Hi everyone
I am an adult with autism visiting Japan with my disability carer soon. I have a question on buying tickets to popular attractions and want to manage my expectations with disability inclusion culture.
In England, most attractions offer disability concession tickets where I can enter at a discounted price and/or bring a disability carer in for free. While I always carry a medical note for my autism diagnosis and my partner as my disability carer, most ticket counters do not ever ask for proof and would apply the concession rate when I ask whether this was available.
For our trip to Japan, I plan to visit some major attractions with large crowds, eg USJ, Disneyland and Shibuya Sky. However, I visited Hong Kong last year and struggled to explain my autism background to attraction staff, as there was a lack of recognition of autism as a disability.
While I would very much like to avoid causing any offense unintentionally, the above attractions in Japan also have disability access policies for either discounted tickets / express pass to help manage sensory issues. Would you recommend I email ahead of time to purchase purchase tickets or on the spot?
Thanks!
\[I’ll prepare official translations for the above documents to aid communication; I’m also happy to pay full price if asking will cause confusion / tension\]
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5 comments
For Shibuya Sky and most ticket vendors the only price tiers are for Seniors and Children. I don’t think having autism will give you a much different experience compared to other non-Japanese visitors as the language barrier masks most behavioral traits and in my experience they are only focused on keeping the flow of people steady. All of the locations you listed will also have crowds so if you get easily overstimulated you will need to account for that.
It looks like USJ has [Guest Support Pass](https://www.usj.co.jp/web/en/us/service-guide/barrier-free/information) and Disneyland has [Disability Access Service](https://media2.tokyodisneyresort.jp/home/download/EN_bfree_informationbook-2.pdf) for those with disabilities that would make it difficult to wait in a queue. Both allow you to reserve a time for an attraction so you can wait somewhere outside the line. They do not provide priority entrance to the attraction.
I didn’t see any mention of discounted admission fees.
The locations you describe are very crowded so if you’re easily stimulated you have to account for that.
Hong Kong (and Japan) government issues official registration cards for people with disabilities. This card is seen as *the* defining documentation that the holder genuinely has a disability and entitled to various concessions for parks, attractions, bus fares etc.
So it is quite possible the confusion came about because there was no equivalent official-looking evidence from your home government and you did not have an “obvious” physical disability for lack of a better word. I would be mentally prepared for this situation arising again and decide how you want to handle it in advance of the actual interaction.
Outside of major amusement parks – Japan does not really offer discounts to anyone above school-age kids. Some facilities offer it for senior citizens, otherwise – no and you would need to be resident of Japan to acquire require ID.
I recently travelled to Japan with my 3 autistic children. While the Japanese people were friendly, I would keep very low expectations when it comes to accommodations for autism. We had to jump through major hoops to get permission to bring in ADHD meds, and we had pretty major issues with sensory overload at the theme parks. I did some basic research about the accommodations available to autistic guests and could not find any special provisions. My son really wanted to visit Super Nintendo world at USJ, but it was a bit of a disaster with crowding and major sensory overload, and the newer simulator type rides were a particular problem. If I had my time over I don’t think we would have gone to USJ. Disneyland was much better, and the premier access passes worked much better for us.