Hong Kong & Tokyo Disneyland – What it costs to visit… not as expensive as you may think

This past spring I decided to travel overseas for the first time and visit the Hong Kong Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland Resorts as you are probably well aware of if you follow the site. If not be sure to visit my 2015 Asia Trip summary page for links to all the sections relating to the trip.. One of the frequent questions people ask me is how expensive was it? So I thought I would write up a post about it.

I allocated about a week at each resort and to try and minimize my air expenses did the trips back to back. My original budget goal was about what I spend at Walt Disney World per person per day. I knew some expenses like airfare would be substantially more but this could be partially offset with lower admission pricing and hotel hopefully.

Walt Disney World

Hong Kong

Tokyo Trip

For this comparison I used:

• Walt Disney World: My December 2014 trip. It was three adults and we stayed in a standard room at the Beach Club Resort using an Annual Pass discount for 7 nights. For our park tickets we upgraded our Disneyland Annual Passes so I used just that upgrade difference. There were no additional transportation costs because we used Disney’s Magical Express.
• Hong Kong Disneyland: My April 2015 trip. 6 Days for three adults. We stayed at a Deluxe room at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel using an Annual Passholder discount. We purchased Annual Passes for each of us. For the airfare I took my total Asia trip and divided it in two.. half for Hong Kong and Half for Tokyo. I also included our sightseeing expenses and transportation in Hong Kong.
• Tokyo Disney: My April 2015 trip. 8 days for three adults. We stayed in a Happy Magic Room at the Tokyo Bay Hilton. We purchased a 4 day ticket to the parks as well as an evening pass one night. I also included our sightseeing trips and transportation expenses in Tokyo. For airfare I used half the total Asia trip.

The per person per day breakdown:
Walt Disney World: $232.20
Hong Kong Disneyland: $183.44
Tokyo Disneyland: $228.74

This really surprised me. I did not feel like we cut any corners at the destinations and experienced the parks the way we intended to. The only real cost compromise we made was in Tokyo we opted for the Hilton over the Disney hotels.

A look behind the numbers at the key categories:

• Airfare: The LAX-> MCO roundtrip was $408 a person. The LAX -> HKG and HND -> LAX were $740 and the HKG to HND one way was $480. So as expected the Asia flights were more, about 3 times more total, but it was for two resorts.
• Hotel: Walt Disney World averaged $378 a night, Hong Kong: $358 and Tokyo $271 The Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel and Beach Club were on par with service and room amenities. I actually thought Hong Kong was a little nicer. Tokyo was a large room by Asian standard but it was pretty run down and not a lot of amenities were used at the hotel but the view of the park was great!
• Park Tickets: Hong Kong was incredibly cheap here. It came out to about $30 a day per person for the four days we spent in the park. Tokyo was about $40 a day per person for the 4.5 days. Walt Disney World was $54 a day per person for the 8 days.
• Food: At WDW we ate a couple nice meals and the rest were in the parks counter service, we also used our Tables in Wonderland discount. This averaged about $35 per person per day. In Hong Kong we averaged $12 per person per day which was skewed because we arrived late at night and left before sunrise the last day.. if you exclude those days we are at about $20 per person per day. In Tokyo we were at $21 per person per day. We opted not to eat at the table service in the parks to maximize park time in Asia. The days we were not in the parks we ate at places like Outback & TGI Fridays plus some Fast Food.

So bottom line Hong Kong Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland both turned out to be less expensive on a per day basis than Walt Disney World for me for comparable trips.