Quick review of package

[istillbelieve]

Howdy! I am leaving Tokyo Disneyland now after a 2 night 3 day package at Fantasy Springs Hotel followed by a night at Disneyland Hotel. Tokyo Disneyland is awesome and we loved the charm and the amount of dark rides. Also Winnie the Pooh and Beauty and Beast lived up to the hype.

I just want to give specific feedback that I didn’t see because all I read and watched was about the sunshine and roses of their Tokyo Disney experience and I wish I had read a more realistic review.

Maybe I did not do my research as I did not understand when you booked the package and scheduled your meals, that it is was basically written in stone. It is so hard to change through the website so make sure you really study what you want. Also the dining means you are mandated to eat their multi course meal and not the menu. I asked and even said let me pay for the regular menu as the multi course was not to our liking and they told me not possible. We ate the most nasty meal last night and annoyed because we didn’t want it. Out of the three mandated meal courses, one was good and 2 were hard to eat and we felt wasteful.

We missed the relaxing vibe of the US parks where you could sit back and have a drink while waiting to check in. The lobby was packed with people just sitting around and no place to get a drink as we were told no drinking or eating anything in lobby. We had people tell my daughter to put up her candy while in the lobby.

Overall, I am glad we came, but I am not sure if I didn’t do my research on how much more of a rigid experience this Disney trip would be.

Please don’t flame me that I should have known about the packages, but I watched quite a few YouTube’s and never saw that mentioned. Also be prepared for them to give you a time to leave your restaurant and to not offer you anymore water or drinks as they took my water glass away and put down tea (that I didn’t order but was in package). It is 100 degrees outside I was preferring the water over hot tea.

Not trying to sound all negative but I think the package was too limiting and wouldn’t do that again. Our experience would have been better, I think, without it.

 

[Disneyhanna]

Sounds like you had the attractions + more package, the regular attractions package probably would have been a better fit! I had a one night package and while I loved it, I'm glad I didn't have dining (other than the included breakfast) and that it was only one night. That was more than enough for me to experience all the benefits and on my last day without the package I knew my way around the parks and app well enough I didn't miss it at all. I'm not sure I'd do it again as the main benefit for me was the FS passport, it's such a huge premium to do every trip. Dining reservations were really clunky, I agree. I tried to book something in the parks and gave up because there was always a queue on the site. I couldn't even get in to change mine without the queue and so I just didn't show up (it wasn't a package meal, just a reservation I added). I felt bad but I wasn't going to sit around waiting to get through the queue while in the parks!

 

[FriendsAndFood]

What restaurant did you dine at that came with your vacation package?

 

[soniam]

Sorry it didn't work out. Our son is super picky, so I was incredibly diligent about determining the menu. I also just got the Attractions package, since I knew we would not want to focus on eating. He still didn't like all of the places that much, even though they had steak for him.

 

[istillbelieve]

Canna and Silk Road were not good but the Italian restaurant at Mira Costa was really good and surprised us. Yeah I really didn’t know what I booked at 1am when the package went on sale, ha! We should have skipped the Silk Road dinner and just enjoyed the snacks in the park. They did not allow us to change anything and the preset meal was not to our liking. Lessons learned! Overall good time just warning for those that book the package with dining.

 

[istillbelieve]

Now Silk Road looked good for others that were eating the dumplings which is what we wanted but were told no.

 

[nono]

Yeah, welcome to Japan where efficiency leads to inflexibility and then customer surprise/disappointment, and a general lack of understanding by the service provider that everyone can't possibly understand all the rules. (My daughter's a resident, and says it makes you resilient...) I think with the huge influx of foreign tourists, there's going to be many folks who are going to have similar experiences, and not just at Disney. But, in the Disney case, it should be part of the message before you book the package. Maybe provide some feedback to OLC on this area? (I think they have an active X account).

For the money spent, you want to have a superior experience. That's a bummer how it worked out.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

We have a package for later this year, and have reservations at Silk Road at MC and Blue Bayou at DL. Do I understand that you're saying dining there will be off a special menu and not the 'regular' menu? More of a package pre fixe menu? We've spent many, many hours researching, and didn't come across that tidbit.

 

[YayforMickey]

All I can say is that I'm very glad I got the attractions package for our trip last month.

 

[Flossbolna]

Sorry to hear that you had a not so perfect experience with the food. And thanks for posting this as a warning to others. We ate at Silk Road and really enjoyed our food, but would have hated the Prix fixed menu, too!

Just a reminder: the package is not a necessity to see TDR. Especially not during the lower crowded times of year. We stayed at the Hilton twice now and had great trips. We would not want to miss the flexibility we gained through this. We aren’t even early birds and didn’t start both of our days at TDR until 9:45 am and still had a fantastic time.

 

[gelatoni fan]

We have a package for later this year, and have reservations at Silk Road at MC and Blue Bayou at DL. Do I understand that you're saying dining there will be off a special menu and not the 'regular' menu? More of a package pre fixe menu? We've spent many, many hours researching, and didn't come across that tidbit.

Blue Bayou only has a set menu anyway so the difference in experience between adding it to a vacation package and making a normal reservation is not huge. But it's still not advised to include lunch/dinner with the vacation packages. The main reason to do that is if you absolutely must eat at a specific restaurant and cannot get reservations the normal way. That means that Japanese people mostly use vacation package reservations for Chef Mickey and Oceano although some people also use it for Magellan's and SS Columbia.

Unless there happens to be a special event exclusive set at Silk Road that you want to try, using vacation package dining for Silk Road is generally not recommended.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

Just a reminder: the package is not a necessity to see TDR. Especially not during the lower crowded times of year. We stayed at the Hilton twice now and had great trips. We would not want to miss the flexibility we gained through this. We aren’t even early birds and didn’t start both of our days at TDR until 9:45 am and still had a fantastic time.

Thanks for mentioning this. I've been stressing out a bit over how to structure our trip and DH have disagreed on that. Currently have 2 nights at the DLH and 3 at Miracosta (and one of those is from an attractions package) because DH wants a 2 night minimum at any hotel. 2 days at each park. But doing it this way meant that we would not have happy entry on the first DisneySea day and everyone says what a huge benefit that is. I would have preferred 1 night DLH to try it, and the rest at Miracosta and then we would have happy entry every day at both parks.

I have both versions of this booked but I'm thinking now I'll just make DH happy and stick with the 2 night / 3 night split stay.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

Now Silk Road looked good for others that were eating the dumplings which is what we wanted but were told no.

I had been a little bummed that I was too late in booking to find the package with dining. I thought it would be nice to have some dining booked and set. Thanks for sharing about the fixed menu, definitely a deal-breaker for us!

 

[soniam]

Now Silk Road looked good for others that were eating the dumplings which is what we wanted but were told no.

That’s like the only reason to go there! What a bummer! I will be sure to see what they are doing next time I go with friends, who actually like food

 

[princesscinderella]

We have a package for later this year, and have reservations at Silk Road at MC and Blue Bayou at DL. Do I understand that you're saying dining there will be off a special menu and not the 'regular' menu? More of a package pre fixe menu? We've spent many, many hours researching, and didn't come across that tidbit.

I can confirm this as we had the package with the restaurants, we were always given the highest cost meal set on the menu. We had Canna, Magellans and Columbia with our package and it made it quite interesting with my gluten allergy. My meal at Canna and Columbia they did a good job accommodating my allergy and I had a similar multi course meal. However at Magellans they would not leave off sauces and such that would have made the courses served to everyone else GF. I was stuck with a kids meal for 3,300 yen. Since we had paid for 5 of the special pre-fixe sets at 12,000 yen I was not happy to only be served a kids meal. It took me about 10 minutes with our translator app and theirs too but I got them to agree to bring out the meal for me that was already paid for so my family could share it and I would pay separately for my GF kids meal. The funniest thing was since we are a family of 5 we were sitting at a table for 6 and they actually set another place setting with all the silverware and would set my meal there, we called it our ghost guest . They would take away the silverware that was supposed to be used with each course too. The portions were small so it was nice that they got to have a little extra.

We enjoyed Canna, the sweetbread course was the only one that my family didn’t like. It was fine dining similar to eating at Remy or V&As with the way the food was prepared and presented.

Columbus was our favorite of the restaurant meals we had and closest to American style food.

We couldn’t get over the description at one of the Italian restaurants at TDS that had a cold pasta with a soy milk tomato sauce, that’s a big nope for us. I missed cheese so much on this trip, we didn’t see much cheese anywhere other than fried cheese nuggets as a street food.

 

[soniam]

I can confirm this as we had the package with the restaurants, we were always given the highest cost meal set on the menu. We had Canna, Magellans and Columbia with our package and it made it quite interesting with my gluten allergy. My meal at Canna and Columbia they did a good job accommodating my allergy and I had a similar multi course meal. However at Magellans they would not leave off sauces and such that would have made the courses served to everyone else GF. I was stuck with a kids meal for 3,300 yen. Since we had paid for 5 of the special pre-fixe sets at 12,000 yen I was not happy to only be served a kids meal. It took me about 10 minutes with our translator app and theirs too but I got them to agree to bring out the meal for me that was already paid for so my family could share it and I would pay separately for my GF kids meal. The funniest thing was since we are a family of 5 we were sitting at a table for 6 and they actually set another place setting with all the silverware and would set my meal there, we called it our ghost guest . They would take away the silverware that was supposed to be used with each course too. The portions were small so it was nice that they got to have a little extra.

We enjoyed Canna, the sweetbread course was the only one that my family didn’t like. It was fine dining similar to eating at Remy or V&As with the way the food was prepared and presented.

Columbus was our favorite of the restaurant meals we had and closest to American style food.

We couldn’t get over the description at one of the Italian restaurants at TDS that had a cold pasta with a soy milk tomato sauce, that’s a big nope for us. I missed cheese so much on this trip, we didn’t see much cheese anywhere other than fried cheese nuggets as a street food.

I love the ghost seat That’s so Japanese. I’m bummed it was difficult for you though. We are in London right now, and they seem to be very accommodating of allergies and GF. We don’t have any but see it on menus and get asked very frequently.

 

[istillbelieve]

I had been a little bummed that I was too late in booking to find the package with dining. I thought it would be nice to have some dining booked and set. Thanks for sharing about the fixed menu, definitely a deal-breaker for us!

I mean my fault for not fully understanding, and we were bummed!

 

[MikeOhio]

I wonder if a solution would be booking restaurant reservations with the package to secure the reservations, and then using the one hour regular reservation window to try re-book the same restaurants, and if successful modifying the package to drop the restaurants.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

I wonder if a solution would be booking restaurant reservations with the package to secure the reservations, and then using the one hour regular reservation window to try re-book the same restaurants, and if successful modifying the package to drop the restaurants.

I think they might be different pools of availability. For instance, I get breakfast at MC with my package but nothing earlier than 8 am is available on one if the days. However, not booking through the package but just as a hotel guest, I can see availability widely open from 6:30 on

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

I wish I could get the earlier time but then we'd have to pay for breakfast, whereas with the package it's free