A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: The Planning Part III

Read about how the trip turned out on the semi-live blog here.

Read about the planning from the beginning here or read the previous article here.

Our plane was set to arrive at 4:35 PM in Tokyo Narita Airport. This final international park is by far the one we were the most excited about, and not surprisingly also required the most research of the international parks. Tokyo Disney Resort is a world unto itself, as it is not owned or even partially owned by The Walt Disney Company but is instead wholly owned by The Oriental Land Company. The Oriental Land Company pays Disney for the licensing and access to Disney Imagineering to develop and design rides, shows, and attractions. For this reason, Tokyo Disney Resort, while being distinctly Disney, also does things vastly different from any other park.

This is immediately evident when you go to the website. The 5 other Disney Resorts websites all have a very similar appearance about them. They use the same font, buttons, etc. If you can navigate one, you can likely navigate the others. Well, Tokyo Disney looks exactly NOT like any of the others.

Tokyo Disney Resort from researching, seems to definitely require strategies in order to make your stay as pleasant as possible. Unlike Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland and to a lesser degree Disneyland Paris, Tokyo Disney Resort has crowds on the same level if not more than Walt Disney World. It requires having a touring plan or there is a VERY good chance you will not get everything you want accomplished, or even being ALLOWED into the new Fantasy Springs Expansion that opened in June of this year.

After extensive researching, it was found that the number one way to decrease the stress of planning and strategizing is to book a Vacation Package. These packages combine a one to two night hotel stay with park tickets, guaranteed access to Fantasy Springs, along with 2-3 attraction tickets per person per day, free breakfast, free soft drinks in the park, and some other extra goodies. Based on the attraction, in order to use the attraction tickets you either pick a scheduled time when you book your package for that attraction OR just give your attraction ticket at the entrance for anytime entrance to the attraction.

As with anything, there are pros and cons to the Vacation Package. The number one advantage is Vacation Packages are VERY convenient and eliminates a huge amount of the stress of planning. A vacation package is the only way to prebook rides prior to arrival. As with anything, at Disney the number one disadvantage is price as when compared to paying for each item individually, it is about $1,000 USD premium for a Vacation Package. On top of that there are some advantages that only people with a Vacation Package are allowed to utilize. Vacation packages are constantly being modified, and it’s hard to keep up with what package a package includes. Innumerable blog posts could be used to describe the advantages and disadvantages of the Vacation Packages, but I will leave that to the pro bloggers such as Disney Tourist Blog and TDR Explorer.

Without a vacation package, you will need to design your day on the fly, much like how Genie + worked at Disney World, and even then, some of the most experienced park goers may not even be able to do everything they realistically set out to accomplish if the crowd level is moderate to high as evidenced by Disney Tourist Blog’s most recent experience at Tokyo Disneysea. At the time of this writing Vacation Packages also gave you access to a special ticket, called the Fantasy Springs Passport that allowed you unlimited access to Fantasy Springs AND unlimited use of the Premier Access lines, which is the Japanese version of Lightning Lanes, for three out of the four new Fantasy Spring rides.

We ultimately did book a Vacation Package. The nomenclature for these packages is vague at best such as “Attractions & More” and “Attractions Even More”. No that’s not a typo. That’s literally the difference in names between two packages.

We chose the most competitive package to get, the “Attractions Even More”. The total for this 3 day 2 night package came in at about $3300 USD for the Hotel Miracosta Venice View room. This package only gave us two days in the parks, one at Tokyo Disney Sea and one at Tokyo Disney Land. The reason this package is so difficult to book and sells out within hours of release is that it has unlimited Premiere Access to ALL the rides with Premiere Access. It’s basically unlimited use of the Lightning Lanes, or in essence a VIP tour, without the tour guide. So as you can imagine, this would be an extremely coveted package. The Vacation Packages sell out pretty quickly in general, but the “Even More” package will sell out within hours after being released, and the only reason it takes hours is because I’m convinced the servers for the Tokyo Disney website operates using a Pentium chip from the 90’s, and that’s likely an overestimation.

We were somewhat at the mercy of when we were able to obtain a vacation package as to how our hotel situation was going to play out. If you get a vacation package, you cannot add or extend days to that package at the hotel you are booked at. This can create a VERY fragmented stay at Toyko Disney if you get a Vacation Package, as if it’s in the middle of your stay, you will need to book a hotel at the beginning AND at the end. Due to the HIGHLY COMPETITIVE nature of obtaining hotels at Tokyo Disney the chance of you getting the same hotel can be very difficult, and the chance of getting the same room, if you managed to book a desirable room in your vacation package, is a long shot at best and near impossible if you booked during a busy time.

I could and likely will write an extensive article on how to book a Tokyo Disney Hotel as it is next level. The rooms will sell out in 30 seconds, and this is NOT an exaggeration. I practiced for over 6 months so that when the time came for us to book our rooms I had the timing down as best as I could to be able to book the rooms we wanted. Even then I only had an 85 percent win rate for peak dates because despite all the practice there is a great degree of luck as the website is incredibly glitchy and tends to crash constantly when they release rooms. Believe it or not booking Vacation Packages is even less fun if that’s to be believed.

Ultimately, we lucked out and managed to book a 2 night Vacation Package for January 2nd, 2025 to January 4, 2025 in the Hotel MiraCosta in a Venice Canal View room, which is the hotel that is IN Tokyo Disney Sea. I will not write about that insanity, as that’s an entire article unto itself, but I lost a couple days of my life stalking that down. We managed to book the “Attractions Even More” Vacation Package that included a 2 night stay, 1 park day at Tokyo Disneyland and 1 at Tokyo Disneysea, 2 breakfasts, unlimited premiere access, and some extra amenities cost a total of $3281 for 3 people.

Until the new Fantasy Springs Hotel opened in June, Hotel MiraCosta was the ONLY hotel in the world inside a Disney park. While Disneyland Paris Hotel and the Grand Californian are right next to the parks, they technically aren’t actually in the park and just at the entrance. Now Tokyo Disney Sea has two, Hotel MiraCosta and Fantasy Springs hotel.

Now that we had our Vacation Package we could fill in the other hotels for our stay. We were arriving on December 31st and as such needed two nights of hotels until our Vacation Package started. We ended up booking the Fantasy Spring Hotel in the Grand Chateau.

Fantasy Spring is divided into two parts, the Fantasy Chateau and the Grand Chateau. The Grand Chateau is basically a hotel within a hotel, and is the more luxurious side of the hotel and as such comes with some added perks. Given we were in a real time crunch we were doing anything we could to maximize our time at the parks, and the Grand Chateau comes with 8 attractions passes and the ability to buy more, along with a show reservation, entrance to park 15 minutes earlier than other guests with Happy Entry, which is the WDW Early Magic Hours, exclusive restaurant and some other benefits. Also, any guest of Fantasy Springs Hotel, Grand or Fantasy Chateau, is allowed to buy the Fantasy Springs Passport. This is by far the biggest perk of booking as the Fantasy Spring Hotel, as we discussed before, this park ticket is basically an unlimited Fast Pass to the new Fantasy Springs rides.

As with everything this trip, anything that comes with convenience comes with a cost, and while we had some big splurges this vacation, this was by far the biggest, and the one we definitely question our “YOLO” policy for this vacation. Over the years as we have checked things off our bucket list we have stayed at some pricey accommodation like the Burj al Arab, but this tops even that in terms of price, coming it at a $2520 per night for a Terrace & Alcove Room for our date of December 31st.

We wanted to stay at the flagship resort at every property, and at this point we were in for dime, in for dollar so we booked it. Since this hotel was cost prohibitive and we had a desire to stay at the Tokyo Disneyland hotel for at least one night because they have some gorgeously themed rooms, we only booked this for one night, which was our arrival night on December 31st. We would then go to Tokyo Disneysea with the Fantasy Spring Passport in hand on New Year’s Day

So now we just needed to book our hotel for New Year’s Day. Unfortunately, despite all my practicing, I initially failed in procuring ANY hotel room for New Year’s Day. Having monitored hotel room inventory for months though, I knew all was not lost. People typically tend to cancel a fair amount in the first day or two after the hotel rooms get released and there is sporadic random inventory. I stalked the site for the next 2 days and lucked out and managed to snag one of the most desirable rooms, “Disney’s Cinderella Room”, in the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel.

This worked out great as we are going to Tokyo Disneyland on January 2nd on the first day of our Vacation Package, and this hotel was situated right across from the entrance to Tokyo Disneyland. This room was the second most expensive of the trip with a cost of $786 for one night. After our night at the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel, we start our Vacation Package and stay at the Hotel MiraCosta for the final two nights.

So yes, the above was just as confusing as you are thinking it is. Again, I emphasize just how complex Tokyo Disney is and a Tokyo Disney itinerary such as this is not abnormal. So to summarize for everyone as I know I got lost just writing that the schedule for Tokyo is as follows:

• December 31st – Arrive and stay at Fantasy Springs – Grand Chateau
• January 1st – Go to Tokyo Disneysea using Fantasy Spring Passport and Attraction Passes and stay at Tokyo Disneyland Hotel
• January 2nd – Go to Tokyo Disneyland with unlimited Premiere Access and stay at Hotel MiraCosta
• January 3rd – Go to Tokyo Disneysea with unlimited Premiere Access and stay at Hotel MiraCosta
• January 4th – Fly to back to the US

So now that we had Tokyo planned, and had a date back to Anaheim which was January 4th, we now needed to wait for Zipair, the low cost subsidiary of Japan Airlines, to open bookings for that flight.

On a totally random and unrelated note, the Zipair Livery could quite possibly be the worst livery in the sky. I do see that they really live up to their name as a low cost carrier, as they even skimped on the livery, as I’m pretty sure my 9yo daughter could have designed something more exciting than that.

So now back to our previous topic, historically Zipair opens bookings for NRT to LAX at the end of July, so I set a reminder on my phone starting mid July to start stalking the Zipair website so I could book the ticket as they go fast, especially around the holidays. It is also imperative to be one of the first as the price rises pretty quickly as the seats fill up. Unfortunately, despite me waiting 5 months for them to open bookings so I could be the first to book, they released their bookings July 3rd, which was two weeks earlier than their historical trends, and it SOLD OUT by the time I realized it on July 5th.

UGH!!!! OMG! This was the last flight I needed to book, and was the final piece of the flight puzzle as I had already booked our return flight from LA for January 6th. There were available not any award seats in business class from anywhere in southeast Asia back to anywhere on the west coast of North America, and a cash booking for a business class seat was running a little less than $3,700 a piece for a one way ticket or about $11,000 for three people. We had one of three options, either suck it up and pay the cash price for business, or pay the economy price which had already risen to $788 per person or $2364 total for 3 passengers plus bag fees or book award seats in economy which there was still availability.

The idea of flying economy after the marathon of flying we had done and park hopping over the previous two weeks was not super appealing, as this was a 10 hour red eye flight and the fatigue at this point in the trip would definitely be setting in. Part of making this trip feasible without killing ourselves was getting some rest on the flights and in the airports. We have flown 17 hours in economy before to Sydney, Australia from Dallas so we are no stranger to long hauls in coach, but this definitely threw a wrench in our plans. This is the definition of a first world problem. Was there a third option….?

Bet you thought this was going to be a trilogy with a beautiful tearjerking ending just like Toy Story 3. Well, guess what! Just like Toy Story 4, the story you never knew you wanted to hear is coming at you.

To be continued here…

Read about how the trip turned out on the semi-live blog here.

Read about the inception of the trip here.