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All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life
The Japan ER Visit That Changed How We Travel (& Tokyo Disney) with Amy Fox
00:51:43
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- [00:00]
Patrick
Our last morning in Tokyo started like any other day of the trip. We're eight days in, We've got three left to go. We're currently staying at the Park Hyatt, and by this point, the breakfast there had become kind of a tradition. It was amazing. Every single person in the family looked forward to it. It was the kind of breakfast you'd actually set an alarm for, even on vacation. Amy was finishing getting ready. Our oldest was almost ready to go. And our youngest, the one we'd been warned for a year, was going to be the unpredictable one. We was spinning around the room, dancing the way little kids do while we waited. I was standing by the door watching her. There was this low table, wood, sharp edges. She was spinning on the carpet with her shoes on. She had her eyes closed, and I
- [00:44]
Jason
saw it before she did.
- [00:46]
Patrick
She slipped, hit the table on the way down and fell over. She landed straight on the bridge of her nose, and it did not look good. That was the moment our last morning in Tokyo stopped being a vacation and the moment I started learning a few things about traveling internationally with a family that I really wish I'd known before we left. Like, which credit card should I have put the flights on, what a Japanese ER actually costs, and a question every traveler should probably answer before they get on a plane. This is part two of our Japan trip with my wife, Amy. Today we're picking up where we just
- [01:19]
Jason
left off in our hotel room. I remember I picked her up immediately. She was crying. I'm walking in the bathroom where the most light was, where tissues and washcloths were, and there is blood coming. And it's a good thing I was holding her because I don't think you handle blood and kids like you probably handled blood before kids.
- [01:38]
Amy
No. I used to be able to look at anything and I'd be like, it's fine. We'll take care of this post, kids. I saw her nose and I was like, I think I might throw up. Like, it was split wide open.
- [01:50]
Jason
And I think on one hand it sounds like gushing is probably strong. I'm sure that's how you remember it. I was like, I saw it. I was like, it is split open. We probably need to go to the hospital or to an urgent care or something. And I wasn't sure what to do, but step one was, we're not going to do it here. So let's get all of us everything we need to go to the hospital or the emergency room. Let's go down to the lobby and let's try to figure out a plan. And so fortunately, shout out to four people, Bill, Rob, Corey, and your sister Jessica, all of who work in the medical field, all of whom, fortunately, it was early enough that they were around and I kind of texted them. I was like, what should I do? They're like, send me a picture, FaceTime me. And so before we tried to figure out how to navigate the Japanese medical system, I had a couple people giving us feedback. And the early feedback was you probably could leave it, but cosmetically, if you could stitch that up, it'll probably look better. And it's not that tough to do, but you got to figure out how to get it done. And at this point in time, fortunately, bleeding had stopped. We're kind of sitting down in the lobby trying to figure out what to do. I'd asked someone from the hotel, like, what do we do? And huge shout out to Daisuke Taguchi. He is the assistant front office manager at the Park Hyatt and was basically our personal Japanese hospital searcher for the better part of an hour. And we kind of had to make this decision, what do we do? And his advice was, you know, you can go to the hospital and it's like many other hospitals. I mean, he, he hadn't lived in the States, but like, you're going to be waiting for a long time or I can call and make an appointment. But a lot of hospitals and medical clinics don't open until 9 or 9:30 or 10. And it was 8:15 or 8:30 at the time, maybe it was 8:45. And so he called three or four hospitals, asked around. I had talked and sent photos to the people I mentioned. And they were like, well, it'd be great if you could find someone who kind of specializes in plastic surgery or something, because they could do a much better job of taking a look and cleaning it up. And here I am sitting, trying to put ice on it. Our daughter being a champ at this point, yeah, didn't want the ice, but was kind of had accepted that this had happened and even wanted to show a friend of mine who I'd met through Points and Miles forums, was there with his family. And she was like, I want to show you the pictures of it, because we've taken a picture. So she was kind of in good spirits. That's who get made an appointment at a hospital that was known for having pretty decent access to English translation. It was the national center for Global Health and Medicine. It was in Shinjuku, so it was close by and made us appointment at 9:30 we had about 25 minutes to spare, so we went to breakfast. And despite her nose being what it was, it was no longer bleeding, and there wasn't much we could do that would be faster. And so we had a very fast but very good last breakfast, packed up a handful of things. They gave us a to go box, which I don't think was standard, but they kind of understood the circumstance and we were kind of ready to be on our way. But I'll just say that this is precisely when staying at a nice hotel with a concierge and front office team like this matters. And for sure, if we were at an Airbnb, we would have been on our own. Many other hotels, I think someone would have stepped up, but I just don't know if they would have stepped up in the way the Park Hyatt staff did. And I was so appreciative.
- [05:12]
Amy
And I think the thing that I very much appreciated about the Park Hyatt was this guy was on the phone for the better part of an hour and a half. He was calling all over because it felt uniquely challenging to get an appointment. Same day that you didn't just have to walk in and wait for several hours, but then layer on top of that the fact that you're looking for a plastic surgeon or a specialist in that area that also has an English translator, and so on and so on. It all came together so seamlessly in a way that obviously, you are the most resourceful person I know. So could we have figured it out elsewhere? For sure. But it definitely took a lot of the stress off of us in having that partner be able to do it and manage it and book everything so seamlessly for us. So that was great.
- [06:01]
Jason
It was amazing. So headed to this hospital and didn't really have any idea what to expect. I'd asked how much it was going to cost just because I was curious. I had no idea. I have been to the emergency room in the US with insurance, but I've still seen the bills that come back, and sometimes Those bills are $10,000 for nothing. When I had shingles, it was like, I don't know what this is. Here's some ibuprofen. $10,000. Not that we wouldn't spend whatever it took to get treated, but the kind of friends we had, the doctors we knew had said, you know, if you don't get this treated, it's not the end of the world. And so if it was going to be $25,000, I think there probably would be a question of, like, do we need stitches? Like, it wasn't 100% certain we did, but he told me, I think he said he thought it would be, you know, $1,000. I was like, okay, we're not going to quobble over a thousand dollars if this needs to be done. So we go to the center and she and I walk in and we go up to this registration desk. And it's not clear that they knew we had an appointment because they gave us like a new customer thing. I was like, no, no, we have an appointment. And they swapped it over. And for how modern and advanced so much of Japan is, it felt like hospital registration was still on paper. And so we were sitting there waiting and we have to get. Because she's not in the national medical system or whatever, whether that was the hospital or some kind of national health. She wasn't in a system. And so we waited probably 20 minutes. They had to take a picture of her passport. They asked me a question. They told me at this point they were like, it might exceed, you know. And she told me some amount of money. I don't even think I remembered it at the time. And then she got her hospital ID card. And now we could go up to the third floor and we could wait at the third floor for an appointment. So I went to this desk that was for, I think it was plastic surgery and orthopedics. And we just sat. We had no clue how long we were going to be there. There was a screen that I took a picture of and sent to Claude was like, what does this say? And it's like, well, you're waiting for room. And I can't remember what room it was. It said like, whichever, the plastic surgery room is like room 16. And I was just like sitting in this waiting room and waiting for room 16 to be done. But I don't know how many people ahead of line I am because the. They were actually. The numbers we all had weren't showing up on the screen. It was about 20, 25 minutes. We go in and the kindest American translator who spoke perfect English and perfect Japanese was there, which made it much easier to understand what was going on because the doctors did not speak much English and sat down, looked at her and said, yeah, she probably needs a couple stitches. And the only surprising thing to me, and I think it's a two part surprising one, they were like, why don't you leave? Because they didn't want me to stay in the room with her. And so I think I probably would have been may more surprised. And Pushed back. Had she not seemed so chill because this translator was so good with kids and spoke English and was kind that I was like, okay, I'll leave. And it might have been better because I did hear some tears in the background. It was not fun to get your nose stitched. It is a very sensitive part of your body. And I remember the one thing that a couple of the medical friends that I talked to said was, it's a very sensitive part. Some people might suggest anesthesia. Just depends on how well they'll be able to take the local anesthesia versus something else. And so all I know is that it was done pretty quickly. I wasn't in the room, and she came out and she said, dad, I cried a little, but I'm okay, you know, like, she was very proud of herself. And we got some stitches all in door to door. It was about two hours after we finished, went downstairs. They wanted to show the paperwork, make sure we paid. Because we weren't in this national medical system. They asked if we wanted to pay with insurance. And at this point in time, I hadn't really figured out whether it would be covered or not, But I figured we could do that later. I wasn't even focused on it, which is maybe a little atypical for me. It turns out that many US Insurance policies, not all, definitely do some research, will cover you abroad as long as you have documentation. And it was for an emergency, which based on my. And some AI interpretation this was. And so they asked, do you want a receipt? Do you want in English or Japanese? And they actually said, here's a card. The English one's gonna take some time and it costs money. If you want, you can email us and we can get it to you later. And she was like, send your email. I'll make sure I get it right now. I was like, perfect. And all the prescriptions were done in the hospital, so that was great. They said, go wait for your prescriptions and then we can go pay. So we picked up some antibiotic ointment and some oral antibiotics, which I'd never seen powdered form of antibiotics. So we just like sprinkled them in, you know, like some juice or some water each day.
- [10:26]
Amy
And they were dosed out by each day.
- [10:29]
Jason
Yeah, they were like little plastic. Little plastic packs.
- [10:33]
Amy
Really convenient.
- [10:33]
Jason
There was this startup pill pack that maybe Amazon acquired that did this. If you search, like pill pack dosage, they would send you, like a box that had these little. All your pills for the day dosed out into little plastic pouches. But that was the only other time I'd seen it. And then they said, take your medical ID when you're all done and go to this machine that looked like an atm and you stick it in and it'll tell you how much you have to pay. And at this point in time, I had no idea what the bill was. And I was thinking, gosh, it doesn't really matter, but could it have gone over right? We had an interpreter, we had to go see a doctor, then we had to get stitches. Then they told us there was gonna be a fee to register at the hospital because we weren't registered. And we didn't pay the extra for the English documentation fee. But I'm not sure if there was a documentation fee and there were prescriptions. I wasn't really concerned because we were gonna pay this like it already happened and it needed to happen. But I got the bill and it was $291. And I remember thinking, I think I have paid more for, like a doctor's visit, just a routine doctor's visit. We paid way more for urgent care for things in the US And I remember thinking, you know, what if insurance isn't going to pay for this, okay? This was so inexpensive, I couldn't believe it. It was so shocking. Funny enough, we came back and had her stitches removed, and the very straightforward doctor's visit to remove her stitches cost more than the entire emergency hospital appointment that we went to before that. So.
- [11:50]
Amy
And was much faster.
- [11:51]
Jason
And was much faster.
- [11:53]
Patrick
This episode is brought to you by Copilot Money. I've tried basically every personal finance app out there to track spending. Not just looked at them. I mean, fully onboarded, imported my accounts and gave them a real shot. And I kept coming back to Copilot Money. For me, it's just the best one out there. Copilot Money connects all your accounts and gives you a clear picture of where your money is going. Spending by category, cash flow, subscriptions, all in one place with beautiful design and the best AI powered categorization I've seen. Honestly, having that picture has led to some real conversations with my wife, Amy, about how we actually want to spend our money. And those decisions wouldn't have been possible without a really clear understanding of where our money is going. And I get that from Copilot Money. Copilot Money works on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and to anyone on the web right now, new users can get 2 months free with the code hacks2@allthehacks.com copilot just sign up on the web@allthehacks.com Copilot and use the code hacks2 this episode is brought to you by Gelt Tax day just passed and if you filed an extension there's still a window. Most people don't realize they have to bring in a great CPA who can still make real moves that impact your 2025 return before the October filing deadline. That's where Gelt comes in. Gelt is a CPA firm built for business owners think tax strategy, not just tax filing and new clients right now can schedule a focused 30 minute session to find out what can still impact your 2025 return. Things like missed deductions, retirement contributions, entity level decisions and more. I've been working with Gaelt for a few years now for both my personal and business taxes and having one team look at both has made a real difference because what you do on the business side directly affects the personal side and most people end up with two CPAs doing each who never talk to each other. And for new clients onboarding this quarter, they'll also go back through your past returns to find and in many cases recover deductions that were missed. As an all the Hacks listener, you can skip the wait list, head to allthehacks.com GELT G Again, that's all the hacks.com GT I'll share one more thing.
- [14:07]
Jason
I did not put our flights on the Chase Sapphire Reserve and I didn't do that because at the time I was like well 5x points on flights on the MX Platinum, 4x on the Chase Reserve or maybe it was a year ago so maybe it was still only 3x and I looked into do any of my credit cards cover this kind of a situation? And this kind of a situation is very unique. The Chase Sapphire Reserve I think it and maybe the Ritz card are probably the only cards out there that I could find that offer any kind of kind of emergency medical coverage and it's not much. They cover up to $2,500. They only cover it if your insurance doesn't cover it itself and the only requirement is you have to put some or all of the flight or if you book a package through a travel agency on that card and the negligible amount of points I would have gotten for having done that are such that I'm probably rethinking in the future which card I book International Travel on. Added point, one of the best benefits of the Amex Platinum is the emergency evacuation insurance, which does not require any expenses being put on the card. Just holding The Amex Platinum gets you emergency evacuation from the Amex Platinum card. So Chase Sapphire reserve only card that covers it. I looked up just for the sake of this episode, any of the other things that come up. There is travel accident insurance which you might see on lots of cards and that is much more extreme. That is usually loss of an eye, a limb, death. Like very, very extreme situations. Most cards cover that and most cards cover emergency evacuation, but not as much as the Amex Platinum does. A lot of them cover up to a hundred thousand dollars, which having looked into this for someone in a critical situation in the past, you know, the cost to medevac someone on a private jet back to the States for surgery usually doesn't get covered by a hundred thousand dollars. So Amex Platinum for emergency evacuation, great. If you don't have any of those things and your home medical insurance doesn't abroad, we got lucky, right? Like stitches on your nose. $281 in Japan. We could have been in another country with a much more extreme, something that would have cost much, much more. And fortunately our Blue Shield plan would have covered that. It's not clear whether it would have covered it as an in or out of network thing. And for our high deductible plan, if it's out of network, like it will basically not matter because it's not going to affect any of what we pay for the rest of the year unless we have a massive out of network bill. But it would have protected us if we had a 75 or 100 thousand dollar medical emergency abroad. If you don't have a coverage for healthcare that covers that, that's where I think travel insurance could be really valuable. And I think it all worked out this time. And now knowing what I know we would have been fine. But I think I regret not having looked into this, having gone through this experience because had it been more extreme, had Blue Shield not offered this, it probably would have been a different situation financially. And I would have wished that I had looked into it because the cost of travel insurance is so reasonable relative to that extreme cost. So highly recommend everyone look into. Does your medical insurance cover you abroad? If you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, highly recommend putting it on there. Even though it's only $2,500 of coverage that covers a lot of things, especially in Japan. And then for everything else, look into other travel insurance options.
- [17:21]
Amy
Wasn't our bingo card, was it?
- [17:23]
Jason
It was not. But you know, I feel like we have one daughter that's kind of our oldest. It's kind of routine, hasn't had any major medical things. Other ones now. Fractured a leg, cut her nose, had a really terrible spill on her bike yesterday, which didn't need an urgent care. But you know, that younger kid energy of just being a little bit more risk taking has proven itself to result in a few family emergencies I think over the years. So I'm glad we have coverage. Two last quick things. One, I want to briefly just talk about shopping. We never really shop when we travel. It's never been a thing. And on this trip I felt like it was. And partially because Japan, you kind of planned this part of our trip more. This was where you were in the kind of pilot's chair. What would you say you went into this thinking and. And kind of what's your advice on where shopping in Japan can be a good move?
- [18:13]
Amy
So there were two reasons in particular that we spent a little bit of time shopping this trip. One, the exchange rate is just so advantageous right now that it made everything much more affordable. And two, Japan, the quality of things you can get there are just incredible. And so I was interested in bringing a little bit of that back home. And so I think we broke it up by a few different categories. There was kind of like the clothing, the beauty, which is more like Japanese face products and electronics. Those I would say were. And some home and. And home.
- [18:54]
Jason
I'm not sure we knew the home goods was a thing until we went to the Muji store. But it ended up being part of the reason why we definitely needed that duffel bag.
- [19:01]
Amy
Well, it's interesting because I was doing a bit of research in advance and everyone was saying that the soap at the Muji store felt very similar to Aesop and like really good quality, but much cheaper. And I was like, well, that's really interesting because ASOP soap now is wildly
- [19:17]
Jason
expensive and we no longer have our SAX credit, which was like.
- [19:20]
Amy
Which is how we.
- [19:21]
Jason
How we usually acquired it.
- [19:22]
Amy
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, the HomeGoods we ended up feels like getting 30 pounds of soap and whatnot from the Muji store, but that was also a big win.
- [19:33]
Jason
So from a clothing standpoint, there's just a bunch of clothing retailers that we don't have. Beams, United Arrows, ships. And then there are a handful of other things that I think we have, but they just have totally different options. Uniqlo, the Onitsuka Tiger store, that kind of stuff. And then we didn't get to do this. And I think this just doesn't work well with kids. Even though we wanted to just the amount of shopping. But you found a lot of secondhand thrift stores that are supposed to be incredible.
- [20:02]
Amy
Yeah, some have more kids stuff, which I was originally interested in hitting for that reason. But they also have great designer bags and other things. So I think maybe in a future trip we'll hit that. But they are supposed to be really
- [20:15]
Jason
good in jeans and jeans. I've heard that there's some really amazing high quality Japanese denim stores that was just not in the cards this trip.
- [20:23]
Amy
Yeah.
- [20:23]
Jason
And actually on the homegood side, there's this place that does like custom pillows in Japan. It's like a one hour appointment and they create a custom pillow for your sleep. Style, your head, everything. I thought that would be so cool. I had it on the map. If we made it anywhere near there, I was like, we're going to stop there. And on that last day, it was the day that we were going to kind of be near the pillow store. The emergency room kind of sucked a little bit of the oxygen out of that day and so it didn't happen. But on the next trip I'm interested in this. It's like maybe like 100 or $200 pillow, but it's supposed to be the best pillow ever. And so I don't know. That seems like something I at least want to dig into more but didn't happen on this one.
- [21:02]
Amy
I feel like that would be worth the investment given how important sleep is.
- [21:05]
Jason
Yeah. Anything you want to say about skincare? Because I don't know anything. That was not a topic I researched.
- [21:11]
Amy
Well, first of all, I'm just a sucker for Korean and Japanese skincare stuff. That's all I use. And there's one thing that I got. I bought a bunch of different things just to try them out. But there's one thing that I got that I didn't actually expect to like at all. I'm not a face mask person, but I got this rice face mask. It's called Kayana Rice pack. You can find it. It's way more expensive on Amazon, for example.
- [21:38]
Jason
It looks like a drink.
- [21:39]
Amy
Yeah, it looks like a white drink. When you put it on, it feels like you're basically applying like sticky rice to your face. You only leave it on for five minutes. But I swear to God, the glow that comes after is just insane. I will live and die by this rice pack. And I'm not a face mask person. So that's one thing that I wish I would have bought a lot more of. But check it out. All like all their stuff is good.
- [22:02]
Jason
The Store for all this stuff was Don Quixote or Donkey. And there's like a 14 floor version of it that has not just face products but everything, everything. I think it's open 247 or something. So there's one activity if you're up early and so that's an option. And in that same store, and I don't think I bought it in that store, but I bought a razor, an electric razor and it's a Panasonic. I think it's an Arc Palm. You can get this in the US I have used like a combo of everything from like, you know, The Gillette Fusion 5 blade with shaving cream razor, straight razor, single blade, electric shaver. Recently before Japan, I'd been using this electric razor that I had got, I don't know, 10 years ago. And what I've been doing is using it and then following up with a razor. But because it's so close to done, I didn't even need shaving cream or anything. I would just like use like a Gillette Profusion something razor without shaving cream dry. But after using electric razor and when I was in Japan I saw these razors and I was like, oh, I didn't realize this such a thing. Panasonic. Panasonic has products that you don't see outside of the US especially in hairdryers. You wanted a hairdryer so bad and if it weren't for the voltage situation, which I would get to, we would have one.
- [23:21]
Amy
Yeah.
- [23:21]
Jason
But the idea of bringing a giant transformer to be able to use it doesn't make sense. But the cool thing about this is it's a USB C shaver. And so this is a tiny electric razor and it fits in your palm like a jumbo size AirPods case. It's like two times an AirPods case and it's a five blade electric razor. It's. And I was doing some searching, it was like, yeah, this is light years ahead of the crappy razor you have. Fortunately I brought it. So I took a picture of it. I was like, how much better is this thing? Because this thing looks awesome. It's so small and it would fit well in travel. It's rechargeable. And it was like, this is way better. What this is is so much better than what you have. And I looked, it was like 300 something dollars in the US or it was like 200 something dollars in Japan. So it was like 30% off plus all of the replacement blades and things that go into an electric razor, cartridges or whatever. They're called were like a half off or maybe even like 60, 70% off. Not because they were on sale, but because they're made there. And the exchange rate's so favorable. And so I picked this up and it is so good that I don't even need the razor after, like, this thing is amazing. Every year we do a gift guide and I'm like, how has this never been on it? How have I never thought to find this product or use it? But it is my highlight of the shopping takeaway. Maybe second to that would be we replaced every soap, shampoo, conditioner dispenser with muji stuff that, like, smells great, feels great, and, like, has a little bit of a cool vibe because it's like, not a brand most people have seen here and very different than the muji you can get in the States.
- [24:52]
Amy
Yeah.
- [24:52]
Jason
And then we did a couple of these stores, I can't remember the name of the story. Went to for like, stationary and the loft. The loft. Just like a bunch of stickers and stationery and pens and notebooks. Really cool stuff that, you know, you can't always find outside of the US So that is all we did. Bring an extra duffel and we filled the entire thing.
- [25:10]
Patrick
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- [27:33]
Jason
All right, so for Disney, a couple things. So in Japan, there are two Disney, there's Disneyland and Disney Sea and Disneyland, similar to Disneyland's around the world. Obviously there are different variations in local things. Disney Sea is one of a kind. There's nothing like it anywhere else having been there. It is beautiful, wild, interesting. So different. It's almost felt a little. And I haven't been there since I was a kid to like Epcot where it like brought all these different places. There's like the American Waterfront. There's a part where you were in Cape Cod, but then there's the Arabian Nights. And then you're in this enchanted place, which is where they have Rapunzel and Peter Pan and there's a Arendelle from Frozen and the Castle in the background. And I'm sure I'm missing other parts of this whole part.
- [28:19]
Amy
Like the.
- [28:19]
Jason
Yeah, you. There's a whole Venetian area. There's a gondola. You felt like. Like it looked like Venice, like inside the Venetian Hotel, except outside there's Mediterranean part we didn't even make it to. So Disney Sea was really cool, visually, Disneyland. I haven't been to Disneyland a long time, but it was still really fun. I will say high level, very more organized, a little bit like lines. People are willing to wait and that was one big takeaway. If you don't play the system well or pay up and I'll talk about how this works briefly, you could find yourself waiting in line for a really long time. The pinnacle ride of both parks with the longest line was the Frozen ride. And we knew in advance that our kids love Frozen. Like we're not gonna not do the Frozen ride. So I thought, well, we gotta figure out how to do this in advance. And I'm so glad we did because on the day we were there, the line for Frozen peaked at four hours.
- [29:10]
Amy
It's insane.
- [29:11]
Jason
And I thought maybe this was wrong, but when you visually saw how many people were lined up, it was four hours. And in the one ride where we went on, where we waited in the full length line, it was about as long as it said. Like they were pretty accurate with timing, which I actually spent one line waiting for popcorn texting with an AI tool to be like, how do they get these line times right? Like, how do they know exactly how long the line's gonna be? There are a lot of ways they do it. Go search that if you're interested. But the way you can avoid the lines in Japan are kind of four ways. The rides are split into kind of three tiers. There's like premier attractions, then there's popular attractions, I'll call them, and then other things. And so for the premier ones, they have this thing called Disney Premier Access where anyone that's in the park can buy a fast pass for those rides. And you can't buy it until you're in the park. So for a ride like Frozen, I've been reading once you're in the park, you can buy it. But the park opens at like 9 and it usually sells out by like 9:05, sometimes before. Because if you stay at one of the Disney hotels, you get in the park 15 minutes early. So everyone that stay at the Disney park hotel, they get in early, they buy all the fast passes for the Frozen ride and they're all sold out by the time you get there. Now, I don't actually know if it was sold out when we first got in. And I'll get to why. So one option, buy those Premier Access which end up costing, I think it's somewhere between 10 and $20 per person. And kids, I think under four or four and under are free. And so you don't have to buy any passes or Premier access or anything for those kids. So for us we only had to buy one kid pass and two adult passes for every ride. So that's one option. And then all those second tier, still popular, but not the most popular rides are part of this program that was like the 40th anniversary passes. And you could reserve those as well. And they were free. You just had to go in the app and reserve them. Those sold out so fast. When we first got in the park, we were able to book one and then I don't think we got another one for the rest of the day.
- [31:06]
Amy
Yeah.
- [31:06]
Jason
And so that meant you're kind of waiting in line if you didn't have something else figured out. And on the something else, the unlock is vacation packages. And so I'll back up for a second. The way this actually works is you can book one thing, but you can't book another thing until you've written the first thing or you've waited. And for the premiere ones, I think you have to wait two hours. I think it's one hour on the premiere ones and then two hours on the other ones. And so the trick if you're going is to book something that you can do right away because as soon as you're done with it, you could book something else or book the thing you definitely want to do because it might be sold out by the end of the day. One of the marquee rides at DisneySea was soaring, and we didn't do it because we hadn't booked it and it was sold out by the time we were able to book it. And I think I was okay with that. So if you book a vacation package, you can, depending on the vacation package, either get to pick three rides and lock in the time in advance and get a fast pass without having to play the game or pay for it, or if you book far enough in advance. And this wasn't an option for us because we hadn't. It was sold out. There's an unlimited rides package where you just get FastPass on all your rides all day. And I don't know as much about how that works because it wasn't available when we were booking. But it comes at a cost. And when you book the vacation package, we booked a one night, two day package. It included your hotel, it included entry to the park, it included happy entry, which is their way of saying you get in 15 minutes early. And 15 minutes early is not all it is. Like it sounds like, oh, it's only 15 minutes early. It's actually you get in 15 minutes early and you don't have to wait in line to get in.
- [32:44]
Amy
Yeah. And those lines are long.
- [32:45]
Jason
And so in our case, it probably would have been 45 to 50 minutes early. And we thought we had it. And so I'll get to that. So vacation package was what we ended up doing. I summed out all the price of buying everything individually because when you buy the vacation package, it includes your park ticket, it includes your room, it includes a breakfast at one of the restaurants, it lets you make reservations for meals at the park. We didn't want to do that. But if you wanted to make reservations at the park, it's one of the easiest and best ways to do it. And then it lets you pick three rides. And so you could pick, I want to do frozen from 9:30 to 10:30 entry. And then for those rides that are in the second tier, you could just pick any of them and they'd give you a card that worked at all of them. So for the premier ones, you get a time slot or you get a card that lets you go into any of the other ones once in our case. So we got three. Had we not done that, I think it would have been a much different experience. But the cost as I broke it out was it was an extra $500 split over two days, split over three people. But on top of the cost to book everything, including if we were able to book those premier access things. So the ability to get in 15 minutes early would have come for free actually with the hotel. So the ability to just pre book three rides a day for two days for three people was 500. And I think it was money well spent. And I know for some people it would be way too much. And if you didn't go during spring break or if you didn't care about going on the premier rides or if you really only need to go on one of them, it probably wouldn't have been money well spent. But for our particular circumstance and the financial situation we're in, I think that was like right on the cusp. To do the unlimited one takes it up to maybe from 500 to like a thousand or twelve hundred dollars. I'm not sure we needed it. I think that wouldn't have been money well spent for us because the only ride we really waited a long time didn't have a standby skip line that Jasmine's flying car. Now would we have gotten to do one or two more rides? Yes. But would that have been worth the extra 700? I don't know. I don't think it would be for us. If you really want to maximize all the rides and if you have older kids that want to do A lot of the rides that are longer lines, the roller coasters and that kind of stuff, which we didn't then maybe that was different. And it really depends on time of year because we went to Disneyland on a weekday and it was not as crowded, it was raining. And I think my understanding was maybe the park was closing early that day or something, which is a hack. There is a calendar you can look at in advance in Japanese I'll link to in the show notes that will show you like predicted crowd calendars. And evidently it's really, really good at predicting. And so if you're going on a light day, don't worry about it. But if you're going on a heavy day or an extreme day, you need another solution. If what you want to achieve is going on a lot of rides, if you just want to walk around the park, great. But even things like popcorn and Disney popcorn is a thing, right? Like, I didn't know this, did you?
- [35:31]
Amy
I had been warned in advance, but I didn't fully appreciate the thing. It was. But those lines would get aggressively long
- [35:41]
Jason
and people waited 30 minutes to buy popcorn.
- [35:43]
Amy
There were like 45, 55 minute waits listed in the app to get a thing of popcorn.
- [35:50]
Jason
Now, the app is great. Everything. It shows you in real time how long to wait, what's going on. You can book the passes. The popcorn was crazy. Tons of different flavors. Honey curry, garlic, scallops, soy butter, yeah, whatever, all kinds of stuff. And every popcorn station sells its own unique popcorn carrier. It's a very collectible thing. And so you can see people are waiting in line not just to get popcorn, but to buy the special carrier or try the special flavor. And so there's not really a way to avoid the popcorn line other than I actually think there was a line that said 30 to 40 minutes and only took me 14 minutes. I was timing it, so some of the line timings maybe aren't perfect.
- [36:26]
Amy
I think the hack, if you're interested in getting the popcorn carrier and the popcorn that they sell in that carrier, because each popcorn cart's different, is you gotta get your popcorn first thing in the morning whether you want to eat it or not. That's the only way to get it without waiting in a long line. Yeah.
- [36:43]
Jason
And we got one free popcorn carrier from the vacation package.
- [36:47]
Amy
Thank you, vacation package.
- [36:48]
Jason
So in general, we hit all the rides in Disneyland because it was kind of raining and because it wasn't as crowd of a day, and maybe because it wasn't Disneysea, we actually did a couple rides like Thunder Mountain multiple times with no fast passes. And we didn't spend any money buying premiere tickets at Disneyland. We didn't need it. We needed the three we had. We wouldn't have been able to do some of those rides without it. But it worked out just great. We didn't need anything extra. DisneySea. We bought two or three Premier Access passes because we could already tell just the lines. It was gonna be chaos.
- [37:20]
Amy
It was. The weather was nicer. It was a weekend. It was right before this big jubilee year.
- [37:27]
Jason
And yeah, there's a celebration for 25 years and we needed it. Otherwise we would have just waited in these two three hour lines. Like the kids loved the Peter Pan ride so much it cost $10. The line was three hours. Right. I will pay $10 per person for three people. I'll pay $30. So the whole family doesn't wait in line for three hours every day. Which wasn't an option. It's not like we were gonna wait in line for three hours. Right. We would have just. I don't know what we would have done though because.
- [37:50]
Amy
Sorry kids.
- [37:50]
Jason
I know we would have done because even the, the rides that when you go search online, what are the best to worst rides, the worst rides that people are like, don't waste your time on this. We're 40 minute wait rides at least. And so there are a lot of places you can go and things you can see and experience without waiting in line. Right. Like there are street performances and shows and just awesome Disney stuff. But if you want to do the
- [38:11]
Amy
rides, the rides themselves, you're waiting the food and the rides. There is no such thing as no wait.
- [38:16]
Jason
You can pre order food at DisneySea and you pick your time slot. And Disneyland in Japan, you pick your time slot, you pick your food, you can add on items later, I think and if you don't pick it up, you can cancel it. But you can pick the time slot. So the second you're in the park, go pick the lunchtime at whatever place you want to get the food. You don't want it, you change your mind, cancel it.
- [38:36]
Amy
But at least you have it.
- [38:37]
Jason
But some of the places we were like, oh, let's go get food here. It was crazy. It was like, do you want to have lunch at 4:30?
- [38:42]
Amy
Yeah. It wasn't available until like 3:00pm yeah.
- [38:45]
Jason
Whereas Disneyland, we picked it like five minutes before.
- [38:47]
Amy
Yeah.
- [38:48]
Jason
It was so easy. The difference between a crazy and a not crazy day was matters a lot, really does. But Disney was awesome, I thought had an amazing time. Lots of People watching. I think going to Disney is a thing. You know, I think about the U.S. like, if me and three of my friends in college, 21 years old, going to Disney dressed up in like, Disney gear would not be a thing that it feels like most high school and college guys think is cool. Totally. All bets are off. Like, it was Disney vibes amongst like 20 to 30 year olds in Japan are wild people with all kinds of characters clipped on their clothes, dressed up like they're going to a wedding, like in the fanciest outfits, all kinds of stuff. It was fun to watch. And people just love Disney to a level that I don't know. I don't think we're Disney people.
- [39:38]
Amy
I can very wholeheartedly say we are not a Disney family. Although when we asked our kids about Disney, they, after having done it, said that was the most amazing thing we've ever done. So unfortunately, we may go back at some point.
- [39:55]
Jason
But man, I think going to Disney is different than, like, being all in. Like, we're just. I don't see us going to Disney 20 times in the next 20 years.
- [40:02]
Amy
No, thank you.
- [40:03]
Jason
But I definitely see us going to Disney a couple times. The one optimization I would have done is we didn't know if our kids would have loved the Frozen Ride so much. So we spent two of our three premier passes on the Frozen Ride and we did it twice. That is the only thing I would have changed. We didn't need to do the Frozen Ride twice.
- [40:18]
Amy
I agree. It was really good, though.
- [40:20]
Jason
It was really good. It was really good. Hats off to the Disney team.
- [40:23]
Patrick
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- [41:56]
Jason
Okay, couple other final little closing things. What are some of the things you loved about this trip?
- [42:00]
Amy
It's so kid friendly and I just feel like there's something for everyone. You don't need to have anything planned and you'll come across some cafe or restaurant or something, a park, and it's just all just really enjoyable.
- [42:15]
Jason
Yeah. We talked about how we could totally see ourselves. Like, should we go live a summer in Japan? Should we find some way to do like a semester in Japan or take a school year off and go put the kids in school in Japan? Like it is a place that I want to go to over and over again. And every time we go I love and I'm so glad the kids loved it. Especially because we dumped a bunch of points during the last transfer bonus into Japan Airlines that expire in three years.
- [42:40]
Amy
We have to go back.
- [42:40]
Jason
So we have to go back because we have these, we have all these points that are expiring. So at least one trip is in our three year future. Any takeaways of things we did poorly or just didn't love or would change in the future.
- [42:51]
Amy
I wish we would have allowed the kids to lead more of our days. At times where we just kind of walk out of the hotel and it's like you guys choose where do you want to go? What do we want to do? We'd probably end up at the park
- [43:03]
Jason
across the street, but we never would have left that part.
- [43:06]
Amy
We would have spent the entire trip there. But I think we could have done that more than we did somehow.
- [43:13]
Jason
We had very little planned in terms of major plans, but each day we probably were like, well, let's try to do these three things today. And it would have been if we had one less thing that we planned in the day. It was like, well, we don't have to go anywhere right now. But the challenge is like, kids can't skip a lunch yeah.
- [43:31]
Amy
Right.
- [43:31]
Jason
When things open at 10 and then you gotta have lunch and then you gotta get to dinner. It's like you don't have as much time as you might think.
- [43:37]
Amy
Think. Yeah. I guess there is a bit of built in rush to the day, but it would have been nice, I think, to just let them roam a little bit more. And then of course we experienced jet lag. It wasn't horrible. I think by day three we were
- [43:52]
Jason
all adjusted and it didn't actually mess the day up. Right? Like, no. The first day we went back to take a nap.
- [43:59]
Amy
Yeah.
- [43:59]
Jason
And man, waking up our oldest was like she did not want to wake up from that nap. I've never seen anyone not want to wake up. We could have turned the entire lights on, picked her and put her on the tile floor of the bathroom. She would have kept sleeping.
- [44:11]
Amy
Yeah.
- [44:12]
Jason
But the next day, no more naps.
- [44:13]
Amy
Yeah.
- [44:14]
Jason
And we were great. And then coming home pretty good.
- [44:17]
Amy
Yeah. Coming home was easier.
- [44:19]
Jason
Yeah.
- [44:20]
Amy
From a jet lag perspective, it didn't seem to hit any of us as hard.
- [44:23]
Jason
Yeah. So we're totally go back. Are you feeling better about this trip to Europe this summer that we're haven't planned but have booked?
- [44:30]
Amy
I both have much higher confidence in how it'll go with kids and I dread thinking about how exhausted I still feel from Japan and the fact that this other trip is coming up. So yes. It's bittersweet.
- [44:46]
Jason
I don't like that we have no idea what we're doing. But we went through our inventory of like free night certificates and hotel credits and I'm like, what if we just used all of them in one trip? And so I don't love the idea of planning the trip around the points, but I also would love to get rid of all these.
- [45:00]
Amy
Yeah.
- [45:00]
Jason
Nights.
- [45:01]
Amy
So. Yeah. So many free nights.
- [45:03]
Jason
So we wrote this quick list of some tips. We probably covered almost all of them. So I don't want to just recap everything but a couple that I noticed we didn't that I wanted to share. So first one I'll go, then I'll let you go. And the first one is that there are no once in a lifetime trips. You can always go back somewhere. And having that attitude, especially for this most recent trip, just made things so much better. We almost took it so far that it was like, oh, we don't even need to buy this thing. We'll be back. We might not be back for a long time. But it, it didn't feel like there was anything that if we skipped a Meal. We didn't get to have a shop. We didn't go to an activity we didn't do. Felt like we could just do it the next time. And even if we never went back to Japan, the attitude that you don't have to do everything made it amazing. And I think it just made the trip so easy. So I would encourage people to always think, like, never think that this is the last time you'll ever be anywhere.
- [45:54]
Amy
Yeah. That kind of aligns with one of the ones I was thinking, which is try not to hit. Hit the best of. You don't need to hit every. This is the best of this food or this cafe or this experience or whatever. Because we didn't look, I think, at ratings or reviews of almost any of the places we went. And they were all great.
- [46:15]
Jason
I looked at the ratings and reviews of every single place.
- [46:19]
Amy
I said this kind of looking at you, like, are you gonna. Are you gonna stop me and correct me? Okay. So I'm not entirely surprised. But were they the best of or were they just solidly great?
- [46:32]
Jason
I think in our past travels we've been like, let's find the best. Yes, Ramen, let's find the best. This. This was. Let's find something good.
- [46:39]
Amy
Yeah.
- [46:39]
Jason
And the reality in Japan is like, pretty much everything's good.
- [46:41]
Amy
Right.
- [46:42]
Jason
So there were multiple times where we just went to a place that I didn't spend any time trying to read reviews or research. I just took like the recommendation from some LLM that it was a good place. So I did try to make sure we went to places that were. But the best of thing. I don't know. I feel like I'm not a food critic. I can't tell the difference between three and two Michelin stars or one Michelin star, or even a great restaurant that has no Michelin stars. And in many cases, especially in Japan, I don't even care about it. I don't want a 13 course kaiseki dinner.
- [47:15]
Amy
Yeah.
- [47:16]
Patrick
I just want a really good meal.
- [47:17]
Jason
Sometimes I just want one thing, you know, like, I just want Japanese curry, which is now turns out our oldest kid's favorite food in the world. And so it sounds like there's a lot of Japanese curry in our future. But yeah, not hitting the best of list is great. And one thing that helped was asking the concierge for recommendations.
- [47:35]
Amy
Yeah.
- [47:35]
Jason
So the concierge at the Park Hyatt gave us a piece of paper that was just a map of all these restaurants nearby. And it was like one or two of every type. And they were all within walking distance. And I was like, you know what? The Park Hyatt doesn't want to lead us astray. Let's just go to one and like, not worry about it. So we did. We didn't really look it up at all. We were just like, let's go. And it was great. We went to that rotating conveyor belt sushi place. We went there twice other than not bringing cash the first time. Excellent. And by the way, the best for kids. They just get to pick whatever they want. Downside is they pick shit they don't want to eat all the time. Three times. This one looks great. I don't like it. Well, you picked it, you gotta eat it. I don't want to eat it. Okay, fine. I'm eating the random sushi that you picked that you don't want. But I really like just asking the concierge for tips and asking for things, right. If you're like, oh, I wasn't sure if we were allowed to have a rollaway bed. Like, I thought maybe we weren't allowed to. And then it was like a lot of hotels, it's like, if you have two queen beds, you can't get a rollaway, but if you have a king you can. But then I just asked and they brought it to our room. And you know, Disney.
- [48:29]
Amy
Yeah.
- [48:29]
Jason
This is so ridiculous. But we stayed in two rooms at Disney. And this is one thing I didn't mention, the Disney thing. You only get to go into the park that early if you stay at that park. So there's like two Disney hotels at DisneySea and three at Disneyland. There's no hotel that covers early entry in both. And because they have this great bag policy where you could just leave your bags and they'll move them to the next hotel or move them to the next room. I do regret not having stayed one night at disneysea so we could skip that line in the morning. And it would have been a super easy transition. But we stayed in the same room in the Disney Ambassador Hotel twice. Exact same room on different floors. And one of the rates supposedly included the pullout couch and the other didn't. And so there were no sheets on the pullout couch. And so we asked for sheets and they told us the sheets were gonna cost $75, just bed sheets to put em on the bed that's already in the room. And I went to the front desk, I was like, can you just show me? I'm happy to pay if you could just show me where in this booking confirmation or website, it said that and they couldn't figure it out and so they comped it. And I tried to make it very clear if I was supposed to pay this, I would love to pay. I'm not trying to get a deal, I'm not trying to complain to get a discount. But I genuinely don't think you make this clear. Can you explain it? And they were like, no, we don't. And they were able to do it. So part of this, ask the concierge, ask the hotel, ask, and someone might say no, but someone might say yes.
- [49:48]
Amy
Yeah, don't ask. Don't get it. The last one I would say is it's been really helpful for us to always add a one day buffer between our trip and going back to work, school, whatever it might be, because it gives you all time to decompress and kind of fall back into the normal schedule. Do laundry, order groceries, do all of the things that you kind of need to do to prepare for the week so that you don't feel both exhausted from the trip and then you just go into the straight sprint of the week. So that's always been really helpful.
- [50:18]
Jason
I always feel like we never have enough time on trips. Then we come home and I'm like, oh, if we had just stayed that one extra day, we would have had an extra day on the trip. And we didn't even kids didn't even have school this day. I never, never regret that we came home a day early.
- [50:29]
Amy
Right.
- [50:29]
Jason
Because I feel like I just need a day.
- [50:32]
Amy
Yeah.
- [50:32]
Jason
Like if you have to go back to work, if you have to go back to school, it's just a lot. So I thought we played that really well. And that's a rule that we're like. We're carrying that rule forward very much so. This is a lot. A couple things before we wrap up app. We're gonna do an AMA episode on the show where I'm gonna take a ton of credit card points and miles questions. I try to rotate through what the topics are. That one's next. Go to all thehacks.com ama submit anything and I'll be recording that soon. I think that's it for this week. Awesome trip.
- [51:01]
Amy
It was a lot of fun. I hope everyone was able to take away a few tips. And if you don't have Japan planned, plan it.
- [51:09]
Jason
Yeah, get on it.
- [51:10]
Amy
It's incredible.
- [51:11]
Jason
Awesome. That is it for this week. I will see you next week.
- [51:14]
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- [51:45]
Patrick
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