About this story
Adapted from H2 Journey’s posts and images published on the dates shown in this article.
Posted on 21 Nov 2023
Hello! For my first post, I’d like to share how I booked Hotel MiraCosta in Japan. I hope it helps if you’re thinking of staying there, too.
Hotel MiraCosta really is part of DisneySea: it sits inside the park. That made it arguably the hardest of the five Disney resort hotels to book at the time, especially the rooms facing the harbor. From some of those rooms, you can watch the shows through your window.
📌---- Where, when and how did I book? ----📌 Those were my first questions too. I chose to book directly through the Disney website. According to the latest announcement at the time, dated 11 November 2023, bookings opened four months ahead, on the same day of the month. For example, if I wanted to stay on 1 April, I could start booking on 1 December. If the stay date was the 31st but the booking month had only 30 days, booking would open on the 1st of the following month. The opening time was 11:00 Japan time (JST, GMT+9), which is 09:00 Thailand time (ICT, GMT+7).
😄 I had two tips to share from those early attempts. 1. I opened the website about three to five minutes early, around 08:55 ICT / 10:55 JST. Waiting until exactly 09:00 ICT / 11:00 JST could mean a long queue before I could reach the booking page. 2. I kept checking the announcements on the website’s home page, because the booking rules sometimes changed.
📌---- Which room did I choose? ----📌 Next came the room itself. Prices varied, so I started with what we wanted from our stay. Hotel MiraCosta’s rooms were divided into three areas: - Tuscany Side - Venice Side - Porto Paradiso Side
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/pbMPw69Vp1SeAPMA/?mibextid=oFDknk
I wanted a room with a harbor view where we could see the shows fairly clearly. Our little one would still be under two when we traveled. I worried that sitting outside for the show might be too much, or that our youngest might need a nap. So my first choice was a Harbor View room on the Porto Paradiso Side. Harbor View rooms seemed to sell out fastest, apart from the special rooms and suites with balconies where you could watch the show outside. I put my choices in this order: 1. Superior Room Harbor View 2. Superior Room Piazza Grand View 3. Superior Room Piazza View
Once I knew which rooms I wanted, I practiced the booking steps so I'd be familiar with them.
I practiced for two months—not every day—but I never managed to get a room during those attempts. Just two minutes after booking opened, I could barely find any Harbor View rooms left. Then, on the day I actually needed to book, I somehow managed to reserve one. Part of that may have been because the booking window had just changed. Perhaps many people had missed the website announcement and were still waiting for the old three-month booking window.
📌---- Payment ----📌 Once I'd reserved the room, the hotel asked for a ¥30,000 deposit, with the rest due on the day of our stay. Then we just had to wait and see where we'd end up: facing the harbor head-on, or in the left or right wing. Whichever position we received, I felt confident that we would be able to see the show.
I hope our experience helps a little if you’re hoping to stay at Hotel MiraCosta. I wrote more about it in the discussion below, if you’d like to read further: https://pantip.com/topic/42354668 Thank you!
Posted on 22 Nov 2023
Here's a little more about why I had my eye on Harbor View.
1️⃣ The main reason was that I wanted our little one to be able to watch the shows from our room. That meant choosing the Porto Paradiso Side, though being on that side did not mean every room would have a view of the shows.
There were four main room types on this side, with further variations such as rooms for three or four guests and wheelchair-accessible rooms: Superior Room Partial View Superior Room Piazza View Superior Room Piazza Grand View Superior Room Harbor View From the information I found across several sources, Harbor View seemed the best fit for us, followed by Piazza Grand View.
2️⃣ These were the approximate room positions I had researched. I had not traveled there yet when I wrote this post. Harbor View rooms were spread across three parts of the building.
🛏️ Rooms facing the harbor head-on These looked straight out over the harbor. The tradeoff seemed to be the distance from the water: the shows might not feel as close as they would from the left and right wings.
🛏️ Rooms in the right wing, when facing the park There were approximately 16 rooms across the third, fourth and fifth floors. Being beside the harbor meant a close view of the shows, but according to the reviews I had read, many rooms on this side might not have a view of the fireworks.
🛏️ Rooms in the left wing, when facing the park There were approximately 15 rooms across the second to fourth floors, with suites in those spots on the fifth floor. These were also beside the harbor, offering a close view of the shows as well as the nighttime fireworks. I thought it would be lovely to get a room on the third or fourth floor on this side.
The Piazza Grand View rooms were also in the left and right wings, but set farther back than the Harbor View rooms.
3️⃣ My final reason... the Speciale rooms and suites were beyond my budget! 🤣 Some of those rooms had balconies where you could step outside to watch the shows. They cost more and seemed to be among the hardest rooms to book.
For more detail, including the other room types, there's a website linked in the original post’s comments. Of all the sites I had found, it was the most detailed. It was in Japanese, but Google Translate could help.
I hoped to take my own photos of the different parts of the hotel on our trip, then share them to make the layout easier to picture. Several websites already had photos, but I could not simply include them here because of copyright.
So for this post, I mainly used images from the official DisneySea website.
The yellow highlights show the approximate positions of the Harbor View rooms.
