Planning our visit to Tokyo Disney
Embracing the unknown.
It’s not often that visiting a Disney resort is a subplot when planning a vacation, but as me and my family prepare to head to Japan this week, that’s exactly what’s happening.
The first time my wife and I visited Japan, we left the kiddo at home, because he was too damn young for us to pay all that money to bring him along (don’t worry, he was with the grandparents and having the time of his life). We also decided not to spend our precious time abroad at parks that we can more or less visit in the States (we didn’t understand about DisneySea, and we regret it and we’re sorry).
This time, being the little otaku-loving tween he is today, we’re bringing the kid along — and we’re also a bit more Disney parks obsessed than we were roughly a decade ago. But once again we’re being stingy with our time, so we’ll only have one day at each Tokyo Disney park.
Here’s what we’ve learned so far:
This ain’t Walt’s wait times
Like any normal, sane person, I often check the Disneyland or WDW apps to see what current wait times are and either wish I was there and laugh at all the dumb people who went when it was super busy.
But even the most insane wait time you have ever seen at any of the U.S. parks will pale in comparison to what the Japanese are apparently fine with. For the new and insanely popular Fantasy Springs area inside Tokyo DisneySea, for example, the standby times for Anna and Elsa’s Frozen Journey regularly reach in excess of 200 minutes. I recently saw it peak at 240 minutes — yes, that’s FOUR HOURS.
So the name of the game for us will be prioritization. Which rides are unique? Which one or two are the most important for us? We’ll be focusing on those and then the rest will be gravy from there.
The one true crowd calendar
When it comes to U.S. parks, there are plenty of great options for forecasting crowds. But in Japan, there is only one you should pay any attention to: the AOKsoft calendar.
You can find it here: https://yosocal.com/
Apparently the URL changed recently, but the one above will get you there. It’s all in Japanese, but you should be able to either have your browser translate it (with some weird/funny mistranslations) or be able to figure it out well enough to find the dates you’re looking for.
Lightning Lane nomenclature
I’m still not sure I understand it, but there is a form of Lightning Lane upgrades at Tokyo Disney.
Some rides offer free options, which are still called 40th Anniversary Priority Passes, even though the 40th anniversary is way over. And others offer what is akin to an Individual Lighting Lane — paid upgrades called Disney Premier Access (or DPA).
We will absolutely be utilizing DPA for our priority attractions (and maybe even a show or two). It doesn’t feel too bad paying for it as the one-day tickets for both parks in Tokyo are much cheaper than what you’ll pay in the States.
The other option is to utilize a vacation package, which bundles a hotel stay on property along with tickets and advance DPA upgrades. In fact, this is by far your best shot at getting a DPA pass for the Frozen attraction at DisneySea. But it’s quite pricy. We couldn’t quite justify it for this trip, so we’ll see if that comes back to haunt us.
Embracing the unknown
I’m convinced that many people take trips to Disney World and end up having a bad time because they just didn’t know what they in for. It takes research and preparation to make the most of it. It’s such a sprawling area and even just getting from one park to the next can be daunting and time consuming.
While we’re doing tons of research, we’re also just being prepared to not know what we don’t know. We’ve got our food spots scoped out, but maybe there will be hours-long lines for them. We know how to get to the monorail, but we’ll need to be prepared to pay to ride it. We’re nervous about the crowds, but have also heard that Japanese efficiency more than makes up for it.
Most of all, we’ll soak in the discovery of seeing a Disney park for the very first time — something I haven’t done in a very long time. Also, we’ll get to ride the OG Splash Mountain (even if it’s all in Japanese, I will be gloating about this).
I’ll of course put together a post about all the things I learn during our visit once I’m back, but in the meantime, if you have any tips of your own for visiting Tokyo Disney, please drop a comment!
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