The rising costs of visiting Florida’s Walt Disney World or California’s Disneyland — nearly $6,000 (¥937,000), according to some estimates, for a so-called budget trip for a family of four — have given rise to a running joke in American travel circles: In certain cases, it’s cheaper to book a flight, reserve a hotel and buy tickets to Tokyo Disneyland or DisneySea instead.

Opened on Feb. 13, the wallet-conscious Royal Park Hotel Maihama Resort Tokyo Bay adds another point in favor of Japan — as long as you know what you’re paying for.

Rates at the new hotel hover around ¥20,000 per weekday night and ¥30,000 on weekends, far undercutting the price of a stay at an official in-park resort, where the cost of rooms can soar to ¥400,000 and above. Apart from the obvious lack of Disney branding across the hotel’s 750 rooms, split across 14 floors (a scant handful of these are themed according to Arabian, Mediterranean, African safari and other global travel-type motifs), the only real trade-off between it and in-park accommodation is distance: The hotel is located around 2 kilometers from the parks’ main entrance.

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