Feel free to ask! I ask other Liners lots of questions for my trips, even non Disney ones. We are Liners and understand the depth of details and tips needed for “successful” trips!
We are not doing an ABD tour. We looked at it and they are way beyond our budget, unfortunately! We have a no frills tour through Gate 1. The tour price includes our airfare, transportation, hotels, and some meals during the tour. We are putting together the Paris days loosely based on a few TRs here and more individualized help from Wahoohokie, who went in March. People say to visit Paris leisurely and it should be treated like sipping a fine wine but we are treating it like a Liner with FOMO mentality! We will rest and catch up on our sleep during the tour! And then we will go about DLP semi Liner style!
I have so much anxiety about booking our Tokyo Disney trip. I’m gunning for 2 nights at the Miracosta Nov 12-14, and likely 2 park days, but we might only do 1 and go to DisneySea. Thoughts? What tips do yall have for booking?
Fly from DCA to Tokyo arriving in Japan Nov 10. A day general exploring Tokyo proper, then head to Disney. Leave for Bangkok on 14th.
After @gingerSnaps543222 experience, I fully intend to use a TA for my TDL trip! I used a Touring Plans TA for my DLP trip this fall and she didn’t charge me a fee. I already talked to her about booking my TDL trip for next year. If you want my Touring Plans TA’s information, PM me.
We love Disney and want to explore TDL at our leisure. We plan on during 2 days at each park.
Ah, we’re almost overlapping! We arrive Tokyo 11/3, but will be at TDL 11/7-11/9, leaving 11/10. But I want to hear about your Bangkok trip - I lived there when I was six, and would give anything to go back!
Ok Japan peeps. I have an evening and a day midweek first week of March. We are hoping to stay at Miracosta. Worth buying tickets for just a few park hours at DL? Mostly to ride BATB and Pooh and a few other unique things and to see the park.
Also @stlouie did you ever find a TA that will help with TDL? I am one, and have a great tour operator … that doesn’t do anything with Disney @gingerSnaps543222 your stuff has been helpful but I still feel so unfamiliar! I’m used to walking in the park like I own it and I feel like I’m gonna be so lost at TDL no matter how much research I do. TP stuff is a little outdated post reopening. I panicked when I read you could book 5 months out… Thankfully it was wrong. How did November bookings go @timwarp and @DizFinder ??
How can I help? You’re gonna be just fine. If you book hotel you’re guaranteed park tickets which you can buy there. If you can’t get Miracosta, Disneyland hotel and ambassador still get you happy entry which is Bs anyway, it took more than 15 minutes to get thru the line and by then they had started letting in day guests so it didn’t give us any kind of jump at all. Soarin was 60 minutes by the time we go thru and over there.
Just study a map and you’ll be absolutely fine with the layout. It is different than ours but not so different it won’t feel familiar in Disneyland and DisneySea is just a giant oval really.
I highly recommend Pooh, BatB and Monsters Inc and a parade if you can work it. The electrical lights parade is astoundingly good and if you buy the premier access you have an assigned seat so you don’t have to worry about wasting a lot of time waiting for parade.
Thanks for the tag! I have done work on our Japan trip since our last conversation! I haven’t even checked in with DD about what she has done. I’m wrapped up in getting ready for my November France trip and trying to keep up for my December WDW trip! I hope to talk with DD about Japan when she comes home for Thanksgiving. I’ll touch base with you after that.
This is how I feel, too!!! @gingerSnaps543222 agony over the reservations and just being there stresses me out! I would happily turn my TDL portion over to a travel agent. Again, I haven’t done more work on TDL since we last spoke.
We did 4 days, 2 at each park split over 2 weeks. (2 days at front, 2 days at end of trip) The first park day in each was like an orientation to the park. We didn’t even see the Castle in Tokyo Disneyland until the end due to pretty much just walking all around it Our 2nd day at each park was then re-riding things we enjoyed, exploring anything we missed.
My liner card needs to be revoked. I have basically screwed up every single aspect of this planning with my latest being unable to book ANY dining.
First, I totally missed the Miracosta booking window - how did I do that? So, we are doing Hilton Tokyo Bay. Whatever. Making myself feel better by saying we will barely be in the room since we are doing 2 nights and 2 days.
We arrive in Tokyo Nov 10, do a private tour of Tokyo Nov 11 + dinner at Sushi Yuu, which comes highly recommended by our Japan Buyout team + my fellow DC colleagues that travel there a lot.
Nov 12 we head to Tokyo Disney so I have actually done something correct timing our departure to get to rope drop an hour early. This is our Disneyland day, can’t make a single dining reservation - SOS. Nov 13 is DisneySea and again, nothing pops up for dining. We leave the next morning, 14th, for Bangkok.
What I have been able to do is buy park tickets, write out the rides we want to do since only a day in each park and arrival times.
Next up: SOS on dining, and need to learn how I do all the morning ride and show booking, and likely same day dining if possible.
Keep checking on the dining, people drop there just like here and I was able to snatch a breakfast on checkout day when initially I couldn’t. I do remember reading about day of booking but I was able to get everything before hand so I didn’t have to use it and can’t personally offer advice. I can for day of rides and shows. Watch some youtube videos, tdrexplorer walks you thru it. It’s fairly simple but unlike our parks you can’t practice ahead of time cuz it immediately says “hey you’re not in the park” I went for things I thought would go first so I did the show lottery first, then (we had 40th anniversary priority fastpass) priority pass, then premier access. There is a 2 hour timer for priority pass and 1 hour for when you can book the next premier access but you can do both a show premier access and a ride premier access at the same time. So for example in Tokyo Disneyland, I booked parade premier access which I highly recommend cuz they give you assigned seating so you don’t have to waste tons of time trying to catch one and I highly recommend both parades but especially electrical parade if you can squeeze one in, and then I booked BatB premier access. When my hour was up I booked the nighttime parade (and I got 2nd row for this one since I had to wait an hour after booking daytime parade) and I booked Splash Mountain. I didn’t want to do Baymax cuz it wasn’t unique enuf in my opinion but I’d go for that after BatB if you want to. In DisneySea I booked the nighttime show and Soarin and Toy Story sell out first. Indiana has single rider as does the Raging Spirits so I’d go for those last since you can always Single Rider it. Let me know if you have any questions.
You can scan everyone’s QR tickets into your one phone app prior to going into the park. I highly recommend doing this so as soon as everyone has tapped in you don’t have to waste time doing that and you can straight away start booking stuff. I did this as we walked to our first attraction but that’s not truly safe (I have been known to fall on stairs at Disneyland while trying to look at my phone!). So you might want to find a place to stand to the side and do that and then high tail it to your first ride.
*If you can’t get sitdown dining in Tokyo Disneyland (I didn’t want to cuz we only had one day and I wanted to focus on rides/shows) I can HIGHLY recommend the Queen’s of Hearts Banquet Hall and the China Voyager Ramen. Both excellent and get you a dessert at Queen of Hearts and you get a cute little dish as a souvenir. I’m using mine as a nightstand jewelry holder.
Here what I was able to accomplish in one day at Tokyo Disneyland to give you an idea:
We did use Happy Entry (but that’s really such a negligible thing)
As soon as we tapped in:
I entered the lottery and did not win for Mickey’s Magical Musical World
Space Mountain free fastpass for 9:10am
and I bought Beauty and the Beast for 915am
then I bought Premier Access for Disney Harmony in Color
I set a one hour timer on my phone at which point I then secured premier access for:
Splash Mountain for 2:05
Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade
We did in order:
Pooh’s Hunny Hunt (during Happy Entry)
Haunted Mansion (as soon as the park officially opened at 9am but we got in line prior to that)
Rode Space Mountain with fastpass (and once tapped in I booked 12:55 Big Thunder Mountain Priority Pass as it’s just like 'Murica where you can do either 2 hours or after you’ve used it)
Rode Beauty and the Beast with premier access
Bathroom break!
Arrived at 10:15am for 10:50am Mickey’s Magical Musical World (if you don’t get the lottery go to the first show of the day as it has no lottery so you can still see it!)
Star Tours (with one of our three free package priority passes)
Monsters Inc Ride & Go Seek (with one of our three free package priority passes)
Lunch at China Voyager Cafe
Pirates with a 10 minute standby line
Jungle Cruise with a 15 minute standby line
Big Thunder where we were were 6 minutes late for our priority pass and they let us in so they have the same 15 min leniency
Splash with that paid premier access from the morning
Peter Pan with a 25 minute standby line
Snow White with a 20 minute standby line
Cinderella’s Fairytale Hall with a 15 minute standby line
Secured some ice cream cones from World Bazaar’s meta “Ice Cream Cones” LOL
Caught Harmony in Color Parade with our Premier Access front row seats, literally sit on a numbered spot on the sidewalk
high tailed it to Roger Rabbit and beat the crowds with a 10 minute standby line (if you don’t do the parade during this time the rides drop significantly in standby)
Pinocchio 10 minute standby
iasw 10 minute standby
Dinner at Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall (our party actually split up and two of them went to the Katsu place themed to Country Bears called Hungry Bear and they also recommend)
Then had that second row seat on the sidewalk for Electrical Parade
We could have done something after this if we had high-tailed it but we were beat as we did rope drop two days in a row and planned to do it again the next day.
We spent two days at DisneySea so I can’t give you a one day estimate of what you can get done but we did almost everything the first day and we had two dining reservations for the Duffy show lunch and for Magellan’s and we had bar reservation for The Teddy Roosevelt Lounge b/w lunch and dinner. We still accomplished:
Winning the lottery for Big Band Beat 12:55 show
Got Premier Access for Lido Aisle (Section 2) for Believe! This is supposed to the be better location cuz you can see the projects on the hotel.
Got a priority pass for Nemo and because it was available immediately I was able to book a second so I got Aquatopia for 11:05 am (so you don’t even have to check in, it just has to be available to checkin if they offer a similar system when you’re there)
Got a premier access for Tower of Terror at 2pm
Venetian Gondolas with 5 minute standby wait
Rode the Electric Railway to Port Discovery with a 5 minute wait
Rode Nemo with priority pass
Rode Indy with our package free pass
Duffy lunch show during which I hit the 11:05 time and I could book another free priority pass for Raging Spirits for 4:05pm
Rode Aquatopia with Priority Pass
Rode Electric Railway back to American Waterfront
Caught 12:55pm Big Band Beat show
Rode TSM with our 1:30pm Premier Access which we bought with our hotel package
Rode ToT with that 2:00 PA I bought that morning
Rode Big City Vehicles (cuz we had time to kill before our 3pm Teddy Roosevelt Lounge rez)
3pm drinks at Teddy Roosevelt
Rode the DisneySea Transit Steamer liner for a full loop from American Waterfront
Bought Premier Access for Journey to the Center of the Earth for immediate access and rode it
Then rode Raging Spirits with our booked priority pass
Then rode 20,000 Leagues under the Sea with the last pass from our hotel package
Had 6pm dinner at Magellan’s
Caught Believe! with our premier access (standing only) and packed but you can see everything
Again we could have squeezed in one more but this was day one of two days of open - close and of three days of rope dropping.
So all this left by the way on our want to do list was Soarin’, Little Mermaid walk thru playground, Sinbad and Magic Lamp Theater with the kiddie rides being gravy. But we did all that on Day 2. So you could probably squeeze in Soarin’ and/or Sinbad too on that first day if you did one last thing after Believe! I’d recommend Sinbad over Soarin’ which is mostly the same except the queue/pre-show and the ending but I do prefer their preshow and queue. It’s stunning so if you can fit it, I would.
BTW I personally didn’t love Believe! and I’d skip it in favor for the attractions personally. I cannot say the same of the parades in Disneyland which were both outstanding and the best Disney parades I have ever seen hands down.
they should have kept Fantasmic…it looked incredible from the youtube videos.
We leave in slightly more than a week and I feel so unprepared! GingerSnaps, thanks for your detailed explanations, although I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to be able to do half of what you did! We got our tix through Klook, and since we’re staying at the Hilton it looks like we can only try for dining reservations the day before and day of. I’ve told my family that if we just walk around enjoying the ambiance and eating lots of snacks it’ll be worth it.
There is so much good Quick Service, a sit down is not necessary. 100% recommend Queen of Hearts. The other interesting place, I cannot recall the name but it was in the same area as Journey to the Center of the Earth (aka Test Track ) at DisneySea. There are so many good snacks too - and all the popcorn & churros!! They are a must.
Will you do a trip report or add in any tidbits? I’m so anxious about out trip! Less than 2 weeks - arrive 11/10, full day Private Tokyo tour 11/11 then DisneyLand 11/12 & Sea 11/13. Very worried about jet lag and my general energy levels.
We have a no frills tour through Gate 1. The tour price includes our airfare, transportation, hotels, and some meals during the tour. We are putting together the Paris days loosely based on a few TRs here and more individualized help from Wahoohokie, who went in March. People say to visit Paris leisurely and it should be treated like sipping a fine wine but we are treating it like a Liner with FOMO mentality! 
We will rest and catch up on our sleep during the tour! And then we will go about DLP semi Liner style!
work on our Japan trip since our last conversation! I haven’t even checked in with DD about what she has done. I’m wrapped up in getting ready for my November France trip and trying to keep up for my December WDW trip! I hope to talk with DD about Japan when she comes home for Thanksgiving. I’ll touch base with you after that.
but I can’t move it because I leave my kids again two days later! 
Our 2nd day at each park was then re-riding things we enjoyed, exploring anything we missed.