JJapan Trips

9-days trip early next year: Is there anything I should know?

  • August 25, 2025

Hey people.

So, I will be travelling to Tokyo in a group of 5 (2 adults around 30, 2 adults around 50 and 1 four-year-old child) early next year. This will be the first time we’re visiting Japan.

We’re landing on Haneda airport on Jan 1st in the morning.

Our plans consist of:

  1. Visiting TDR on Jan 2nd – 3rd
    We’re planning to stay at the Hilton Bay hotel until the 4th. Reading, learning and researching about TDR is so overwhelming, tbh. But I think I get the gist of it for now. Sort of.

I’m aware this is probably the worst time to visit there ever (new year holidays, etc.) – but is there any advice regardless? We did not get the vacation package because it was way out of our budget.

We’ll probably get the DPA for perhaps Frozen, Rapunzel and Beauty & the Beast and that’s about it (if we’re lucky enough).

Honestly the kid would be really happy just to see the castle and all from the outside.. we’re not sure if she’ll be allowed in the attractions as well. And the queuing would probably turn her off really bad.

Dumb question but is TDR even worth it IF we decide to do it without the attractions? Probably not right?

  1. Hakone on 4th – 7th
    Plans yet to come. Seems like the several places we looked into has no private showers bathroom inside the rooms and we’re not sure on how we feel about this. Is this just the trend how it is in Hakone?

  2. Back to Tokyo 7th – 9th
    Explore the city, and finally back to the airport.

Is there anything I should know regarding these initial plans we have so far? From the airport to the hotel, from Tokyo to Hakone, and back to Tokyo, is a taxi the recommended transport to use since I’m with a child? Would they even accept 4 adults + 1 kid in a single car? Should I be renting a car instead?

Truth is we don’t really know what to expect/ask questions about because there’s just so many things we don’t know (yet). Just TDR alone was taking up a lot of time reading/researching.

Should we just stick with Tokyo instead? Or should we perhaps do Hakone prior, then do TDR on 5th-9th?

Is there anything else we should know prior?

by CoralShade