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

[Hannikins]

day 4 posted

[Hannikins]

Day5 on it's way, sorry for the delay, I know some of you are just waiting for the Japan part :P

[Hannikins]

day 5 posted!

[Hannikins]

day 6 posted! I'm on a roll!

[Lucyjane45xxx]

You may have posted this and I may have missed it so apologies if you have but we are planning to do Shanghai and Tokyo for our honeymoon next year and I have been reading your reports which have been extremely helpful!
Would you recommend them? We are thinking September/October time but have not done a huge deal of research yet, do you think from or research this would be an alright time to go?
Was the planning really hard work? I went on the tokyo/shanghai websites to get an idea of prices and I was pretty confused already!
Just wondering whether you might share your costings with me? Like what was the overall price you paid for the holiday as a whole (excluding spending money) And how much your flights cost you in total?
Trying to work out roughly how much we should be budgeting. Where did you fly from and to also? I have looked at flights now but obviously as it is a long way off being 11 months from when we would go the flights seem to have like multiple changes are are like 24hours.

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by Lucyjane45xxx

You may have posted this and I may have missed it so apologies if you have but we are planning to do Shanghai and Tokyo for our honeymoon next year and I have been reading your reports which have been extremely helpful!
Would you recommend them? We are thinking September/October time but have not done a huge deal of research yet, do you think from or research this would be an alright time to go?
Was the planning really hard work? I went on the tokyo/shanghai websites to get an idea of prices and I was pretty confused already!
Just wondering whether you might share your costings with me? Like what was the overall price you paid for the holiday as a whole (excluding spending money) And how much your flights cost you in total?
Trying to work out roughly how much we should be budgeting. Where did you fly from and to also? I have looked at flights now but obviously as it is a long way off being 11 months from when we would go the flights seem to have like multiple changes are are like 24hours.

See more...

OOO lots of questions. Let me check my spreadsheets and I'll get back to you :P

[Guest]

Thank you so much for doing this trippie!

[Hannikins]

ok let's do this one in bits as there's a fair few questions...

Originally Posted by Lucyjane45xxx

Would you recommend them?

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Most definitely. It's not a relaxing holiday by any means, I've never been more exhausted but it's certainly an experience!

Originally Posted by Lucyjane45xxx

We are thinking September/October time but have not done a huge deal of research yet, do you think from or research this would be an alright time to go?

See more...

In october china celebrates national day, it's a week long holiday called golden week and I would avoid that like the plague! Weather in September can be hot and humid early on so consider this. In Tokyo I don't think there is such a thing as a quiet time but these crowd calendars might be useful

tdrnavi.jp/forecast/disneyland?lang=en
www15.plala.or.jp/gcap/disney/

First week in September for Tokyo seems to be the sweet spot looking at those calendars, as halloween celebration will then kick in and affect crowds, especially on a weekend. That does mean a hot and sticky shanghai first though so you need to play with the dates. I squeezed my disney days in mid week and it was fine.

Originally Posted by Lucyjane45xxx

Was the planning really hard work?

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It was certainly the most difficult, especially Shanghai as there is very little info out there. I found the articles on disneytouristblog and TDR explorer VERY helpful and I believe TDR have just updated their shanghai info after another visit. Both are worth a read. I'm sure the more people go the more info there will be around

Originally Posted by Lucyjane45xxx

Just wondering whether you might share your costings with me? Like what was the overall price you paid for the holiday as a whole (excluding spending money)

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overall, all flights, long distance train tickets, disney tickets for both and hotels came to £3800. I think overall with everything it was probably somewhere between £5-6k but if I'm honest I've tried not to add it all up in the end

Originally Posted by Lucyjane45xxx

And how much your flights cost you in total?

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main flights from the UK and back were £1026.08 The flight between shanghai and tokyo was £521.4 thats for both of us. The Uk flights were similar to our HK flights but the inbetween one was more expensive than I expected.

Originally Posted by Lucyjane45xxx

Where did you fly from and to also? I have looked at flights now but obviously as it is a long way off being 11 months from when we would go the flights seem to have like multiple changes are are like 24hours.

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We flew from Manchester. It's a little early to find flights, try looking at september this year for an idea I doubt you'll find direct flights, it's too far. Your best bet, and most common option is to fly into either Abu Dhabi or Dubai as those are major routes. Both Shanghai and Tokyo have two airports, and we didn't always fly in and out of the same one, have a play around with options to get the best prices. For stopovers you can do 24 hours, if you'd like to see dubai for example, but typically ours have been 2-3 hours, less on our flight back, although that was a little hairy!

I do strongly recommend doing Shanghai first as if you time it right you can enter without paying for a visa on the 144 hour visa free scheme. This only works if you have onwards travel, so if heading to Tokyo afterwards it works out pretty well!

Any happy planning, don't get to overwhelmed by it, I did unfortunately! You've got plenty of time to plan!

Any more questions just let me know, always happy to help

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by princess_chazy

Thank you so much for doing this trippie!

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haha, you're welcome.

I'm enjoying it though, I got bored with my Florida one as it's the same thing you're trying to make interesting, this thing writes itself!

Nearly done another day, maybe I'll be finished by the time you go at this rate

[hornetgirl]

Would you say it's essential to rent one of the wifi devices? Not counting the Disney part, we'll only have 3.5 days in Tokyo and don't plan on doing anything beyond the standard tourist attractions and a trip on the Shinkansen.