Questions for people who visited TDR who are not from Japan.

That's where we stayed! It was a great hotel, make sure you ask for a high floor room. We were on the 30th floor and had amazing views (see pictures). Our kids (8 and 10) loved the Robot Restaurant show, though there's not a lot of actual show -- lots of drink and souvenir breaks. We got discount tickets on Klook for the first show and paid $44 each. It's not something I would necessarily pay that much for without kids, but there were lots of people there without kids who were having a lot of fun. I would maybe liken it to Vegas -- if you're the type of person who thinks Vegas is fun and outlandish, you'll probably enjoy the Robot Restaurant; if you think it is garish and over the top, you probably won't.

Amazing view!! Good to hear great things about Hotel Gracery :) We are actually Vegas locals and me and SO think it looks like tons of fun. We have TDR at the beginning of our trip, so I have a feeling the night we get into Tokyo we are going to be wiped out from walking. This seems like a perfect thing to do to call it an early night.

Thanks!!!
 
I asked over on the DIS Facebook page before booking our upcoming June trip if we could stay at Disney and transfer into the city. The consensus was this would take too much time because it's farther than it looks. It was suggested to do a split stay, so that's what we are doing: Three nights in Shinjuku upon arrival and three at the Hilton Tokyo Bay before flying to Hiroshima and then train to Kyoto. I feel like it was definitely the right choice now that I've read more about Tokyo.

I'm so on the fence about the Robot restaurant. It really looks like a huge tourists trap to me, but I wonder if my kids would like it!
 
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I asked over on the DIS Facebook boards before booking our upcoming June trip if we could stay at Disney and transfer into the city. The consensus was this would take too much time because it's farther than it looks. It was suggested to do a split stay, so that's what we are doing: Three nights in Shinjuku upon arrival and three at the Hilton Tokyo Bay before flying to Hiroshima and then train to Kyoto. I feel like it was definitely the right choice now that I've read more about Tokyo.

I'm so on the fence about the Robot restaurant. It really looks like a huge tourists trap to me, but I wonder if my kids would like it!

I think a split stay between TDR and Tokyo is definitely a right decision. For visiting Seoul the second time, I had a split stay between Myeongdong and Gangnam. It cut down time spent on travelling across districts to visit different sights. With the split stay, the second trip was more pleasant and enjoyable than the first one.

I was also not sure if DD21 would like to check out the Robot Restaurant. I personally would not enjoy it but wonder if young people might want to take a look. DD decided that it would be too loud for her and we decided to pass it. I am glad that we were on the same page and the money saved can be used on more souvenirs to bring home! You can show your kids videos of the restaurant to see if they are interested.
 
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I would also suggest to everybody to split their stays between a TDR hotel and one more "in" Tokyo...It's not that far away but enough to be "annoying" and it takes some time.

We still haven't done the Robot Restaurant but I think we will try it someday...seems fun to me! I just know that everyone says to just go to the show and to eat before or after because the food is no good. :)

We did the Kawaii Monster Café instead and loved it! We went on a burlesque night (a bite prude but funny haha) and took the package with food and unlimited drinks, and we really had fun!
With kids you can go in the day, they may love their rainbow spaghettis and desserts :)!
 


I asked over on the DIS Facebook page before booking our upcoming June trip if we could stay at Disney and transfer into the city. The consensus was this would take too much time because it's farther than it looks. It was suggested to do a split stay, so that's what we are doing: Three nights in Shinjuku upon arrival and three at the Hilton Tokyo Bay before flying to Hiroshima and then train to Kyoto. I feel like it was definitely the right choice now that I've read more about Tokyo.

I'm so on the fence about the Robot restaurant. It really looks like a huge tourists trap to me, but I wonder if my kids would like it!
I'm on a Japan planning FB group and about 80% say Robot Restaurant is worth it. So I decided for something fun for DD (to offset all the temples/shrines which she may not be as enthused as DH and me to visit;)) to book it.
 
I'm on a Japan planning FB group and about 80% say Robot Restaurant is worth it. So I decided for something fun for DD (to offset all the temples/shrines which she may not be as enthused as DH and me to visit;)) to book it.

Trainingupmy4pri: Can you share the name of the FB Japan planning group?

We are planning for 2020 but my head spins when I think about transferring hotels via trains 4 times with luggage and a 9 year old. Can anyone share tips, tricks???
 
Trainingupmy4pri: Can you share the name of the FB Japan planning group?

We are planning for 2020 but my head spins when I think about transferring hotels via trains 4 times with luggage and a 9 year old. Can anyone share tips, tricks???
I bought a travel carryon backpack and a 25 inch suitcase (one set for each of us), so it will be easier to maneuver on the trains. After TDR, we are staying one night at Ginza because I miscalculated the dates and rebooking the Shibuya hotel meant higher rate. Instead, I added a night in Ginza. I will send the suitcases to Shibuya using the luggage transfer service and only pack two days of stuff in the carryon backpacks for the Ginza stay. I may do the same thing for the one night stay at Nara and send the suitcases to Sapporo on the last day in Osaka. I hope we can restrict buying souvenirs to the available luggage space we have or buy a duffel bag for dirty clothing and check it.
 
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Trainingupmy4pri: Can you share the name of the FB Japan planning group?

We are planning for 2020 but my head spins when I think about transferring hotels via trains 4 times with luggage and a 9 year old. Can anyone share tips, tricks???

Search "Japan Travel Planning" and it should come up. You have to get approval which shouldn't take too long.
 
We did 4 days at TDR and 3 days in Tokyo and then headed to Osaka/Kyoto for 7 days.

We stayed near Disney the whole time in Tokyo, but we are a family of 5 and it was significantly cheaper for us to stay in one of the large family rooms at the Sheraton Grade Tokyo Bay then anywhere else. It was slightly inconvenient but not horribly so. We ended up taking the free shuttle to the Manheim station most of the time to save a bit of money, which again was fine for us. One night it was kinda late coming back from Tokyo so we just used the bayside station. We may be back in Tokyo for a few days and we may or may not do Tokyo Disney Sea for one day and we are considering staying at the same hotel because we liked it well enough. It would be nice to stay closer to Tokyo, but at most of the Marriott hotels we would need to get 3 rooms which adds quite an expense and We are platinum with Marriott so like to stay there for several reasons.

We did do the Robot restaurant. Dh and 2 of my 3 kids (13 and 9) loved it. My 15 year old and I thought it was okay, something we were fine enough with doing once but wouldn't do again.

For the second part of the trip we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott that was just outside the Shin Osaka station, it made daytrips to Hiroshima and Nara really simple. We did a 7 day Japan rail pass for the second half of the trip. The first part in Tokyo we just used Sucia cards and paid for the trips that way. We didn't feel that they 14 day pass would have been worth it for us. I'd have to do the math to see if it was a good choice or not, but it worked well for what we wanted.

Anyway here was our basic schedule

Day 1 Arrive in Tokyo, Tokyo Disneyland until we were tired, around 6pm
Day 2 Tokyo DisneySea
Day 3 Tokyo Disneyland
Day 4 Tokyo DisneySea
Day 5 Tokyo- Fish market (The new one had just opened), Harajuku street,
Day 6 Asakusa, Tokyo Skytree
Day 7 Samurai Museum, Robot Restaurant
Day 8 Train to Osaka, Ramen Museum
Day 9 Kyoto Sumo match, visited the Golden Palace and Gion district
Day 10 Nara day trip
Day 11 Osaka Castle, shopping in Osaka, Pokemon store
Day 12 Hiroshima day trip
Day 13 Kyoto bamboo forest, some shopping and another temple
Day 14 flew home
 
We did 4 days at TDR and 3 days in Tokyo and then headed to Osaka/Kyoto for 7 days.

We stayed near Disney the whole time in Tokyo, but we are a family of 5 and it was significantly cheaper for us to stay in one of the large family rooms at the Sheraton Grade Tokyo Bay then anywhere else. It was slightly inconvenient but not horribly so. We ended up taking the free shuttle to the Manheim station most of the time to save a bit of money, which again was fine for us. One night it was kinda late coming back from Tokyo so we just used the bayside station. We may be back in Tokyo for a few days and we may or may not do Tokyo Disney Sea for one day and we are considering staying at the same hotel because we liked it well enough. It would be nice to stay closer to Tokyo, but at most of the Marriott hotels we would need to get 3 rooms which adds quite an expense and We are platinum with Marriott so like to stay there for several reasons.

We did do the Robot restaurant. Dh and 2 of my 3 kids (13 and 9) loved it. My 15 year old and I thought it was okay, something we were fine enough with doing once but wouldn't do again.

For the second part of the trip we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott that was just outside the Shin Osaka station, it made daytrips to Hiroshima and Nara really simple. We did a 7 day Japan rail pass for the second half of the trip. The first part in Tokyo we just used Sucia cards and paid for the trips that way. We didn't feel that they 14 day pass would have been worth it for us. I'd have to do the math to see if it was a good choice or not, but it worked well for what we wanted.

Anyway here was our basic schedule

Day 1 Arrive in Tokyo, Tokyo Disneyland until we were tired, around 6pm
Day 2 Tokyo DisneySea
Day 3 Tokyo Disneyland
Day 4 Tokyo DisneySea
Day 5 Tokyo- Fish market (The new one had just opened), Harajuku street,
Day 6 Asakusa, Tokyo Skytree
Day 7 Samurai Museum, Robot Restaurant
Day 8 Train to Osaka, Ramen Museum
Day 9 Kyoto Sumo match, visited the Golden Palace and Gion district
Day 10 Nara day trip
Day 11 Osaka Castle, shopping in Osaka, Pokemon store
Day 12 Hiroshima day trip
Day 13 Kyoto bamboo forest, some shopping and another temple
Day 14 flew home
We are doing some of the same things. We’re also doing the 7 day rail pass for our time in Kyoto and for the train to/from Kyoto to Tokyo. In Tokyo, I think we are going to buy the 72-hour metro pass but still carry a PASMO card around. We haven’t quite decided about the metro card but are pretty sure.

Did you just do the standard seats for the rail pass or the upgraded seats?
 
Did you just do the standard seats for the rail pass or the upgraded seats?

We did the standard seats and they were comfortable. I would recommend getting reservations when you pick up your rail passes, some of the trains are pretty full and can be difficult to find unreserved seats on. But overall we were pretty happy with the trains in Japan.
 
We did the standard seats and they were comfortable. I would recommend getting reservations when you pick up your rail passes, some of the trains are pretty full and can be difficult to find unreserved seats on. But overall we were pretty happy with the trains in Japan.
Did you get reserved seats each time? I was thinking maybe we would only need it from Tokyo to Kyoto and vice versa. Like do you think we would need reserved seats between Kyoto and Osaka or to other surrounding places?
 
Did you get reserved seats each time? I was thinking maybe we would only need it from Tokyo to Kyoto and vice versa. Like do you think we would need reserved seats between Kyoto and Osaka or to other surrounding places?

We ended up not using the high speed train in between Kyoto and Osaka, we just used the metro since it got us closer to the places we were going. It took longer but we needed less walking for my MIL. We did not have reservations to Hiroshima and just got to the station early as it was the first stop. We did find seats for all 6 of us, but Dh and I gave ours up to an elderly couple a few stops later. We tried for reservations but they were sold out a week beforehand. We did have reservations for Nara, but we ended up taking non high speed trains on the way back which was actually easier.

We really didn't do as many high speed trains as we initially thought we would, but we did use a lot of JR trains so the pass was still worth it. It was a little bit of a pain getting the vouchers changed over, it took longer than I expected it would. And we had a hard time finding the office to change the tickets over at Tokyo station but after that it was really easy to use the passes.
 
We ended up not using the high speed train in between Kyoto and Osaka, we just used the metro since it got us closer to the places we were going. It took longer but we needed less walking for my MIL. We did not have reservations to Hiroshima and just got to the station early as it was the first stop. We did find seats for all 6 of us, but Dh and I gave ours up to an elderly couple a few stops later. We tried for reservations but they were sold out a week beforehand. We did have reservations for Nara, but we ended up taking non high speed trains on the way back which was actually easier.

We really didn't do as many high speed trains as we initially thought we would, but we did use a lot of JR trains so the pass was still worth it. It was a little bit of a pain getting the vouchers changed over, it took longer than I expected it would. And we had a hard time finding the office to change the tickets over at Tokyo station but after that it was really easy to use the passes.
I guess we’ll have to leave time to get the vouchers changed over. I think we are gonna do it right when we fly in at Narita. We definitely plan to take the shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto and since that’s a long trip we will probably reserve seats. We may not reserve seats on the other ones that aren’t as long because we won’t always want to work on a tight schedule and feel like we have to be there at a certain time
 
I guess we’ll have to leave time to get the vouchers changed over. I think we are gonna do it right when we fly in at Narita. We definitely plan to take the shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto and since that’s a long trip we will probably reserve seats. We may not reserve seats on the other ones that aren’t as long because we won’t always want to work on a tight schedule and feel like we have to be there at a certain time

Most of the other trips you are planning don't have long train rides so it shouldn't be a huge deal to stand if needed. We were in a bit of a difficult position with my MIL who is getting older and having a tough time getting around, My husband who has a knee injury that he has been putting off surgery for and a 9 year old who acts like she is dying if she has to stand in one place for longer than 15 mins. Thankfully my teens are easy going or I would have gone nuts!
 
Most of the other trips you are planning don't have long train rides so it shouldn't be a huge deal to stand if needed. We were in a bit of a difficult position with my MIL who is getting older and having a tough time getting around, My husband who has a knee injury that he has been putting off surgery for and a 9 year old who acts like she is dying if she has to stand in one place for longer than 15 mins. Thankfully my teens are easy going or I would have gone nuts!
Lol yeah it’ll just be Dh and I so we probably won’t worry about reserving seats every time
 
We were only in Tokyo for 4/5 days due to the way it got added onto a Hawaii trip last minute, but here's what we did:

Sunday-Thursday - 4 nights in Tokyo, hotel 2 blocks from Tokyo Station
Sunday night - Tokyo dinner and walking around
Monday- Toured Tokyo
Tuesday/Wed - Disney
Thursday - Tokyo , flew out that night

This worked for us because of our short period of time. Getting to TDR wasn't bad each morning because we were staying near Tokyo Station, so it was an easy train ride.

HOWEVER - in the future, we will go for at least 8-14 days and stay 3-4 in the TDR area just to make things simpler. But for those that switching hotels doesn't make sense, staying near Tokyo Station was just fine.


This is crazy that i saw your post. We were originally planning on going to Tokyo 2021. However we are going to Hawaii April/May of next year
ONLY because i have some Hawaiian air credit i need to burn before it expires. Now im thinking of just adding Tokyo to that trip. How did it go
for you? Was it doing too much? I noticed the flight is shorter so that is a plus lol. We just got back from Hawaiii last year and i don't want to go
back but i'm not one to waste free money. lol And I had no idea Hawaiian Air flew to Japan.
 
This is crazy that i saw your post. We were originally planning on going to Tokyo 2021. However we are going to Hawaii April/May of next year
ONLY because i have some Hawaiian air credit i need to burn before it expires. Now im thinking of just adding Tokyo to that trip. How did it go
for you? Was it doing too much? I noticed the flight is shorter so that is a plus lol. We just got back from Hawaiii last year and i don't want to go
back but i'm not one to waste free money. lol And I had no idea Hawaiian Air flew to Japan.
Why don't you want to go back to Hawaii? We've never been, but it's on my bucket list.
 
This is crazy that i saw your post. We were originally planning on going to Tokyo 2021. However we are going to Hawaii April/May of next year
ONLY because i have some Hawaiian air credit i need to burn before it expires. Now im thinking of just adding Tokyo to that trip. How did it go
for you? Was it doing too much? I noticed the flight is shorter so that is a plus lol. We just got back from Hawaiii last year and i don't want to go
back but i'm not one to waste free money. lol And I had no idea Hawaiian Air flew to Japan.

We were EXHAUSTED when we left for Hawaii because of all the walking - but we had a great time and would do it again in an instant. Staying near Tokyo Station was key to save time because most locations were an easy ride away since that is a hub. Here's a little bit more detail on our schedule:

Sunday night - arrival, Pokemon Cafe
Monday- Asakusa (Temple), Akihabara, Nakano, Shibuya, Shinjuku (Robot Restaurant)
Tuesday: TDL
Wednesday: Disney Sea
Thursday: Ikebukuro and the area around Tokyo Station

When we go back I'd probably spend a day or at least a half a day at most of these places, and explore farther out, but we had SO much fun and made great memories, I'm glad we did it.
 
So my husband and I our doing a tour group to Asia and we have one free day in Hong kong and one free day in Shanghai, so we only get one full day at each of the parks. We probably won't take advantage on trying any of the restaurants due to the short time we have there, but does anyone have any recommendations with only one day at each?
 
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