Advice needed for a newbie

[Ryan10940]

I’ve watched dis Oates for years and have always marveled at how helpful everyone is!

I could use some some advice. My family has been fortunate enough to visit Florida, California, Paris, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. We are planning on finally visiting Tokyo in August.

We’ve already learned it’s very different visiting the Tokyo park vs the others. This whole “can’t book more than 90 days out” thing has my stress level up, but we’ll deal with it.

I have two specific questions:
1. If we are successful in booking a Disney hotel (our goal is for the one in Disney Sea), do I even bother trying to get park tickets online? I’ve been told as long as we are staying in a Disney hotel we could just get our tickets from the hotel upon arrival. Is this true?

2. A general question- for those that have been there, what do you know now that you wish you would have known before going there?

Thanks!
Ryan

 

[sophy1996]

When the booking window opens, know exactly what room type you want to book (there are a lot of choices) and be ready the minute your window opens. We saw choices disappear within a minute or two. Have multiple credit cards available. The first time we booked (2019) the website rejected three cards before accepting the fourth. Luckily we didn’t have that trouble this year.

If your August dates include the Obon festival, it will be an especially busy week.

Answer to question 1: yes, true. We stayed at the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel last week and were able to buy our tickets from the hotel once we arrived. But all they had were 1-day passports, not the after-3 pm tickets.

 

[Ryan10940]

When the booking window opens, know exactly what room type you want to book (there are a lot of choices) and be ready the minute your window opens. We saw choices disappear within a minute or two. Have multiple credit cards available. The first time we booked (2019) the website rejected three cards before accepting the fourth. Luckily we didn’t have that trouble this year.

If your August dates include the Obon festival, it will be an especially busy week.

Answer to question 1: yes, true. We stayed at the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel last week and were able to buy our tickets from the hotel once we arrived. But all they had were 1-day passports, not the after-3 pm tickets.

Thank you! That was another question I meant to ask. From what I’ve read, park hopping work’s differently there. I thought I saw something though that the tickets sold at the hotel did allow park hopping?

 

[sophy1996]

No park hopping tickets (at least that's what we were told last week). You would have to buy two tickets (either 2 one-day passports or a one-day passport and an after-3 weekend or after-5 weeknight ticket). But even the highest one-day passports are only around $70 (range from 7900 to 9400 yen) so even if you bought two for the same day, you'd still be ahead of U.S. park prices on busy days.

 

[vegs1]

You are guaranteed entry to the parks if you are staying onsite. You can buy tickets right at guest services. Each hotel has different early access hours to the parks.

Disney Hotel	Applicable Parks
Tokyo Disneyland Hotel Disney Ambassador Hotel Tokyo DisneySea Hotel MiraCosta	Tokyo Disneyland or Tokyo DisneySea
Tokyo Disney Resort Toy Story Hotel Tokyo Disney Celebration Hotel	Tokyo Disneyland

On your park day, be sure to already have the Disney Tokyo app downloaded. Then as soon as you enter the park, you can scan your tickets into it and get any Disney premier access tickets that you may want.

Someone above mentioned having a few credit cards for booking. You will likely need that. We had a lot of difficulty booking our hotel but it finally worked with a Mastercard. Using Disney premier access was the same. Credit card issues. Just stop at guest services on your way into the park, tell them you’re having difficulties booking and they will help you book premier access.

If you aren’t going to buy Disney premier access, be sure you go directly to the ride you want to go on the most. We experienced quite lengthy queues (Soarin was 180 minutes, journey to the centre of the earth was the same) ) and that was common for many of the major attractions.

Restaurants had lengthy lines during the main meal times. If you eat before or after typical times, lines were shorter.

All hotels have a small shop where you can get drinks and snacks. I did find the Mira Costa’s to have less selection than Toy Story Hotels or Disneyland hotels.

Ikspiari is Tokyo Disney’s version of Disney Springs but it’s not really the same. They do have a small grocery store on the bottom
level as well as Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, McDonalds and other restaurants.

If you are looking for any type of clothing such as tshirts or sweatshirts, you may find they only have small or medium. Larger sizes seemed to be always sold out.

Have fun!

 

[CanucksRock]

There is no park hopping tickets period currently. If you want to park hop, you would need to buy a ticket for each park separately.

No issues buying tickets on-site . They will ask you at check in which days/park (if applicable) you would like to use for Happy 15.

When they say be at park by 8:15 for Happy 15, this really means be there at least 30 minutes before that. As that’s the time they actually start letting you in.

 

[sophy1996]

When they say be at park by 8:15 for Happy 15, this really means be there at least 30 minutes before that. As that’s the time they actually start letting you in.

Definitely, especially on weekends. The H15 crowd at Disneyland park on Sunday was quite large. You will lose much of the already limited time being in the back of the crowd!

They opened the gates at exactly the time printed on the H15 entry pass. To the minute, all three days.