Visiting Disneysea April 2023

Hi all,
Hoping to take my grand-daughter (14) to DisneySea in April.

I know to avoid weekends (thinking Thursday 20th April or Friday 21st) but would love current advice on how to get the best out of a day there.
We're staying in Oshiage and I see there's a bus from Skytree to Disney resort. Is that the best way to get there?
What si the best (and cheapest) way to buy tickets? How far ahead do we need to do that?
Are fast passes still a good option?
Is there a good map available and advice on how to plan a day without too much rushing back and forth? I'm going to be on a walking stick so I'll have to send the young one and her mother on ahead and meet them there. Is it ok to join the queue then?
I don't suppose they have wheel chairs to hire if I do fall apart a bit?
Any and all advice would be verrrry welcome!
thanks
Kathy

Hi!

I last went to Disney Sea on 12/31/22, so all information is based on that trip and just general knowledge of Disney.

I would pick April 20th because a Thursday tends to be a better day to visit a theme park than a Friday unless one day is supposed to have rain. Bad weather in a theme park tends to mean much shorter lines though a lot of the outdoor entertainment will be affected.

For how to get there, it depends on when the bus from Oshiage runs? I've never stayed there, so I don't know the schedule. The goal though is to be to the park at least 1 hour (or more) before it opens on the day you visit. There will be Japanese people lined up when you arrive. From what I saw on Youtube, Disney has been letting in people earlier than the stated entry time, and you want to be able to take advantage of that, as the earlier in the day, the shorter the waits for rides.

I would 100% recommend downloading and setting up the official Tokyo Disney Resort App on your cell phone. I have it on mine, you will need it if you want to do any Premier Passes.

I am unsure of the Chinese Parks (Hong Kong and Shanghai), but both US Parks, Tokyo Disney and Paris Disneyland got rid of the fast pass system in 2021. All of them now offer a various pay as you go plans. At TDR, you have the option to buy "Premier Passes" for party members. They range in price from 900 yen -2500 yen per person per ride. The 4 rides at Sea that offer Premier Pass access are Soaring, Tower of Terror, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Toy Story Mania. I think there is also the option to buy it for one of the parades. Right now, for March 17th at almost 11:00 am in Japan, there is at least a 90 minute line for each of those attractions. Soaring and Toy Story Mania have the two longest lines, with both over 120 minutes.

One nice thing about Disney vs. Universal, is you can not buy a Premier Pass until you are physically in the park the day of your visit. (which is also another reason to get to the park as early as possible so you can get in as early as possible.) So you don't have to worry that Premier Passes are already gone for your visit. They won't start being sold until the park is open on April 20th (or the 21st should you visit then.)

I booked my 12/31/22 tickets on 12/12/22, because I had thought tickets were long sold out and there was no way I was going. In general, I've always waited to get tickets until I was in Japan, but I also often stay on property. The website doesn't always work well with foreign credit cards, I had to use Mastercard. However, the Visa I normally use worked fine when I was buying my Premier Passes in Japan as well as on merch/food in the park, it only didn't work when booking my tickets.

Wheelchairs can be rented at Tokyo Disney Sea
https://www.tokyodisneyresort.jp/en/tds/guide/babycar.html

I have never personally done so, so I can't speak on how it works, you would need to contact Tokyo Disney.

I think in general you're not supposed to hold spots in line at Tokyo Disney, but I also don't use any aids so I am unsure if allowances are made. Though unless it would hurt your pride too much, I would probably start with a wheel chair. I find it is hard not to walk a lot in Tokyo Disney and if you have already been in Japan for a few days, you might have been walking more than you expected. I know I averaged 5 miles a day last trip (except my Disney day) and I was just shopping and trying to take it easy because I hurt my toes. On our Disney day we got to 8 or 9 miles.

Popcorn buckets are fun but after a while they become bulky. We really liked the Ristorante Canaletto. The food is quite good and the view is lovely if you're outside.

I hope this helps!

Very very kind rkold! great information.
Yes we do plan to book for 20th - we arrive in Tokyo on 18th - go to teamlab Planets on 19th and then should be ok for Disneysea on 20th! Weather forecast is possible rain so we'll keep an eye on this and book closer - light rain is a good thing - we had a shower or two in Paris Disneyland and that was fine and kept the huge crowds away.

If you think of any more advice I'd be very grateful.

And if anyone else knows more about the bus from Oshiage that would be great!

I guess this is the bus:
https://www.tobu-bus.com/en/skytree/tdr.html

@rkold, I have never been to a theme park, but these descriptions that you need to be there 1 h before opening and need to wait for some attractions 90-120 min sounds totally awful to me. What are people doing waiting for so long? How long does the attraction itself then last? Just wondering. To me this sounds like torture. But apparently I am missing something.

@Likebike, I'll be honest, sometimes it does feel like torture. This is going to get a bit out in the weeds, but....

First, I want to say it's not all attractions, and some of the lines were worse when I checked on the 17th than when I was there on 12/31. There are also rides with much shorter lines. These are just the 4 most popular rides and the ones that offer to let you pay to skip the line. You could go to Sea and just ride less popular rides and use single rider for a few others to cut the wait time and not wait more than 30 minutes.

People in Japan just seem to like to line up early for openings, more so than anywhere else I know. I will never forget one trip to Japan where there were 60+ minute lines to enter H&M. There is a whole queuing system for going to the Nintendo Store, and while I've not waited in lines to enter the Pokemon Centers, I've seen cordoned off areas for such a purpose.

Honestly, the worst line I ever waited in was the 5 hour one to enter a small shop to buy exclusive merchandise in Kyoto (I did not make it into the shop, I gave up and left, all the limited items were gone.) I got in line a good hour + early to draw a lottery number to give my actual place in line and I was towards the back of the pre-line to draw lottery numbers, because the Japanese wanted to be early in hopes of getting better numbers This was an activity meant for the Japanese, as I was the only foreigner there.

USJ actually has worse lines than Disney right now. Nintendo World is insanely popular, and someone on Reddit posted they waited 1 hour in single rider, to go on the new big ride there in the middle of January on a week day!

I can't imagine what the lines would be like at the Ghibli Park near Nagoya if they weren't severely limiting capacity, and even with that, I wonder about the lines. There was a 15-20 minute wait to play on the catbus for like a minute at the museum and that was only open to kids under a certain age. I waited 30-40 minutes at Shirohige Bakery to get my pre-order of Christmas themed Totoro cream puffs and Christmas cookies (and then they didn't even have my pre-order, just gave me things in stock, so I could have just LEFT!)

In general, theme parks get long rides. We didn't go into the park, we just went to: Yuami no Shima, (which was surprisingly nice, but I'd avoid at night because OMG the loud Japanese kids!) strawberry picking (my tween loved this), and Nabana no Sato (which was also great), but the hotel was attached to Nagashima Spaland and nearly every coaster had a 1 hour line by 10:00 am. In the US I went to Hershey Park (like the chocolate) and most rides had long lines (so I paid for the skip ride the pass) Cedar Point was pretty quiet, but I went after OH and MI returned to school. (I know this is an odd concept to many, but the US has no National school start and end date for the year. I've always lived in a state in with a late start and a late ending date. It's why we go to Japan in mid to late June, that is when school ends. If I lived near Atlanta, school ends closer to mid May. Each state also has its own cut off date for how old a child must be to start kindergarten.)

I do find myself less patient with lines and more likely when possible to pay to skip lines. I did not try to go to a doll event in Japan on 12/24/22 because I couldn't pre-register for an actual entrance time, and I was worried we would just be waiting outside for hours and not make it in. I want to go to Nintendo World, but I know I don't have the patience to fight to get to pay for Express Passes at this point in life. I'm about the same age as you, and it's just too much.

Going back to @Yeshekathy and the topic!

I don't know if Paris Disney does this because I went in 2001, so things were super different then, but I know in the US Parks: if the park closes at say 9:00 and you want to ride Space Mountain, you can get in line at 8:59 and ride it after the park has closed. Japan is not like this. If the line for Space Mountain looks to be about 60 minutes, they will close the line for the day at 8, so the park can close at 9. They do this with all rides, so you can't just get on a ride at 8:59. They also do this with many food stands and shops, except for the big shops right at the exit. I hadn't realized this before my trip and would often wonder why I saw Soaring down for repairs 2 hours before the park closed. It wasn't really broken. It was just closed for the night for new people to enter the queue.

The other big difference is many of the restaurants take walk ups. In the US, especially Florida, getting a walk up is very hard, but we went to Canaletto around 2ish, and they just let us right in. We were a party of 3 (me, my friend and my tween.)

I didn't mention that before because I wasn't sure which Disney Parks you've been to since I think you're from Australia?

Good luck!

These two recent posts are like reading my husband's views and then mine... I doubt that he'll come at all and frankly it might be more enjoyable without him (hehehe). The queues would drive him crazy and he'd drive us crazy.
We waited for over 2 hours at the Eiffel Tower because we wanted to go to the top and then by the time we got to the counter they'd closed the top anyway... sigh... thank goodness for games on smart phones!
I am still in two minds about Disneysea this time at all... mostly because of my torn meniscus so the standing in queues will be horrible on top of the walking.
But this is a birthday trip for our beautiful 14 year old and although I sat online for 90 mins at exactly the right time I missed tickets to Ghibli Museum (which she really wanted to see).
We used to go to Dreamworld here in Queensland and the waits there were sometimes awful too, but the rides and the place itself was nowhere near as good as Disneyland in Japan! And it was more expensive too if you didn't have annual tickets! (My husband didn't come there either)
So... basically - we'll keep a check on the numbers, see how my knee is, and decide later. If we go we'll take snacks, get there early and plan the rides we really want to do...

thankyou thank you

@rkold, thank you for the detailed explanation.

Yes, waiting in line sometimes seems to be a Japanese hobby. I don�ft remember how often I came upon small restaurants somewhere in the middle of a non descript neighborhood (by bike I often come through totally non touristic, totally Local neighborhoods) to find at 10;00 am a long queue outside a small equally non descript,local restaurant. For example some ramen place. I do get it that some ramen is much better than other ramen. But waiting in line for 1-2 h to eat a bowl of ramen ???

BTW, the different school holiday system isn�ft foreign to us Germans either. Supposedly implemented in order not to clog the Autobahn with all the families driving to the beaches in Italy. Only the Bavarians got a fixed time (supposedly because they all need to help with the harvest not because it�fs the weeks with the best weather in general) . Everyone else is rotating when they are allowed to start vacation. Anyway we are digressing.

@OP , yes, sounds like a good day for your husband to make some alternative plans of his own for everyone to enjoy her/his time in town.

BTW since I mentioned it for one of the lines I waited in... @Yeshekathy, have you thought about going to Shiro-hige's?

http://www.shiro-hige.net/main/

It's not the same as the Ghibli Museum, but when I don't have to wait in a 30+ minute line, I did like the cookies a lot. I know most people like the cream puffs, but I am picky. You could look into pre-ordering a cake and having it for her birthday.

and if you tell Sea you are celebrating a birthday they will do special things too I believe, I know in the US parks they often do something, since we use to go for my tween's birthday, especially if you can book a sit down restaurant and share that you are celebrating.

I would just get the wheelchair if you go to Sea. Again, I've not needed to get one there, but I have had to get wheelchairs in WDW, sort of. We went to WDW when my daughter had Lyme, and got a tag to use her stroller as a wheelchair. (It was easier than an actual wheel chair and had better storage.) I had a doctor's note just in case, but they trusted me. She couldn't stand, let alone walk, so it was a lifesaver. We also got permission to use the stroller as a wheel chair when she was older and recovering from a broken ankle. So, I know at least in the US parks they are quite lovely about it.

I most definitely do not think theme parks are for everyone, but I like to be able to share my knowledge when people have questions and I 100% understand not wanting to wait in line.