Is Tokyo Disney Right for My Family: the Basics

The Tokyo Disney Resort consists of two theme parks and six hotels, located in Chiba, just outside of Tokyo. The first park - Tokyo Disneyland - opened in 1983 and at the time was - and to a large extent still today is - a near replica of Disneyland (Anaheim). A second park - Tokyo DisneySea - followed in 2001 and is widely regarded in the Disney community as the greatest themed theme park in the world. The resort is owned by an independent company - the Oriental Land Company (OLC) - who license the use of Disney intellectual property but who also do an incredible job at matching (and often exceeding) the magic found in the original U.S. based Disney parks. OLC have nice summaries on the development of both Disneyland and DisneySea on their website. 

Although Disneyland will feel similar to the other "castle" parks around the world, there are enough new attractions and unique twists to more familiar rides that Disney fans can still easily spend two days there. As for DisneySea, two days feels more like a minimum and anyone with a love of the "theme" part of theme park could easily spend much more time there. 

For U.S. park fans, a good reference point is that Tokyo Disneyland is going to be close in size and scope to what you experience at Magic Kingdom or Disneyland (California), while Tokyo DisneySea is comparable to EPCOT's vast size (but with more attractions) and substantially bigger and busier than what you might find at California Adventure.

Sources: 1. TEA Global Experience Index 2024, 2. ParkLore.com

What these aggregated attendance numbers mask though is that while a day's attendance might be comparable to parks in the US, the upper range of attraction queue length is likely to be significantly longer that what you have seen before.

Japanese Disney fans are quite happy to wait for their favourite attractions and the "balk time" to walk away from long lines is significantly higher than in the U.S. parks. It is commonplace to see waits of two, three, or even four hours for the headliner attractions during busier times of the year. That said, on the same day you'll also see waits of 15 minutes at Jungle Cruise or 5 minutes at Sindbad's Storybook Voyage, so it isn't so much that the parks are intolerably crowded, just that you need a very specific plan of attack if you want to experience a number of the more popular attractions.

​OLC continue to expand their on-site hotel offerings with the Fantasy Springs Hotel becoming the sixth onsite accommodation. For some context though, this still gives the Tokyo Resort only around 3,500 guestrooms, less than 10% of the onsite rooms at Walt Disney World (per Touring Plans). Of course, the resort is also connected by a quick train ride from a city with a metropolitan population of 41 million so hotel rooms aren't typically the driver of crowds here. We get into the advantages of staying in the official Disney hotels here.

Tokyo is an incredible city - the personal favourite of this writer in the entire world - and Japan is a dream destination that could easily occupy weeks or even months worth of travel. It's also a country that is incredibly accessible to tourists and is just about the perfect place to visit if you want to travel slightly further than you might be used to but aren't yet ready to go too far outside of your comfort zone. Japan can offer nonstop, authentic, and unique experiences but it's also a place where you'll feel safe, can easily get around on public transport, and where your kids (or you) can easily get some familiar food if they need a taste of home. ​​

Is the Tokyo Disney Resort right for my family?

Where to spend your money and precious vacation days is often a complex decision, but for almost all visitors the simple answer as to whether it's a good idea to visit Japan is simply "yes". We've been fortunate enough to visit over 60 countries and Japan is right near - or even at - the top of the list. Excellent travel resources go into some of the more specialist considerations you or your family might have - such as accessibility or dietary concerns - but broadly speaking Japan is easy to get around, has food that will please most palates, and has a tourism sector that is well tailored to providing endless entertainment for kids. 

While most visitors would agree that Japan is awesome and pretty much everyone should try and visit, the answer to this question might change slightly if we ask "should we go to Tokyo Disney Resort . . . right now?" The ideal time to go to Disney is a popular question, and one one whose answer is typically well answered by the great Touring Plans blog:

"Obviously there are good and bad aspects to Walt Disney World travel at any age or stage. For me, there’s no right time to go. Or to put it differently, there are many right times to go. I loved my Disney visits when my kids were toddlers and I love them now when they’re young adults – even though the trips themselves are entirely different."

I'd say this advice generally  ​holds true to visiting the non-U.S. parks, though there are a couple of additional factors to consider when deciding if a trip to TDR is right for your family:

1. Flight time: For those travelling from outside Asia, getting to Tokyo is going to be a much bigger deal that getting to the U.S. parks (or Disneyland Paris for those in Europe). That said, for those on the west coast of North America like us, it's 10 hours to Tokyo and less than nine on the way back, which is actually closer than Europe via a direct flight or even somewhere like Orlando if you have to layover en route. For our family travels, the kids reaching the age where they could watch - and actually concentrate on - a tablet or the in-flight entertainment screen was the key factor. Our kids don't really use tablets at home, but watch enough TV that they have their "favourite" shows, and so giving them the option to binge watch content for hours was a sufficient motivator to keep them busy for several hours. Conventional wisdom seems to be that trying to fly overnight can be useful as you can kill much of the flight time with sleep. Of course, that's a bit of a boom/bust strategy as if you (and the kids) don't sleep then you're now uncomfortable and tired on arrival. For our most recent trip to Tokyo we flew from Vancouver at 1pm which had a lot of advantages. Even with a very brief connection to get to Vancouver we didn't need to get up super early and - ignoring time zones for a minutes - on arrival it was relatively late per our body clocks but not so late that people had begun to turn into zombies. Local time was just after 3pm which meant we just needed to survive for a couple of hours to pickup our luggage, catch the bus to our hotel, grab a bite to eat for dinner and then head to bed at a time which put us nicely onto Japan time. We were tired the next day - and wouldn't really recommend you try and hit a full Disney day on that day - but managed to get into the city for some shopping and a visit to TeamLabs without much of an issue. 

   
   

2. Eating habits: For most travelers, Japan is super​ easy to find food that everyone will enjoy. Even putting aside my own view that Japanese cuisine is arguably the best in the world, you will find a plethora of "western" or pretty much any other cuisine available in most places around the country, particularly in big cities (and of course theme parks). The prevalence of very good snack and quick eat options at local convenience stores adds another way to easily keep little stomach's well fed. All that said, if your kids are really picky then it's still worth roughly mapping out what they might eat while in Japan. I was personally a terribly picky kid and while I would now equate chicken kaarage with chicken nuggets, I don't think 8-year old me would have found them to be the same.  In some ways the food outside of Disney is actually easy for picky eaters as you can find familiar fast food chains or grab simple snacks at a konbini (convenience store). There are kids options in the park but I would say that (a) there tends to only be one or two in a dining location, and (b) they aren't always the ubiquitous burgers, chicken fingers, and fries that a regular visitor to the U.S. parks might expect. Below is a typical kids set that is found throughout the park:

   
   

   

   
   

   This is good, simple, accessible food, but it looks a little bit different from the typical U.S. kids meal, so our advice would be to look at the restaurant menus in some detail and have a list of restaurants where you are going to be able to find something for any picky eaters in the group. Mobile order is great help here, as it makes it easy to order from several places and have one person go and pick up something from a different location without wasting too much time. Even if you are all ordering from the same place, mobile ordering is still advised as is possibly one of the last few ways to really gain an advantage on the typical guest, as the service still doesn't seem to be fully taken advantage of.

   
   

3. Accommodation style: Generally, Japanese hotels tend to run a bit smaller than those in the U.S., although those used to staying in many European city hotels likely won't notice a major difference. One practical limitation though is that many Japanese hotel rooms have a maximum occupancy of three people and in my experience, "family" suites are not commonplace in many cities. When we travel, our family tends to try and get a room with a separate living area so that the adults have somewhere to sit after the kids go to sleep but such a room isn't often available in many Japanese hotels. If you have a very small kid, or several kids with wide-ranging bed times, you might end up needing two rooms which can be quite costly. I'm not an expert on hotels and local guides will have more detailed information, but anecdotally, I have found that staying in newer and less centralized areas have given a higher possibility of bigger rooms, which helpfully for Tokyo Disneyland, includes the Tokyo Bay area (although even the Disney partner hotels don't really offer family suites with separate rooms).  

   
   

4. Attraction restrictions: If a trip to Tokyo Disney is going to be more "once-in-a-lifetime" than "just another Disney trip" then it stands to reason that you - and more importantly your kids - will want to maximize the trip. I don't think this means you need to wait until everyone in your group can ride every attraction, but it's useful to go in clear eyed with what the littlest members of your group might miss out on. The good news, is that there aren't too many attractions which have a height restriction that is likely to limit your plans. For example, there aren't many kids who will be mature enough to want to ride Tower of Terror before they hit that 40 inch limit. We've summarized the height restrictions and "scariness" the park's attractions here.

   
   

5. Language Barrier: In terms of logistics, an inability to not speak Japanese won't present many issues at the Tokyo Disney Resort or really in Tokyo/Japan more generally. A good number of locals speak English - especially in heavily touristed areas - and important signage tends to come in multiple language (such as at train stations, airports, or theme parks). That said, I do think that not understanding the local language does detract a little bit from some of the Disney magic. You won't understand the narrative in the night time spectaculars, or the corny jokes on the Jungle Cruise, or the words of the in-ride music. If you are a park veteran and are well versed in Disney lore, then this probably doesn't matter too much. You already probably have a pretty good idea as to what the pirates are saying in Pirates of the Caribbean, and you know the basic storyline of Beauty and the Beast so don't need the introductory presentation to be able to enjoy the attraction. If however, this is going to be your (or your kid's) first time at a Disney park then I would at least pause to consider if you feel you will miss anything without that language element. You can (and likely will) still have an amazing time and many activities - character greetings, rollercoasters - are unchanged, but for the dark rides, and those with a deeper story, be prepared to need to fill in some gaps yourself.

Hopefully this post will spark your interest in a trip to the Tokyo Disney Resort, and if so, check out our Tokyo Disney page, where we're building out all the questions, tips and learnings from our recent visits, together with our own plans for our next visit in 2027.