Our first night at Tokyo DisneySea

With my Tokyo Disneyland Hotel review good ‘n done, it’s time to get back to my recap of our experiences inside the phenomenal Tokyo Disney Parks. We’d spent our first day at Disneyland, exploring the Japanese iteration of the Happiest Place on Earth.

As dusk was falling on our second day at the Tokyo Disney Resort, we found ourselves dog-tired and drained at DisneySea, Tokyo’s nautically themed secondary park. We’d arrived at DisneySea around 7:30AM, in time to line up for the “Happy 15” that allows Disney Hotel guests to enter 15 minutes before general admission. The first half of the day was spent running all over, grabbing Fastpasses, catching shows, noshing on the legendary DisneySea snacks, and exploring our hearts out.

By the time twilight hit, we’d walked nearly 7 miles and were very much ready to rest our feet. But no time for that! We had dinner reservations to attend to…

Unlike Tokyo Disneyland, which is known more for its quick and casual counter service, DisneySea is home to some legit fine dining restaurants. Mark and I are big foodies, so we were excited to give the more lavish wine & dine options a go.

There were so many options we didn’t know where to start! So, we consulted some handy dandy Disney blogs, and tried to narrow things down…

Magellan’s: Fine Dining at DisneySea

After a bit of research, we landed on Magellan’s Restaurant. The Disney Tourist Blog calls it the best table service restaurant in DisneySea, and the best overall Disney restaurant worldwide. Can’t argue with that kind of praise!

We didn’t make reservations until barely 8 days out from our trip (hi, we are big time procrastinators). After reading so many wonderful things about the restaurant online, we were worried it would be fully booked. I’m not sure if they hold tables for the Disney Hotel guests, but we were able to log on to the online portal and book a table through our room reservation with no trouble at all! Easier, in fact, than booking a table at a restaurant in Disneyland or WDW.

Magellan’s is a fine dining sit-down experience, located in Fortress Explorations, a mini land inside of Mediterranean Harbor (think: Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland, mixed with 16th century Renaissance flair).

As Disney Tourist Blog tells it, Magellan’s is “named after Magellan the explorer, and the dining room is themed after the Age of Exploration, with a Disney backstory that it’s the meeting place of the S.E.A. (Society of Explorers and Adventurers), which originally consisted of real explorers such as Magellan and Galileo.”

In other words: THIS PLACE WAS UNREAL. The ambiance was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced at a Disney restaurant, and any second you half expected Leonardo Da Vinci to pop out from behind one of the pillars and join you for dinner.

The main dining room had this gorgeous, massive, hand-painted & ornate world globe, held up by giant seahorses. We ate in an area just off this main dining room, but were able to stop by after we finished eating to “oohh, ahhhh” and take pictures.

Don’t be fooled by the empty seats! Magellan’s is extremely popular, and they were fully booked the night we were there. We just happened to be one of the last ones dining, and I snapped these photos as we were leaving, just before Magellan’s closed for the evening.

Magellan’s dining concept was pretty simple. You ordered from a set of prix-fixe dinners, each of which came with an amuse-bouche, appetizer, main course, and dessert.

I ended up ordering the Christmas Wishes special course, called “Galleon,” which came with Wagyu beef and a commemorative DisneySea spoon.

And wine, of course. Who do you think we are, after all?

My first course was some sort of duck veal paté. A bit weird looking, but tasted delicious.

Second course: fishy fish.

Third (and best!): Wagyu beef.

Dessert: a beautiful pistachio and strawberry mix.

While Mark got a massive creme brûlée. (He was excited, obvi!) It was very tasty — rivaling Steakhouse 55’s version, for sure.

Some things to note:

Serving sizes are small, fitting with both the fine dining atmosphere, and with what you can expect from Japanese meals in general.

If you have any food allergies, come prepared for a bit of translation struggle. Mark is allergic to shellfish, and we had a hell of a time conveying this to the Cast Members. Each person we told didn’t quite understand what we were trying to say, and it took conversations with 4 separate people to come to an agreement on what Mark could (and could not) eat. That said, the Cast Members are SO kind and helpful, and really want to do the best they can to make your experience wonderful. So don’t be discouraged! A few hand gestures and some charades go a long way.

Though the food was tasty, don’t go in expecting the caliber of a Napa Rose or a Carthay Circle. Everything was delicious, but there was a certain “wow” factor not quite there. That aside, this place is still worth a visit for the ambiance alone!

Cost wise, this place seems comparable to other fine dining Disney establishments, if not a little bit cheaper. The prix-fixe meals were about $50-80 a person, depending on which one you chose, and wine bottles ranged anywhere from $40-250.

All in all, we greatly enjoyed our dinner here, and would absolutely recommend this place to any & all DisneySea goers. Service was great, food was unique, and ambiance was unbeatable.

xx

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