Tokyo Planning
Hotels
There are two parts to our Tokyo trip, our visit to the Tokyo Disney Resort and site seeing in Tokyo itself. As the Tokyo Disney Resort is approx. 1.5 hours’ drive from the main city areas like Shinjuku it doesn’t make any sense to stay in the city and take public transport out to the resort if you are spending 4 full days there. Tokyo Disney resort is very big, very popular and demands a lot of time, so we want to be based there, as on our last trip, to remain in our Disney bubble during our Tokyo Disney visit. I’ll talk more about the Tokyo Disney hotels we plan to stay at in a minute, but for now go into a little about the Tokyo hotels we plan to stay at.
I’ll start with our final hotel in Tokyo. For those of you who are unaware Narita Airport, Tokyo’s main international terminal, is about a 2 hour drive/public transport ride from Tokyo city area so on our last trip we booked into an airport hotel on our last night before our flight the next day, and we plan to do the same thing on this trip. It makes sense as it means you don’t tack on another 2 hours sitting on top of an 8 hour flight to Singapore. Of course as our flight is the next evening it may seem counterproductive to waste what could have been a half day of touring in Tokyo, but we will probably be so exhausted by this point a restful morning sounds great, and we have access to the Singapore Airlines lounge at Tokyo Airport, so while we are waiting we will be very comfortable (and hopefully editing some of those great photos I’m sure Jared will have taken so we can show you all
). The hotel we’ve picked at Narita is the same one we stayed in last time, the Tokyo Hilton Narita Airport. Honestly I don’t remember much about this hotel, the last trip we were flying from Tokyo to Orlando (through LA) and our night at the Tokyo Hilton Narita is a bit lost in that giant travel burr that is known as jetlag (and 2 full days of travelling). I’m sure like most airport hotels it will be comfortable, and that’s all you need for an airport hotel.
In Tokyo proper we are planning to stay at the Tokyo Hilton Shinjuku. If you are planning to visit Tokyo for the first time I highly recommend staying in the Shinjuku area. It’s the entertainment district of Tokyo, near to Tokyo largest train station and you can easily get to any of the tourist sites on Tokyo’s awesome metro (subway) system. We stayed at the Tokyo Hilton Shinjuku on our last trip and LOVED it. This time around, it seems to be a lot more expensive than our last trip, but given our savings in accommodation in other cities we have decided to spend the money, especially as we know the area and the hotel and know that both will suit our touring needs.
Siteseeing
Before we get into our site seeing plans I thought here might be a great place to talk about our experience with Tokyo’s metro subway system. It’s super easy to use and can get you anywhere in Tokyo proper. I wrote this description in my last trip report after our visit to Tokyo which pretty much sums up how to use the metro:
Simply remember the letter (line), colour (line) and stop number (platform) of the train station you needed to get to. Find that colour and letter on a sign, follow the signs to that platform and hop on the side of the line which is going towards your stop number. It really is that simple. There is plenty of signage to point you in the right direction. There are even arrows on the platforms indicating which stop is next from that side of the platform (i.e. if your station is 12, 11 will be one way and 13 will be the other. So, if for example, you were going to 17 you’d know to get on the train going towards stop 13 as that way the numbers are going up, whereas if you were going to 8 you’d know to get on the side going towards 11, where the numbers are going down etc). As there are so many lines and stops you really do need to know which line (colour/letter) and platform (number) one you were headed to and where or how you needed to transfer to a new line
The subway even had signs (in English no less) pointing out tourist spots, government offices and buildings and hotels close to each subway platform!
On our last trip to Tokyo we visited the following sites; Kamakura, Senso-Ji Temple, the Edo-Tokyo Museum, Rikugien Garden, Ginza shopping district and the Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku. All of these places we visited on our last trip (bar Kamakura and the more local Rikugien Garden) are all major tourist destinations, but, for the most part, are the kind of places you only need to visit once. Still, on our last trip we didn’t get time to do a number of the ‘major’ touristy things in and around Tokyo so those things are on our list for this trip. This includes a day trip to Hakone and the famous Mt Fuji, visiting Shibuya Crossing (the famous crosswalks/square that’s the Japanese answer to Times Square) and visiting the Tokyo Skytree, the Meiji Shrine and possibly the Tokyo Imperial Palace. The Senso-Ji and Meiji Shrines are probably the biggest and most popular in Tokyo, but we only had time to visit one last time around, so we choose Senso-Ji (on Culture Day no less, never have I experienced such crowds!). We also only got time to tour half the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which is a great museum which has two sections, one showing the history of the Edo period of Tokyo from the mid 1600s to mid 1800s and one showing the modern Tokyo period from the mid 1800s to recent. We would love to go back and see the parts of that museum we missed, time allowing. In addition to these very touristy activities we want to visit the Owl Café, which one of those ‘only in Japan’ type places where you can visit with owls for an hour or so. We also can’t pass up another opportunity to see the Robot Restaurant show again (which has apparently changed a bit since our last visit).
We aren’t much for shopping so probably won’t bother visiting Ginza again, the only shopping destination that may end up on our list is Akihabara, because it would satisfy Jared’s inner geek to see so many electronics together in one place.
Our tour to Hakone and Mt Fuji will be with the amazing touring company I discovered on our last trip, the Backstreet Guides to Tokyo. As I said in my Kyoto Siteseeing section, this guys know Tokyo and surrounding areas so well, are amazing guides and provide wonderful information (in English) on the local culture and sites because they are locals! I can not recommend them highly enough and they offer lots of tours in and around Tokyo and in Kyoto.
Tokyo Disney Resort Planning
Ok first up, hotels. For those of you who don't know there are 3 official onsite Disney hotels at the Tokyo Disney Resort. The Tokyo
Disneyland Hotel, The Miracosta Hotel and the Ambassador Hotel. There are also about 6 unofficial onsite hotels, which are much cheaper than Disney's official ones. We LOVED staying at one of Disney's Official Hotel, the Miracosta, on our last trip. To say it was opulent, beautiful and divine would be an understatement. We had 4 different rooms with 4 different views on our last trip (due to the difficulties we had getting a Porto Paradise Harbour View Room) so we were able to look out onto different views of the Piazza, the harbour and the Venice side of the park. Having a Harbour View room on the one night we managed to get it (they are VERY popular and VERY in demand so we only managed to score the room for 1 night out of the 4 we stayed in the resort) was wonderful. Looking out over the beautiful Disney Seas park was like a dream come true (check out the pictures of our views below). It is expensive but if you have the budget for it it’s totally worth it.
(sorry about the quality of the pictures - they were taken before we had our good camera - we are hoping to get better shots this time around!)
This trip, we decided to split our stay between the Miracosta and the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel, which we’d admired on our last trip but not visited. This way, we can enjoy a Harbour View (hopefully) and the beautiful Tokyo Disneyland Hotel architecture and will hopefully have less room switching than on our last trip (one switch rather than 4). The Toyko Disneyland Hotel rooms are also cheaper than the Harbour View room at the Miracosta , which is another reason why we decided to split our visit between both hotels.
Of course this all depends on our ability to actually get that covered Harbour View room at the Miracosta on the night we want it. Certain popular rooms at the Tokyo Disney Resort hotels (including all rooms on the Porto Paradiso side of the Miracosta Hotel) can only be booked exactly 6 months before the date of your stay. Also if you are staying for multiple days you have to book each day one at a time as that 6 month window opens up. We will be on the website as it opens (9am Tokyo time which is 8am Perth time) in July, 6 months out from our trip dates, for each of the 4 nights, in order to try secure the rooms we want.
In order to spend a full 4 days in the parks we decided we would need to spend a 5th night at the resort, but we didn't want to spend the money for another night at one of the Disney official hotels so we are moving to one of the unofficial onsite hotels, the Hilton Tokyo Bay Hotel. This hotel is very reasonably priced and can be accessed from the Tokyo Disney resort monorail line and is at least half the cost of the official onsite hotels. We are glad we are doing this, so we can spend a full evening in the parks taking pictures and not have to worry about travelling 2 hours after the close of the parks into the city that same night.
The Tokyo Disney Resort is a little like Walt Disney World, in that it requires a lot of thought and planning to tour well. Not in the sense that you have to make a ridiculous number of reservations 180 days and then 60 days out from your visit, but in the sense that you have to understand how to tour what is arguably one of the busiest Disney theme parks in the world successfully, and find ways to one up the Japanese who are ALL savy in the art of Fastpass, arriving early and are will willingly wait in lines for hours for certain attractions. On our last trip in November 2013, we visited at a fairly moderate time of year for crowds, and EVERY attraction generally had waits between 1.5 – 2 hours after about an 1 hour of the park being opened. All guests knew how to make the most of Fastpass and as a result they were mostly sold out after 1-2pm and I swear that the majority of the guests visiting each day always showed up 30 minutes – 1 hour before park opening and RAN to their first attraction. You may think, that sounds awful, BUT we managed to beat the crowds every day on our last visit by doing a few simple things:
· Staying at an official onsite Disney hotel. They are expensive, and they aren’t for everyone, but they do allow you to enter the parks 15-20 minutes earlier than the regular guests and be held at a rope drop (FYI, regular guests to Tokyo Disney not staying onsite have no rope drop, they just open the gates and people run!). Being inside the park when the ‘running of the Japanese Disney tourists’ begins allows you to avoid that mess and beat all those people to your first Fastpass and attraction for the day
· Using Fastpass efficiently and effectively. We would get a Fastpass first thing in the morning each day, and as soon as we were able to get another we did, and then as soon as we were able to get another after that we did. In doing this we’d be able to skip lines at 3-4 attractions and not risk Fastpasses running out before we had made our best use of them. The Japanese KNOW how to use the Fastpasse system, and they do, so you have to be as aggressive as they are with it!
· Using the Single Rider Lines. Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones – the Temple of the Crystal Skull and Raging Spirits have single rider lines and the Japanese DO NOT seem to use them (at least that was our experience). We walked onto both Splash and Indy when the waits were 70-80 minutes in the late afternoon.
· Having a plan. Know which attractions are your priorities for Fastpass each day (for example, we knew our first FP priority at Tokyo Disneyland was Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, followed by Monsters Inc Ride and Go Seek – as they are original attractions for Tokyo Disney) so we prioritised those as our first Fastpasses on our two days visiting Tokyo Disneyland. We then had second and third prioritise for each day as well. Use Fastpasses for those unique attractions you can’t find at any other Disney resort and over at Tokyo Disney Seas, skip Toy Story Mania (it’s the same as in the US and all the Japanese visitors rush to it first thing, so if you are happy to skip it because you’ve done it before you can use your Fastpass options for more unique attractions like Journey to the Centre of the Earth or Tokyo Disney’s VASTLY different Tower of Terror or it’s much superior Indiana Jones ride).
Our visit in January we will be going at a much quieter time of year according to my trusty Tokyo Disney Crowd Calendar which you can find
here.
(FYI the website is in Japanese but if you translate the page to English you get a fairly good Idea about whats going on - for those of you interested here is how you read the ride the wait time estimate pop ups for each park (from left to right):
Tokyo Disneyland:
Monsters Inc - Hunny Hunt - Splash Mtn - Big Thunder - Buzz - Space Mtn - Haunted Mansion
Tokyo Disney Seas:
Toy Story Mania - Tower of Terror - JTTCOTE - Indiana Jones - 20,000 Leagues - Raging Spirits - Storm Rider
Still, we want to have a plan in order to make sure we don’t have to wait in lines at all, so we are making use of all of the tricks we used last time to make sure we are ahead of the crowds again.
Other Tokyo and Tokyo Disney Resort Planning Update
