We’re Booked! Nov 2020!

[heybets30]

We somehow managed to shift around enough miles for 3 free tix on JAL via AA and then purchase our son’s tix reduced rate as he is under 12! Wooooohooooo!! The biggest hurdle surpassed - airfare price cut by 75% since we made mileage work. Also figured we have enough rewards thru Chase & Citi for $1500 Airbnb gift cards, so we’ll be looking at Airbnbs for 7 nights and 2 nights at Disney. Probably Celebration to keep it budget-ish.

We’re taking our 13 & will be 11-yr old for our 15Th wedding anniv & my 50th. They’ll miss 8 days of school. Oops!

Just so excited right now!

Thinking Tokyo 4 days, 1 day DisneySea (maybe evening before at DL), bullet train to Kyoto for 2-1/2 days, return via bullet to Haneda airport hotel for 1 night for morning flight.

Now planning can start in earnest! I see Disney hotels aren’t booking out this far, so we’ll trust we can find something near there on a Mon & Tue night in Nov!

Goal: everyone’s luggage goes in 1 expandable carryon per person - will def look at airbnbs with washer/dryer options. Only thing about Nov - thicker clothes & more layers.

Love all the trip reports!

 

[nono]

Congrats!

Disney hotels proper open their booking at 5 months out, if I'm recalling correctly. The Happy 15 perk is changing in 2020, with the Celebration Hotel having TDL access only. Source of info here. So if you really are only going to TDS, you may want to choose an official hotel, which you may be able to book now.

HTH!

 

[indoshakespeare]

I wish I could take kids out of school so we could go off-season but schools here don't let you do that. Are you going to buy the JR Pass?

 

[heybets30]

Thanks nono for the head's up about the Celebration Hotel! It looks like they are booking through June, so I need to wait a while for ANY of the hotels. The problem we have is we only need 2 nights. We'll do an evening at TDL - hotel - TDS - hotel, then check out. So, not sure there are any passes available for that short of a visit! (i.e., the Happy 15 perk - or any perk!!!).

indoshakespeare - we don't really care what the schools think. Kids will be 6th grade & 8th grade next fall. Funny thing is - we have the utmost support from the schools. This trip will be the 9th time we've pulled our daughter out for at least 5 consecutive days (7th year for son). We always travel off-season, refuse to pay extra just because it is spring break or summer break! The problem is starting 2021, our daughter will be in High School, and most likely will be taking all honors classes. While jr. high teachers are super supportive and allow plenty of time to make-up work, I have a feeling high school will NOT be as lenient. And, the quantity of the work will be massive for her to make up. 8th grade, it'll be the first week of the 2nd quarter, she'll be in geometry, and my degrees are in Mathematics/Statistics, so I can get her up-to-speed quickly. The other subjects we aren't too worried about her, the 1st week of a quarter tends to be a lot of review & "here's what we'll be doing this quarter" info. We do let the teachers know about 2 weeks in advance, ask if work can be done ahead of time. Definitely kids will make up the work.

We have wiggle room of 10 days of unexecused absences before it is reported to the District, so 8 days off won't raise red flags. I know the superintendent really well, and several members of the board of education, so worst case scenario, I would be having some discussions ;-)

 

[heybets30]

indoshakespeare - you asked about JR Pass ... I honestly DON"T KNOW!!! We will definitely want to do bullet-train round-trip Tokyo-Kyoto. I saw that the train line to take to the monkey park & the bamboo forest in Kyoto is JR, then a short walk to each. We are flying in and out of Haneda, and the Monorail is on JR - so day 1 and Day 10. But, for going around Tokyo first, maybe we don't get a 14-day JR pass, and do Suica the first few days, then maybe get the 7day JR pass.

That's probably the most confusing for me right now. Figuring out what lines are on JR pass, what would be cash ticket/Suica. It is SO EXPENSIVE for Round-trip bullet train. It'll be ~$1200 for the 4 of us if we do Nozomi. I know that's not on JR pass, so we need to balance what we want to pay vs. how much would the JR pass be used it we buy it (and use the ever-so-slightly slower bullet between Tokyo-Kyoto)! Not sure we'd be saving that much, sounds like tickets aren't horribly expensive to take the subway say 7 stops within Tokyo/Kyoto.

I've gone to that Hareida (sp?) site, really does me no good.

A colleague's sister lives & works in downtown Tokyo. As we get nearer to the trip & need to start finalizing & making a day-to-day loose itinerary, she said she would help guide me with trains.

I live in NYC for 2 years, so navigating a myriad of trains isn't daunting to me at all, just that they are different lines and it's not as simple as dropping a token or swiping a metro card. Strange reading "this place is accessible on the x line, which is NOT on the JR line". Or, "use your JR pass here!, but you'll need Suica or cash to continue on to x".

I know we need to purchase the JR pass in advance, so that'll be a decision probably made closer to September.

 

[Agent 86]

We've never had any issues getting where we needed to go using the JR pass (and the Suica card for local travel). You not be able to take the very next train departing a station or the very first / last train of the day, but even the bullet trains run pretty frequently to most destinations in Japan, so it's never been an issue to wait for the next JR pass compatible train.

That can sometimes work in your favour as you have time to make a reservation in the JR ticket office, which will be a good idea if there are four of you and you want to sit reasonably close together.

But, it's a question of value for money. We normally only get the JR pass when we plan to do a number of day-trips on the bullets trains. If it's just a single day trip or even just a return journey, then I'm not sure it would offer great value.

The monkey park and bamboo forest are accessible on JR. I wouldn't say it was a "short" walk to either. The monkey park is at the top of a hill, but as you're going in November, it should be nice and cool weather for climbing. From memory, the bamboo forest was a bit of a stroll from the monkey park. A pleasant enough stroll, but not 5 minutes away.

 

[indoshakespeare]

The 7 day JR Pass is roughly the price of a round trip Tokyo-Osaka Bullet train so if you plan to do the bullet train round trip, the JR Pass is usually good value because you can also use it within the city.

 

[Haley R]

We were in Tokyo first and bought the metro pass. It was easier than a Suica because you don’t have to load any money onto it. We then started our 7-day JR pass when we headed to Kyoto

 

[heybets30]

Haley R - can you tell me more about the metro pass? Honestly, I haven't read about it at all - just Suica/Passmo/JR pass ... do tell! It is WAY cheaper for us to only get the 7-day vs. 14-day JR pass, even though we'll be coming in via Haneda & that's on the JR line. Kyoto, I learned, is booking up in mid-November very fast due to fall foliage. Called the major hotels (Marriott, etc.) and all are booked for our days in Kyoto, so we did already book a boutique hotel - selecting the Kyoto Station location. Hearing others on the blogs dragging bags through Kyoto to get to hotel/Airbnbs, we thought we'd stay near Kyoto Station so that in & out on the bullet train & getting to & from Kyoto locations near subways will be SUPER convenient. Best part? Brand new hotel, super close to train station, AND, "free" for exchanging Chase Rewards!! We are set on Kyoto last - we hear the foliage is spectacular, and we will be there super-close to peak colors.

Still browsing for Tokyo hotels/airbnbs for Nov 5-9, and will be anxiously awaiting until November opens up for Disneyland Hotels for Nov 9-11. We only need 2 nights, and I just know they'll be ridiculously expensive or already booked. But, it's our splurge! Well, within reason ;-)

 

[Haley R]

Haley R - can you tell me more about the metro pass? Honestly, I haven't read about it at all - just Suica/Passmo/JR pass ... do tell! It is WAY cheaper for us to only get the 7-day vs. 14-day JR pass, even though we'll be coming in via Haneda & that's on the JR line. Kyoto, I learned, is booking up in mid-November very fast due to fall foliage. Called the major hotels (Marriott, etc.) and all are booked for our days in Kyoto, so we did already book a boutique hotel - selecting the Kyoto Station location. Hearing others on the blogs dragging bags through Kyoto to get to hotel/Airbnbs, we thought we'd stay near Kyoto Station so that in & out on the bullet train & getting to & from Kyoto locations near subways will be SUPER convenient. Best part? Brand new hotel, super close to train station, AND, "free" for exchanging Chase Rewards!! We are set on Kyoto last - we hear the foliage is spectacular, and we will be there super-close to peak colors.

Still browsing for Tokyo hotels/airbnbs for Nov 5-9, and will be anxiously awaiting until November opens up for Disneyland Hotels for Nov 9-11. We only need 2 nights, and I just know they'll be ridiculously expensive or already booked. But, it's our splurge! Well, within reason ;-)

The metro pass works off a day system (24, 48, 72 hour). The longest you can get the pass for is 72 hours. We chose that one and used PASMO for any trains that weren’t a metro line. That’s the only bad thing is you have to take metro lines only. There are a lot of them though! Getting the metro pass was a bit of a pain. It’s at the Odakyu sightseeing center in Shinjuku station which is kind of hard to find. They also didn’t speak English but our Airbnb host helped us with that. So it might be more of a hassle.

We stayed at an Airbnb in Tokyo if you’re interested. It isn’t near a large train station but the area is amazing and the host is the sweetest. She’s from new zealand and her family lives in the upper part of the house

ETA: Dh said he wouldn’t get the metro pass again. He said it was more of a pain to have to find metro lines.

 

[Sarahboo]

I liked using Suica in part because I could load it up and then also use it on vending machines, at conbinis, and even to purchase food in most of TDR. I just found it to be really convenient as opposed to always digging for cash when I wanted a bottle of water or whatever. It tells you every time you tap out how much you have left on the card so we always kind of had an idea. It also made us realize HOW CHEAP it was to take the trains. I think it cost us less than $3 to get from Shibuya to TDR which seems crazy when comparing to the cost of American transportation.

 

[Hannah nz]

You can use this calculator https://www.japan-guide.com/railpass/ and add your trips in to see it works out. It doesn't include the smaller trips but there were some local trains, ferries and buses you get free with JR. We also got some museum/garden discounts for showing JR pass.
There were also some limited edition tourist pass cards which are the same as passmo/icoca/suica cards but it was a better deal. Sadly was sold out for us as we were there in Golden week.

 

[cisobe]

We've gone to Tokyo 3 times and 2 of the trips we have gone to Kyoto/Osaka. Our trips were typically 12-15 days long.

For the two trips that we traveled from Tokyo to Kyoto/Osaka, we got the 7 day JR Rail pass as it was the same cost as the around trip bullet train ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto. In addition we did get Pasmo cards. This made it super easy to quickly get anywhere we wanted to go. We did however try to use the JR rail pass as much as possible to save some money.

Be sure to get a pocket wifi when you go to stay connected and to use google maps. Google maps' public transportation directions were awesome and also gives you options on how to get where you want to go on different rail lines including estimated cost to get there! We used this to help figure out the easiest and cheapest way to get around.

For hotels in Tokyo, the biggest challenge is finding hotels that allow 4 people or more in a room. Many are for 2 to 3.

Airbnb's are typically further away from railstations in residential areas. We have young kids so walking with 3 kids under the age of 6 with 3 large bags 3-4 blocks was a bit crazy but it was cheaper than most of the hotel rooms we looked at. Japan did crack down on airbnbs a couple years ago requiring hosts to register and get permits. Last summer we couldn't find as many available listings.

We did find a great hotel near Tokyo Tower that has larger rooms for families (we are a family of 5). It was nice because the airport shuttle stopped at this hotel as well. It was also a couple stops away from Tokyo station where you need to go to catch the train to Disney and to catch the bullet train.

 

[LovesTimone]

DH and I are planning, and booked for Nov. 2020 !!!!... Air fare is booked...still working on our travel path...

We are flying in and out of Haneda...

Booking WIFI and extra battery pick up at airport...

I haven't started a pretrip report... hopefully this week coming up I will start one... I have a rough draft and updated it, but its such a mess now... Now that we have the airfare bought, I think its time to start a full on pre-trip report....

We are planning on using Sucia for sure... to use on other trains, and we like the options of using it to pick up things from the Conbini's, vending machines and restaurants in and round the train stations, so less pulling out cash for simple stuff like getting a drink out of a vending machine, seem much easier than digging for the correct cash......

Please someone if I misunderstood, please correct me... I thought I saw where you could use them at the carts inside the parks, and at Ikspiari,
( TDR version of Downtown Disney)...
as well I thought I read somewhere... you can use them in the small stores located inside the partner hotels... this I'm not sure about, I have a note written down... but I can't seem to locate where I found this out... Anyone thoughts?

Pretty much we are trying to decide on whether or not to go to Osaka for 2 nights...which for us we would get the JR pass and Sucia for sure if we go this route...

If we decided against going to Osaka we will stick with the Sucia card...

If you would like feel free to PM me... and we can plan together...

 

[gelatoni fan]

Please someone if I misunderstood, please correct me... I thought I saw where you could use them at the carts inside the parks, and at Ikspiari,
( TDR version of Downtown Disney)...
as well I thought I read somewhere... you can use them in the small stores located inside the partner hotels... this I'm not sure about, I have a note written down... but I can't seem to locate where I found this out... Anyone thoughts?

The smaller drinks/snack stalls/carts and some vending machines in the park are cash only. I believe the carts that sell balloons and the wearable or handheld glowing thingies don't accept Suica either. Most of the ice cream and popcorn stalls/carts at Disneysea do accept Suica though. If you're buying small items or snacks in Iskpiari or the hotels, odds are that the particular store will accept Suica. There's a few exceptions in Iskpiari though so it's good to still have some cash and a credit card.

 

[Haley R]

The smaller drinks/snack stalls/carts and some vending machines in the park are cash only. I believe the carts that sell balloons and the wearable or handheld glowing thingies don't accept Suica either. Most of the ice cream and popcorn stalls/carts at Disneysea do accept Suica though. If you're buying small items or snacks in Iskpiari or the hotels, odds are that the particular store will accept Suica. There's a few exceptions in Iskpiari though so it's good to still have some cash and a credit card.

I think the popcorn carts are hit or miss. We went to at least a couple last June that were cash only. We were really surprised. I think we even had to go to an ATM at one point at the front of the park