3 Weeks travel plan to japan (sep-oct)

Hi,

We're a couple planning to travel Japan during Sep-Oct and would like to receive some insight on our planned itinerary. this is our high level plan:

Day 1 (Thu) - Tokyo (evening arrival)
Day 2 (Fri) - Tokyo
Day 3 (Sat) - Tokyo
Day 4 (Sun) - Tokyo
Day 5 (Mon) - Disney Land
Day 6 (Tue) - Matsumoto
Day 7 (Wed) - Kamikochi
Day 8 (Thu) - Kyoto
Day 9 (Fri) - Kyoto
Day 10 (Sat) - Kyoto
Day 11 (Sun) - Osaka
Day 12 (Mon) - Osaka
Day 13 (Tue) - Osaka
Day 14 (Wed) - Naoshima
Day 15 (Thu) - Naoshima
Day 16 (Fri) - Nara
Day 17 (Sat) - Hakone
Day 18 (Sun) - Hakone
Day 19 (Mon) - Tokyo (Nikko)
Day 20 (Tue) - Tokyo
Day 21 (Wed) - Tokyo
Day 22 (Thu) - Tokyo
Day 23 (Fri) - Tokyo (evening departure)

What do you think, would you change anything?

Thanks.

Hi!

If you're going to Disney Sea, I think all your dates are likely to be pretty bad, if you're going to Disneyland proper you probably want to move it to the end of your trip.

http://www15.plala.or.jp/gcap/disney/

This is the crowd calendar. I've been on Blue, Yellow and Orange days to Sea. You could not pay me to go back on Orange day because it was really pretty miserable, and yes, I go to theme parks quite often. I think anything beyond orange is going to be insane lines and walls of people.

If you have the money, yes, the 15 minute early entry is totally worth it and really does give you a leg up. I'm not fond of the hotels, but I love that early entry.

Unless you're planning to go to USJ, I don't see why you would change from Kyoto to Osaka. It's all of 30-40 minutes between the two and you can even say in Osaka until 22:00 pm and make it back to Kyoto with plenty of time to get to most accommodations before the last train/subway. My last trip to Japan, I stayed in Osaka visiting a friend until around 22:00 and easily made it back to my hotel in Kyoto.

I would not necessarily want to travel from Hakone to Tokyo to Nikko so close together unless it was a matter of I had to fit everything into a rail pass, but you'd have to do the math to see if a rail pass is worth it because I think the fastest way to get from Kamikochi to Kyoto is technically a direct bus. Otherwise you need to either: go on to Takayama and take a limited express to Nagoya and take a shinkansen or go back to Matsumoto, take a limited express to Nagoya and then take a shinkansen to Kyoto.
I'm very biased, but I would probably take a day from Hakone and a day from Osaka and instead do Kamikochi to Takayama for 1 night and then Takayama to Kanazawa for 1 night and then train it from Kanazawa to Kyoto. I would use buses for the Matsumoto to Kanazawa leg. I love Kanazawa though so I am biased.

Good luck!