hakone and lake kawaguchiko

Hi everyone, i have made plans to spend 1-2 days in hakone and 1 of the Fuji 5 lakes (most likely Lake Kawaguchiko)

Day 1: From Shinjuku to Hakone-Yumoto station via the Romance Car and then taking the Hakone Tozan line to Miyanoshita to stay in a ryokan there. I'm planning to arrive early at the ryokan, dump our luggage and proceed to explore Owakudani and then back in the late afternoon to enjoy the ryokan.

Day 2: Check out of ryokan and planning to rent a car for ease of travel. Drive to Lake Kawaguchiko and hopefully there is still cherry blossoms to enjoy. Will then drive to Chureito Pagoda for that postcard shot of Mt Fuji and the pagoda with cherry blossoms hopefully.
Return to Hakone to return car and take the same transport back to Shinjuku/Tokyo

Some questions:
1. Does the itinerary look feasible?
2. Will parking be an issue during mid april period? Will it be safer to just stick with public transport? My only worry is I'll have to wait too long and wont have time to explore Lake Kawaguchiko area.
3. I believe I should get the Hakone Pass for transportation even though I'll be renting a car. Correct me if I'm wrong but a return transport to Tokyo and some rail and cable trips will be worth the cost of the pass.

Thank you

any suggestions friends?

Some questions:
1. Does the itinerary look feasible?

It looks feasible but be prepared to do a lot of driving. We took the train down to Mishima after staying in Hakone and then rented a car, drove from Mishima to Kawaguchiko and stayed the night in Kawaguchiko. The drive from Mishima took about an hour and a half with some light traffic. I donft know how much time youfd have to explore the area when doing a round trip from the Hakone area but Ifd suspect it wouldnft be much.
Additionally, unless youfre going to be at the pagoda by like Wednesday 4/4 probably I think youfll miss the sakura. Wefre in Kyoto right now 4/1 and theyfre falling fast.

2. Will parking be an issue during mid april period? Will it be safer to just stick with public transport? My only worry is I'll have to wait too long and wont have time to explore Lake Kawaguchiko area.

Parking was not an issue for us. There was plenty of public parking at various places lakeside. Park and take the bus or park and walk.

3. I believe I should get the Hakone Pass for transportation even though I'll be renting a car. Correct me if I'm wrong but a return transport to Tokyo and some rail and cable trips will be worth the cost of the pass.

The Hakone freepass will only cover trips on the Hakone Tozan rail lines, the cable car, the local busses, the ropeway and the lake cruise (pirate) ship. It will not cover the Romancecar trip from Tokyo to Hakone or any other return mode of transportation (JR rail). For us the Freepass was worth it since we used the busses and the train a lot and made the full train : cable car : ropeway : cruise ship : bus loop.

Hi Josh, thanks so much for your comments.
My ryokan is near Miyanoshita so we'll probably take the Tozan railway to Hakone-Yumoto and rent a car at Nissan. (unless there are other recommendation for car rental?). Then we'll drive to Lake Kawaguchiko eastern shores and Chureito Pagoda. Google maps suggest a time of ~1.5hours for the route with tolls. Is the paying of tolls easy?

I guess the above sight seeing will really depends if there are still sakura. If not, probably we might take a shorter time to explore the area and then head back to Hakone Yumoto for our journey back to Tokyo (Shinjuku/Asakusa)

I've checked Hyperdia for the transport timings and seems like for journey back to Tokyo, the trains run till quite late and we should be in time.

Looks like we will only be utilising the Tozan Railway and the ropeway cable cars. I'll probably have to calculate to see if its worth it. We have not considered taking the cruise ship.. not sure if worth the time.