Tokyo Disney Trip Report

Lyricallie

Mouseketeer
Joined
May 2, 2015
Hi everyone, I thought I would start my trip report here as I have found other people's reports very useful in my planning!

We are planning a 2 week holiday to Japan, flying out from Glasgow with a layover in Amsterdam landing in Osaka, April 1 - 14 2018. As all other tourists going in April we're going to see the cherry blossoms! I'm very excited, we've been planning to go to Japan as long as I can remember.

The Cast
Myself - Gemma, 25 and Disney daft the planner, the organiser and owner of the spreadsheet.
Boyfriend - Tim, 27 enjoyer of Disney due to proximity to me, however lets me plan the mayhem.

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So the plan is to go to Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Sea for two days midweek of our holiday to Japan. We have bought our tickets through Klook so we got a discount through a podcast I listen to. Also means we don't need to queue and it's one less thing we need to pay for when we get there.

We are staying in Hilton Tokyo Bay during our time at Disney. I'm currently reading as many tips as I can as although I've planned many a Walt Disney World and Disneyland Paris trip, Tokyo is brand new!

So I will be updating this when I have a better idea of my plans and afterwards with many photos and thoughts!
 
Have a great trip... Just had our first visit to Tokyo and TDR in Jan and it was amazing... Can't wait to see pics of your cherry blossom visit...
 
Yay! We visited Japan 3 years ago around this time to see the cherry blossoms. It was an amazing trip, and we loved everything about Japan. We only made it for a day to DisneySea, but I can't wait to read your trip report both for the nostalgia and to file away for ideas for our next visit there.
 
Also means we don't need to queue and it's one less thing we need to pay for when we get there.

So, you have the printed tickets on A4 paper? On your first day, you may want to pay (200 yen per ticket) to "upgrade" your printed A4 paper ticket with a regular park ticket. I find it much easier for grabbing Fast Passes. The queue to exchange your tickets will be non-existent. But, that queue is very different to the queue for entry to the parks.

It's great that you want to avoid the queues, but that isn't possible at Tokyo Disney. There will be queues. MIGHTY queues, especially in April when there are a LOT of international tourists in Tokyo hoping to see the Cherry Blossoms (depending upon the weather and when they decide to blossom).

Also, the majority of visitors to Tokyo Disney are locals, so they always arrive in sufficient numbers to form queues.

When we visited in April 2016, we arrived at the gates at least 45 minutes before opening time and the queues always stretched at least 100m (often more) from the gates. The good news is that the Japanese are very organised and even though the queues are substantial, they move relatively quickly and orderly. Also, there is no line-cutting, pushing or shoving.

If you try to get Fast Passes for the most popular rides, especially Toy Story Mania, then be prepared for more queues. I spent 40 minutes in the queue to get Fast Passes for TSM upon opening (this was after arriving 45 minutes before the park opened).
 


So, you have the printed tickets on A4 paper? On your first day, you may want to pay (200 yen per ticket) to "upgrade" your printed A4 paper ticket with a regular park ticket. I find it much easier for grabbing Fast Passes. The queue to exchange your tickets will be non-existent. But, that queue is very different to the queue for entry to the parks.

It's great that you want to avoid the queues, but that isn't possible at Tokyo Disney. There will be queues. MIGHTY queues, especially in April when there are a LOT of international tourists in Tokyo hoping to see the Cherry Blossoms (depending upon the weather and when they decide to blossom).

Also, the majority of visitors to Tokyo Disney are locals, so they always arrive in sufficient numbers to form queues.

When we visited in April 2016, we arrived at the gates at least 45 minutes before opening time and the queues always stretched at least 100m (often more) from the gates. The good news is that the Japanese are very organised and even though the queues are substantial, they move relatively quickly and orderly. Also, there is no line-cutting, pushing or shoving.

If you try to get Fast Passes for the most popular rides, especially Toy Story Mania, then be prepared for more queues. I spent 40 minutes in the queue to get Fast Passes for TSM upon opening (this was after arriving 45 minutes before the park opened).
Ha true. Maybe I should have said one less thing to queue for :p I had planned on heading there an hour early (Sorry Tim) and I think we’re going to skip TSMM as we had done it at Florida and head straight to ToT for a FP and then to Journey. Hopefully their queueing is as good as us British ;).
I keep telling myself I can’t moan about queues and crowds because of the cherry blossoms as I’m part of the problem :p

Definitely take your advice on changing the ticket over to the physical one. Is that place to do so inside or outside of the park? Thanks!
 
To exchange the print outs for regular tickets, just head to the glass booths for regular tickets and exchange them there.

There won’t be any lines or maybe a minimal line, but you have to get to the booth by walking between the lines of people queuing to get into the park. Don’t get into the really long lines as those visitors already have their tickets! Once you’ve exchanged your tickets, then join the long queues.
 
I have my husband stand in the long queue to get in the park while I run up to the short line for tickets and buy the park passports. The line for the tickets is rarely long. Plus it's easier to get English maps from the ticket window. It can be hit it miss when you ask at the turnstile as you enter. But get the Japanese paper that shows you all the special promotion food and items.
 


I am excited to find out about your trip! I will be following along as we are visiting at the beginning of July for 2 weeks and are also visiting TDR for 2 days. I have a question, if any of our TDR visitors happen to know, we are staying at Mira Costa, is there somewhere at the hotel where we can switch our A4 tickets to regular tickets?
 
I have my husband stand in the long queue to get in the park while I run up to the short line for tickets and buy the park passports. The line for the tickets is rarely long. Plus it's easier to get English maps from the ticket window. It can be hit it miss when you ask at the turnstile as you enter. But get the Japanese paper that shows you all the special promotion food and items.
Great idea definitely going to do that!
 
If you have the 15 minute early entrance do you bypass the very long entrance line?
 
We had amazing time in Japan! Especially Tokyo Disney (We got engaged!) So watch this space for a report!
 

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