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    Our Family's Visit to Tokyo Disney Resort

    Our trip to Japan ended with a visit to Tokyo Disney Resort.  Located just east of Tokyo proper, the Tokyo Disney Resort is easy to reach from Tokyo itself, or either of Tokyo's international airports - making it a great first or final stop on any Japan itinerary.

    We arrived via train from Tokyo proper - its about an hour train ride to Disney from the center of Tokyo, and trains go every few minutes.  Cost for the train is about $3 per person, and it drops you off right across a walkway from the monorail loop/shopping area.

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    The monorail loop at Tokyo Disney has four stops: The Gateway (by the train station), Disneyland, Bayside (near most of the non-Disney hotels), and DisneySea.  A ride on the monorail costs 300 yen per adult (about $2) or you can buy a multiday pass for about 900 yen ($6).  The Bayside stop was immediately across the street from the Sheraton, so it was super convenient.

    Tokyo Disney is currently only selling single-day tickets for a single park - you cannot buy multi-day passes or park hopper tickets.  A single-day ticket for the days we visited was 8100 yen (about $55) for adults, a little less for kids 8-12, and even cheaper for kids 3-7.  Kids under 3 are free, just like in the US parks.  You cannot buy tickets at the park gates - only online or at a ticket sales location in the hotel.

    Tokyo Disney does offer an “after 5 pm weekday pass” that allows entry to one of the two parks after 5 pm on a weeknight for 5100 yen regardless of age (about $35).  Some people will buy a regular park ticket for one park, and then an after 5 pass for the other park and sort of park-hop that way.  

    Since we only had a day and half anyway, we did the after-5 pm passes for the first day for Disneyland Park, and then bought regular park passes for DisneySea for the second day.

    Disney Premier Access (DPA) is available for certain attractions throughout the parks; you cannot purchased DPA passes or reserve times until you have scanned into the park for the day.  It works just like Individual Lightning Lane, although we observed that far fewer folks in the Japan parks tended to purchase DPA at least on the days we were there so there were not very many people using the shorter queues!  That helped the standby lines move more quickly than at WDW.

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    Disneyland Tokyo is very similar to Magic Kingdom, except I think it’s the first time I’ve ridden a bunch of rides at a Disney park where every single animatronic and component of the ride were functioning properly! We did not find DL to be very busy at all, and managed to do the following between 5 pm and park closing at 9 pm without paying extra for DPA:  Pirates of the Caribbean x 2, Buzz Lightyear, Stitch Adventure, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain (the old theming), Baymax Happy Ride, It’s a Small World, Pinnochio’s Grand Adventure, Peter Pan’s Flight, and Snow White’s Scary Adventure.  We also did a quick walkthrough of the castle, complete with a cute glass slipper and throne photo op.  We ate quick service burgers for dinner between rides.  There are currently no nighttime fireworks at DL.

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    DisneySea was the park I was most looking forward to and it did not disappoint.  One thing to note about DisneySea is that the new “land” - Fantasy Springs - is currently only accessible to those holding a DPA or a Standby Pass (like Virtual Queue) for one of the four rides in the land.  You have to scan into the park in order to get a DPA or SP, which is why people have been lining up really early in the morning to get in.  We entered the park at about 10:00 (an hour after opening) and the only DPA I could get was for the new Peter Pan ride, and not until 6:40 pm.  You can get more than one DPA, provided you’ve either used your first one, or more than 2 hours have passed - but I checked throughout the day and no other ones popped up, so we didn’t get to ride 3 out of the 4 rides in Fantasy Springs.  A reason for another trip, I suppose!

    DisneySea is really amazing in its theming - it’s like someone just gave the imagineers a huge pile of money and said “build whatever you can dream up.”  The Tower of Terror there is incredibly themed (although not quite as good of a ride as the WDW one), 20,000 Leagues under the Sea was amazing, Fantasy Springs was totally immersive and awesome, and even the smaller lands were cool - there’s a section that looks like the Little Mermaid and another section that looks like Agrabah from Aladdin, as an example.  There are lots of nooks and crannies to explore, and one section of the park even had a whole scavenger hunt themed after Leonardo da Vinci.

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    We didn’t pay for skip-the-line and managed to ride the following in about 8 hours: Tower of Terror, Toy Story Mania, Indiana Jones Adventure, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Aquatopia, Raging Spirits, Jasmine’s Flying Carpets, the Whirlpool and Scuttles Scooters; at 6:40 we were able to enter Fantasy Springs and also rode the new Peter Pan’s Neverland Adventure (it was awesome) and took a look around Fantasy Springs including the Arandelle area and the Tangled area.  We also at a Chinese food lunch at Vulcania, plus a snack later at the New York Deli.

    We found the food at both parks to be kind of meh, with the exception of the flavored popcorn.  Flavored popcorn is a THING there, and we saw all kinds of options: strawberry, chocolate, white chocolate matcha, curry, black pepper, caramel, honey and even roast beef flavored popcorn.  If you buy a popcorn bucket, they will refill it for you for a reduced price.  There were tons of collectible popcorn buckets, and we bought two - one from Monster’s Inc and one that looks like Big Ben from Peter Pan and lights up.  Food prices were reasonable - maybe $10 for a quick service meal including a drink, or $3 for a box of popcorn or an ice cream.

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    While credit cards were accepted in all park locations, we found it very helpful to carry cash for small purchases - Japan isn’t quite as cashless yet as the US, and pocket change made it much easier to buy water and popcorn throughout the park.

    A few other observations:  when we visited Disneyland Paris earlier this year, announcements and shows were given first in French followed by English, so we assumed the same thing would be the case in Japan.  NOPE.  All instructions and shows were only in Japanese - signs are written in both Japanese and English, and most of the cast members spoke some English, but it made the shows a little tough to follow and we ended up doing some googling for backstory on a few of the rides so we didn’t miss out on any details.

    Also, it is very hot and humid in Tokyo in August - similar to Florida in the summer, but possibly even higher temps.  Luckily, bottled water was cheap (around $1.50) and readily available and there were plenty of shaded areas to sit and cool off.

    All in all, I think 1.5 days was a great amount of time for us experienced Disney people - we felt like we had enough time to see what we wanted to see without really rushing, but we also have been to WDW so many times that it didn’t bother us to skip things that would have been repeats of the Florida parks.  3 days would maybe have allowed us to slow down a bit or take a mid-day break - I would have done one day at DL and two days at DisneySea.  While I don’t think I’d plan a trip to Japan ONLY to go to Disney there, it’s definitely easy to add on to a Tokyo trip.

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    We left from Disney to go straight to the Haneda International Airport - we took the “Limousine Bus” which was about $9 per person and took about an hour to make the drive.  You could taxi, but taxis are expensive in Japan and small - so not great for five people plus luggage.  There’s also a train option, but the bus was much easier with suitcases.

    In summary - I would totally visit Tokyo Disney again, and would not hesitate to recommend it!  It was a really fun experience and a great way to end our trip to Japan!