Hi all, I don’t know if this type of post is allowed, but I’m getting desperate and we have some deadlines coming up.
We are going to Japan for 12 days in October and are so excited! I’ve wanted to visit Japan my whole life. Like most first times, we are mainly going to Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. But also we are theme park/roller coaster enthusiasts and are trying to check out some parks in between and I’m struggling to make it work.
I have kind of a skeleton and was hoping someone here could help me order it, or tell me if this is even possible.
So we arrive on a Tuesday afternoon to Haneda. We need to be back in Tokyo the following Tuesday night to check into a Tokyo Disney Resort hotel. We are planning Disney for the second half of the trip since those will be long days and we will be more adjusted to the time difference.
I want to avoid any theme parks on the weekend, so I would like to explore Osaka and Kyoto on the weekend. I know the cities will also be crowded on the weekend, but minimizing lines at the theme parks is priority #1.
Nagashima Spa Land and Fuji-Q Highland are musts. They are harder to get to than the others on the list, and if possible I would like to stay at their official hotels to get early entry and access to the spas.
Other parks that I’d like to check out in this segment include Universal Studios Japan, Yomiuriland, Yokohama Cosmoworld, and Hirakata Park. For the latter 3, we would only want to spend a couple hours, just to ride each coaster once. For Universal, Nagashima Spa Land, and Fuji-Q, we would stay open to close.
So is this at all doable? Something like:
**Tuesday**: Arrive, stay in either Yokohama or Shibuya/Shinjuku
**Wednesday**: Yokohama or Yomiuriland early (depending on where we stay), then travel to Fuji-Q in the late afternoon
**Thursday**: Fuji-Q, then travel to Nagashima Spa Land
**Friday**: Nagashima Spa Land, then either stay the night or travel to Kyoto
**Saturday**: Kyoto
**Sunday**: Kyoto/Osaka
**Monday**: Universal Japan
**Tuesday**: Osaka/Hirakata Park early, then travel back to Tokyo in the late afternoon to check in at Disney in the evening
Is this possible? What routes could I take to make that work? Is there another order that would work better?
Thanks in advance!
3 comments
The public transport options around nagashima spa land are lacking. Most likely you would bus to/from Nagoya.
Fuji-Q is not too difficult to/from Tokyo. It’s been a few years, but I did a bus to get there from Shinjuku, and it was something like 1.5-2h to get there. I also only did the afternoon pass and just bought fast passes to a handful of the coasters, at something like $10/ride on top of the ticket price. I was able to do all the coasters pretty easily.
Your schedule feels a bit rough arriving at Fuji-Q the night before and doing open and then doing a lot of travel in one go to get to Nagashima Spa Land. I would personally do Fuji Q daytrip very early on Wednesday, come back to Tokyo, do a slower Yokohama/Yomiuriland day Thursday and then the longer travel to setup for Nagashima Spa Land that afternoon. The rest of the schedule seems fine to me. Similarly, the express passes at Universal are definitely worth it. I’m not sure where else you can do express passes.
Not sure what time you arrive in Tokyo but just wanted to give you more to do because you’ve got the coaster at Tokyo Dome..