disneyland | JahBella

After the tough decision of having to decide which flight configuration and flight timing would work for us, I had another dilemma looming in the horizon..where to stay in Tokyo?

Here are some of the options we had and the rationale/ pros and cons behind each one.

Stay at a Disney Hotel for 11 days.

🙂 Minimize the need to move hotels and keep us really close to Disney on the 4 days we were intending to visit (perfect for going back for afternoon naps!)

😦 Visiting Tokyo on the other 7 days would be a hassle, with multiple train stops and at least 45 minutes travel time each way.

Stay at a Disney Hotel for half our trip and move to a city hotel for the other half.

🙂 Minimise travel time on a day to day basis

😦 Lose one entire day when we change hotels and we would have to visit Disney over a weekend and battle the crowds. [Read about our tips to surviving Disneyland Tokyo with kids]

Stay at a City hotel for 11 days

🙂 Easy travel for most part of our 11 day holiday

😦 Almost impossible to go back for afternoon naps on our 4 Days at Disneyland and lose out on a lot of the Disney experience

So which would you have chosen?:)

We eventually chose Option 1 which I know is probably not the most popular choice but we really cherish our naptimes :p (well rested kids = happy kids = happy parents) So yes we chose to struggle on most days and manage our itinerary within means.

We ended up booking a room at Hilton Tokyo Bay which although is not an Official Disney Hotel (The Disney hotels are connected to either Disneyland or Disney Sea) but it was fairly well-connected by a monorail line which served the Disney area (think our local LRT).

The hotel provided a free shuttle service to the nearby Bayside monorail station. We would usually take the shuttle bus to and from Bayside except at night when it tends to get really crowded. For those peak times, we would opt to take a nice slow 5 minutes stroll to our hotel.

Disney Shuttle to Bayside Station from our hotel

With Mickey design and interior

Jah enjoying his front row seat everytime we took the Disney shuttle

Bayside monorail station would bring you to 3 other stations – Disneyland station, Disney Sea station and the main Maihama Station which would connect you to the greater Metro lines. The monorail takes about 15 minutes to complete an entire loop so it was really convenient and fast!

We bought a 3 day monorail pass which gave us unlimited rides (only adults need to pay)

The Disney monorail

Enjoying the view of Disneysea while enroute to Disneyland

All smiles for Disney!

The hotel also provided a direct shuttle service to Maihama Station for those who are heading out to the city. This was how we travelled out to the city on the other 7 days. This is also where you would find Ikispiari Mall, where we settled a lot of our meals when we were not heading out to the city.

Maihama Station

The Hilton Tokyo Bay had several room types – 1 of which was the Happy Magic Room. The Happy Magic rooms are situated on their own level which was decorated in a Magic Forest Theme. It was a real treat for the kids and they would ‘greet’ the little dragon 3D holograms found near our lift lobby every time we took the lift.

The room we had was really awesome for 3 main reasons. The room was HUGE compared to many of the city hotels in Tokyo and honestly even Singapore!!! Yes, we had 3 queen sized beds put side by side and so we didn’t have to squeeze or worry about rolling off the bed. There was also ample playing space for the kids and our huge suitcases.

Huge Happy Magic Room!

Wondering what to do with themselves in this big room

There were little tricks in the room to entertain the kids, like a magic mirror and a giant key to unleash the ‘magic’.

Magic Mirror and his princess friend

We also enjoyed our 180 degree sea view which offered us a glimpse of Mount Fuji on a nice clear day.

Brother and sister enjoying their seaview in the mornings

View of Mount Fuji from our room

While the hotel does not offer room service, it does have a well-stocked convenience store where we would purchase our daily beverage and snacks replenishment. They also have a take-away deli which sells hot food, pastries and desserts, and they offer room delivery for an additional 20% charge. This was how we settled our dinner upon arrival and the food was pretty decent (tasty spaghetti bolognaise, curry rice, kiddy bento). The photo doesn’t do the food justice because I was too famished to take a good shot :p We ordered from the deli every time we were too lazy to eat out and the kids even requested to go back to the hotel for the deli food on a few occasion. 🙂

Well-stocked minimart at our hotel

Our hot food upon arrival..takeaway from their Deli

While it was really quite a hassle to travel out to the city from the hotel (for 7 days!!) Reality was a lot tougher than what I imagined in my head :p That being said, I would definitely still choose to stay at this hotel, the next time we visit Tokyo Disneyland (unless of course we decide to stay at the Official Disney Hotel 😉 )

The Hilton Tokyo Bay is a real value for money hotel especially if you book early..:) (Think $300 a night vs $900 a night!) It is after all a Hilton right?

JahBella’s Mummy

During our dating years, it was extremely hard to convince Joel to holiday in Hong Kong and I didn’t quite know the reason for his reluctance. I only found out the reason for it when he finally agreed to visit Hong Kong in 2009. The first thing he said to me as our taxi pulled out of the airport was, “wow! this isn’t like Young and Dangerous at all!” (Yes so now you know which era we are from :p).

So anyway he has been quite in love with Hong Kong since then and it was extremely easy to convince him to bring the kids there (on such short notice) despite just returning from our Perth holiday.

Family Pic before we jet off!

Admiring the Social Tree at T1

Stickers are extremely serous business! Do not let your child discover your secret sticker stash pre-flight!

Pushing his sister around HK Airport

So what is there do do with kids in Hong Kong you ask. Everyone would tell you to “Eat and Shop” however we could only manage the ‘eat’, ‘go to Disneyland’ and ‘eat somemore’.

While staying at one of the Disneyland would probably seem like the most obvious choice, we decided to stay in Mongkok instead. We chose the Langham Place Mongkok for its location and also because the the range of room types that were available for families. (Also the hotels at Disneyland were extremely expensive if we wanted to cater for 3 adults and 2 kids 😦 )

We ended up with two rooms that were inter-connected which gave us our privacy but still allowed us to holiday as a family. Staying at Langham Place also allowed us to head down to the streets at night when the kids were asleep and our helper could still watch out for Jah who was in our room.

We managed to go for massages and awesome suppers without worrying about traffic. Staying in Mongkok also meant that we could have our pick of the local food with the kids without worrying that it was past their bedtime (after all we were only a few streets away from our hotel).

Room 1 with a babycot

Room 2 with a king size bed

The bathroom in the main room – the other toilet only had a WC

The kids were really delighted by the food that we had (dim sum, char chant eng sets and roasted goose rice!) What can I say, my kids love their Chinese food!

Picking up dinner 5 minutes after we checked in

Famished after his flight – we managed to pick up dinner right in front of our hotel..yummy!

Awesome street snacks enjoyed in the comforts of our room with the fantastic city view

Snow Ice at a Dessert shop, a short walk from our hotel

How the loves of my life entertain themselves before food is served

Whack first!

Talk later!

I apologise for the lack of char chan teng pictures. There was a really yummy place in front of our hotel too but yes we were too focused on wolfing down our food each time we went there. I am still dreaming of their Bo Luo Bao and their Satay Beef Noodles.

The only downside of our location was the fact that we had to travel abit to get to Disneyland. (MTR going there and a cab coming back). Given that the kids needed their afternoon naps, we pretty much had to visit Disneyland over two days (a morning and an evening trip).

To be honest, it would definitely be a struggle for me to decide between Langham Place and Disneyland hotels for our next trip. Guess we will just have to see if food or sleep reigns supreme!

JahBella’s Mummy