On April 15, 2018, a new daytime parade, “Dreaming Up,” made its official debut at Tokyo Disneyland as the park’s year-long 35th-anniversary celebration began. This parade replaced the long-running “Happiness Is Here,” which started out as the park’s 30th-anniversary parade.
Big-time, U.S.-based Disney blogs like WDW News Today and Disney Tourist Blog were on the frontlines for the earliest run-throughs of the parade, having descended on Tokyo in the days leading up to April 15. Incidentally, that day was a rainy Sunday—not the best parade weather. Since we didn’t want to contend with the opening-week crowds, my significant other and I opted to wait until ten days later before we ventured into the park.
The weather on April 24 wasn’t much better (they didn’t coin that phrase “April showers” for nothing), but we happened to get lucky and win the lottery for the parade viewing area. This enabled us to get front-row seats for “Dreaming Up” without having to stake out a spot on the ground hours beforehand.
We were close enough to see that a couple of the female characters in the parade might have actually been … men in makeup and wigs? Apparently, the Kabuki tradition is alive and well at Tokyo Disneyland.
Photos of Dreaming Up!
I’ll undoubtedly have more pictures to share after future viewings of the parade, but since “Dreaming Up” is still pretty fresh and there probably aren’t many front-row pics floating around out there on English-language sites yet, I wanted to get these posted ASAP.
We also had a front-row seat on the boat in the new version of “It’s a Small World.” The re-opening of that ride is the other main event for the anniversary celebration. But winning the parade lottery and being able to get up close (whereas other blogs could only shoot from a distance) was the day’s real highlight.
It was my first time photographing Tokyo Disneyland with an iPhone X, so I took a lot of pictures. If you’re a fan of Disney parks, enjoy these snapshots of “Dreaming Up,” and follow me on Twitter, where I’ll post occasional updates related to Tokyo Disney Resort and travel in Japan.
Update: 07/09/2018. This post has now had more pictures added from a second viewing of the parade in the first standing row. There is now a total of 50 photos here, with the second batch showing blue skies and capturing some aspects of the parade that we missed the first time around.
