2025 China-Japan Trip Part 1: Background, Trip Planning, and Flight to Beijing

In October 2025, my wife and I went on a two-week long trip to Japan with a brief stop in Beijing tacked on to the beginning. It included five theme park days (including two parks that were new to me), five different hotels, and more train rides than I can count. 

This trip report will include Universal Studios Beijing, Tokyo Disney Resort, Universal Studios Japan, and Fuji-Q Highlands, as well as a few other attractions. 

I will focus on the theme parks and attractions, as I travel for neither food nor enlightenment. But I will have some notes that may be of interest to anyone else considering a “Theme Park +” Asia trip in the near future. I hope you enjoy!

Background and Trip Planning

This was my third trip to Japan, but it was the first time I went there on vacation as opposed to traveling there for work.

My first trip was a six-month-long work trip in 2018 to Osaka. While I was there, I worked long hours on weekdays, but generally had the weekends free. Every Saturday in the winter, I went skiing at either Hachi-Kita Kogen or Biwako Valley. On Sundays, I typically explored Osaka or Universal Studios Japan. As the skiing season ended, I made weekend trips to other places in Asia, and was able to visit Tokyo Disney Resort, Nagashima Spa Land, Hirakata Park, Universal Studios Singapore, and Shanghai Disneyland.

I returned to Osaka with my wife R in 2019 for a two-week-long work trip including a weekend at Tokyo Disney Resort. R was not particularly keen on international travel prior to the trip. In fact, I had to give her my business class seat while I sat in her seat in steerage on the flights both ways in order to coax her to go with me on this trip. But Japan is so pleasant, even the least interested visitors will find something to love while they are there.

Our next big trip on the books was a trip to Europe in 2020 (where I could check the final Disney theme parks off my list), so we planned to return to Japan in 2021.

For some reason I can’t quite remember, the 2020 trip to Europe ended up getting delayed to 2022. And the return trip to Japan ended up becoming a joint trip with my childhood friend M and his Japanese wife N. I had to delay the trip in 2023 due to some work responsibilities. And M had to delay it in 2024 for the same reason on his end. So, we ended up planning the trip for the second half of October 2025.

Early in my career, I had done some work on a project in Beijing, but had not been able to see any of it in person. So, I decided that this trip might be the perfect opportunity to get to finally see it, since flights from Beijing to Tokyo are pretty reasonable.

The best way to do a short trip to mainland China is to use a 240-hour Transit Visa which allows people with tickets onward to a country other than their origin country to have a “layover” of up to 10 days in China without going through the hassle and expense of getting a tourist visa to China.

Additionally, I had wanted to visit the Osaka Expo which ran through October 13 on this trip. But M’s job requires employees to bid for vacation time based on seniority. And our original plan for an early October Japan trip didn’t pan out. The earliest he could get time off was the week starting October 22.

I experimented with a version of the trip where R and I would fly to Osaka to see the expo, then fly to Beijing, then return to Japan by way of Korea in order to be eligible for the 240-Hour Transit Visa before going to Tokyo Disneyland and finally meeting up with M and N to tour the other parts of the country. But after running the numbers, I came to the unwelcome conclusion that I had neither the vacation days nor the money needed to do such a long trip.

Around the time I was trying to figure this out, the expo opened, and a friend of mine was able to visit. He said it was great and I would love it, but also that it was poorly run, the lines were insane, and it would need to be a four or five day visit to give it justice. R was not enthusiastic about the expo, so I dropped it from the itinerary. And the final trip came into focus:

October 15-16: Fly to Beijing
October 17: Visit the Forbidden City
October 18: Visit the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu
October 19: Visit Universal Studios Beijing and Scares @ Universal
October 20: Fly to Tokyo
October 21: Tokyo DisneySea
October 22: Shop in Tokyo
October 23: Tokyo Disneyland
October 24: Shinkansen to Osaka and shopping
October 25: Universal Studios Japan and Halloween Horror Nights
October 26: Osaka Aquarium and shop in Kyoto
October 27: Sightseeing in Kyoto and Shinkansen to Yokohama
October 28: Fuji-Q Highland
October 29: Shopping in Yokohama
October 30: Fly home

October 15-16: Fly to Beijing

I was able to use credit card points to book the flight to Beijing via Chase Travel. I had never used this service before, and the way it worked out, I am hesitant to use it again (although it is entirely possible my problem was just user error). We booked a flight through Air China from Orlando to San Francisco (operated by United) and San Francisco to Beijing (operated by Air China on a Boeing 777-300).

Part one of the trip: Fly to Beijing and go to our hotel at Universal Beijing Resort.

The flight from Orlando to San Francisco was uneventful. I was able to read all of Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf which was the source novel for the 1988 masterpiece film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The book was very different from the film. I’m glad I read it, and there was a lot to like about it. But the movie is much better. I feel like the world of the movie has a much stronger internal logic than the novel. Still, a great way to pass a flight.

Transferring in San Francisco was not too bad. The airport is under construction, so there was a very long temporary walkway between terminals. However, I don’t recall it being a longer or more difficult walk than it was before the renovation project began.

Once we arrived at the gate for the flight to Beijing, it was chaos: There was multiple long lines to the counters and completely incoherent messages over the PA. I knew that we would need to show them our passports prior to boarding, but the setup made it very difficult to tell where we were supposed to be.

Eventually, I just got in a line, and after a few minutes, my name was called over the PA, so I went to a different line and was able to check in (I guess I was in the wrong place?) It eventually worked out in the end, though, as we were allowed on the plane.

When I fly long haul in steerage in a 777 or 787, I like to sit in the second-to-last row on the left or right, because the narrowing body of the plane makes the last two rows have only two seats instead of three.

Image source: Air China

Unfortunately, our seats got moved forward by two rows, so we were in a row with three seats, with a stranger occupying the window seat. Maybe our seats moved because of whatever happened in the terminal that lead to the gate agents needing to call my name over the PA? Or maybe I screwed up when checking in to the flight or even when booking it? Who knows?

Making matters worse, my seat did not recline! (The seats around me did recline—I believe my seat was just broken).

The flight itself was not my favorite. It was 14 hours from gate to gate, landing at 6:15pm local time the day after we left. The food was fine, but the beverages were extremely stingy. Imagine spending 14 hours in a plane and getting only three small paper cups of water for the whole duration. When I got up to check what they had at the galley, I didn’t see anything or anyone that could give me more to drink, either.

When we landed, I had a headache and felt like a zombie. (Normally after a long haul flight, I feel like a zombie without a headache!)

On the flight, I read Felony Juggler: A Crime Novel by Penn Jillette which was really fun. I also read about two thirds of The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt which was also quite good.

When we landed, I had arranged for a black car service to pick us up from the airport, who drove us directly to our hotel. The driver had a sign with my name on it and was waiting for us just outside the customs check. He was a very courteous driver, the car was clean and new, and I thought it was definitely worth the ~$22 USD for the 45 minute ride.

I took this photo at sunrise on one of the mornings that jet lag woke me up early.

For our time in Beijing, I decided to stay at the NUO Resort Hotel-Universal Beijing Resort. This hotel included early theme park entry, and its location on-site and adjacent to the subway station made it appear to be convenient for our purposes. Booking at this hotel only opens 60 days in advance, so it was the last hotel I booked for the whole trip. It was a bit pricey for Beijing at ~$990 USD total for four nights. But my wife R was a bit nervous about traveling in China, and I thought a fancy hotel at an American theme park resort would make her feel more comfortable. 

The resort has a lot of indoor common spaces, but they are broken into different rooms. This is the bell service desk lobby, and the first room you enter from the porte cochère. 

It worked. The hotel room was really nice, and R was happy! After putting our stuff away, we fell asleep almost instantly.

Our room was a Deluxe Double Queen Room. The shower, sink, and bath tub were separated from the sleeping room by barn doors (open on the right side of the photo) and a regular door near the room door. The toilet was in a room separate from the shower, behind the TV.

The hotel was absolutely gorgeous, the service was excellent, and the room was very comfortable. However, it is a long metro ride from most non-Universal attractions in Beijing. So although I would say it is a perfect choice if you were considering a trip to Universal Studios Beijing, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for a trip to Beijing proper.

 

The next part of this trip report will cover the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China!

Series Directory

Part 1: Background, Trip Planning, and Flight to Beijing