Theme Parks
Universal Studios Japan
I decided to just get the 2 day studio passes/tickets and Express Pass 7 from Klook. The Express Pass shows up earlier on Klook than USJ in the US. USJ seems to show up at midnight my time for tickets for the same day; whereas, they showed up on Klook the day before. I had no issues getting the 2 day passes and Express Passes for the first day. Klook released them later than I had expected though. The next day I got Express Passes for our 2nd day. We got Super Nintendo World for midday on the first day with Wizarding World about 4 hours later. The second day we got SNW for as early as we could, 10am with a 9am park opening. Wizarding World was again about 4 hours later. The 2 day pass was ~$119 (JPY 17,900) per person. The first day Express Pass cost ~$150 (JPY 22,800) per person, and the second day cost ~$145 (JPY 21,800) per person.
We wanted to get tickets to the Cool Japan Detective Conan escape room and the Monster Hunter VR experience, like the Void. You can only buy these on the USJ website. None of the my 5 or 6 credit cards, 2 debit cards, or Wise card worked. I tried going through the Japan site too. However, I always got hung up when trying to create the account. It’s difficult to tell exactly what the credit card info fields were supposed to be; there were really not much instruction. We tried a VPN. Both my husband and son tried their PCs and different browsers. It just never worked.
I wanted to book a reservation for the Park Grille Restaurant, a steak place. You can do it 1 month out to the date at 11am JT through the Priority Seating section of the website. When I originally looked, it was in Japanese. At some point, it changed to English when using the English site. It’s through a third-party. I did a few practice runs. Completely bombed the first try. 2nd try I made sure to have all my info filled out at the bottom, and to have the time and date filled out. I got to the point of confirming one but didn’t, since it was an earlier date. When my dates came, only noon and 1pm showed up; whereas, the previous tries had later times. We really wanted 3pm or later, so that we could get the dinner menu. It had stuff on it that I thought my son would eat; he’s picky. Plus, our Express Passes would conflict. I think the restaurant is closing earlier on our days, because they don’t think it will be very busy. We can try again at 9am JT at the restaurant.
Ghibli Park
They released all of June on the 10th of April 2pm JT. They posted the release information on their website. I looked at the May tickets before June went on sale, and there were still regular tickets available but no premium tickets. I got onto the site about an hour before, and the queue started about 30 minutes before. They uses Queue-it. I had 3 browsers on a laptop and 1 on my phone. My lowest queue position was about 7000. I was worried that it was too high to get what I wanted, but I managed to get the premium tickets for my date for a 1pm Grand Warehouse entrance time. The cost was ~$50 (JPY 7410) per person. We wanted a later time, since we will be coming from Kyoto. It looks to be about a 2.5 hour trip. The park is outside of Nagoya. We are going to aim to get there at park opening at 10am for a weekday. You can enter the other areas at any time, so we can do those first if we make it on time. We will be heading their on our way from Kyoto to Tokyo Disney. I think we will have our luggage transferred at our hotel in Kyoto to Miracosta at Tokyo Disney.
Tokyo Disney Resort
Dining reservations open at 9am JT 30 days out. This is an hour before non-hotel guests. Plus, you can make them for the length of your reservation, hotel or package. I have 3 possible opportunities to reserve dining, since I have 3 reservations: 1 night hotel room only, a 3 day package, and a 2 day package. The first hotel night is the night before our package, so I can reserve a restaurant for our first park day. The next day I can make reservations for the next 2 park days. Finally, I can make reservations for the 4th park day 2 days after. Here is what I got. Some of these choices are not the boldest or most unique, but they all had something that I think, or at least hope, our son will eat or try.
Day 1 Disneyland: Crystal Palace 11am
Day 2 Disney Sea: Magellan’s 2:10pm
Day 3 Disney Sea: Horizon Bay 11:30am, Disneyland: Blue Bayou 6:30pm
Day 4 Disney Sea: SS Columbia 2:20pm
I was surprised about the lack of lunch availability for Crystal Palace. It’s a buffet but no characters. I wanted lunch but had to settle for dinner. Most of the lunch slots were gone when it opened. I guess guests with longer stays booked these before it opened for me. Magellan’s, which is very popular and a long seating, and Blue Bayou, again popular, had better availability. Their menus are fancier and more expensive, so maybe that’s not as appealing. I realized while booking my 2nd and 3rd days, that I had booked Crystal Palace for the wrong day. I had booked it for our first day where we will arrive late and don’t have park tickets. Luckily, it was really easy to get the time I actually wanted, lunch, for our actual 1st park day.
Booking Magellan’s for the 2nd day was very easy. Lots of availability. Since we have overlapping packages, we have tickets for both parks on the 3rd day. I decided to reserve a lunch at Disney Sea and a dinner at Disneyland, but I think we will end up canceling the lunch at Disney Sea. I really want to eat at Blue Bayou. We should have been able to see the nighttime shows the two previous nights. If not, then I can cancel Blue Bayou in order to wait for the Electrical Parade.
For the last day, I booked SS Columbia. This did not go quite as well as the previous days. The site kicked me out as I was in the process of confirming the booking, so I had to painfully wait in a short queue and then wait on every single action/page. I finally got it though. For the 3rd day lunch, I had initially booked SS Columbia, in case I couldn’t get it for the last day. However, once I got it, I canceled SS Columbia and booked Horizon Bay. Horizon Bay had a ton of availability, even though I was booking it a day after it had been released. I don’t think it’s terribly popular.
