would not recommend January. Even with the allure of the low crowd levels and cooler weather (if the latter appeals to you), the downside of a weak seasonal event is too much. One of Tokyo’s strong suits is its exemplary seasonal events, and these are the weakest of the lot. There are also low/moderate crowd times during the Easter, Halloween, and Christmas seasons, and you get to experience Tokyo’s best special events during one of those seasons. With that said, we hope you enjoyed this trip report…and perhaps piqued your interest for a trip to Japan in the process. Thanks for reading and see ya real soon!