Akasaka Excel Tokyu Hotel

[lurkyloo]

We were booked into the Akasaka Excel Tokyu Hotel by the production company of the ad my husband was shooting in Tokyo, but we couldn't have picked a better place ourselves. It's one of only 15 Disney Good Neighbor hotels in the whole city, which means it offers free motorcoach service directly to the parks - no small thing when the alternative is a 45-minute subway journey that includes a long slog with your luggage through parts of Tokyo Station that don't have elevators.

Also, unlike many of the other Good Neighbor hotels, it is centrally located right in Tokyo, not out in the suburbs. It's directly across the street from the Akasaka-Mitsuke Metro Station, which connects you to the Ginza and Marunouchi lines. If you don't use the shuttle, it's four stops to Tokyo Station and then a 10-minute walk down that loooooooong hall with stairs to the Keiyo line for Maihama Station and Tokyo Disney.




The lobby’s on the third floor









Our hotel room was much nicer than I expected – it had been recently redecorated and didn’t have the IKEA feel I saw in older pictures on TripAdvisor. It was also a decent size—not huge, but you could actually walk around the bed. It turned out to be the biggest non-Disney room we had in Tokyo.





My favorite part was the corner window into the bathroom cuz it made the place feel bigger. Although it was a trick figuring out which way to dial the blinds so your spouse couldn’t see in!




The view wasn’t half bad either.




Soaking tub and shower…



…and the requisite complicated toilet!




Other cool features of this hotel: It has a 7-Eleven on the first floor, which means an ATM that accepts US ATM cards and a cheap meal are always close by; it is adjacent to two shopping complexes with restaurants and stores and even a post office; and there is a street running behind the subway station that is jam-packed with restaurants and clubs.

I never thought I’d be so glad to see a 7 Eleven!



Restaurant Row

[lurkyloo]

Oh, one thing I forgot: On the second night we were moved to what was supposed to be a better room because it was marginally bigger. However, it was on the other side of the hotel, at slightly-below-ground-level, facing a dirt patch and a cement wall, with windows that didn't open.

The last part was the deal breaker for me because this is one of those hotels where the thermostat in your room doesn't work unless they've turned on AC for the whole building... which they hadn't... and it was so stuffy in there I could barely breathe. I had to ask three different people to be switched back to our old room type.

So I guess I'm not cautioning against this room type, just the location: