Are We Finally Going? (A Pre-trip/Trip Report)

[soniam]

Transportation

Trains
I looked into getting a Japan Rail Pass; however, when I priced out the cost of our train travels using the fare calculator on the JR site, the pass would be more expensive than buying the individual trips. The cost has gone up significantly. We plan to take local trains and the shinkansen from Tokyo->Osaka, Osaka<->Himeji, Osaka->Kyoto, Kyoto<->Nara, Kyoto->Ghibli Park, and Ghibli Park->Tokyo Disney.

I then tried to figure out how to purchase tickets ahead of time. I also wanted to try to get oversized luggage storage on the Tokyo->Osaka leg at least. Our luggage won’t be oversized, but the suitcases might not fit in the overhead. There is also only 1 overhead storage per row per side. It can really only hold 1 suitcase. The only other place to put them would be in front of our feet. On certain shinkansen routes, you have to reserve the storage ahead of time and pay extra. It’s required if your luggage is too large. I found a JR app that allows pre-purchasing, but it wouldn’t take any of my credit cards. Klook sells pre-purchased tickets, but they don’t sell the oversized luggage ones and cannot guarantee that you will be seated with your party. So, we will just have to try to purchase the tickets at the station for Tokyo->Osaka when we arrive. This will at least give us several days before we head to Osaka. We will have to wait until we get to Osaka to buy the other tickets, since those locations are all within the Kansai region. Japan Rail is divided into regions. Tokyo and Kansai are different regions.

I finally discovered that JR-West will let you book tickets online for the Tokyo<->Osaka route, including reserved seats, 1st/green class, and oversized luggage. It was very easy, and I had no issues with my credit card. We just have pick up the tickets at a station before we travel. Luckily, Tokyo Station is one of them. We can pick it up at a counter or a machine.

Subways
I think we will wait until we arrive to see if we want a Tokyo Subway pass or just pay per ride with Suica. We will probably end up getting at least one pass, since we will have several days in each city.

 

[TwingleMum]

Excited to follow along. We will be at TDR in mid June. Unfortunately we didn’t get a vacation package but we are at the Miracosta so I am hoping Happy 15 will help get us Premier Access.

 

[soniam]

Excited to follow along. We will be at TDR in mid June. Unfortunately we didn’t get a vacation package but we are at the Miracosta so I am hoping Happy 15 will help get us Premier Access.

It will still be awesome!

 

[soniam]

Just finished booking my final dining reservation for Tokyo Disney! I also got a surprise this morning that the service I used to get my Pokemon Cafe reservation had managed to get me a Kirby Cafe reservation too. They originally couldn't but had a cancellation.

 

[soniam]

Theme Parks

Universal Studios Japan
I decided to just get the 2 day studio passes/tickets and Express Pass 7 from Klook. The Express Pass shows up earlier on Klook than USJ in the US. USJ seems to show up at midnight my time for tickets for the same day; whereas, they showed up on Klook the day before. I had no issues getting the 2 day passes and Express Passes for the first day. Klook released them later than I had expected though. The next day I got Express Passes for our 2nd day. We got Super Nintendo World for midday on the first day with Wizarding World about 4 hours later. The second day we got SNW for as early as we could, 10am with a 9am park opening. Wizarding World was again about 4 hours later. The 2 day pass was ~$119 (JPY 17,900) per person. The first day Express Pass cost ~$150 (JPY 22,800) per person, and the second day cost ~$145 (JPY 21,800) per person.

We wanted to get tickets to the Cool Japan Detective Conan escape room and the Monster Hunter VR experience, like the Void. You can only buy these on the USJ website. None of the my 5 or 6 credit cards, 2 debit cards, or Wise card worked. I tried going through the Japan site too. However, I always got hung up when trying to create the account. It’s difficult to tell exactly what the credit card info fields were supposed to be; there were really not much instruction. We tried a VPN. Both my husband and son tried their PCs and different browsers. It just never worked.

I wanted to book a reservation for the Park Grille Restaurant, a steak place. You can do it 1 month out to the date at 11am JT through the Priority Seating section of the website. When I originally looked, it was in Japanese. At some point, it changed to English when using the English site. It’s through a third-party. I did a few practice runs. Completely bombed the first try. 2nd try I made sure to have all my info filled out at the bottom, and to have the time and date filled out. I got to the point of confirming one but didn’t, since it was an earlier date. When my dates came, only noon and 1pm showed up; whereas, the previous tries had later times. We really wanted 3pm or later, so that we could get the dinner menu. It had stuff on it that I thought my son would eat; he’s picky. Plus, our Express Passes would conflict. I think the restaurant is closing earlier on our days, because they don’t think it will be very busy. We can try again at 9am JT at the restaurant.

Ghibli Park
They released all of June on the 10th of April 2pm JT. They posted the release information on their website. I looked at the May tickets before June went on sale, and there were still regular tickets available but no premium tickets. I got onto the site about an hour before, and the queue started about 30 minutes before. They uses Queue-it. I had 3 browsers on a laptop and 1 on my phone. My lowest queue position was about 7000. I was worried that it was too high to get what I wanted, but I managed to get the premium tickets for my date for a 1pm Grand Warehouse entrance time. The cost was ~$50 (JPY 7410) per person. We wanted a later time, since we will be coming from Kyoto. It looks to be about a 2.5 hour trip. The park is outside of Nagoya. We are going to aim to get there at park opening at 10am for a weekday. You can enter the other areas at any time, so we can do those first if we make it on time. We will be heading their on our way from Kyoto to Tokyo Disney. I think we will have our luggage transferred at our hotel in Kyoto to Miracosta at Tokyo Disney.

Tokyo Disney Resort
Dining reservations open at 9am JT 30 days out. This is an hour before non-hotel guests. Plus, you can make them for the length of your reservation, hotel or package. I have 3 possible opportunities to reserve dining, since I have 3 reservations: 1 night hotel room only, a 3 day package, and a 2 day package. The first hotel night is the night before our package, so I can reserve a restaurant for our first park day. The next day I can make reservations for the next 2 park days. Finally, I can make reservations for the 4th park day 2 days after. Here is what I got. Some of these choices are not the boldest or most unique, but they all had something that I think, or at least hope, our son will eat or try.

Day 1 Disneyland: Crystal Palace 11am
Day 2 Disney Sea: Magellan’s 2:10pm
Day 3 Disney Sea: Horizon Bay 11:30am, Disneyland: Blue Bayou 6:30pm
Day 4 Disney Sea: SS Columbia 2:20pm

I was surprised about the lack of lunch availability for Crystal Palace. It’s a buffet but no characters. I wanted lunch but had to settle for dinner. Most of the lunch slots were gone when it opened. I guess guests with longer stays booked these before it opened for me. Magellan’s, which is very popular and a long seating, and Blue Bayou, again popular, had better availability. Their menus are fancier and more expensive, so maybe that’s not as appealing. I realized while booking my 2nd and 3rd days, that I had booked Crystal Palace for the wrong day. I had booked it for our first day where we will arrive late and don’t have park tickets. Luckily, it was really easy to get the time I actually wanted, lunch, for our actual 1st park day.

Booking Magellan’s for the 2nd day was very easy. Lots of availability. Since we have overlapping packages, we have tickets for both parks on the 3rd day. I decided to reserve a lunch at Disney Sea and a dinner at Disneyland, but I think we will end up canceling the lunch at Disney Sea. I really want to eat at Blue Bayou. We should have been able to see the nighttime shows the two previous nights. If not, then I can cancel Blue Bayou in order to wait for the Electrical Parade.

For the last day, I booked SS Columbia. This did not go quite as well as the previous days. The site kicked me out as I was in the process of confirming the booking, so I had to painfully wait in a short queue and then wait on every single action/page. I finally got it though. For the 3rd day lunch, I had initially booked SS Columbia, in case I couldn’t get it for the last day. However, once I got it, I canceled SS Columbia and booked Horizon Bay. Horizon Bay had a ton of availability, even though I was booking it a day after it had been released. I don’t think it’s terribly popular.

 

[TwingleMum]

I would like to try for the Crystal Palace and Center Street Coffee House. We are staying at Miracosta for 3 days, Disneyland hotel for 2. But we used our DVC to make the reservations so I don't think that gets us any perks in terms of making dining reservations. Glad you were able to grab some it helps to have that sorted out.

 

[soniam]

I would like to try for the Crystal Palace and Center Street Coffee House. We are staying at Miracosta for 3 days, Disneyland hotel for 2. But we used our DVC to make the reservations so I don't think that gets us any perks in terms of making dining reservations. Glad you were able to grab some it helps to have that sorted out.

I would check. Do you see your reservation in your Travel Case? Try doing +Add More. It will tell you when you can book. I was able to book early with just hotel reservations. Center Street Cafe was on our list too, but not enough time.

 

[TwingleMum]

I would check. Do you see your reservation in your Travel Case? Try doing +Add More. It will tell you when you can book. I was able to book early with just hotel reservations. Center Street Cafe was on our list too, but not enough time.

I'm ashamed to say I don't know what a Travel Case is . I have the Tokyo App but that's about it.

 

[soniam]

I'm ashamed to say I don't know what a Travel Case is . I have the Tokyo App but that's about it.

Use the mobile website. I don’t think you can do this in the app easily. Go to Reservations (top right) and My Booking (bottom left). Pick your hotel reservation. Then “Add Online Reservation Privileges/option”. “Add Online Reservation Privileges”, Restaurants. It will list all of the restaurants and when they are available to book.

 

[DenaRox]

Following along ◡̈ Will live vicariously through you as I miss Japan and TDR so very much. We were last there May/June of 2023 to celebrate my 50th so I’d be happy to chat and answer any questions you might have.

 

[Kwami]

I decided to just get the 2 day studio passes/tickets and Express Pass 7 from Klook. The Express Pass shows up earlier on Klook than USJ in the US. USJ seems to show up at midnight my time for tickets for the same day; whereas, they showed up on Klook the day before. I had no issues getting the 2 day passes and Express Passes for the first day. Klook released them later than I had expected though.

How many days in advance did Klook start selling tickets? And at what time?

Whenever I look at the USJ website, they're sold out of just about everything for every day.

 

[TwingleMum]

Use the mobile website. I don’t think you can do this in the app easily. Go to Reservations (top right) and My Booking (bottom left). Pick your hotel reservation. Then “Add Online Reservation Privileges/option”. “Add Online Reservation Privileges”, Restaurants. It will list all of the restaurants and when they are available to book.

Thank you , you are a very patient kind person

 

[fatmanatee]

Theme Parks

Universal Studios Japan
I decided to just get the 2 day studio passes/tickets and Express Pass 7 from Klook. The Express Pass shows up earlier on Klook than USJ in the US. USJ seems to show up at midnight my time for tickets for the same day; whereas, they showed up on Klook the day before. I had no issues getting the 2 day passes and Express Passes for the first day. Klook released them later than I had expected though. The next day I got Express Passes for our 2nd day. We got Super Nintendo World for midday on the first day with Wizarding World about 4 hours later. The second day we got SNW for as early as we could, 10am with a 9am park opening. Wizarding World was again about 4 hours later. The 2 day pass was ~$119 (JPY 17,900) per person. The first day Express Pass cost ~$150 (JPY 22,800) per person, and the second day cost ~$145 (JPY 21,800) per person.

We wanted to get tickets to the Cool Japan Detective Conan escape room and the Monster Hunter VR experience, like the Void. You can only buy these on the USJ website. None of the my 5 or 6 credit cards, 2 debit cards, or Wise card worked. I tried going through the Japan site too. However, I always got hung up when trying to create the account. It’s difficult to tell exactly what the credit card info fields were supposed to be; there were really not much instruction. We tried a VPN. Both my husband and son tried their PCs and different browsers. It just never worked.

I wanted to book a reservation for the Park Grille Restaurant, a steak place. You can do it 1 month out to the date at 11am JT through the Priority Seating section of the website. When I originally looked, it was in Japanese. At some point, it changed to English when using the English site. It’s through a third-party. I did a few practice runs. Completely bombed the first try. 2nd try I made sure to have all my info filled out at the bottom, and to have the time and date filled out. I got to the point of confirming one but didn’t, since it was an earlier date. When my dates came, only noon and 1pm showed up; whereas, the previous tries had later times. We really wanted 3pm or later, so that we could get the dinner menu. It had stuff on it that I thought my son would eat; he’s picky. Plus, our Express Passes would conflict. I think the restaurant is closing earlier on our days, because they don’t think it will be very busy. We can try again at 9am JT at the restaurant.

Ghibli Park
They released all of June on the 10th of April 2pm JT. They posted the release information on their website. I looked at the May tickets before June went on sale, and there were still regular tickets available but no premium tickets. I got onto the site about an hour before, and the queue started about 30 minutes before. They uses Queue-it. I had 3 browsers on a laptop and 1 on my phone. My lowest queue position was about 7000. I was worried that it was too high to get what I wanted, but I managed to get the premium tickets for my date for a 1pm Grand Warehouse entrance time. The cost was ~$50 (JPY 7410) per person. We wanted a later time, since we will be coming from Kyoto. It looks to be about a 2.5 hour trip. The park is outside of Nagoya. We are going to aim to get there at park opening at 10am for a weekday. You can enter the other areas at any time, so we can do those first if we make it on time. We will be heading their on our way from Kyoto to Tokyo Disney. I think we will have our luggage transferred at our hotel in Kyoto to Miracosta at Tokyo Disney.

Tokyo Disney Resort
Dining reservations open at 9am JT 30 days out. This is an hour before non-hotel guests. Plus, you can make them for the length of your reservation, hotel or package. I have 3 possible opportunities to reserve dining, since I have 3 reservations: 1 night hotel room only, a 3 day package, and a 2 day package. The first hotel night is the night before our package, so I can reserve a restaurant for our first park day. The next day I can make reservations for the next 2 park days. Finally, I can make reservations for the 4th park day 2 days after. Here is what I got. Some of these choices are not the boldest or most unique, but they all had something that I think, or at least hope, our son will eat or try.

Day 1 Disneyland: Crystal Palace 11am
Day 2 Disney Sea: Magellan’s 2:10pm
Day 3 Disney Sea: Horizon Bay 11:30am, Disneyland: Blue Bayou 6:30pm
Day 4 Disney Sea: SS Columbia 2:20pm

I was surprised about the lack of lunch availability for Crystal Palace. It’s a buffet but no characters. I wanted lunch but had to settle for dinner. Most of the lunch slots were gone when it opened. I guess guests with longer stays booked these before it opened for me. Magellan’s, which is very popular and a long seating, and Blue Bayou, again popular, had better availability. Their menus are fancier and more expensive, so maybe that’s not as appealing. I realized while booking my 2nd and 3rd days, that I had booked Crystal Palace for the wrong day. I had booked it for our first day where we will arrive late and don’t have park tickets. Luckily, it was really easy to get the time I actually wanted, lunch, for our actual 1st park day.

Booking Magellan’s for the 2nd day was very easy. Lots of availability. Since we have overlapping packages, we have tickets for both parks on the 3rd day. I decided to reserve a lunch at Disney Sea and a dinner at Disneyland, but I think we will end up canceling the lunch at Disney Sea. I really want to eat at Blue Bayou. We should have been able to see the nighttime shows the two previous nights. If not, then I can cancel Blue Bayou in order to wait for the Electrical Parade.

For the last day, I booked SS Columbia. This did not go quite as well as the previous days. The site kicked me out as I was in the process of confirming the booking, so I had to painfully wait in a short queue and then wait on every single action/page. I finally got it though. For the 3rd day lunch, I had initially booked SS Columbia, in case I couldn’t get it for the last day. However, once I got it, I canceled SS Columbia and booked Horizon Bay. Horizon Bay had a ton of availability, even though I was booking it a day after it had been released. I don’t think it’s terribly popular.

Thank you for mentioning the USJ express pass price because I've been looking at this as a way to bypass SNW chaos and had no idea it was that expensive! Still considering it but this gives me something to think about, was under the impression that it might cost 50 dollars, not... triple that, given the standard ticket cost.

 

[Micca]

You had me at Tokyo Disneyland, but Trader Vic's??? It was our favorite place for a long time- KC, Portland, ATL, Chicago,Munich, and London (I think!) Most of the U.S. spots are gone now.

 

[soniam]

How many days in advance did Klook start selling tickets? And at what time?

Whenever I look at the USJ website, they're sold out of just about everything for every day.

Same number of days as USJ, 60 days to the date. You have to make sure you are not checking the USJ site between about 2-6am JT. It goes down for maintenance and makes it look like everything is sold out. Entry tickets rarely sell out. Express Pass does though. Also, Klook releases stuff at the most random times. If you see stuff there and it says it isn't and you reload the page and availability is completely different, then they are loading in new days. Just be patient, and it will get in. I never got my credit cards to worth with USJ for the Cool Japan tickets and never tried for tickets or EP.

Thank you for mentioning the USJ express pass price because I've been looking at this as a way to bypass SNW chaos and had no idea it was that expensive! Still considering it but this gives me something to think about, was under the impression that it might cost 50 dollars, not... triple that, given the standard ticket cost.

It's close to $150-300 in Orlando and Hollywood; although, those are for every ride at least once. Just get there early and get a free timed entry through the app once you are in the park. Scan your tickets in ahead of time.

You had me at Tokyo Disneyland, but Trader Vic's??? It was our favorite place for a long time- KC, Portland, ATL, Chicago,Munich, and London (I think!) Most of the U.S. spots are gone now.

We have been trying to hit a tiki bar for every place we visit. We did one in Rome last summer. We have been to the original in Emeryville and loved it.

 

[fatmanatee]

It's close to $150-300 in Orlando and Hollywood; although, those are for every ride at least once. Just get there early and get a free timed entry through the app once you are in the park. Scan your tickets in ahead of time.

Yeah I think my mistake is partly that I’m comparing this to the wrong thing: I did early entry for USH and it was 30 dollars. Sort of different but VERY worthwhile to do everything in SNW with barely any lines.

 

[Nala83]

Subways
I think we will wait until we arrive to see if we want a Tokyo Subway pass or just pay per ride with Suica. We will probably end up getting at least one pass, since we will have several days in each city.

I highly recommend getting the Suica card. I works in every city you're going to, and you can use it on the Yamamote line and buses. (You'll end likely up using buses to get to Teamlab Planets.) It's also handy for buying food/drinks at konbinis and vending machines- even some other stores and restaurants.

Pretty much the only thing it can't be used on is the monorail at Disney.

 

[Kwami]

Pretty much the only thing it can't be used on is the monorail at Disney.

You can use Suica on the Disney monorail.

https://www.tokyodisneyresort.jp/en/tdr/resortline/fare

"The following payment methods are accepted: Kitaca, PASMO, Suica, manaca, TOICA, PiTaPa, ICOCA, HAYAKAKEN, nimoca, SUGOCA."

 

[jofo]

We wanted to get tickets to the Cool Japan Detective Conan escape room and the Monster Hunter VR experience, like the Void. You can only buy these on the USJ website. None of the my 5 or 6 credit cards, 2 debit cards, or Wise card worked. I tried going through the Japan site too. However, I always got hung up when trying to create the account. It’s difficult to tell exactly what the credit card info fields were supposed to be; there were really not much instruction. We tried a VPN. Both my husband and son tried their PCs and different browsers. It just never worked.

I think what we've all learned is that what works for one person buying tickets doesn't necessarily work for someone else but just in case -- I went through this getting tickets to the One Piece show. Could not get it to work on my PC with any browser or any of my credit cards. Finally saw the tip online to use a browser on my phone -- I was able to book using Safari on my iPhone. I don't know if it works with other browsers or phone types. It worked with my first credit card I tried on my iPhone (AmEx) so I don't know if it would've worked for my Visa cards or not. Anyway, maybe try your phone if you're still interested.

 

[soniam]

I think what we've all learned is that what works for one person buying tickets doesn't necessarily work for someone else but just in case -- I went through this getting tickets to the One Piece show. Could not get it to work on my PC with any browser or any of my credit cards. Finally saw the tip online to use a browser on my phone -- I was able to book using Safari on my iPhone. I don't know if it works with other browsers or phone types. It worked with my first credit card I tried on my iPhone (AmEx) so I don't know if it would've worked for my Visa cards or not. Anyway, maybe try your phone if you're still interested.

Unfortunately, I tried on my phone too, and my son's Samsung phone. I also tried some tips I found in a Reddit thread. It's OK. Thanks. I think it would have just been too much to try to do anyway.