From Mike Gallagher on December 26, 2011 at 3:53 PM
As someone who's not as Disney-centric as many on this site, and someone who knows precious little about any theme parks not located here in the US of A, I've gotta say I enjoyed the history lesson about how DisneySea came to be (hey, I'm a poet and don't know it!) Fascinating stuff, Robert, and I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

But...

" The Long Ranger? "

Wasn't that an XXX rated movie? ;)

From 71.129.38.166 on December 26, 2011 at 11:11 AM
Robert, when you said two weeks ago that there were several thousand people lined up at the gates at opening, I suppose a stampede into the park was the logical conclusion.

My question: what about families with younger children and babies in strollers? Do they know to stay out of the way until the rush has slowed down?

From José María Sandoval on December 26, 2011 at 12:59 PM
I can´t wait to tomorrow, great report!!
The history is very interesting.

From Robert Niles on December 26, 2011 at 5:58 PM
Autocorrect strikes again. (Sigh.) Fixed. Thanks. As for the strollers, I didn't keep count, but several times thought to myself that I wasn't seeing nearly as high a percentage of families with strollers as I see in Orlando or Anaheim. I don't know if that's due to demographics in Japan, or people being more likely to wait until their children were older before visiting Disney.

From Mike Gallagher on December 26, 2011 at 2:27 PM
Robert, you're leading the parade..I just went back and fixed a typo of my own, so I'm just marching in it.

Actually, I see now the "edit" button is nowhere to to be found in my first post above. So I guess "here" will remain as "her" therein.

From Mike Gallagher on December 26, 2011 at 3:53 PM
Someone fixed it! Was it you, Santa? I thought you'd be too tired from yesterday to deal with something trivial like that!

From Robert Niles on December 26, 2011 at 5:59 PM
Little known fact: Santa has admin rights on TPI. Betcha didn't know that huh?

From Mike Gallagher on December 27, 2011 at 4:47 AM
Santa can do ANYTHING!!!

From James Rao on December 28, 2011 at 10:14 PM
Finally catching up on TPI (been a busy few weeks here at year end). Great stuff so far, Robert. Love all the photos and details, and the history lesson was an unexpected, but welcomed delight. Looking forward to catching up on the rest of this week's posts tomorrow. Night!

From Marc Benz on January 1, 2012 at 4:48 AM
There is actually sort of a rope drop, but only for guests of the Hotel MiraCosta. They are allowed to enter a small square near the central lake. There they are entertained by characters.

While they are not allowed to leave that square until the official opening time, they still get a bit of a head start from the guests waiting at the park entrance.