Tokyo Disney questions
 

:wavey: looking for advice on Tokyo Disney & Disney Sea

1 Would 2 days be enough
2 How easy is it to book and when would you book, also is it very expensive in a Disney Hotel
3 Do they have magic bands and fast pass
4 finally what’s the Weather in October like.
I have googled these questions, but I would love some real advice from helpful Dibbers
Thanks in advance :spin:

I went in October 2015!

2 days wouldn't have been enough for me - I was there for around 4 days. The way the multi day ticket works (if things haven't changed) is that on day one you can go to either DL or DS, the next day you can go to the other park, and then after that you can park hop between the two. And there's lots to see and do there that I don't think I would have been happy with just 2 days. But again, everyone is different, and my friend just went recently and was happy with just one day in one of the parks.

There are 3 Disney hotels (remember hearing something about Disney/Oriental Land Company buying another property but not 100% sure about this - seems like this is the Celebration hotel?) - the Disneyland hotel, Hotel MiraCosta, and the Ambassador hotel. The Disneyland hotel is right outside of DL, and Hotel MiraCosta seems to be right at the entrance of DS (something like the Grand Californian at Disneyland or the Disneyland hotel at Disneyland Paris). I remember seeing that they book out pretty early once they get released, as they're quite popular. Probably best to check the Disneyland Tokyo website to get an idea of prices.

In addition to the official Disney hotels there are also a number of partner hotels, such as the Hilton Tokyo Bay and Sheraton Tokyo Bay. These are far cheaper than the official Disney hotels, but are very close by on the Disneyland monorail loop. I stayed at the Sheraton that time and it was a great hotel and really easy to get to/from DL and DS.

No Magic Bands (WDW is the only Disney resort with them). There is FP, but when I went it was only paper FP and this can run out quick for certain rides.

Weather in October when I went was beautiful - just needed a light cardigan most days, never too hot and never too cold. We also lucked out and got pretty much perfect blue skies most of the trip.

One more thing - please look at a crowd calendar when booking dates, apparently DL Tokyo can get really crowded at certain times of the year such as Japanese holidays. It also tends to be far more crowded at weekends than weekdays, since a large number of its visitors are locals who will go at weekends.

Anyway, DL Tokyo is great, and I would love to go back there!

We prebought two day tickets but because we got to Tokyo in the afternoon the day before our first planned day, we headed over to Disneyland and bought one of the “6pm” tickets for that night - basically for a cheaper price you’re allowed into the park from 6pm. That gave us a chance to orientate ourselves, and that plus the two days was enough for us to do everything we wanted (including some rides several times and seeing the electrical parade twice).

We stayed at a more budget hotel nearby and walked the 15 minutes or so to the parks as we couldn’t get availability at the hotels we wanted. It was travelodge-style but clean and quiet with free breakfast and frankly we were barely in the room.

As PP said, Tokyo still has the old paper FP system. Popular rides do run out quickly, I recommend reading the TDR Explorer site for planning tips. That’s where we found out about the 6pm ticket.

I went in October, one day was gorgeous and then it tipped it down for most of the second day, but we carried on regardless!

I echo the above really.

2 days is not a lot to do both parks, but it depends a bit on how thoroughly you want to do them. A number of the rides are similar to or the same as those in other Disney Parks across the world, so if you are happy to miss these out and focus on what is different and soaking up the different atmosphere, then you could certainly do a lot of that in 2 days. DisneySea is very different to any other Disney park, whereas DisneyLand is very similar to the MK and so with limited time I would prioritise DisneySea. (And if your time in Japan is limited, then I would prioritise more of Japan over extra days at Disney, if that makes sense!) We did a full day in each park plus a day across both and a final hour and half on our last morning. This was at a busy time of year and seemed to be plenty.

The Disney hotels are popular and book up quickly. We booked to stay 3 nights at The Ambassador Hotel and secured it by booking online in the middle of the night UK time when the rooms were released. They are available 5 months in advance (unless things have changed). They do also offer vacation packages, which allows you to book your room further in advance - 6 months I think - but we didn't find these to be good value for money vs booking room only and buying tickets separately. We bought our park tickets when we checked in to the hotel - advance tickets are not a big thing for Tokyo Disney. As stated above, with standard multi day tickets you need to specify a park for each of the first two days and then can park hop from the third day. I believe that you can pay more to park hop from day one though.

Staying in a hotel gets you "Happy 15" entry, which allows you in to the park 15 minutes ahead of guests not staying in a Disney hotel - there is a dedicated entrance queue for this and the queue gets big quickly, so you need to arrive early to be near the front and maximise the value of the 15 minutes - which is effectively just to beat the rush to be at the front of the queues for popular rides.

Fast passes are the old style paper passes where you insert your tickets in to the machine and get a return time. If you get a late return time then you will usually be able to get another fastpass 2 hours after that one was issued.

I can't help with weather as we went in April. It was very busy when we were there as Japanese schools were on a break. Despite this we still secured plenty of fast passes - we did not come across anything that had run out. Evenings were quieter too, as locals seem to get there early and go home early.

Have fun planning your trip - I can't wait for the chance to go back to Japan as we really loved it!

Wow thanks for your replies, seeing all the Disney parks is on my bucket list. This is big one for me to knock off 😀

This photo was take on 28th September last year at Disneyland Tokyo it was the only day that we didn’t have heavy rain , we got there 1hr before rope drop and this was the queue behind us within 1/2 hour. We had 6 days in Tokyo before joining a cruise round Japan. We had to join the cruise a day late as a Cyclone hit Japan lucky not much damage. A week into the cruise another Cyclone hit Japan and had to miss the port of Hiroshima GUTTED it was the one port I really didn’t want to miss. The Captain said it was unheard of to have 2 Cyclone in a cruise , but still had a great holiday.

Oh wow that queue 😳 we are also joining a cruise with Celebrity first time with them hope it’s nice, glad you still had a fab holiday 😊

Not been yet but there is a plan in the works.

Have a look at TDRExplorer on YouTube, his Disney Tokyo videos are great.

He has also done a great e-book guide which I’ve got.

I go next week, in fact a week today, so can give more practical thoughts when I get back in a couple of weeks.

My trip is 2 days at the Hilton Tokyo Bay for 2 days at Disney, then moving to Shibuya for the rest of the holiday, bar the final night – we wanted to try the new Muji hotel in Ginza.

Our trip is very much Tokyo centric, with a day trip to Kyoto on the bullet train.

My YT channels to view have been:

TDR Explorer
L&R Dreaming – they have had 2 Tokyo Disney / Japan trips
thisNatasha – she is a regular visitor to Japan and as well as Tokyo Disney does the city and other parts of Japan too.

Oh yes, the queues... Can be really long. There was also a mad stampede for FPs for Toy Story Midway Mania when I was there. Apparently, because a lot of the guests are locals, they are happy to queue and camp out for parades and all.

That being said, the Japanese guests are really incredibly polite and well behaved in queues. And I love that they sit down on the ground for parades - means that people behind still get a very good view of the parade!