[Travel Advice] Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea

Short itinerary and prep for Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea

Random Observations/Comment #883: After every visit to Japan, I wonder, how do we live like dishonest heathens in the US? How come we can’t have awesome public toilets everywhere?

Things we wish we knew during planning

We wish we followed our own advice from California Disneyland and DCA:

Disney Parks: Tokyo vs California

California Disneyland has the extra Star Wars section, while Tokyo Disney had a Beauty and the Beast castle area. DisneySea is a force all onto its own.

• More parkland and rides? - Disneyland vs. Disneyland, California feels bigger with a larger area around the Frontierland. DisneySea in Tokyo dwarfs Disney California Adventure.

• Bigger castle? - Tokyo Disney. The original California Disneyland is so dinky.

• Better animatronics? - Tokyo Disney has really new special effects. Think Toon town magnetic rides everywhere.

• Food? - Tokyo Disney definitely has higher quality food (this goes for anything done in Japan).

• App usage? - IMHO, California Disney has an easier-to-understand lightning pass for sign up, while Tokyo Disney has one-off purchases per ride with reservations (*~1500yen per person per ride). The overall lightning pass easier to bounce around the park and feels much more of a bang for the buck.

• Gifts and Toys? - They’re about the same. That said, California had better themed toys like Nightmare Before Christmas after the Haunted Mansion Ride. Tokyo Disney also features this character, Duffy the Bear, so expect to see that a lot.

• Rides and Lines? - This is hard to compare. I’d say that Japanese teenagers are extremely patient and polite when getting onto rides. The lightning pass situation and not staying at the park makes it difficult to compare I get the feeling that Tokyo Disney has more focus on the kids (and obsessive Baymax teens) and less on the intense rides since California Disney Adventure has much more Marvel than either Tokyo parks.

Some mistakes were made:

• Staying outside the resort location - Even though it was a 30 min commute, this was still a big barrier of returning to the park at night. The resort stay would have given us early entry for rides, the ability to take naps without a crazy commute, and less stress overall.

• Going to DisneySea on a Saturday - Crowds and long lines (it took nearly an hour just to enter and we couldn’t go on the popular rides we wanted).

• Doing minimal research on DisneySea - While we did watch a video on all the rides, we didn’t do adequate planning.

• Going to Disney the next two days after landing - Because of jetlag, we were drained by the early afternoon. If we planned better, we would have the opportunity to take a nap at the resort or go during a weekday.

• Not doing two days at DisneySea - DisneySea is deceiving large and beautiful. Disneyland is pretty much a mirror of rides from California Disney resort. Just arriving from Colorado to ride a train through Frontierland felt awkward. If you had a Friday-Saturday time slot and want to go to both parks, then I would definitely do DisneySea on Friday and Disneyland on Saturday.

• Booking a restaurant and show for 7:30PM - There was no way we were going to make it to that late and we couldn’t get a refund. Earlier seating is so much better.

• Hubris - I went in thinking “we’ve been to this rodeo before” and therefore missed out on a few rides and deals.

At the end of the day, though, everything was reasonably priced with the exchange rate and we were really just there for the vibes with a few rides and photos. The food was also pretty delicious (but then again, all food in Japan is delicious to me).

Rides Research

This TDR Explorer channel is pretty good for giving advice for Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea:

I really feel like the combined knowledge from the recent California trip meant that I could just wing it. Mentally, I was much more prepared on the app to see the wait times and general path across different lands. We were also going to skip all the rides that were heavy in Japanese language (e.g. Jungle cruise ride).

For 7-year-old not really into big rides:

• Tokyo Disneyland

  • It’s a Small World with Groot - This was a family favorite. Many may be familiar with the classic boat ride and earworm of a song, but this version was updated with Marvel characters and adorable baby Groots.

  • Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast - This was the one line that went up to 120 minutes immediately. If you’re really interested in this, get into the resort and go here early or pay for the Fastpass timed entry.

  • The Happy Ride with Baymax - Even if you don’t do the ride, it’s fun to just see the fanboys dance to the song around it.

  • Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters - Evie loved this in Tomorrowland, but the line for this was insane.

  • Monster’s Inc. Ride & Go Seek - We also wanted to go to this one because there’s some shooting interaction, but the line was too long.

  • Pooh’s Hunny Hunt - This one is apparently much better in Japan due to the higher animatronics and projections.

  • Star Tours - This was pretty much the same as Disneyland, but in Japanese.

• DisneySea

  • Anna and Elsa’s Frozen Journey - If we stayed in the resort, this would totally be the first ride I’d go to because it’s right next to the hotel. I’ve seen the app show 180 minutes. Based on the walkthrough, this is basically the whole Frozen story while walking through the full frozen castle.

  • Rapunzel’s Lantern Festival - I wish we got here earlier to see this. I will come back to Japan just to see this ride.

  • Peter Pan’s Neverland Adventure - This is another upgrade from California.

  • Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage - Fun dark ride with a beautiful song. This was also super crowded.

  • Soaring: Fantastic Flight - We did this in DCA, so I suspect this is the same.

  • Toy Story Mania! - This was a weird shooting one because you have to pull this string on the gun. I guess it’s the equivalent of the Spiderman one in DCA.

  • Jumpin’ Jellyfish - I just liked the mermaid area because it was nicely air conditioned.

  • Venetian Gondolas - This usually has a short line and it’s really peaceful to float around.

  • Caravan Carousel - A nice escape from the sun in the world of Aladdin.

  • Aquatopia - It’s a trackless bumper boats, but more fun spinning.

Tokyo Disneyland Itinerary

TL;DR: Peaceful wandering and getting over jetlag.

imseelemons

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Friday: Left at 8AM, arrived at 8:30AM for the 9AM door opening. It took 20 minutes or so to get in. Not really a big line or that much rush to go to rides. Everyone seems to have gone to Beauty and the Beast or Baymax.

Note that if you take the red JE Keiyo Line, you will get off at Maihama Station. From there, you can just walk to the entrance.

We wandered and walked straight to Fantasy Land. We really liked the Cinderella castle.

It’s a Small World ride was one of our favorites. Adorable Groot everywhere. I was also wearing a Groot shirt so everyone loved me.

Snack at La Taverne de Gaston. Pretty happy about the meat pie and beer.

Walked around all over the place to see some shorter ride lines and enjoy the space.

Lunch at Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall - The kid’s lunch meal was super cute. Desserts were delicious.

Walking around some more, we saw a lot of people sitting next to the path for the parade. We wound up seeing it from afar, but the parade looked in-depth.

Frontierland was our last stop. The train ride had no wait and we found it funny that we came from the Colorado Red Rocks to see the artificially created red rocks.

If I had better planning, I would have followed:

1. It’s a Small World with Groot (usually a shorter wait)

2. Beauty and the Beast (book on premium slot)

3. Baymax Ride or Alice Tea party ride

4. Early Snacks

5. Pooh’s Hunny Hunt (wait)

6. Lunch

7. End with Buzz Lightyear or Monster’s Inc (book on premium)

Tokyo DisneySea

TL;DR: 18,000 steps and 4 hours of just walking around to see the level of immersion. This felt more like Disney World in size than California.

imseelemons

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Same plan as yesterday, we got there at 8:30AM for the 9AM entrance. The difference was that to reach DisneySea from the JE Maihama Station, we also needed to take another 500yen train/tram ride around the park. This slightly extra time means we were much further back and it took around 45 minutes to get in.

Once inside, you’ll see this gigantic place. I’m pretty sure everyone walks to the Frozen area and starts to wait on line. If we planned better, we would have bought the one-off fast tickets for Rapunzel to see the lanterns. The fast tickets are around 1,500-2,500yen per person per ride ($10-15), which is a bit steep but worth it as a premium to get a shortened ride line. By the time we got to walking, everything was fully booked.

The walking around and sightseeing is really just as entertaining. There’s just so much to see and details in this massive place.

Journey to the Center of the World was vast. Long lines were everywhere.

TBH, you can probably save the Mermaid area for a later time because the rides aren’t that exciting and the waits are good for a hot day.

Across from Ariel’s Playground is Aladdin, which was really well crafted. There’s even a slums area that leads to the palace.

The carousel was another nice reprieve from the heat. Super lazy spins.

Aquatopia had a short wait, but it also took 15 minutes of walking to get there from what looked like a shorter walk. This is another reason to understand how massive this place is.

Toy Story Mania was an okay ride. It was an immersive shooting game with some rotations.

Since we had jetlag, we looked up the best place for a rest, which is the Teddy Roosevelt Lounge. We waited 45 minutes to get a lounge area and had an early lunch. It was a much needed nap and rest.

The last place we went was probably not a great idea. We walked all the way to the other side of the park so we could take a rest while waiting for the Frozen journey. It was worth just getting to the area, but the ride itself was way too long.

The hotel was glorious and literally right next to the Frozen ride, so next time we’ll get you.

To end the day, we had enough of walking so we took the steamboat ride back to the entrance. This didn’t save any time, but it did save some walking.

If I had better planning, my walking path would have been:

1. Rapunzel

2. Sinbad Story

3. Walk around Frozen area

4. Mermaid area to cool off and eat

5. Steamboat ride

6. Gondola ride

7. Snacks around the NY area

Net-Net: Based on what we actually went on, I would personally like to go again (in 3 years) and just stay in the resort. There were a lot of details and places to explore. In any case, this wasn’t the main reason for the Japan trip, so I’m happy we didn’t give it too much weight for it to be the main attraction.

~See Lemons Love Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea

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