For a different perspective on Tokyo, we spent our final few nights in Japan at Tokyo Disney Resort. There are two theme parks to visit here: Disneyland and DisneySea.
We booked stayed at the Hilton Tokyo Bay, one of the official partner hotels of the Disney Resort. Staying at an official partner hotel guarantees access to park tickets during your stay, an important benefit at busy times when day tickets for the two parks can, and do, sell out. Another benefit of partner hotels is the direct door-to-door airport shuttle service than runs to the two Tokyo airports and are extremely easy and convenient, as well as being good value vs. other transport options between the city and the airport (since our Japan Rail passes had expired).
The Disney Resort Cruiser busses shuttle hotel guests to the monorail that does a loop around the resort.
As we would find out, Disney in Japan takes Halloween very, very seriously.
Tokyo DisneySea
This is the newer of the two parks. In the same way that the attractions at EPCOT in Orlando are geared more towards older children and adults than the Magic Kingdom, the same is true for DisneySea vs. Disneyland here. They’re both a lot of fun regardless of age, but the rides at DisneySea will get your pulse beating faster.
The nautical explorers theme of the park was originally conceived as a second park to accompany Disneyland in California, but the project was scrapped there due to financial pressure and the idea passed on to the Japanese joint venture to expand their resort.
Apart from the rides, the best reason to visit the Tokyo Disney Resort is for the people watching! In fact, this is probably good enough reason alone to go and spend a couple of days here. The dedication that adults (without children!!) put into their visit is mind-blowing. This is the country that invented cosplay, after all.
Everyone has their favourite characters and they spare no effort in showing off how big of a fan they are. It’s frankly pathological.
Duffy the Disney Bear is exceptionally popular here, arguably even more so the Mickey and Minnie who have a far smaller following in terms of merchandise.
Effective use of the FastPass is a must at the two Tokyo parks where their use has been elevated to something resembling an arms race. Competition is fierce and some attractions give out all their FastPasses for the day within the first few hours of the park opening. The trick is to balance a pass for the most popular attractions that you will otherwise lose hours queuing for, with effective use of the second pass that can be used and then used again after going on a ride. Using the FastPasses this way allows more passes to be used in a day to get more cumulative queue-jumping-time gains. There are blogs dedicated to the optimised FastPass strategy so do a bit of reading to find one you think works for you.
Disneyland
This is the original park, with many of the same attractions as Disneyland California, the Magic Kingdom in Orlando and EuroDisney.
A few hours before our midnight flight home, there was time to go out for one final meal to round off our wonderful time in Japan.
Links
Hilton Tokyo Bay – link
Tokyo Disney Resort – tokyodisneyresort.jp/en/
Airport Limousine Bus Transfers – To/from Narita and Haneda (Tickets can be bought from English ticket machines at the airport and from the hotels)
Jan & Warren's Spot 