Im vegan, how easy is it to get by?
It won't be. BUT, that's not a reason to not go. Here, I'll walk you through it.
Our five days at Tokyo Disney were by far the hardest days to feed ourselves during our 18 day stay in Japan. (We relied on the Happy Cow app everywhere else in the country and did fine.) The parks are abysmal when it comes to vegan diets. Before we left the states I called the resort to try to get info about special diets. With the help of a translator, I explained our dietary restrictions and was told they had options available for us -- Eastside Café in
Disneyland offers a green salad with lemon dressing and Ristorante di Canaletto at Disney Sea has a pasta with marinara sauce. Yep, that's it. It was going to be a long five days.
We stayed at the Hilton and at the last minute added the breakfast buffet to our reservations. I'm so glad we did because this ended up being our lifeline to one guaranteed meal a day. The buffet had a huge selection of food and much of it was "safe". Plenty to fill a heaping plate, and this is where we did our best to fill up to carry us through the lean times to come.
In the parks we mostly subsisted on French fries, coffee, and popcorn. (I fully intended to do a vegan trip report once we got home but scrapped the idea once I realized how boring it would be. "And then we ate another kid-sized portion of fries...") Truthfully, I can't even swear that the popcorn was vegan; there was a bit of a language barrier with that question. The "buttered" popcorn at WDW is vegan so I tried to convince myself the same would be true in Tokyo. (If it's not, nobody tell me. I don't want to know. Lol.) Of course, we avoided the obvious no-no's like Milk Tea and Honey flavors. The only other vegan quick service food we found was at Eldorado something-or-another in Disney Sea. They sold nacho chips with a skimpy tablespoon each of salsa and guacamole. We ordered that once and had no desire to order it again. Even the "fruit stands" I had written down in my notes as possibilities didn't actually serve fruit. They only had things like parfait and yogurt. Eastside Café and Ristorante di Canaletto? Yeah, that never happened. We ran for fastpasses each morning at rope drop, did a couple rides, and by the time we checked in with the restaurants the priority seating was already filled up for the day.
We didn't only eat French fries and popcorn, though. We brought in a lot of our own food, either packed from home or purchased in Japan. Fruit, vegan jerky, granola, snack bars, fruit leather, wagashi, onigiri. The wagashi and onigiri were bought each night for the next day at the convenience store in the Hilton along with some other snacks. The first time we stopped in we asked an employee for help reading the labels. Once we knew what we could eat we took pictures of the labels so we could match the symbols on each subsequent visit. We also kept oatmeal in the room that we could cook with hot water from the kettle if we wanted something before bed. And wine. I got a lot of my calories from wine.
Overall, we survived and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again. The experience was worth it. Just be prepared and keep your expectations low.
Somewhere on this board someone posted a link to Japanese language dietary restriction cards. Look for them -- they were so, so useful. If someone didn't speak English, no problem. I could hand them the card explaining what I could and couldn't eat and then they could help me without anything getting lost in translation.
If you're heading to Disney via Tokyo Station hit up T's TanTan before you get on the train. It's a vegan ramen restaurant that's one of the last storefronts on your right just before you descend the stairs to the train to TDR. I wish we'd had the chance to eat there more than once.
To touch on a couple of your other questions: I would definitely stay on the monorail line of TDR, whether that's at a Disney hotel or one of the official hotels. The hassle of getting to and from the city every day would be too much for me.
You can't miss Pooh's Hunny Hunt or Journey to the Center of the Earth. I also thought Storm Rider was pretty good compared to most simulator rides even though I know a lot of people give that one a thumbs down. The Mystic Rhythms show was, IMO, the best Disney show I've ever seen in any park but, unfortunately, I think it'll be closed by the time you go.
Let me know if you have anymore questions.
DLR would be a much less expensive trip.
