Today was DH’s birthday and our first day at DisneySea – the most gorgeous Disney park! 
My original plan had us checking into the Hotel MiraCosta today, but when the Sheraton’s price dropped and became 1/3 of the price of the MiraCosta, I couldn’t justify it to myself and shortened our stay. DH is the type of person who will go out of his way to save a buck, so I knew he’d approve. The side effect of that change was I lost all the table service priority reservations I had. One of the first things I did was to try to recreate the reservations by checking at the restaurants, but the times didn’t work out. Ristorante di Canaletto offered me 4 PM and Oceano was 9 PM. It was around 10-11 AM when I checked, plus it was a Monday, which tends to be a little busy still (better than Saturday or Sunday of course). I had reservations for 2 days later when we would stay at the MiraCosta, so it was okay, it just wouldn’t be on DH’s birthday.
Then I went to try the lottery for Big Band Beat – no luck again. In fact, I would have no luck with the lottery the entire time. I thought I would at least win once over 4 days, but nope! 
Well, Tuesday at TDL was quiet enough that there was no lottery, so it was 3 tries, but still!
While I was doing this, DH took the kids to McDuck’s Department Store:
That morning, we bought the Crystal Compass for DD. That was her splurge of the trip at 3000 yen (DS’s was the R2D2 popcorn bucket at 2100 yen). You use it to “collect” 7 crystals at the stations scattered across Disney Sea. Here’s the Mysterious Island station. It lights up and there are sounds when the compass is put in the slot. One of the crystals on the compass then permanently lights up to show that you’ve collected it.
We asked for and got English directions, which helped, but there were still things we were a little confused about. You can find other CM’s with the compass and activate the sounds and a color comes up when the compasses point at each other, but I’m not totally sure what the purpose is…. The compass has Mickey’s voice saying various things, but the only one I understood was “yatta!” (“I did it!”). After all 7 crystals, there is supposed to be some special sounds and lights – we heard Mickey say a bunch of stuff in Japanese and I think some of the lights flashed…. It’s also supposed to activate lights and sound at the Wing of Wishes Ship (the big golden ship by the entrance), but we were never sure if we activated it, someone else activated it, or it just comes on every so often. Lastly, it’s supposed to flash to the beat of the music during Fantasmic, but I totally forgot about it!! We were on the balcony of Oceano, so I’m not sure if that would have been close enough anyways. Well, even though we were a little confused about all the functions, DD had fun with it. She just asked me yesterday to go back to the Disney park and collect crystals. 
We also got these misters for the kids that morning because it was hot (1600 yen each). I’ve never seen them at the US parks. The CM showed us how to use them – pump 10 times (the handle on the bottom) and the water mists out continuously out of the characters’ mouths when you press the button. They were light, easy to carry around, and the kids still used them after the parks. It’s too bad for DD that these were the only choices since she’s not into them. They did have a Minnie water bottle type with the fan, but those are pretty bulky, so I was glad when she just wanted the similar type to her brother.
Travels with 2 Kids 