Ever since we came to Japan, we've fantasized about visiting Tokyo Disneyland. We don't do a lot of traveling out here, partly because Japanese hotels insists on charging by the head instead of the room. With two kids (who are often considered adults in the eyes of the greedy innkeepers), travel costs spiral out of control pretty quickly. In order to save a bit of money, Stef and I decided we'd save our Disneyland trip for the weeks before we leave Japan for good.
However, when Stef did the research and crunched the numbers, she found that the busiest (and, consequently, the most expensive) time of the year at Disneyland is actually from July to August, when kids are out of school--and when I would be going home. The first part of September, according to Stef's online research, was actually the least busy time of the year; kids are back in school, so the attendance drops drastically. It's basically the same in America. So, we decided that we might as well check and see how much it would cost to plan a trip out to Tokyo in early September.
We found a good time to go, which just so happened to be the first possible day that we could book cheap airline tickets. Since I don't have a credit card in Japan, I had to run around like a headless chicken to get the reservations made (and make sure that I was getting the best possible price), and then make a mad dash to the convenience store (they call it a "conbini" in Japan) before midnight to make a payment on a confusing computer kiosk, all because that night just happened to be the last possible night that I could book the flight for the time frame we had set (you have to book at least 30 days in advance).
To make matters more stressful, I had to make sure right then that I could get decent hotel reservations for the same time frame, since it would be pretty pointless to pay out the nose for a place to stay for the sole purpose of saving money on a plane ticket. Hotels in Tokyo are not cheap. Any place near the park is absurdly overpriced. In my frantic rush to find a place for less than $650 (or at least the equivalent if the dollar were 1:100 yen like it used to be) for three nights, I even fooled myself into thinking that I might be overlooking great package deals from the resort hotels.
I saw the price per night at one of the official Disney hotels, and was surprised to see that they charged by the room rather than per person. Still, the $500 per night charge seemed outrageous. Then, I saw that there were rooms at another official Disney hotel for only $150 per night, and they charged by the room, too! When I got to the checkout page that asked for my payment, I realized that I had made a critical mistake--I didn't see the extra zero at the end of the total.
That's right--it wasn't $150 per night, but $1500 dollars. And the other, already outrageously overpriced room was actually $5000 a night. Five. Thousand. Dollars. This was not some luxurious penthouse suite, but a normal room at the official resort hotel. Who the heck has that kind of money?
I called Sayuri and asked if she could help me find a deal, and she gave me the name of the area in which I should be searching. I eventually discovered the website of a little place called Family Resort Fifty's for Maihama, which seemed close to the park, and only cost about $120 a night with breakfast included. I got the booking ready, and just as I was about to click the button to make the reservation, I remembered hearing that sometimes you can get better deals for hotels through other companies. I did a search for Fifty's on a few of the Japanese travel sites, and was pleased to find that I could get the same exact room for $89 each night. I booked the room at Fifty's for three nights for a total of $267--much less than the $600-$700 that all the other places were asking.
Having booked the room, I then ran to the conbini about an hour before the midnight deadline to pay for the plane tickets. We were going to Disneyland in a month!
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