Tokyo Disney Trip Report: 2 Day Unlimited VP with a 6 year old (Sept 28 / 29 / 30)
**Tokyo Disney Trip Report: 2 Day Unlimited VP with a 6 year old (Sept 28 / 29 / 30)**
2 Day Unlimited VP for me and my 6 year old, plus an extra night at Toy Story Hotel on the front end. My husband hates Disney so he sat this one out, and we used the savings from not having a third person to splurge on the Unlimited VP for the 2 of us. Almost all rides had no wait, but several took 15 or so min to get on regardless because of pre show stuff and how the priority line meets up with the standby line.
**Booking**
I somehow booked the Shanghai Toy Story Hotel on Klook, but luckily my husband noticed on the last day we could get a 100% refund. I kept checking around 8 days before check-in and managed to scoop up a room for us for the first night at Tokyo Toy Story hotel!
**Toy Story Hotel (Sept 28)**
Amazingly themed. Just wow. They let us check in at 2:30pm instead of 3pm. The VP package is a little confusing but manageable. The next day we packed up our luggage and they moved it to the new room for us.
**Disneyland Day (Sept 29)**
8:00am lineup. Regrets!!!! Way too early. Did not have proper ponchos and got SOAKED to the bone waiting for the park to open. I thought Uniqlo rain jackets would keep us dry. Nope. We needed both those and ponchos.
8:45am we finally got in but blew Happy Entry because child had to use the bathroom 🤣
Got to old school Peter Pan at 8:58am and were the second or third ones on the ride.
Rides:
* Peter Pan x 2
* Snow White x 2
* Pinocchio
* Tea cups
* It's a Small World
* Cinderella's Fairy Tale Hall (10 min wait)
* Castle Carrousel x 2
* Haunted Mansion
* Western River Railroad
* Beauty and the Beast (10-15 min wait despite VP)
* Monsters Inc x 3
* Star Tours
* Stitch Encounter (parents, spare yourself this one if you don't speak Japanese. Child enjoyed it but I was totally lost and bored)
* Pirates of the Caribbean (scariest ride in the whole park for my 6 year old)
* Roger Rabbit
* Gadget's Go Coaster x 2
* Goofy's Paint 'n' Play House
* Chip 'n Dale's Treehouse
* Donald's Boat (boring)
Shows and parades:
* 2 parades (no planning, just stumbled into them while walking around)
* We won seats in the lottery for Mickey's Magical Music World. We went on a whim, not knowing at all what to expect. Don't miss this!!! It was one of the highlights of the day. We were blown away. If I could do it again I would have paid to sit downstairs, but we had a great view up top so I can't complain!!
Food:
* Ate as much ice cream as humanly possible with the unlimited frozen desserts package. Four rounds per day pp.
* Didn't have as much success with drinks. Tea, water, a weird boba soda thing and an orange soda.
* 2 popcorns (caramel and soy sauce)
* 1 chicken leg
* Dinner at Pizza Planet (pizza and green aliens). Not very good but picky-kid friendly.
Souvenirs:
* 1 big floppy rabbit hat, 1 Princess Jasmine doll (32 USD), 1 small clip ghost stuffed animal, 1 Elsa keychain and a frozen cookie tin.
* For the free VP gift I gave mine to my daughter and she chose the Mickey clip stuffie and the suitcase purse thing
**DisneySea (Sept 30)**
Drizzling and gray with some breaks in the rain.
Breakfast at Lotso cafe. I wasn't wild about it, but my kid loved having chicken nuggets for breakfast and all bets were off this trip. She could eat whatever she wanted (no food battles). We slept in and missed our scheduled breakfast time (8:10am) but they let us use the ticket at 9:15 because there was space.
10:00am we went in the Fantasy Springs entrance because we were staying at Toy Story Hotel.
* Rapunzel x 1. Absolutely beautiful, but we decided it was too slow paced to ride again just then.
* Peter Pan x 3 in a row to start the day. We both loved it. Maybe my fav ride in the history of rides. It really felt like we were flying. Love love love.
* Frozen was sadly closed and said it would be all day!
Then we raced across the park to the stage by the big boat because we'd won free entry tickets to a character dance show, Dance the Globe. It took us 35 min, lost and backtracking much of the time.
* Jasmine's carpets on the way, 15-20 min wait (at the end of the night the line was only 5 min!! Oh well)
* The moment we arrived at the dance show, they canceled it for rain.
* Toy Story shooting ride x 3 in a row since we were right there. Loved it.
Then we trekked back thru to the other side of the park.
* We hit 20,000 Leagues. Borderline too scary for my kid, and after that she decided she was absolutely not going on Journey to the Center of the Earth.
* Journey to the Center of the Earth (me, solo). I was dying to do this ride and she's tall enough, so we went all the way to the cart roller coaster part and they were so nice to let her wait 3 min for me by the exit so I could go alone. It was my fav ride in the park!!! I absolutely loved it. Screamed and laughed like crazy.
* Ariel's grotto. We ran around and explored a while but didn't ride anything bc the lines were really long and it was crowded. The room with all her treasures would have been a dream of mine to enter as a child. It was really amazing. The whole area was spectacular to run around in.
* Soaring. Also amazing, and my kid wanted to do it again, but even with VP it took maybe 15-20 min to get on and I was getting tired at this point.
* Sinbad's journey and the genie carousel. Got a quick curry/naan in the food court there and saw Abu and Genie running around.
* Frozen x 2. I randomly noticed on the app it was suddenly up and running! Such a nice surprise! Similar to the Hong Kong one but different. Just lovely.
* Tinker Bell buggies (25 min wait)
* Peter Pan one more time on our way out (4th ride of the day!)
Then we exited the park to go get our bags and meet my husband in Tokyo, and right at the exit she convinced me she wanted to "face her fears" and go ride Journey to the Center of the Earth!!
I decided to let her. We re-entered the park, trekked about 15 min there in the cold rain, and had a blast. She faced her fear and loved it. It scared the crap out of her tho and she didn't want to do it again (the dark part and the fast coaster part. She loved the monster and the gems part). But she was so glad she did it and can't stop talking about it.
She wanted to face her fear and do Raging Spirits too, but at that point it was 7pm, we were soaked, cold and wet, and I'd established that she doesn't really like fast roller coasters, so I called it a night. I knew we had a 90 min subway ride ahead of us.
Shows:
* I decided not to plan any more shows or parades, but we did manage to catch the characters sailing around the bay once, which was really fun.
Food:
* We had unlimited ice cream and as such got popsicles every time we saw a cart. We couldn't find many free beverage places but took full advantage of the frozen treats! We managed 4 ice cream treats each per day (I let her get whatever, but I got 1-2 ice cream sandwiches and 2 or 3 popsicles each day). I told myself the popsicles were like having a frozen juice when we couldn't find water, and free and fun.
* Curry popcorn and caramel popcorn at this park. Yum!
Random cute thing: she was convinced that guests dressed up for Halloween were the official park princesses. Many were flattered and happy to take photos with her!
**DisneySea vs Disneyland**
I didn't like DisneySea as much in terms of vibe. I can't quite put my finger on why. It may be partly because I found it very hard to navigate. You can't orient yourself in the app like you can on Google Maps to make the arrow face the correct way, and I found it hard to see the little arrow to tell which way I was going. At least at Disneyland you can always see the castle and sort of figure out where you are. Here there were near ZERO signs anywhere as far as I could tell, and I 100% of the time chose the wrong avenue to get somewhere and had to backtrack.
I think Disneyland is generally just more fun with a 6 year old. If she were older I think Sea would have probably been the clear winner.
But the rides at DisneySea BLEW US AWAY!! And the scenery, attention to detail, sheer scale... I mean it felt like we were really in a friggin volcano.
**Final thoughts**
I'm slightly bummed we didn't get to see either night firework show (rain), but I really feel like we killed it at both parks and rode most rides!!
I truly would not have enjoyed this experience without the Unlimited VP. Having to plan times/rides/navigate the park with DPAs would have been too much for us, esp in the rain. I already felt glued to my phone all day as it was, just trying to navigate the parks!