I always thought we would wait until the boys were a little older before we would attempt a family Disney trip, but we had been told that now was the time to go. Tokyo Disneyland still has limited capacity and so there are very few lines. No lines sounded fantastic to me with two young kiddos. Another plus about going now was that both boys were free still. You don’t pay for kids until they turn four. We thought we would give it a shot! Tickets are hard to come by but with booking a Disney hotel you automatically get some, so we were lucky enough to snag a hotel room at Tokyo Disneyland Celebration Hotel at the tail end of the July 4th weekend. I was so excited for our first family Disney trip and this would be Taylor’s first time to a Disney park too! (Apologies in advance for the amount of exclamation marks that Jackie is about to subject you to.)
Sunday we took the short drive up, only about 1.5 hours for us. We felt the Disney magic as soon as we walked in to the hotel! The staff was so nice and the lobby was so cute and colorful with Minnie Mouse and the teacup chairs in the middle.
A lot of folks arrived after we did. Our check in was pretty quick thankfully. 
Bad pic, but we had a garden view. Disney themes with the wishing well and Cheshire cat
The Celebration hotel isn’t right on the Disneyland property, but they have a shuttle bus that takes you to Disneyland which only takes about 20 minutes. After getting our things into the room we took the shuttle to Ikspari, which is kind of like a downtown Disney type of area. We ate dinner at a Japanese Tonkatsu restaurant. After, we walked around a little bit and got some pie!
Tonkatsu 
Some American food chains and a huge Disney store
Then we headed back to the hotel and put the boys to bed. Thankfully even though we were all in the same room, the boys went to bed fairly easily. One fun thing about the hotel was they give you pajamas to wear!! Taylor was a good sport and wore them also.
The hotel had a buffet breakfast for extra cost. It was so convenient and the food was decent, I thought it was worth it especially when the boys ate for free. They had cute Mickey and Minnie plates. Boys loved the Mickey pancakes.
After, it was time to head to Disneyland!!!
On the bus we went!
We got to the park around 9:30 and waited in line for the park to open at 10, they did seem to open a little early though.
Disney monorail station 
Entrance
Once we got in we immediately went to Tomorrow Land and got in line for Jeffrey’s first ride!!
He didn’t like it, lol.
Taylor hung out with Jonathan since he was too short for the ride. Disney did have a great ride swap system so after I got done with the ride with Jeffrey, Taylor was able to skip the line and go on the ride. We did this swap for a lot of the rides there.
None of the rides were doing standby requests because the lines were so quick but they did have a couple that required “Entry Request”, I think it worked basically like a lottery system. One was the Baymax ride, it’s a new ride here so I guess it is popular. I was able to get an early time slot for this ride. This was Jon’s first ride ever!
Jon was not thrilled about the bracelet (indicating his height) 
Jeffrey’s favorite ride of the whole park was the Buzz Lightyear ride.
We stopped for lunch at a cafe. I even got a Baymax Boba soda drink, so good! Taylor later took Jeffrey on the Star Tours ride while I waited with Jon and we shared some alien mochi balls. Each one had a different flavor in the middle (vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry). Fun little treats!
The next ride that required a entry request was the Beauty and the Beast ride. We headed to this castle next for our time slot. Jonathan was terrified of Beast and screamed throughout this ride, but this was my favorite ride of the park. The rides here are in Japanese and at the end of the ride you are in the ballroom “dancing” with Belle and the prince and everyone was singing Beauty and the Beast in Japanese. It was so beautiful and surreal. I may have teared up. Such an amazing ride especially for those who love the movie.
We kind of skipped over Toon Town (maybe an excuse to go back…) and headed to Fantasy Land next. The It’s a small world ride was so cute here. The boys seemed to really like this one too. It rained for like 10 minutes while the boys took a quick nap (Taylor and I swapped riding Haunted Mansion while they napped).
We also did Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, Peter Pan’s Flight, and Mickey’s PhilharMagic in this area. Taylor then took Jeffrey to Splash Mountain in Critter Country while I did the Dumbo Flying Elephant ride and the Carousel with Jon. Then we all went on the Tea Party ride and the Carousel again for Jeffrey.
They even had cute vending machines! 
We ran into a parade. The boys actually seemed more excited about this than I thought they would be.
We found curry popcorn for a snack as we headed toward Adventure Land. It was pretty good. We also passed Western Land, but the Big Thunder Mountain ride was closed the day we went. We did the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and then Jungle Cruise. I tried getting a picture of an example of some of the lines. Pirates of the Caribbean had literally no line and Jungle Cruise seemed long but it was only like 15 minutes. I don’t think we waited for anything more than 15 minutes and most rides had no lines at all. It was really awesome. Jungle cruise was kind of funny because it is a “punny” ride, but it was all in Japanese so we had no idea what was actually said lol. It was still fun though.
The park closed at 7 pm so it was about time for us to head out.
Closing time
We left the park and went to Ikspari to grab a quick dinner and then headed back to the hotel for the night. It was a great day!!
The next day we were checking out of the hotel so we did breakfast and loaded our car. Then we took the shuttle to Disney Sea!
This park is unique to Japan (it even has its own mascot cast, Duffy and friends) and is very different than any Disney location I’ve been to before. It definitely had a lot of watery type themes going on (hence the name lol), you could even ride gondolas and steamboats around. It was really neat, Taylor actually liked this park more than Disneyland.
This was part of the park and part of a Disney hotel
We walked through Mediterranean Harbor headed towards Mysterious Island (the volcano) first and ride swapped Journey to the Center of the Earth. Really fun ride (probably my favorite ride of the weekend).
Jon napped 
Jeffrey ran around
After we did a 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride in this area. Really cool Joules Verne themed area.
We saw some matcha white chocolate popcorn on our way to Mermaid lagoon and had to try it. Loved it!
Mermaid lagoon was my favorite part of the park. It had such a cool design, you could go inside the lagoon (thank you AC), and there were a lot of kiddie rides perfect for the boys. Jeffrey’s favorite ride of this park was Flounder’s roller coaster. We didn’t stay in this area as long as I would have liked because we had to move to catch our time slot for the Toy Story ride, but it was really cool.
We cut across the park to American Waterfront to ride Toy Story Mania!
For lunch we ate at a New York Deli. Taylor got an interesting pink-bunned burger. I got a tasty ruben sandwich. Quite good. We did get sandwiches for the boys, but let’s be real…they ate french fries.
After we went to ride the Tower of Terror ride. We told Jeffrey it was scary, but he still insisted on riding it. Thankfully he didn’t seem traumatized afterward! Jonathan, on the other hand, was terrorized by the spooky music sounds outside the ride and cried until Taylor came back… All was well though because Taylor let them splash in some fountains while I rode (fountains make everything better).
poor baby! 
After we moved on to Port Discovery where we rode Jonathan’s favorite ride of the day, Aquatopia. Jeffrey also got to ride a Finding Nemo ride here. They rode these rides twice! (The ride attendant recognized Jonathan and myself and asked if it was our second time. She was really excited when I told her yes and that Jonathan loved it.)
Then we loaded them into the stroller hoping they would nap (Jeffrey did). While us big kids rode the Indiana Jones and Raging Spirits rides.
It started sprinkling for a few minutes here but didn’t last long 
Finally, we were in Arabian Coast. We did Jasmine’s Flying Carpets, Sinbad’s Story, and the Carousel here. All so fun!
Then we made our way back to the front of the park to leave.
Unfortunately, it was time for us to leave the magical world.
We left the park and shuttled back to the hotel. Grabbed some food from their convenience store and drove home that evening.
We really had an amazing time. It took me a while to write this post because I kept stopping to look up tickets and hotel information so we can go back immediately lol. Taylor isn’t too keen on that idea though 😉 (I told her that one Disney trip a weekend is probably too much.)
It was an absolute dream and we can’t wait to go back!
BRB, Out to Japan – Jackie
How exciting and fun!
Awesome!! So glad you had a wonderful time!!❤️
Ahhh looks so awesome!!! Love all the pics! 💗💗💗 And that ride swap thing seems super cool!
What a fun weekend!!
Loved everything — especially Taylor’s vimeo clip of Jon during the Baymax ride!