Hi — I’m Tabiiku. I travel around Japan with my daughter on the principle that experience is the best thing you can give a child. Most people have been to Universal Studios Japan at some point — this post is about how to get the most out of it, and about staying somewhere rather better than the parkside hotels.
We stayed at The Ritz-Carlton Osaka, in a room with club lounge access.
The Ritz-Carlton Osaka
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The hotels immediately around USJ are charming, and there is something lovely about staying in the theme-park mood right up to the moment you fall asleep. But if you want to maximise the adults’ enjoyment, I would widen the search to Osaka as a whole and stay at the Ritz-Carlton.
It is about ten minutes by taxi from Shin-Osaka station, and under twenty minutes by taxi to USJ.
And if you stay here, take the club lounge rate. The view from the 34th floor is superb.
The main draw is the five food presentations a day. The menu changes each time, so even over two nights it never repeated — we ended up having both breakfast and dinner in the lounge on both days, which, when you work it out, makes the rate rather good value. Check-in and check-out happen on that floor too.
It was close to my daughter’s birthday so we asked for a cake in the room (charged separately). What arrived, in typical Ritz-Carlton fashion, was the cake plus a small plate of welcome sweets and a handwritten birthday card. She was ecstatic.
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USJ: the VIP tour
If you have come a long way, or you are here with children, the thing I would tell you about is the VIP tour.
You are met and shown to a private room first, where you have a drink and plan the day with your guide.
Broadly, pick whichever attractions you like — but note that on some the tour adds nothing. Curious George, for instance, never has a queue and the tour gets you no special treatment, so leave it out.
Beyond the rides, the one thing I would definitely build in is Ollivanders. Normally, to be chosen for the wand ceremony you have to be picked out of the several dozen groups in your session. On the VIP tour you go in as a private party — which means your child is guaranteed the experience. My daughter was chosen, and the look of delighted astonishment on her face is something I will not forget.
There are five-hour and eight-hour versions, and the five-hour is by a wide margin the better value. Here is why: during the tour you skip the queues, obviously — but for the whole of that day, including the hours when your guide is no longer with you, you can still skip the queues. So the time you spend skipping queues is identical on either tour; the eight-hour version simply buys you more time with a dedicated guide.
The mechanism is a VIP wristband with a crest on it. Show it and you join the same line as Express Pass holders. Better still, the crest also works on attractions that have no Express Pass at all — and a surprising number of the rides aimed at children have no Express Pass and long queues.
As a bonus, dinner is included at the restaurant of your choice, all you can eat.
On price: it varies by season, but when we went the five-hour tour was a little over 150,000 yen. Up to four people pay the same price, so that is under 40,000 yen a head — which strikes me as remarkable value. The eight-hour tour was around 1.5 times that.
Our guide told us that the five-hour slots are very limited and that getting one is lucky. I sat refreshing the booking page daily to get ours.
Next time we go to USJ I will be going after the VIP tour again. So: if you are going to Osaka, stay at the Ritz-Carlton and use the VIP tour. Questions and thoughts welcome in the comments.
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