Seeking Advice: Staying in Shimokitazawa the night before Tokyo Disney

Trying to decide the best way to handle going to Disney from Shimokitazawa

Background: We have an Airbnb in Shimokitazawa for a week. We have a 5 year old. We plan to do 2 days at Disney (one day at DisneySea and one at Disneyland). We have 1 night booked at the Tokyo Disneyland hotel that we will check into our first Disney day and check out of on our second. We will have the Airbnb the whole time to leave most of our belongings and bring only bare essentials to Disney.

However it looks like a far journey from Shimokitazawa to Tokyo Disney on trains. I want to be economical since we are splurging on the Tokyo Disneyland hotel one night, but I am worried if we spend so long on the train in the morning we will be too tired to enjoy the park. What would you do?

Some possible options:
1. Get a cheaper room the night before Disney in the area. (Any suggestions of spots?)

2. Save the money and deal with the long train that morning (is it not as bad as I think it will be?)

3. Take a taxi from the Airbnb to Disney (We won’t have a booster seat so we need a taxi that allows kids without car seats or provides one)

I welcome any other suggestions!

2 comments
  1. Is your concern about getting up early, or just the exhaustion of having to navigate all of the transfers? If the latter, the answer might be to catch the Disney bus from Shinjuku instead of taking the train all the way to the parks. You might even be able to get in a nap on the bus if your family are good sleepers.

  2. Depending on which route you take, a train can take less than an hour and less than ¥1000 per adult to travel from Shimokitazawa Station to Tokyo Disneyland. Prices can go down to ¥580 per adult for the slowest trip of about 90 minutes. (Children younger than 6 years old do not have to pay to ride the train with their parents or another adult.)

    A taxi will run maybe ¥15,000 each way and will likely take longer than a train if you go in the morning: the Tokyo Disneyland area is convenient for driving, but Shimokitazawa is a spaghettilike maze of tiny, slow, one-way streets that I would never consider driving in: bicycles go faster than cars there.

    The bus from Shinjuku Station, if you can make a reservation for the hourly departure, might be a good compromise, but our child at 5 years old had no problems riding trains for an hour.

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