Once in a lifetime trip – should we delay until Fantasy Springs has opened?

bswift

Mouseketeer
Joined
May 25, 2013
Hi all,

My fiancé and I were planning a trip to Japan in Oct/Nov 2023 for our honeymoon. For me this would be a once in a lifetime trip to Japan, as I have coeliac disease and Japan is notoriously difficult for finding safe gluten free food.

Of course our plans included Tokyo Disneyland and I had been waiting to hear more about the opening of Fantasy Springs before confirming our dates. Well, now it's been pushed back to Spring 2024! I've heard that Disney Sea is already amazing as is but I'm wondering if I would regret missing out on experiencing Fantasy Springs. I tried to talk about this with my fiancé but he doesn't understand 😅

So what do you the experts think – go in 2023 and miss Fantasy Springs or delay our trip until it has opened?

Thanks in advance!
 
IMO I would delay the trip. I've been to Japan before but my sister hasn't and wants to do a trip with me that also includes TDL. We plan on waiting until Fantasy Springs opens as it'll probably be a long time before we return. Fantasy Springs looks incredible and at least for me I'd rather wait than go earlier and miss it.
 
Depends on whether they build it like Tron, which is years over the estimated date or whether they actually open it when they say they will.
 
Depends on whether they build it like Tron, which is years over the estimated date or whether they actually open it when they say they will.

We would go somewhere else next year for our honeymoon and just go to Japan once Fantasy Springs is already opened so no rush!
 


If you can only go once, wait for Fantasy Springs. After the recent announcement, I'd expect The Oriental Land Company to be pretty accurate with their opening dates. So I'd wait 6mths post-opening and go - maybe for your 1st Anniversary.
 
If you only plan to go to Japan once, it's a good idea to wait so you won't feel like you missed something years later.
 
Personally I would go in 2023, before Fantasy Springs opens, or (as bswift suggested) go somewhere else now and then go to Tokyo Disney in a few years' time once Fantasy Springs has been open for a while.

I've just got back from TDR and (despite the reports of OCL reducing the capacity, dated tickets etc.) it was very crowded. This was probably in part due to the fact that the "Believe! Sea of Dreams" night-time show had just started a week or so earlier. However, I can only imagine how incredibly crowded it will be once Fantasy Springs opens - which I would assume would last for a year or two after it opens. I found the main impact for this was that the lines for counter service restaurants and food stalls/carts to be very, very long. This severely limited my options for dining, as I wasn't prepared to wait half an hour for every meal, snack and drink. I think this was the first time I've ever visited a Disney resort and not had a churro - but the lines were just too long. I really wanted a waffle from the Great American Waffle Company in Disneyland but the wait was almost always 50-60 minutes. Most of the counter service places in DisneySea were ~30 minutes (except Yucatan Base Camp Grill, which seems to be quite unpopular so I ended up eating at several times...) I think I queued for half an hour for a chocolate thing and a drink in Arabian Coast, which is longer than I waited for most rides. Luckily there are vending machines peppered about, so you can at least get a drink without queuing.

I menion this in particular as your coeliac disease will, unfortunatly, already be a challenge at Tokyo Disney (compared to the other parks). Although I'm not coeliac I do have several close family members that are (although they weren't with me on this trip) so I have some idea of its impacts. When the parks are very crowded, your dining options will be more limited (unless you're willing to wait for a long time) and it will be slightly more challenging. In addition, cast members' English is not generally quite basic (by which I mean it's easy enough to order food from the menu but making changes/adjustments or asking ingredients is almost certainly beyond their English abilities and you'll have to use pre-prepared translations, google translations etc. and they'll probably have to call another cast member). Weirdly in my three weeks in Japan, I found the language barrier to be larger at Disney than anywhere else - at Guest Services they had to get another cast member to help me, at the TDL Hotel when I called to say "I have laundry to be collected" they had to patch in an external translator etc. etc.

Sorry to be a bit of a downer, but if it were me in these circumstances I would be doing everything I could to go when it's least crowded, which probably means going in 2023 before Fantasy Springs opens. DisneySea is still an amazing park with plenty to see and do so you won't feel like you're missing out.

The flipside of this is that elsewhere in Japan, at nice hotels, I'm sure they can accommodate your coeliac disease, especially if you can email them in advance to explain. I stayed at a lovely ryokan on Miyajima and emailed them about my shellfish intolerance and they had no issues accommodating it.
 



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