Tokyo Disney Tickets: Every Passport, Priced

The scale of the variation is the part most planning advice understates. On the live calendar we read, a single month of adult one-day admission ran through three tiers: $60.90 (¥9,400) on the quietest weekdays, $64.20 (¥9,900) through most of the month, and $70.60 (¥10,900) on Saturdays and the run-up to a holiday. None of those dates was available at the $57.70 (¥8,900) floor the ticket page advertises.

Two practical consequences. First, the difference between the cheapest and the dearest date in one month is about $9.72 (¥1,500) a head, or $38.90 (¥6,000) for a family of four, which is worth a Tuesday over a Saturday on its own. Second, the from-price you find quoted on travel sites is not a price anybody paid; the number that matters is the one on your date, and the only way to see it is to open the calendar for that date.

The same logic runs through what a Tokyo day costs generally.

Two tickets do this work in the current line-up. The After 5 passport admits you from 17:00 on weekdays, excluding holidays, from $38.90 (¥6,000) for an adult. The After 3 passport admits you from 15:00 on weekends and holidays, from $51.20 (¥7,900).

Both name one park, exactly like the full-day ticket, and both run on the same date-based pricing.

• The weekday evening ticket is about a third off the adult full-day floor, which is the largest saving available on this page
• The weekend afternoon ticket saves less, because it is aimed at the days the parks are full anyway
• Both are worth checking against the parks' hours for your date: a 21:00 close makes a 17:00 entry a four-hour visit, and a shorter day makes it much less
• A student aged 18 or over at a university, graduate school, junior college or technical school can use the college passport instead, listed as a limited-period ticket from $50.50 (¥7,800)

The After 6 ticket guidebooks still name

It is not on sale. The evening product was called an After 6 passport for years, then a Weeknight Passport, and the resort's own page records the current replacement in plain terms: the summer After 5 passport replaced the Weeknight Passport, and from mid-September the After 5 weekday passport carries it on with a 17:00 start. If a page you are reading offers you an After 6 passport, it is out of date, and so is everything else on that page about prices.

The official website and the resort app are the primary shop, and they need a registered MyDisney account. Up to ten tickets can be bought in one transaction. Guests staying at a Disney hotel can buy at the hotel; guests at an affiliated hotel need an accommodation plan that carries the entitlement, arranged with the hotel directly.

Some travel agencies and convenience stores also sell them, on their own terms.

Note what is missing from that list: the gate. The resort states plainly that ticket booths are currently closed. Arriving at Maihama without a ticket is not a plan with a fallback, and the approach and the timings, set out with the rest of the city on the Tokyo guide, are long enough that discovering this at the gate costs the day rather than an hour.

If an unauthorised resale for commercial gain is confirmed, the resort invalidates the ticket and every other ticket the person responsible bought, whether or not those others were being resold. The measure applies to all tickets sold since 1 December 2016. The consequence for a buyer is stated just as plainly: tickets sold at unofficial vendors, resale sites, auction sites and ticket brokers may be invalid, the holder is denied admission, and there is no refund or compensation.

• The risk is total loss of the money and the day, not a discount that might not work out
• The resort does not need to police every ticket, only yours, and the invalidation happens before you reach the gate rather than at it
• A cancelled or refunded ticket does not exist here either: refunds for personal reasons are refused outright, which is why so little legitimate inventory ever reaches a resale market
• The two operator cards on this page are not resales; they are dated admissions issued through an authorised channel, which is exactly why they cost more than a broker's listing

Fixed-date tickets go on sale daily at 14:00 Japan time for the same date two months later. Each ticket type has a daily sales limit, and the resort warns that sales may be suspended without notice when that limit is reached. Then comes the sentence worth remembering: tickets that are sold out may become available for purchase again without notice.

There is no waiting list, no notification and no published release hour for returns.

• Check a sold-out date more than once, at different hours, rather than treating the first no as final
• The calendar marks each date as available, few remaining, unavailable or not sold online, so a date can be full for one ticket type and open for another
• A date that is genuinely gone cannot be reached by changing an existing ticket either: a change cannot be made to a date whose tickets are sold out
• If the date is fixed and the park is not, check the other park before giving up; the two calendars fill at different speeds

If the month you want is gone

Take a weekday, take the other park, or take an evening passport, in that order of savings. The dated e-ticket for Disneyland and the one for DisneySea run on the operators' own allocations and sometimes show dates the official calendar does not. What is never the answer is a broker, for the reasons in the section above.

There is no fee for changing the date of admission or the age category, and changes can be made as long as the ticket is within its validity, including after the date it originally named. The mechanism is a swap rather than an adjustment: you are charged the full price of the new ticket and refunded the full price of the old one, whichever way the price difference runs.

Two conditions carry the whole rule. Changes online work only for tickets bought through the official website, so an agency or convenience-store ticket falls outside the system. And the park lock is absolute, which is why every part of this guide pushes the park decision in front of the date decision.

If cancelling matters more than the last few dollars, the operator cards cancel for a full refund well before the visit, and that is the trade they exist to offer.

Prices are per person and per access, and every one of them sits on top of the passport. Attractions are the cheaper half of the list, parades and shows the dearer, and the seasonal shows carry the highest figures on the board.

The rules are as important as the prices. Each park ticket buys one of these at a time, the access cannot be shared with another person, quantities are limited and sell out, and payment inside the app needs a credit, debit or prepaid card. Children aged 3 and under, who need no park ticket, are covered by the resort's own guidance on the same page rather than by a purchase.

A family of four buying one standard attraction access each spends $38.90 (¥6,000), which is most of a child's admission again. Budget it deliberately or not at all, and see how the free systems work in the park before assuming you need it.