Mikey and I started planning this trip over a year ago. Tons of research on travel blogs and Disney fan sites suggested we book a main round trip flight from the USA to Asia on a major carrier and then book our inner-Asia flights on carriers when we could find good deals. This turned out to be much cheaper than trying to book a multi-city ticket on a single carrier that covered all bases.
Where do we start our trip? Tokyo? Hong Kong? Shanghai? From what we’ve read the Tokyo parks are the most spectacular followed by Shanghai and then Hong Kong. The right way to do it would be to save the best for last, right? Well, we are doing it the opposite way. Tokyo, Shanghai then Hong Kong. This is due to an upgradable flight we found on United. Thanks to a bunch of miles we were able to get a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo in United’s new Polaris First Class.
I experience pretty decent flight anxiety. Experiencing it in comfort helps. This flight pretty much made the decision as to where we are starting our adventure. We decided on Shanghai as our second destination since Shanghai Disneyland can be super crowded on the weekends and the number of days we planned on spending in Tokyo gave us two potentially slow days (a Monday and Tuesday) in Shanghai. It also allowed us two weekdays in Hong Kong Disneyland. This is some pretty high level math. Fortunately, Mike teaches calculus.
Now that we had the main flight booked we could begin to lockdown the hotels. We decided on the Miracosta Hotel in Tokyo as our biggest splurge. This hotel is located inside the DisneySea park. Yes, inside the park. It’s kind of like the Grand Californian at the Anaheim parks as it creates the boundary of a large portion of Tokyo DisneySea only it is a far more prominent backdrop than the Californian creating the look of classic Venetian and Tuscan cityscapes.
In Shanghai we are staying at the Disney Toy Story Hotel. This is slightly less pricy than the Miracosta while still part of the Disney Resort.
In Hong Kong we will stay at the Disney Hollywood Hotel.
Why did we opt to stay at Disney properties? Close proximity and views of the parks, perks like early entry and it’s a Disney bucket list trip!
Once all the hotels were booked we found our flights from Tokyo to Shanghai on Delta and Shanghai to Hong Kong on China Eastern Air.
Our final obstacle was to secure our visas for China. We ended up using a service for this rather than waiting in line at the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco. Well worth the $30 service charge!
Trip booked!
Art’s Travel Adventures 