Traveling to the Disney Parks in Asia
My experience planning and scheduling the flights, and whether or not I recommend it.
When I was planning our trip to the Disney Parks in Asia (plus Aulani!) back in 2019, I felt like it was difficult to find many articles about people’s experiences with the same trip. I love watching videos or reading about other people’s experiences because it gives me a better idea of what to expect. I will have separate articles about each destination, but this article will focus on the flights and my overall opinion of the whole trip.
Unfortunately, making this same trip isn’t currently possible, but when the world opens up and is safe for international travel again, hopefully, my experience will be helpful to anyone wanting to make the trek to Shanghai Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo Disney Resort, and Aulani.
How to Plan and Schedule the Flights
If you, like me before planning this trip, have never scheduled a trip other than flying into one location and flying back to the original location, you might be surprised to learn how easy it is. All you need to do on any flight search engine is change the ‘round trip’ option to ‘multi-city’.
Then comes the tedious work of filling in different orders of the destinations and different dates to see what works best for you and your budget. For example:
I went to Japan in 2015, and the cost for my round trip flight just to Japan was about the same price as it was for this entire Asia Disney Parks trip! Of course, there could be other factors, like flights were just more expensive in 2015 (which I do think was the case because I was seeing very cheap flights in 2019 compared to when I searched in 2015), but if you want to see all these places, doing so in one trip will definitely save you money over going separate times for each location.
Visas
Please keep in mind that visa requirements and rules change, so make sure to look up official travel requirements before you buy your flights and plan your trip. (Also, I’m a citizen of the U.S. so my experience only applies to people with a U.S. passport.)
When we went, we didn’t need to apply for a tourist visa for Japan or Hong Kong. Both allowed you to stay for up to 90 days as a tourist.
To visit Shanghai, applying for a visa in advance is required unless you want to use the transit visa. The idea of the transit visa is that people can stay for a short amount of time while passing through to another country. Shanghai is 144 hours, and other areas of China have different lengths of time. We needed proof printed out of where we were staying while in Shanghai, as well as proof of our flight leaving China within the 144 hour time period.
We didn’t plan on staying that long, so that was perfect for us. We arrived at night, spent two full days at Shanghai Disneyland, and left early the next morning. The option to use the transit visa was convenient, however, we did have an issue at the airport before leaving the United States.
We were traveling with our friends on separate airlines, and when they tried to check-in for their flight to Shanghai, the airline employee wouldn’t let them because they didn’t know about the transit visa and insisted our friends needed to apply for a visa in advance. They ended up missing their flight because of this and had to rebook a flight on a separate airline last minute.
We almost had this happen with our flight, but thankfully the first employee to help us asked another employee who happened to know about the transit visa. Hopefully, this is more well known now and you won’t have the same issue, but just keep in mind that you may need to prove you can do this or ask for a manager who may have more experience with the different visas. You don’t want to miss your flight!
What Order Should You Visit the Parks?
Tokyo Disney Resort seems to be the favorite park for most people. In addition to that, we wanted to spend the most amount of non-park time in Japan. Because of those two reasons, we wanted to end with Tokyo Disney Resort. Looking on a map you might think it makes the most sense to therefor start in Hong Kong, go to Shanghai next, and then end in Tokyo. However, with the timing and prices of available flights, the best plan for us was to start in Shanghai and go to Hong Kong second. Then we added a day in Hawaii onto the trip home for a little relaxation after all the craziness of the parks and sightseeing.
So basically, you do you! I don’t know of any specific advantage or disadvantage of going to one before another. Choose what works best in terms of flights and the order of what you want to see.
Is It Worth Going to All These Parks?
If you are a fan of the Disney parks and you can travel to these places, then YES! I 100% think it is worth it and I really hope I can go back to each of these parks one day.
Possibly a more important question is whether it is worth going to all of them in one trip. As I mentioned above, in terms of money and budget, I think going on one big trip is less expensive overall when compared to going three or four separate times. However, we were very rushed. We had two days in Shanghai Disneyland, one day in Hong Kong Disneyland, two days at the Tokyo Disney parks, two days in Tokyo, and less than one full day at Aulani.
For me personally, it was totally worth it. I was exhausted at times, but I loved every moment and would do it again in a heartbeat if given the chance. Of course, now having already been to each place, I would also love to spend more time relaxing and exploring each location.
That is it for the overview of this trip! If you are planning or thinking about a similar trip, I hope this article and the ones to come will be of help.
