Japan Trip Booked - Your Recommendations or Advice?

[Wendy Pleakley]

Hey everyone! Girlfriend and I are starting to plan a trip to Japan for Christmas. We're complete novices to the country, and while we plan on doing Disney (three days, ideally Dec. 22-24), even that we're unsure of what to do. I figure this is as good a thread as any to ask for help or advice on things to do or how to go about booking things.

Disney is straight forward. You're going at Christmastime so don't buy tickets last minute, but I don't think they sell out often as a rule.

Tokyo Disney has only recently brought back park hopper tickets, but they cost almost as much as two single tickets so it's not included the way it is elsewhere. Keep that in mind for a 3-day visit.

Tokyo Disney ticketing doesn't like foreign credit cards for some reason so you may need to buy your tickets thought Klook, which works fine.

As for anything else you want to do, research is key. So many things are done through reservations and/or lottery systems. The popular Ghibli Museum for example has a 30-minute window once per month where you can join a randomized queue to try and get tickets. You can't get into a lot of things by just showing up.

 

[Robbiem]

Hey everyone! Girlfriend and I are starting to plan a trip to Japan for Christmas. We're complete novices to the country, and while we plan on doing Disney (three days, ideally Dec. 22-24), even that we're unsure of what to do. I figure this is as good a thread as any to ask for help or advice on things to do or how to go about booking things.

My key piece of advice would be try to immerse yourself in the culture. Japan and the Japanese people are amazing places. It can appear daunting but it’s easy to get around by yourself and the Shinkansen and other trains are fun and easy to use

If you have time I definitely recommend traveling outside of Tokyo to see more of the country. Japan guide https://www.japan-guide.com/ has some good information on a lot of places and is a good place to start.

If you have any areas of interest or want to see anything specific let the forum know

 

[Nirya]

So our general plan is some combination of:

Disney for three days near the start (to avoid New Years)
Tokyo for 3-4 days (I want to do Shibuya and sightseeing)
Osaka/Kyoto for 3-4 days
Maybe Nara/Mt. Fuji

A lot of what I'm wondering about is things like eSIMs, recommendations on places to stay, how best to navigate the trains, etc. I have a general knowledge of places to visit (TikTok is very helpful on this front somehow) but otherwise I'm clueless.

For Disney-specific questions, is a vacation package worth it? I priced one out to about $3000 for the two of us to do three days and stay at the Toy Story Hotel, but is it better to get a hotel nearby and just buy tickets? How much more will we get out of the package?

 

[Disney Analyst]

So our general plan is some combination of:

Disney for three days near the start (to avoid New Years)
Tokyo for 3-4 days (I want to do Shibuya and sightseeing)
Osaka/Kyoto for 3-4 days
Maybe Nara/Mt. Fuji

A lot of what I'm wondering about is things like eSIMs, recommendations on places to stay, how best to navigate the trains, etc. I have a general knowledge of places to visit (TikTok is very helpful on this front somehow) but otherwise I'm clueless.

For Disney-specific questions, is a vacation package worth it? I priced one out to about $3000 for the two of us to do three days and stay at the Toy Story Hotel, but is it better to get a hotel nearby and just buy tickets? How much more will we get out of the package?

Are you trying for 3 park days, or 3 nights? What is your currency?

We are doing 4 nights, 3 park days, without a vacation package for our trip.


Vacation packages are only good for 1-2 nights, so would need an idea of what package you were doing, as they are quite costly, and may only be getting you 1 or 2 nights at the hotel, so then you'd need to add in trying to book hotel only before and after, or just before, or just after, which may be hard as December dates are almost all out and Toy Story is a tricky one to book hotel only.

 

[Robbiem]

So our general plan is some combination of:

Disney for three days near the start (to avoid New Years)
Tokyo for 3-4 days (I want to do Shibuya and sightseeing)
Osaka/Kyoto for 3-4 days
Maybe Nara/Mt. Fuji

A lot of what I'm wondering about is things like eSIMs, recommendations on places to stay, how best to navigate the trains, etc. I have a general knowledge of places to visit (TikTok is very helpful on this front somehow) but otherwise I'm clueless.

For Disney-specific questions, is a vacation package worth it? I priced one out to about $3000 for the two of us to do three days and stay at the Toy Story Hotel, but is it better to get a hotel nearby and just buy tickets? How much more will we get out of the package?

I’ve not been since COVID but here are my thoughts

I’d try to do a one trip into Tokyo if you can and out from Osaka if you can to avoid a travel day.
For your itinerary I’d start at Disney, I’ve not stayed at the Disney hotels. I have stayed at the Hilton and the Sheraton and both are great, I like the Sheraton a bit more, especially the ocean liner rooms but the happy magic rooms at the Hilton are fun as well. Take the airport limousine bus directly to your resort. I was able to buy tickets at the hotel but now I would probably book in advance direct or through klook.
Tokyo is huge so you will be traveling no matter where you stay. I stayed at the park hotel in shimbashi which was really nice, its on top of an office tower so you get amazing views. I’ve also stayed in shinjuku at the hilton but that is a lot more expensive now, unless you can get a good deal.
In kansai I would stay in Kyoto for the change of pace as Osaka,
is more like a mini Tokyo. I reccomend staying near the station, which is an attraction in itself - the granvia is nice but pricey or there is a doubletree nearby. Kyoto has a direct train to osaka kansai airport
I can’t help you with esims but I would recommend getting an IC card for transport which you can generally use on most trains.
Based on where you want to go check out the JR rail passes, they aren’t as good value as they used to be but could still be worth it if you travel a lot. Also send your bags by takubin delivery its cheap and convenient
I wouldn’t stay at Nara - you can go from Kyoto for the day. Fuji is harder to say you can stop off between Tokyo and Kyoto if you want to
Hope that helps, if you want to know about anywhere specific let me know and I will try and help

 

[Nirya]

Ok so we bought our plane tickets today and ended up extending our trip a few more days because it made sense cost-wise (literally saving $1500 on what we were originally planning, and we get a small day trip in Honolulu on the way back which we love).

Trip is December 21 (arrive around 11:30 PM on the 22nd) to January 7.

We're probably still going to do Disney early, likely on the 24th-26th, and then probably head out to Osaka/Kyoto from there, mostly because I assume those places will be cheaper than Tokyo during New Years. Then we'll head back to Tokyo for the final days of the trip (I personally want to try and hit up Wrestle Kingdom at the Tokyo Dome on the 4th as a bucket list thing).

Few questions I have at the moment are:
- What on earth should I do the first day we get there? Arriving around midnight doesn't seem like it will be conducive to trying to navigate to a hotel, so do we try and just find lodging around the airport and move around the next day?
- For hotels, we're probably going to stay away from the Disney-branded hotels just to save money, but are there any recommended places in the Resort area (or that provide easy access to the resort) that people recommend?
- As for the rest of the itinerary, does this make sense to people or should we change things around?

 

[The Empress Lilly]

- For hotels, we're probably going to stay away from the Disney-branded hotels just to save money, but are there any recommended places in the Resort area (or that provide easy access to the resort) that people recommend?

You could stay 'off-site', especially if you stay within walking distance of station along the Keiyō Line. Last trip I stayed a short walk away from the Shin-Urayasu Station, one stop / four minutes from Maihama, TDL station. Lots of great value hotels in this area. It’s all very straightforward after the first time.

 

[Wendy Pleakley]

We stayed at Hotel Sardonyx as an example. It was nice and priced reasonably.

Plenty of nearby convenience stores for a quick morning breakfast. We bought onigiri and ate while waiting to enter the parks.

I’m pretty sure I’ve had longer commutes to theme parks staying onsite in Florida.


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[Keladry84]

- For hotels, we're probably going to stay away from the Disney-branded hotels just to save money, but are there any recommended places in the Resort area (or that provide easy access to the resort) that people recommend?

At Disney, I stayed at Tokyo Bay Maihama First resort. It was the cheapest option in the monorail area and I'd highly recommend for a budget option nearby. It has really good shuttle service and I never waited more than 5 minutes for a shuttle. The ship cabin room is extremely well-themed and is my favorite hotel room I've ever stayed in because of how immersive it was. The lobby area is spacious/quiet and the service from the front desk/bell desk and restaurant was very good for the cost of the room. I think this hotel tends to get a little overlooked by westerners but is worth booking for the price.

 

[Robbiem]

At Disney, I stayed at Tokyo Bay Maihama First resort. It was the cheapest option in the monorail area and I'd highly recommend for a budget option nearby. It has really good shuttle service and I never waited more than 5 minutes for a shuttle. The ship cabin room is extremely well-themed and is my favorite hotel room I've ever stayed in because of how immersive it was. The lobby area is spacious/quiet and the service from the front desk/bell desk and restaurant was very good for the cost of the room. I think this hotel tends to get a little overlooked by westerners but is worth booking for the price.

I’ve stayed at the Hilton and the Sheraton Grande. Both are nice and can be good value if you get a good promotion offer. At the Hilton we had a happy magic room which had a fantasy forest theme and at the Sheraton we stayed in an ocean liner themed room which was great for adults

Ive not stayed there but there is also the dreamgate hotel at Maihama station which is practically at the resort on the station grounds.

If you arrive by train and stay at one of the onsite non disney hotels (or the disney ones) you can check in at the welcome centre and drop your luggage off. It varies between hotels- the hilton took our luggage but we had to collect it and check in in the hotel lobby. The Sheraton took the luggage straight to the room and gave us our room keys etc.

I’m sure no matter where you stay you will have a great time