Tokyo Disneyland - A family review

The Winnie the Pooh ride ©Troid family

This week we have a Guest review from the Troid family who visited Tokyo Disneyland for the first time in January 2018. The Troid family are a Family of 5 (Mum + Dad + two kids 5 & 13 + Grand Mum (67)) from Australia. This is their review of their time in Tokyo Disneyland and a few other things they did in Japan too!

Where did you stay in Tokyo? Can you recommend? Hotel name..Pools? Busy? Facilities? Food options?

We stayed in a one bed room apartment with 3 beds+1 bathroom + small kitchen. I got this room through Airbnb and it was quite spacious in a quiet neighbourhood area. It is close to Nishishinjuku gochome station and Hatsudai station. Basically, the owner  prepared everything on earth you could possibly need- Shampoo, Conditioner, Bath gel, hair cap for showering, Slippers, batteries, basic kitchen utensils, microwave, Laundry machine and laundry powder –  just like home.

Also very convenient was that there was a '7-11, Lawsons’ in the area. There were also many restaurants – with a  range of options – budget (Hanaya), Izakaya restaurants. We were very happy with our accommodation.

However, we had to ask the kids to keep quiet and not make any noise to respect the neighbours as there is a condition with Airbnb that the owner can cancel our stay if there is a complaint from a neighbour. I was worried that Daughter Aged 5 would get too excited and make too much noise but in the end, she was ok. 

Scramble Crossing, Shibuya ©Troid family

How did you get your Disneyland tickets (online?)? Did you do a Park Hopper ticket? How easy was that?

We got our tickets from Lawson. The machine and menu is in Japanese, lucky that I asked my friend son to buy them for us. Even though he can read Japanese, it was still complicated for him and we spent at least 15-20 minutes until we got the ticket. I couldn’t use my (Australian) Master credit card paying at this ticket machine and you had to pay by cash.

If you buy ticket from this machine, you cannot buy the senior price ticket – we ended up paying the Adult price ticket for my mum(who is over 65), however, you can get the senior price if you buy the ticket at the Disney gate.

The machine printed off the docket. Then we needed to take the docket to the Lawson check out so that they could print the actual tickets at the cashier which can be presented at the Disney gate. If you hold the ticket from Lawson, you can go directly to the gate and they let you in.

©Troid family

What were your favourite rides in each park and why? Did this differ between kids and adults?

We loved:

Space Mountain – not recommend for seniors, my mum who is 67 years old was lining up with us but then we thought she would not cope with this ride (there was also a warning sign), so she did not end up on this ride. There are many escape exits.

Winnie the pooh - We all loved this ride. At first my husband thought that it was only a walk into the book and that was all! It turns out to be a very fantastic ride, love the Hefalumps and all the sweet set up in this ride (just like you read in the book, my 5 year old really enjoyed this ride as she knows all the books and the characters.

Monster Inc – Very fun ride, we loved the game and the little torch (you need to look for ‘M’ and shed the light from your torch to ‘M’. We loved the set up inside, just like you are in Monster Inc in the movie.

Big Thunder Mountain:  We enjoyed this ride, the ride took us back to the oldie Gold rush period. I think It would be alot quicker if we had a Fastpass ticket but the normal line was not bad either as it was close to 6pm. We were in line for 25 mins which is not too bad. The train crazily went up and down the mountain and there was a little splash of the waterfall. Both my kids enjoyed this ride. Grand Mum also loved this but it maybe was a bit too much for her (she was a bit sick afterwards, but not serious).

Big Thunder Railroad ride ©Troid family

Alice Tea party Tea-cups: The kids loved it but I hated it, as they twisted round and round and round, it made me feel dizzy!!!!! Not recommend for adults (like me).

Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blaster: As the line up was not so bad, we gave it a shot. It was so much fun and you got to shoot Astro(?) and see your score in the end. We can see that many people loved this ride and went back to play it again and again.

Stitch Encounter: As it is only in Japanese (no English subtitles), we did not quite get it but it seemed that all the Japanese had so much fun. I guessed it is like an interactive kind of thing but as we could not understand the language, it was not quite fun but we had a good experience anyways.

I would have thought my eldest daughter whom is 13 would get bored with some of the rides in Disneyland but she really enjoyed pretty much all the rides, Dumbo, Snow white ride, Peter Pan flights. The only ride that she has no interest was the Carousel Merry go rounds (only my husband and daughter aged 5 went on there).

We missed the Splash Mountain as the queue was insane – 1 hour wait- if we had worked out how to get a Fastpass, we would not miss it. My 5 year old daughter still says to me until this day that we have to go back and play ‘Splash Mountain’ while my 13 year old daughter has got no interest as she did not like the rides that can make her wet!

Grand Mum's (67) favourite rides were Peter Pan, Snow Whites, the Parades and Mickey's Philharmagic in 3D. She also loved how all the Cast Members in Disneyland were also always so cheerful and happy. Grand Mum loved Big Thunder Railroad (despite it making her feel sick). She was less enthused about Gadgets Go Coaster in Toon Town as it made her feel a bit dizzy afterwards.

Any Rides that were too scary for the kids?

Snow white rides  - my 5 y.o girl is scared of the witch- she closed her eyes all the way through this ride. We heard there was a girl crying when we was lining up. The set up and the witch is quite scary for the little ones.

Funny moments on the trip?

Husband and I went to Izakaya restaurant (place where you can drink and have a grilled bbq) at night. In the menu, it wrote ‘Heat’ but actually we found that it was in fact ‘grilled cow heart’ – is this funny or too scary?

Where did you eat at Disneyland? Recommend?? Or ones you don’t?

We arrived Disneyland at 1pm (I know, my group are not early birds) and we were starving. We ate at the burger shop in front of Disney Resort as soon as we got there. It was so delicious. Japanese burger size is quite small compared to Australian sizes. The fried chicken burger I had was so succulent. It was so delicious, Japanese taste standard is very high and we were so impressed. We paid $6-$8 AUD for a set of burger+ chips and salad.

©Troid family

We bought a Churro’s, in Western Land area. It was a foot long churro. My 13 year old daughter loved it. At first, I thought it would cost us more (as you would imagine all the food prices in Theme parks in Australia are quite ridiculously expensive!). However, we so surprised that it was only 300 yen and it was delicious ! I would recommend this as a quick energy lifter for your kids!

A foot long Churro for 300 Yen ©Troid family

Queues and Lines? How did you find them versus the kids?

We went there on a Monday at 1pm. We found that the queue was shorter at night time than day time. We did not use the Fast pass at all. I couldn’t find the Fastpasses machine so did not end up using it. For Winnie the Pooh ride, it only took 20 minutes of waiting. Most of the queues we waited were 20-30 minutes (or less than that). The kids were fine - my secret was as long as they had popcorn, they were fine.

The longest queue we had was 40 mins line up to take a photo with Mickey Mouse.

 

Inside Mickey's house ©Troid family

How did you find getting around Tokyo and getting to Tokyo Disneyland?

Most of the time we used the Subway and whatever Google maps suggested.We bought Passmo card which was quite convenient. When we returned the Passmo card at the Haneda airport, we got 500yen refund. We went to Disneyland by subway, train.

What do you love about Disneyland?

We loved all the rides, the set up, the castles and the parade. We were so lucky that we did not miss any parade even though we only arrived at the park at 1pm. We watched the Disney parade and Elsa parade, the kids loved them.

©Troid family

©Troid family

©Troid family

Did you try any of the popcorn flavours and buy a Popcorn character? 
The popcorn comes in all sorts of flavours! Weird ones like soy sauce but also things like chocolate popcorn! You don’t need to get the flavoured popcorn with the character. You get a voucher and go somewhere else if you don’t like the popcorn flavour that accompanies the character! We had milk chocolate popcorns in the Cinderella pumpkin chariot.

©Troid family

©Troid family

Fireworks? How were they?

We missed that as we went on Monday (there were no fireworks)

How did you cope with the plane trip with 2 kids?

My 5 years old daughter - she was fine. All I needed to do was help her with Movie and Games selection on the plane. We flew with Cathay Pacific from Thailand, it took 2 hours then stopped over at Hong Kong (HK). We only had less than 50 minutes for transit. There was quite a long queue for HK border security, so we ended up we had to run but we made it. So if you need to transit at HK, choose a flight that has more transit time. From HK to Japan it is roughly 3 hours.

My 13 years old brought her own laptop, she downloaded all the shows she loves to watch prior to the flights. She also brought her phone with her so that she could listen to her favourite songs on the plane. On the plane she could charge her device- there was no problem as long as you turned it to Aeroplane mode. The only consequence was she had to carry her bag pack with all these gadgets around which in Grand Mums opinion, was not convenient (for me), when we had to go through HK border security check it took longer, but she was fine with it.

Skating rink at Odaiba with giant robot ©Troid family

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Until next week,
KJ 

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