Scaredy Cat Travels

Tokyo – Shiodome, Disney

Transportation: trains, subway, feet, avoid taxis 

Hotel: Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel ~ Standard 4 Bed Room with Balcony & Ocean View 

Plans: I really, really love high tea. I could give or take the tea part but the little sandwiches, pastries, scones, clotted cream, champagne and the fussiness are all right up my alley. I also associated high tea with two wonderful memories. Not long after Rowan was born, my sister and I flew to England to visit my father and step-mother who were living in Wilmcote, a tiny, one pub village near Stratford-upon-Avon. One weekend we took the train into London and celebrated our trip with high tea at The Savoy Hotel. It was so fussy I was in heaven. My other high tea memory is with Ryan at the Grand Floridian Hotel in Florida. It was not nearly as fussy and fabulous as The Savoy but Ryan did accidentally call the tea cozy a tea condom to our waitress. The look on her face was worth it all. I have to admit, although Ryan often made up words, they usually sort of made sense.

All that is to say, I found out that there are many places that host high tea in Tokyo too but these are even more fabulous because they are themed to the season or a fruit or even an anime. Our hotel conveniently happens to have one of the best high teas in Tokyo (or so they claim). I will be the judge of that.

At some point after tea, we’ll transfer to our next hotel – the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay. I am a little concerned that switching directly from a suite at The Conrad to the most basic room offered at the Sheraton will cause us to go into some sort of shock. It seems a step-down program would have been wiser.

The evening plan is to take advantage of After 5 PM discount tickets to DisneySea. We’ll try to knock out some of the rides we are most interested in that night and see the evening show, so we aren’t as pressured to fit everything in the next day. As I mentioned (I think) before, I couldn’t purchase these tickets from Klook or Disney directly. Tokyo Disney no longer sells tickets at the gate so my next attempt will be preordering them through the Sheraton which involves a weird “reservation request”. If all else fails, I think/hope I can purchase them once we are at the hotel.

The $$$: I don’t know how much high tea at The Conrad is yet but assume it will not be reasonable. The offset is that DisneySea evening tickets are about $35 per person or the equivalent of two cocktails at a US Disney park. The hotel room at Sheraton is around $300 per night – still pricey but compared to the rates at the official Disney hotels, it is a steal.

Scaredy Cat rating: One paw – again only a little concern about luggage handling and the transfers. In general, I am only worried about transportation when we are on a tight schedule (like getting to Fukuoka in time for the ferry) or if we’re lugging our suitcases. The suitcase portion may subside once we know if we can actually squeeze into our smaller suitcases.

If there’s anything I know, it’s Disney and I think that knowledge will transfer for the most part to the Japanese parks even if they aren’t technically owned or run by Disney. 

Hotel #3 Detail – Sheraton Grande Bay Tokyo

This was the easiest decision for me. Despite my earlier declarations about Sheratons in general we are staying at the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel in a Standard Four-Twin Guest Room with a Balcony & Ocean View in the Main Building. 

This is one of those instances where we are taking advantage of Japanese hotels often using twin beds and often packing several of them into one room. Having so many beds in one room will likely make it very crowded but it’s nice that these rooms give a family of five the option to stay together. In the US, it is next to impossible. You may be still five+ people in one relatively small room sharing one bathroom but at least it is an option if you have too many kids or are on a very strict budget. 

Our room description has a lot of words, and I don’t know what many of them mean. The Sheraton, like many Disney partner hotels, appears to be enormous with lots of buildings in various states of renovation. For this portion of the trip, proximity to Disney and low cost were the priorities (haha, have those two priorities ever worked out on a Disney trip?). All I can say is that the photos look very “Sheratony”. In addition to being on the Disney monorail line, the Sheraton has plenty of amenities like a large pool, lovely walking gardens and even a wedding chapel. In my humble opinion, the best feature other than being close to Disney and “cheap” in comparison to the other hotels, is the rooms seem to have beautiful direct ocean views. A good view of the ocean will cover a multitude of sins.

I feel the need to point out that I did not want to book a room with so many beds. It’s far too early in our trip for us to have already kidnapped a member of BTS, so we don’t have use for it. It was just the only thing left in my price point after I procrastinated.

Online, not surprisingly, the nearby Hilton gets better reviews but I’m sticking to my guns and hoping my Marriot Platinum status will make it worthwhile at Sheraton. Please, please let us get bumped up or have a good lounge. If not, we’ll be in the parks most of the time anyway.