When we were aboard the Celebrity ship in Jan 2018 we checked the future cruise desk for a cruise vacation to a place we never had been before.
The salesperson found a cruise in Mar 2019 that had two cruises from China to Japan and return.
Upon reviewing the itinerary we were excited to find that the cruise from China to Japan was one we had to take. Reason being we could visit the Shanghai Disneyland and the Tokyo Disneyland as well as spend 3 days in Beijing. Everything we wanted to see and do on the cruise.
We contacted our travel agent to find a tour operator for China and Japan to arrange hotel stays, tours and transfers to and from the airport and ship.
We ended up with Goway Tours and the itinerary seemed very good. However this changed once we were on the trip. We had to make adjustments during our trip and I will list those when I get to the appropriate day and post.
The cruise itinerary was really good- Sailing from Shanghai to Seoul, Beijing with a three day overnight, Jeju Island, Korea, overnight in Kobe, Japan; Mt. Fuji; and an overnight in Yokohama and then disembarking in Tokyo.
Once we had booked the cruise I immediately booked the three night excursion to Beijing ( details in future posts for those days).
Preparation for the trip was not too difficult but time consuming.
We started the prep 4 months before the cruise. We only needed Typhoid shots as we had all the others. see list here https://www.tripsavvy.com/required-recommended-vaccinations-for-china-travel-1495144.
We had booked out tours with Goway so that was taken care of.
We had a travel agent help me book the hotels in Shanghai and Tokyo Disneyland's so we were set there.
Three months before the cruise we applied for out Chinese visas. We used a visa service in San Francisco ( I dropped off and picked up the passports in interests of time and not getting lost in the mail). It was a bit expensive for the visa and the visa service but the visas are good for 10 years.
I started reading about travel to both countries on the internet to see what else to bring with us on the trip. Main thing was to have at least 1 $100 in Chinese and Japanese currency for the car service, bellmen etc.
There were lots of Youtube videos about travelling to China that I saw and as well as the sights in Beijing.
Since most internet apps are blocked in China the advice was to get a VPN app and find an international phone plan to use with the app. More on this when we get to Shanghai.
One thing that we were concerned with was the flight to China and the return from Tokyo. Since we are now older and want more comfort we decided to take business class both ways.
Main thing was to find direct flights and we ended up booking United round trip. Turns out the return was on ANA air because it was a codeshare with United.
The advantage with business class other than the comfortable seats and great service was being able to check two bags each free and access to the business class lounges at the airports.
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