Bucket List or Bust! - Tokyo & Shanghai - November 2016

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by princess_chazy

That view from your hotel! 😍😍😍

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I know, honestly amazing and the best hotel I've ever stayed in

[Hannikins]

I decided to tackle this trip in exactly the same way as I did last year, flights first. I did come a little unstuck with this when I realised I didn't have enough time to play with but at least this way I could make sure I got the best combination.

Time of the year was kinda set, November, giving us time to save up, now all I had to do was decide when. What followed was lots of flight combinations on Kayak to work out the best possible option, both flight time and pricewise.



Once I had a few options worked out I started looking at disney crowd calendars. I don't profess to being amazing with numbers and spreadsheet, despite being a planner by profession, and honestly all the combinations completely blew my MIND.



Crowd calendars for shanghai were out of the question, it wasn't even open! My only logical decision was to avoid weekends at least.

Tokyo on the other hand has a few and using one I roughly worked out a weeks window, again avoiding weekends which may work, checking this against flights with every option I found.

I make this sound alot simpler than it was, it wasn't, I was pulling my hair out by the time I had finished.



In the end I ended up with the following

2 days Shanghai Disneyland
2 days Shanghai
4 days Tokyo
3 days Tokyo Disneyland

I was happy with my plan, pretty chuffed in fact.



I started watching prices of flights and looking into possible things we'd like to see and do. All the time I was starting to worry about the 3 days in Tokyo disneyland, would it be enough? If it was busy would I be rushing about? We'd added an extra day at Hong kong disneyland last year and I never regretted it, loving that we could take things slower. Would I miss that this time? So I revised my plan again...

2 days Shanghai Disneyland
2 days Shanghai
3 days Tokyo
4 days Tokyo Disneyland

And so began the flight watching... again.

I spent alot of this watching time watching vlogs on youtube, I love them and I started seeing lots of people visiting Kyoto... I quite liked the idea. Checking flights etc it was no cheaper flying back from Kyoto, hmmmmm.



So the plan changed AGAIN!

2 days Shanghai Disneyland
2 days Shanghai
3 days Tokyo
4 days Tokyo Disneyland
2 days Kyoto

See why I never got chance to start this pre trippie, too busy changing my mind!

Back to flight watching again. I hate this point, it's like gambling, when should you check out. In my head I set a budget of £500 each for the main flight, that wasn't based on any research of logic, it just sounded right, so I watched. When I started flights were £750 each, it went up, it went down, but never to where I wanted it to be. Finally they went down to £504, should I wait, just a liiiiiitttleeee bit more...



Nope, I cashed in, I didn't want to be petty and risk losing it all for the sake of £8!

And so we are flying on the 19th November with...



Emirates! Number one airline in the world in 2016. For the extra £8 it had better be bloody good!

[disneyme]

Looking forward to reading more of your plans as I'm hoping to so something very similar next November/December

[hornetgirl]

Hoping to pick up lots of tips. We're going to Tokyo next year (but not Shanghai) and all I've done so far is book flights...

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by disneyme

Looking forward to reading more of your plans as I'm hoping to so something very similar next November/December

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sounds like a plan!

Originally Posted by hornetgirl

Hoping to pick up lots of tips. We're going to Tokyo next year (but not Shanghai) and all I've done so far is book flights...

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oh well if you've booked flights you're pretty much where we are planning wise.

[Hannikins]

Budgets
I touched very briefly upon budgets during my flight searches and I approached my actual trip budget with the exact same amount of logic as I did flights, i.e. none!’

Having never travelled to either city I wasn’t sure what logic I could use, I mean it’s not like Florida where you can ask lots of people on the Dibb or look at previous Florida trip costs and base it on that is it?

Instead I decided to simply pluck a figure out of thin air and aim for it!

I started with a plan of £3,500 for all travel and accommodation. I thought that sounded a reasonable place to start if nothing else. I added it to my spreadsheet and began to plan.

Well what can I say, I started looking for hotels less like



and more like



I’m convinced it’s an age thing. Back when I was 18, on my first holiday “abroad” I was completely horrified that we were paying £300+ for a week in Lanzarote. Now…..

I want comfort and luxury godammit!



My first “Plan” worked out at £6,000, There are some seriously amazing hotels in shanghai, it was so easy to get carried away!





Was my budget not enough? or were my tastes for expensive hotels getting worse


At the same time I was planning our hotels so was my good friend Rachel (she has a pretrippie, go see!) she was managing waaaaaaaaaaay better than I was, finding lovely hostels and hotels which were more than comfortable and a tiny fraction of mine. She confirmed it, I was being a silly hotel sob and needed to get a grip! Although she was a little more tactful than that

So back to the drawing board I went…

[Hannikins]

I've been SHOPPING! I may have gone a little bit mental in Primark over the weekend. I'll share the goodies tonight, just need to get some photos

[Hannikins]

ok so shopping happened... In my defence I only went in for pump socks but you know that never happens in Primark. Instead I came out with a whole holiday wardrobe!

First a shirt


Cute right? I just love all the sequins!



Next up a little jumper.



As the temperature is a little unpredictable during our trip I wanted to be prepared

Because of this I also picked up a jacket, these is my fav :P



and then, whilst looking for some new pj's I found THIS!



Seriously have you ever seen something so completely awful yet so utterly amazing in your life! Adam was speechless... even more so when I told him I planned on wearing it in public

On a more sensible note I picked up a backpack



I obviously own lots of backpacks but I wanted something a little larger that worked for the parks and for around the city.

You'd think that was it but at the till I spotted these and I just had to get them :P





I'm still planning outfits for the rest of the trip and I also have some disney bounding in the pipeline, I'll share soon!

[amymiller]

Enjoying reading this so far. Am interested to go myself in the next few years so this is all very helpful information to me. Kinda testing the waters a bit with my trip to Hong Kong next month first. Hoping you may post a bit more about what you got up to there, so I can again steal some ideas.

You got some very cute bits in Primark, particularly liking the jewellery. Looking forward to reading more.

[vics18]

Love the minnie sequin top! Does it change if you brush them up/down? I got a storm trooper own last week that changes into a tie fighter pilot