[misslilo]

Our travel agent got our tickets - definitely worth asking if you have one. I would strongly recommend insidejapan.

We spent 2 days there across both parks but didn't stay long,
We arrived mid morning and left early evening... only did about 2 rides at each park and just soaked up the atmosphere. We did go just after obon... Not sure if this affected how busy it was, but queues were VERY long and we failed to get anything on the lottery. I think to do it properly, you'd need longer than a day in each park.

Can't help with hotels I'm afraid, as we stayed in shinjuku and got the train in each day.