Princess Madeleine
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2018
Finally got back into my routine at home and decided to give impressions of my first trip to TDR.
Background:
Trip participants were my sister and myself, both under 25s from the US. I've attempted a Disney World trip every year since getting a corporate job after college, but my sister hadn't been to a Disney park since middle school. We needed to make this trip work on a budget and, other than flights, I found this to be a pretty cheap getaway.
We spent 4 days in the park and 1.5 days in Tokyo.
Transportation:
Highly recommend Singapore Airlines. It really felt about as luxurious as I can imagine an economy seat ever becoming. I would recommend spending the extra $10-15 a seat and getting the priority economy seating since that space is a little quieter.
We purchased Suica cards in advance on Voyagin and picked them up at the airport. It was very easy to find the redemption counter and use the cards for city trains.
We got 4-day monorail passes for our park days, which were well worth the price. We did notice on the monorail that if we left our hotel to arrive at the parks an hour before park open, the trains were pretty quiet and plenty of seating was open. However, if we left to get to the parks right at opening, we'd get to the station right at the same time as kids going to school. Everyone was respectful of others so it was never uncomfortable, but it did get crowded.
Hotel:
Stayed at Hilton Tokyo Bay for the whole trip, and we actually ended up getting upgraded to a Celebrio bay view room for free since they had overbooked the lower priced rooms. That view was breathtaking in the mornings as we were on the top floor. The room itself was spacious and fit our needs perfectly.
We got breakfast every morning at the grab and go place, but didn't eat anywhere else at the hotel. The pastry case had a nice balance of Japanese and Western items; our favorite was the curry bread.
Parks:
Everything you've heard about the friendliness and cleanliness is true, so I won't go into that too hard. I did have some random impressions that may be helpful to those in the planning stages.
I did expect Toy Story to have a ridiculous fast pass line, but it still surprised me when I got there. We arrived at the park over an hour before opening on a low crowd and rainy day, walked over as quickly as we could after entering, and fastpasses were already going for 2:00pm when we got there.
Buffeterias are my favorite dining style. We usually tried to sit down at one around 11:30 and we only needed popcorn and small snacks for the rest of the day.
Speaking of popcorn, I didn't find a flavor I didn't fall in love with. We tried curry, Chinese chili, soy sauce & butter, strawberry, and honey.
As for rides, I forced us to take about 5 turns on Sindbad because Chandu is the cutest. My wallet was thankful that the amount of Chandu merch was limited. My sister loved Hunny Hunt and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Both of us came off of Space Mountain happy (instead of the usual "thankful we made it out alive" feeling we always get in Florida lol). I must say that I did miss being able to grab fastpasses on the app, as walking all the way across the park did hamper our use of fastpass. However, we went on light crowd days so we rode basically everything anyway.
Merch was very unique on the whole, and usually wasn't terribly expensive.
It was odd to me (in a good way) that cast members seemed to light up when we waved at them and said a quick "ohayo gozaimasu" or "konban wa". Very nice touch by the park staff to make it a magical trip, and even a tiny amount of Japanese language skills went a long way.
Can't think of much else to highlight at this time. Thanks fellow DIS-ers for all of your input over the last few months, this was a fantastic experience and I can't wait to go back!
Background:
Trip participants were my sister and myself, both under 25s from the US. I've attempted a Disney World trip every year since getting a corporate job after college, but my sister hadn't been to a Disney park since middle school. We needed to make this trip work on a budget and, other than flights, I found this to be a pretty cheap getaway.
We spent 4 days in the park and 1.5 days in Tokyo.
Transportation:
Highly recommend Singapore Airlines. It really felt about as luxurious as I can imagine an economy seat ever becoming. I would recommend spending the extra $10-15 a seat and getting the priority economy seating since that space is a little quieter.
We purchased Suica cards in advance on Voyagin and picked them up at the airport. It was very easy to find the redemption counter and use the cards for city trains.
We got 4-day monorail passes for our park days, which were well worth the price. We did notice on the monorail that if we left our hotel to arrive at the parks an hour before park open, the trains were pretty quiet and plenty of seating was open. However, if we left to get to the parks right at opening, we'd get to the station right at the same time as kids going to school. Everyone was respectful of others so it was never uncomfortable, but it did get crowded.
Hotel:
Stayed at Hilton Tokyo Bay for the whole trip, and we actually ended up getting upgraded to a Celebrio bay view room for free since they had overbooked the lower priced rooms. That view was breathtaking in the mornings as we were on the top floor. The room itself was spacious and fit our needs perfectly.
We got breakfast every morning at the grab and go place, but didn't eat anywhere else at the hotel. The pastry case had a nice balance of Japanese and Western items; our favorite was the curry bread.
Parks:
Everything you've heard about the friendliness and cleanliness is true, so I won't go into that too hard. I did have some random impressions that may be helpful to those in the planning stages.
I did expect Toy Story to have a ridiculous fast pass line, but it still surprised me when I got there. We arrived at the park over an hour before opening on a low crowd and rainy day, walked over as quickly as we could after entering, and fastpasses were already going for 2:00pm when we got there.
Buffeterias are my favorite dining style. We usually tried to sit down at one around 11:30 and we only needed popcorn and small snacks for the rest of the day.
Speaking of popcorn, I didn't find a flavor I didn't fall in love with. We tried curry, Chinese chili, soy sauce & butter, strawberry, and honey.
As for rides, I forced us to take about 5 turns on Sindbad because Chandu is the cutest. My wallet was thankful that the amount of Chandu merch was limited. My sister loved Hunny Hunt and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Both of us came off of Space Mountain happy (instead of the usual "thankful we made it out alive" feeling we always get in Florida lol). I must say that I did miss being able to grab fastpasses on the app, as walking all the way across the park did hamper our use of fastpass. However, we went on light crowd days so we rode basically everything anyway.
Merch was very unique on the whole, and usually wasn't terribly expensive.
It was odd to me (in a good way) that cast members seemed to light up when we waved at them and said a quick "ohayo gozaimasu" or "konban wa". Very nice touch by the park staff to make it a magical trip, and even a tiny amount of Japanese language skills went a long way.
Can't think of much else to highlight at this time. Thanks fellow DIS-ers for all of your input over the last few months, this was a fantastic experience and I can't wait to go back!
