My wife and I will be visiting the Tokyo Disney Resort in July. We haven't been since 1996, when we stayed at the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay, one of the official resorts on property.

This time we were thinking of staying at the DisneySea Hotel MiraCosta, and even getting a nice terrace room on the Porto Paradiso Side. Unofrtunately, I had a lot of trouble getting through a call to the reservations center in Japan. Once I finally did, there was a recording in Japanese and then it hung up! As a backup, I went ahead and booked a nice executive room at the Hilton Tokyo Bay, one of the new official hotels.

Has anyone else stayed at these properties? Is it worth the extra yen to stay at the MiraCosta? How about the more expensive room types like I'm looking at--are they worth the premium? Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi, I just got back from Tokyo DL and I also had trouble making a reservation at a Disney Resort owned and operated hotel. Might I suggest the following, call JTB (Japan Travel Bureau) in Los Angeles and tell them you're interested in making a reservation. They will fax a request and ascertain availability for the resorts and book a room for you.

I spent a lot of time in the public areas of the Mira Costa and, by the way, I don't think any of the rooms had balconies overlooking Tokyo Disney Sea. People were certainly looking out of their rooms, but they were not sitting on balconies.

The resort is truly beautiful, and the public spaces are more elegant in my opinion than the Grand Floridian or the Yacht Club Resorts (I was an opening manager at the Yacht Club so I know this for a fact).

The next time I go back, I'd love to stay at the Mira Costa, but the Ambassador didn't seem to be a bad property either.

One word of warning, you're rather land-locked at the Mira Costa. If you intend to go to any other area of the resort other than this hotel or the Disney Sea park, you must take a monorail (called the Disney Resort Liner). Service is speedy and efficient, but to explore other sites in Tokyo, the Disney resorts aren't necessarily all that convenient.

Tom, thank you so much for that help! We'll be spending time in downtown Tokyo, too, so our time at Disney is purely for Disney! I got the balcony information from the TDR web page which lists the room rates and types.

How convenient was the monorail? Do resort guests have to pay to ride it? Does it also connect the Sheraton/Hilton/etc.?

The monorail has four stops - Maihama Station/Ikspiari, TDL, Bayside Station with the official hotels, and TDS. It's about a 10-12 minute round trip running every 4-6 minutes.

Again, I don't think they had balconies, and I was sort of shocked because I'm a balcony "freak" and enjoy sitting on them and people watching. If they have them, they certainly aren't facing Disney Sea, honestly I made a point to verify (the hotel does sprawl and there are some less conspicuous rooms overlooking Disney Sea, perhaps these had them, but I'm telling you I really don't think they did).

The monorail is "probably" complimentary for registered resort guests, but I'm not certain as I was only a "day visitor" to the resort. Yes, the monorail does connect to stations that are near the Hilton and Sheraton. In fact, the stop is the one preceeding Tokyo Disney Sea/Mira Costa.

Also, there were a few issues I had with Tokyo Disney Resort admission media, and I'll post the slings and arrows that I encountered in another thread on this site. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if they made registered resort guests pay for a ticket, it was about $7.00 for two days of unlimited use, so it's not a big hit (it's probably complimentary).

As for getting to downtown Tokyo, you will have to take a train to the Toyko Station and then navigate from there to the various environs of Tokyo (it's about a 12 minute ride from the main TDL stop, not at all bad - but bare in mind you have to access monorail to get to this station, walk to other train, etc. - allow 90 minutes to get to your final destination in Tokyo - not kidding here).

Or, you could opt to focus on Disney and stay there for that part of the trip, and then work on staying in a more centrally located Tokyo hotel for that portion of the trip. I stayed at the Century Hyatt Tokyo wich is located in Shinjuku. We had concierege level accommodations that ran about $190 a night, exclusive of a 10% service charge and a 5% tax. The hotel was exceptionally maintained, located in the central corporate business center, and it overlooked a large, serene park. They had complimentary (and painfuly prompt and efficient service to the Shinjuku train station), and a multitude or killer (but pricey) restaurants and an awesome health club. When I return, I intend to stay here again.

Everyone, look for my low-down on ticket media in a serarate post.

Balconies are available only for Terrace Rooms and Porto Paradiso Suites and they do face the inside of Tokyo DisneySea either on the Venice or Porto Paradiso sides. All other regular rooms have windows but the are shut and cannot be opened. You can see some photos of the accomodations on the official site: http://www.hotelmiracosta.com/english/guest.html .

JoeInJpn
http://www.jtcent.com

And oh yes, for anyone staying at any of the 7 hotels onsite at TDR, Disney Resort Line monrail passes are included and issued when you check in at the TDR Welcome Center Hotel Service Center or the individual hotels. However, passports are not included nor are they discounted for hotel guests and there is no early entry either. Although the parks do ocassionally open 30 minutes before posted time to everyone.

JoeInJpn
http://www.jtcent.com

>Although the parks do ocassionally open 30 minutes before posted time to everyone.


This was something I couldn't figure out. Someone here had said that TDS opened at 8:30. But I showed up on a Monday and the gates opened at 9am sharp. And I mean sharp - not a second sooner. And that was the front gate. They didn't even let people in to mill around.

But another day, it did open at 8:30. And then it didn't. And then it did. On the day I left it even advertised that the following day (a Thursday) was open at 8:30 even though the guide book said 9.


Aside - I chuckled how at 10pm they would make several announcements in Japanese and English that the park was closed for the day. It was so polite, but I know that what they really wanted to say was:

"Hey, you've been here for 13 hours. Go home already!" :)