This morning was our designated rest day of the trip – lol – and also marked the halfway point of our trip.
No alarm! I woke up naturally at 8.45am, got up at about 9.10am and we were out of the room by 9.50am. We were truly sad to be saying goodbye to the Toy Story Hotel and commented that our 4 nights here had gone so quickly.
We dropped our bags at Bell Services, and got the shuttle into Disneytown.
It didn’t take long to wander around, but perused the menus for lunch as we walked, and popped into the Lego Store to see more of the amazing sculptures, and of course the World of Disney (the neighbouring Trend-D and D-Street stores were exclusively Duffy & Friends merchandise).
We had already done most of our shopping, but I couldn’t resist the Lotso Post-It notes any longer (RMB35/£3.80) and we also realised that we hadn’t bought a Christmas decoration from Hong Kong nor Shanghai because there weren’t any, so we picked up some plush keyrings of Mickey & Minnie wearing traditional Chinese attire instead (RMB169/£18.40).
We decided on Blue Frog for lunch. This was a Chinese-owned American restaurant. We were going to go to Cheesecake Factory but at nearly double the price (it’s basically translated from American prices but eating out in China is so much cheaper than that, so it felt very expensive!), it just didn’t really seem worth it. Our meal was part of a fixed price menu, which was RMB298/£32.40 for 2 starters (we chose fried chicken), 2 mains (BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger) and 2 drinks (7-Up). In the end, I wish we had splurged on the Cheesecake Factory, but we are headed back to the USA next year and I’ve no doubt we will eat there several times.
I got a photo of the Cheesecake Factory menu with prices though just in case anyone wanted to see it.
After lunch, we headed back to the hotel for a final explore. Whilst there, we bumped into Woody & Jessie which was a lovely touch. It really is a wonderful resort. I would absolutely recommend it, and are glad we opted to stay here instead of the Disneyland Hotel, despite our stay in Hong Kong beforehand.
With 40 minutes to spare before we needed to head to the airport, we decided to grab some dessert from the Sunnyside Café, so we both had a cinnamon Mickey donut (like for breakfast on our first day) and each had a Pepsi which came to RMB100/£10.90.
At 1.40pm, we collected our bags from Bell Services, repacked our backpacks, dropped off our Mi-fi at Concierge, and grabbed one of the taxis parked up outside. Our taxi took about 40 minutes (this time to Pudong), and cost RMB104/£11.30/. Bargain!
The airport operated a little differently to any I had experienced before, with security and bag scans as we entered the airport, then immigration before the usual pre-flight security. Very thorough!
Once through, we got some drinks from one of the shops (water, Coke Zero, RMB28/£3) before heading to our gate where I sorted out the photos from this leg of the trip.
Hairy crabs was a unique duty free purchase!
Our flight boarded and departed on time. The taxi and take-off felt like the longest I had ever experience, but the flight was otherwise good, and with our experiences of both Shanghai Airlines and China Eastern, we would recommend them to anyone else travelling between these destinations. I had wanted to fly Cathay Dragon but those flights cost more than double so we went for these ones.
Once we were in the terminal, immigration was very quick, though the luggage took 20 minutes, but thankfully arrived safely. We also saw the Iranian Volleyball Team who had arrived in Tokyo for the World Cup – claim to fame!
We found our driver (who we had booked through Klook for £74.69), and were on the road by 9.50pm-ish, so we arrived at our hotel, the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay for 10.30pm. Unfortunately, everyone exiting the park to check in arrived at the hotel at the same time, so we had to queue to check in for 20 minutes, but thankfully the staff were really lovely which helped.
We were told at check in that we had been upgraded to a Superior Room, which was very exciting, and learned that this meant that we would be on the 10th floor. They also proactively informed us that we had a package (our Pocket Wifi, ordered through Japan Rail for US$57) which we were impressed with.
We headed up to our, but after the excitement of the upgrade, were quickly disappointed, as the room was very dated and looked nothing like the photos of the hotel which had clearly been renovated elsewhere. This would be our home for 6 nights so I was hoping for a nicer room and hadn’t realised that the whole hotel hadn’t been done or I would have requested a room in advance.
Anyway, Matt opened the curtain, and was greeted by this view – that sort of made up for it (sort of).
And by day...
We unpacked, showered, and made it to bed at midnight – phew!
Steps = 14,229