“不可能を可能にするのは努力だ”
Not too surprisingly we were all up by 3:30AM still feeling the effects of the jet lag. We impressively aren’t too tired. Thankfully, unlike yesterday morning there was no panic involving the name on my boarding pass, as we have no boarding pass yet as China Eastern airlines website for some reason does not recognize our tickets on their website. I’m not worried as I have a confirmation email, ticket numbers, and in the worst case scenario we can always buy a new ticket to Tokyo on the spot. So I am confident we will get to Tokyo today. We’ll just have to stop by the check-in counter at the airport. We eat the pastries we bought from the cafe the night before. I was very excited to try my Mickey Muffin.
It was actually a decent muffin. It didn’t take us long to pack as we’d only been had the room a little over 13 hours at this point. The front desk calls us to let us know our taxi has been called and should be here shortly. We head down to the lobby, and meet our cab. The drive is a quick 30 minutes to Shanghai Pudong. On the way to the airport we fill out our departure cards.
We arrived at the airport on time. It takes a little bit of time to find the international check in counter for China Eastern. We check in, and I ask if they have any upgrades available for purchase. We were flying on a nearly brand new A350-900 and it had these new suites I really wanted to tryout in their business class. The price for economy for all 3 of us was only $304 dollars total for our one way airfare from Shanghai to Tokyo. It would have been about $332 dollars per person to upgrade to business, so about $996 USD. For a two hour flight that was just tough to justify. If the upgrade price they offered was reasonable I would debate purchasing it. Given it was $1298 total for 3 people in business when I booked it initially I was hoping an upgrade would be in the $125-140 per person range. Because of this I can say I was totally shocked when I asked and it was 5000 RMB per person, which is around $685 per person or $2,055 for a 2 hour flight for three people. The price to upgrade at the counter was over double what it would have cost to purchase it when I booked. Considering it was only $304 total for us to fly economy, I just couldn’t justify that cost for a two hour flight.
We then tried to go through security, but we were stopped prior to entering. They then weighed each of our carry ons. In all my years of flying I have never had a carry-on weighed at the security checkpoint just prior to entering the line. They just laid it down across the scale with my backpack still attached. They did not speak English but I understood enough via gesturing to know my carry on was overweight. So I had to go back and check it in. In the end, we decided to check all bags, as we weren’t totally sure if it was just me or all three of us that was overweight and we didn’t want to go through the line again if we were wrong.
Thankfully it was free to check the bags. We then went through security this time with no issue. The security check point was very thorough, and we are pretty good with pulling everything from our bags that could flag the system, but in China they also want your power packs out and we did not realize this so we pull the power banks out and have our bags go through one more time with no issues.
As is always the case in an airport, as you have likely figured out by now, we are always looking for a lounge. Free food and drinks is never a bad thing. Even though we weren’t flying business class today, we still have lounge access via our credit cards. Priority Pass has 4 lounges in terminal 1 in PVG. We chose China Eastern Airlines No. 36 lounge. I hadn’t heard much about it to be honest, unlike The Pier in Hong Kong, which is a very well known lounge. I must say I was seriously impressed and this is definitely the best Priority Pass lounge we’ve ever been in. It was two floors and it was massive.
They had these message chair pods that looked like they came out of a sci fi movie.
Upon further investigation it seems to be the main lounge for those flying business class on a Sky Team carrier in Shanghai. Not only did they have more drink stations than I have ever seen in a lounge, they also have the prettiest organization of pop in any lounge ever.
There is a plethora of food options including a noodle bar, warm food, cold sandwiches. snacks, and dim sum.
The Noodle Bar
I had some noodles, pasta and a steam bun. I was totally stuffed.
They have a self service bar with a small assortment of liquors, some wine and champagne. There is no formal bar in this lounge, however.
I was shocked as I hadn’t read much about this lounge and many said Priority Pass didn’t have any good options in Shanghai, but this was a very good lounge in my opinion.
We left the lounge 5 min prior to boarding time. Thankfully, the lounge was very close to our gate so not a long walk at all. We board without any issues, and as expected it was a brand new A350-900 and it definitely looked the part.
We find our seats and they were nice and had the standard amount of legroom.
One interesting thing about the seats though is that they are cloth. It has been a LONG time since I have been on a carrier with cloth seats. This reminded me of flying in the 80s and 90s back when most planes had cloth seats with some red, orange, blue, or combination of the those colors with some striped pattern.
It was just so odd to be sitting on cloth seats on a plane, as I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a commercial plane with them. Even stranger, was that these seats were even a light beige so I just can’t imagine them aging well given the inevitable spills, stains and body fluids that will eventually end up on the seats. Either way, not my circus and not my monkeys. This is the first time flying China Eastern and will likely be our last for quite sometime as we don’t come to Southeast Asia too often, so I won’t have to worry about the cloth seats again anytime soon.
Despite the size of the plane, the boarding was swift, but it did take sometime to start taxiing. Of note, we were required to take off our headphones and Airpods during taxi, takeoff and landing. For those of the younger crowd this felt like an absolute blast from the past when you were not allowed to have electronics on during taxi, take off and landing. I’ll never forget around 2012 when they started letting you keep your small kelectronics on during the whole flight and it felt like a whole new world of air travel.
The flight went by fast. Impressively enough, despite the shortness of the flight, they served a FULL WARM LUNCH in economy. It was excellent, and to be honest, one of the best meals we’ve had this vacation.
It consisted of fried rice and sausage, a pound cake, some cheesy Chex type product, and peanuts and a drink. It tastes better than it looks I promise. All three of us ate the fried rice, and that was in spite of us stuffing ourselves with lounge food. I cannot remember the last time I saw a full meal in economy on a two hour flight. Even in the olden days like the 80s and 90s when airlines served meals for free on most flights over 3 hours I don’t think I can ever remember a time that they were served on a 2 hour flight. It was definitely a pleasant surprise.
We land and proceed through immigration and customs. We actually had to pick up our luggage this time, but it was out by the time we were done with immigration so it didn’t didn’t really add anytime. I had scheduled a meet and greet, but since we changed flights due to coming from Shanghai instead of Hong Kong our driver was not there. This was because amongst all the cancellations and rebooking I made, I unfortunately forgot to email them till yesterday about the change in our itinerary. I had received no response to the email. I also texted and called and did not receive a response, so it looks like we will likely have to get a taxi to Tokyo DisneySea.
Today, we will be staying at the first of three different hotels in Tokyo Disney. I will not go into the logistics of everything, as that would be a multitude of blog posts. I will say that if you book a vacation package, and you are staying more than two nights, the chance of getting the same room before or after your vacation package is not great. Tokyo Disney hotel rooms sell out in SECONDS for nearly any date. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION. I KNOW YOU THINK IT IS BUT IT IS IN FACT NOT. I had an easier time getting Taylor Swift tickets than getting the room we are staying in tonight.
Luckily, I finally get a response after we land from the meet and greet service. They send a different driver to accommodate us which was super nice of them. The only negative is we’d have to wait an hour while they send a replacement driver. We coulda taken a taxi, but this we had already prepaid $155 for this and it was not refundable so we chose to wait an hour rather than paying for transportation twice to our hotel.
During this time, we spent some time just exploring the airport. I’ve been to Japan several times before, but it’s been a while. I forgot how much I love the quirkiness of Japan. While waiting we see an ice cream vending machine, so we all get some ice cream. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Japan and I definitely havent been since the Yen has taken a dive. I was totally taken aback by the price for some ice cream. It was 180 yen or about 1.16 USD which is crazy cheap by US standards. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many flavors in a single vending machine.
Of note, Japan is very well known for their vending machines and they sell almost anything in a vending machine.
Right before we met our driver we all went to the bathroom as it was a 45 minute drive to Tokyo Disney Resort. I was a little shocked to see a map for the bathroom area. I personally think bathrooms are typically pretty straight forward but apparently some have gotten lost before so they installed a map for clarity.
In case you got lost going to the bathroom.
We then went outside and waited for our driver. It was actually a pretty warm day with temperatures in the 50’s with sun. We see a guy waving at me with a sign with the wrong name on it. I was very confused but he had a picture that I sent him of our location so I figured it had to be him. He eventually came back with a sign with my name so that made me feel a lot better that we had the right guy.
Not too surprisingly we were all up by 3:30AM still feeling the effects of the jet lag. We impressively aren’t too tired. Thankfully, unlike yesterday morning there was no panic involving the name on my boarding pass, as we have no boarding pass yet as China Eastern airlines website for some reason does not recognize our tickets on their website. I’m not worried as I have a confirmation email, ticket numbers, and in the worst case scenario we can always buy a new ticket to Tokyo on the spot. So I am confident we will get to Tokyo today. We’ll just have to stop by the check-in counter at the airport. We eat the pastries we bought from the cafe the night before. I was very excited to try my Mickey Muffin.
It was actually a decent muffin. It didn’t take us long to pack as we’d only been had the room a little over 13 hours at this point. The front desk calls us to let us know our taxi has been called and should be here shortly. We head down to the lobby, and meet our cab. The drive is a quick 30 minutes to Shanghai Pudong. On the way to the airport we fill out our departure cards.
We arrived at the airport on time. It takes a little bit of time to find the international check in counter for China Eastern. We check in, and I ask if they have any upgrades available for purchase. We were flying on a nearly brand new A350-900 and it had these new suites I really wanted to tryout in their business class. The price for economy for all 3 of us was only $304 dollars total for our one way airfare from Shanghai to Tokyo. It would have been about $332 dollars per person to upgrade to business, so about $996 USD. For a two hour flight that was just tough to justify. If the upgrade price they offered was reasonable I would debate purchasing it. Given it was $1298 total for 3 people in business when I booked it initially I was hoping an upgrade would be in the $125-140 per person range. Because of this I can say I was totally shocked when I asked and it was 5000 RMB per person, which is around $685 per person or $2,055 for a 2 hour flight for three people. The price to upgrade at the counter was over double what it would have cost to purchase it when I booked. Considering it was only $304 total for us to fly economy, I just couldn’t justify that cost for a two hour flight.
We then tried to go through security, but we were stopped prior to entering. They then weighed each of our carry ons. In all my years of flying I have never had a carry-on weighed at the security checkpoint just prior to entering the line. They just laid it down across the scale with my backpack still attached. They did not speak English but I understood enough via gesturing to know my carry on was overweight. So I had to go back and check it in. In the end, we decided to check all bags, as we weren’t totally sure if it was just me or all three of us that was overweight and we didn’t want to go through the line again if we were wrong.
Thankfully it was free to check the bags. We then went through security this time with no issue. The security check point was very thorough, and we are pretty good with pulling everything from our bags that could flag the system, but in China they also want your power packs out and we did not realize this so we pull the power banks out and have our bags go through one more time with no issues.
As is always the case in an airport, as you have likely figured out by now, we are always looking for a lounge. Free food and drinks is never a bad thing. Even though we weren’t flying business class today, we still have lounge access via our credit cards. Priority Pass has 4 lounges in terminal 1 in PVG. We chose China Eastern Airlines No. 36 lounge. I hadn’t heard much about it to be honest, unlike The Pier in Hong Kong, which is a very well known lounge. I must say I was seriously impressed and this is definitely the best Priority Pass lounge we’ve ever been in. It was two floors and it was massive.
They had these message chair pods that looked like they came out of a sci fi movie.
Upon further investigation it seems to be the main lounge for those flying business class on a Sky Team carrier in Shanghai. Not only did they have more drink stations than I have ever seen in a lounge, they also have the prettiest organization of pop in any lounge ever.
There is a plethora of food options including a noodle bar, warm food, cold sandwiches. snacks, and dim sum.
I had some noodles, pasta and a steam bun. I was totally stuffed.
They have a self service bar with a small assortment of liquors, some wine and champagne. There is no formal bar in this lounge, however.
I was shocked as I hadn’t read much about this lounge and many said Priority Pass didn’t have any good options in Shanghai, but this was a very good lounge in my opinion.
We left the lounge 5 min prior to boarding time. Thankfully, the lounge was very close to our gate so not a long walk at all. We board without any issues, and as expected it was a brand new A350-900 and it definitely looked the part.
We find our seats and they were nice and had the standard amount of legroom.
One interesting thing about the seats though is that they are cloth. It has been a LONG time since I have been on a carrier with cloth seats. This reminded me of flying in the 80s and 90s back when most planes had cloth seats with some red, orange, blue, or combination of the those colors with some striped pattern.
It was just so odd to be sitting on cloth seats on a plane, as I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a commercial plane with them. Even stranger, was that these seats were even a light beige so I just can’t imagine them aging well given the inevitable spills, stains and body fluids that will eventually end up on the seats. Either way, not my circus and not my monkeys. This is the first time flying China Eastern and will likely be our last for quite sometime as we don’t come to Southeast Asia too often, so I won’t have to worry about the cloth seats again anytime soon.
Despite the size of the plane, the boarding was swift, but it did take sometime to start taxiing. Of note, we were required to take off our headphones and Airpods during taxi, takeoff and landing. For those of the younger crowd this felt like an absolute blast from the past when you were not allowed to have electronics on during taxi, take off and landing. I’ll never forget around 2012 when they started letting you keep your small kelectronics on during the whole flight and it felt like a whole new world of air travel.
The flight went by fast. Impressively enough, despite the shortness of the flight, they served a FULL WARM LUNCH in economy. It was excellent, and to be honest, one of the best meals we’ve had this vacation.
It consisted of fried rice and sausage, a pound cake, some cheesy Chex type product, and peanuts and a drink. It tastes better than it looks I promise. All three of us ate the fried rice, and that was in spite of us stuffing ourselves with lounge food. I cannot remember the last time I saw a full meal in economy on a two hour flight. Even in the olden days like the 80s and 90s when airlines served meals for free on most flights over 3 hours I don’t think I can ever remember a time that they were served on a 2 hour flight. It was definitely a pleasant surprise.
We land and proceed through immigration and customs. We actually had to pick up our luggage this time, but it was out by the time we were done with immigration so it didn’t didn’t really add anytime. I had scheduled a meet and greet, but since we changed flights due to coming from Shanghai instead of Hong Kong our driver was not there. This was because amongst all the cancellations and rebooking I made, I unfortunately forgot to email them till yesterday about the change in our itinerary. I had received no response to the email. I also texted and called and did not receive a response, so it looks like we will likely have to get a taxi to Tokyo DisneySea.
Today, we will be staying at the first of three different hotels in Tokyo Disney. I will not go into the logistics of everything, as that would be a multitude of blog posts. I will say that if you book a vacation package, and you are staying more than two nights, the chance of getting the same room before or after your vacation package is not great. Tokyo Disney hotel rooms sell out in SECONDS for nearly any date. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION. I KNOW YOU THINK IT IS BUT IT IS IN FACT NOT. I had an easier time getting Taylor Swift tickets than getting the room we are staying in tonight.
Luckily, I finally get a response after we land from the meet and greet service. They send a different driver to accommodate us which was super nice of them. The only negative is we’d have to wait an hour while they send a replacement driver. We coulda taken a taxi, but this we had already prepaid $155 for this and it was not refundable so we chose to wait an hour rather than paying for transportation twice to our hotel.
During this time, we spent some time just exploring the airport. I’ve been to Japan several times before, but it’s been a while. I forgot how much I love the quirkiness of Japan. While waiting we see an ice cream vending machine, so we all get some ice cream. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Japan and I definitely havent been since the Yen has taken a dive. I was totally taken aback by the price for some ice cream. It was 180 yen or about 1.16 USD which is crazy cheap by US standards. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many flavors in a single vending machine.
Of note, Japan is very well known for their vending machines and they sell almost anything in a vending machine.
Right before we met our driver we all went to the bathroom as it was a 45 minute drive to Tokyo Disney Resort. I was a little shocked to see a map for the bathroom area. I personally think bathrooms are typically pretty straight forward but apparently some have gotten lost before so they installed a map for clarity.
We then went outside and waited for our driver. It was actually a pretty warm day with temperatures in the 50’s with sun. We see a guy waving at me with a sign with the wrong name on it. I was very confused but he had a picture that I sent him of our location so I figured it had to be him. He eventually came back with a sign with my name so that made me feel a lot better that we had the right guy.
