Essential Things You Need to Know Before You Visit Ghibli Park

Ghibli Park is the world of Hayao Miyazaki come to life. It’s beautiful, but confusing, so there are a few things you need to know before your visit to ensure you have the best day. I wish I’d known some of them.

Article by Helen Foster. Disclosure: Some links in this post are affiliate links. See our Affiliate Disclosure.

I have to admit, I have never been to a theme park – or any other attraction – anywhere in the world with a more convoluted system than Ghibli Park.

If you do want to visit, make sure you know how it all works in advance so you don’t pay more than you should, get caught up in unnecessary stress when buying tickets, or miss out on anything fun on the day. Read on to discover what you need to know about buying tickets, getting to the park, and, most importantly, navigating Ghibli Park once you arrive.

Ghibli Park Explained in a Nutshell

Let’s start with a quick bullet point explanation of the park and what’s in it.

• The park is located just outside of Nagoya, a city between Tokyo and Kyoto.
• It consists of five areas: the Grand Warehouse, Valley of Witches, Hill of Youth, Dondoko Forest and Mononoke Village. Each contains buildings based on locations in Ghibli films and/or props used within them.
• It’s not like Disney or USJ – there are only two (very tame) rides, and you won’t get to meet live-action versions of Howl or Totoro. It’s more about immersing yourself in the Ghibli world.

• Tickets can be hard to get – but not as hard as the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo.
• There are two types of ticket – Premium and Standard. Premium gets you into all of the different areas; Standard lets you into the Grand Warehouse, Mononoke Village and the general area of the Valley of Witches.
• Premium tickets cost from 7300 yen for adults (kids 4-12 are half this). Standard tickets cost from 3300 yen (kids 4-12 are half this).
• If you do buy a Standard ticket, you can buy extra passes to enter some other areas on the day.

That’s the basic facts you need to make sense of things. Now, let’s get into the details…

1. Understanding the Park Layout

While you might think you don’t need this yet, it’s important to understand from day one, as it will help you decide which ticket you need to buy to enter.

As I said above, there are five areas in Ghibli Park, but the cheaper Standard tickets only let you into parts of them. However, depending on the films you love or the interests you have, the Standard pass might still cover everything you want to do, meaning you don’t need to pay more for Premium.

What’s Included in the Tickets at a Glance

AREA/ATTRACTION	INCLUDED ON STANDARD	INCLUDED ON PREMIUM
Grand Warehouse	✔	✔
Valley of Witches	✔ Excluding inside Howl’s Castle, the House of Witches and Okino’s Residence	✔ Including inside Howl’s Castle, the House of Witches and Okino’s Residence
Mononoke Village	✔	✔
Dondoko Forest	x	✔
Hill of Youth	x	✔

Here are a few more details that might help you decide which areas you want to visit.

The Grand Warehouse

This is full of props, exhibits and selfie opportunities with models of characters like No Face from Spirited Away, Totoro and CatBus. There’s a cinema showing an exclusive movie, and a huge gift shop.

This is included in both Premium and Standard tickets. You pick a time to enter here and can only go in once, although you can stay as long as you like once inside. We spent two hours – you could spend 3-4 if you do absolutely everything.

Valley of Witches

The outdoor area with the most to do. It contains life-sized models of Howl’s Moving Castle, Guchokipanya Bakery from Kiki’s Delivery Service, The House of Witches from Earwig and the Witch and The Okino Residence, Kiki’s home from Kiki’s Delivery Service, that you can enter with the right tickets.

There are two small rides here: the Carousel and the Flying Machine – they have an extra charge of 1000 yen and 500 yen, respectively.

There is a food area called The Flying Oven, and a snack stall selling hot dogs. There’s a large shop called the Witches Coven that sells merchandise based on the films in this area, and a smaller one that sells sweets. This is based on Sophie’s Hat Shop from Howl’s Moving Castle. Hidden above this is a bookshop.

Entry to the Valley of Witches area is included in both types of ticket, BUT only Premium Tickets include access inside the models of Howl’s Moving Castle, The House of Witches and Okino Residence.

If you buy Standard tickets, you can either view these from outside or buy individual tickets on the day for those you wish to enter. I’ll explain more about that process a bit further down.

Mononoke Village

Based on the landscape in Princess Mononoke. This contains a slide based on Lord Okotto, a Demon Spirit Statue and a hands-on experience you can try.

The experience varies by the season, but might be mochi grilling or starch grinding.

These are not included in any ticket and cost at least 1000 yen extra. You book in once you arrive in the area.

Hill of Youth

Only accessible on a Premium Ticket. This includes World Emporium, one of the locations from Whisper of the Heart, and The Rotary, a model of the roundabout from the same film. There’s also a model of the Cat Bureau from The Cat Returns.

Dondoko Forest

Based on My Neighbour Totoro, this includes a model of Satsuki and Mei’s House and a playground containing a giant Totoro. Only kids under 12 are allowed to use this. There is also a shop selling amulets, keychains and unique Totoro souvenirs.

Entry to Dondoko Forest is only included in Premium tickets.

There are also a few sights like the Earwig and the Witch bridge (above), and the steampunk Elevator outside of the main areas open to people with any ticket.

2. Tips for Buying Tickets

Tickets for Ghibli Park go on sale at 2 pm Japanese time on the 10th of the month, two months before you want to visit – so, for example, if you want to visit in September, you need to be online July 10th at 2 pm Japanese time. The website to buy tickets for international guests is this one.

But on top of that, here’s what you need to know.

Be Prepared

You don’t just need your credit card when buying the tickets. You also need your passport as the tickets are secured to any official ID. Make sure it’s not in a cupboard somewhere!

Also, the park is closed on Tuesdays. Don’t plan to buy tickets for a Tuesday!

The Ticket Queue is Random

This was my biggest shock about the ticket-buying process. The 10th of the month arrived, and I was there and ready, in the waiting room 15 minutes beforehand. The ticket queue opened, and I got a message on my screen. ‘There are 18,746 people in the queue in front of you. Your wait time is more than an hour.’

At this point, I basically turned into Roy Kent from Ted Lasso – the air was bluer than Chu Totoro.

Then a message pinged into the corner of my screen: ‘I’m number 3025,’ said my friend, who had joined the queue 10 minutes later than me. That was when we realised that the queue is random.

The moral here is that you need to get a few different people involved in the ticket-buying process and to have a couple of devices on the case, as you never know where you might end up in the queue.

Don’t Rule Out Weekends

As with everything in Japan, local audiences make up most of the people visiting Ghibli Park, so you would think weekends would be busier. But as the park is always sold out, the day you visit shouldn’t make much difference to the crowd numbers; it’s at maximum capacity every day.

However, as you can see in the picture below, taken about four hours after tickets went on sale, on the international site, early slots on weekends weren’t sold out, but the ones on weekdays were.

My theory (and it is only a theory) is that because there is less stress involved with buying the tickets for Japanese people, they don’t all rush on to buy immediately. International guests do, and they are all attempting to avoid weekends, as that’s the general rule with theme parks – so, having a weekend option might make it easier to get a ticket.

Standard Tickets Are Easier to Get than Premium

Because they let you into every area of the park, Premium tickets sell out first, but as I said, you might not want to go everywhere in the park.

If you don’t, save yourself some stress in the queue, buy Standard – and then plan on buying the extra tickets on the day.

As you can see from the picture above, which again, was taken four hours after the queue opened, Standard tickets were still available for pretty much the whole month, even after the initial rush had disappeared – the x means sold out, all the other slots have some availability on the international site.

If Premium sells out, go back in and try for Standard.

The Entry Time is Not for the Whole Park

This is something many people get wrong. When you buy your ticket, you will be asked to select an entry time. This is NOT the time you can enter the park, per se. It is the time you can enter the Grand Warehouse.

No matter what time you pick for this, the rest of the park can be entered when the doors open – which is 10 am during the week and 9 am at weekends.

Pick Your Grand Warehouse Timings Carefully

When choosing your time to enter the Grand Warehouse, you need to be a bit strategic. If you have bought Standard tickets and want to try and get passes on the day to visit other areas, particularly the extremely popular Howl’s Moving Castle, you do not want to be in the first slot for the Grand Warehouse, as they might have sold out by the time you come out.

Book a slightly later slot for Grand Warehouse, and go into the main part of the park first to secure your tickets for the extra areas.

If you don’t want to buy extra tickets or have Premium Passes, then do pick the first slot for Grand Warehouse to beat the queues.

3. How to Buy Extra Tickets on the Day

I couldn’t find a lot of detail online about this process before we went, and it’s a bit complicated, so here is what you need to know if you do decide to supplement your Standard tickets with some extra attractions.

How Much Do The Areas Cost

There are three areas not included in a Standard ticket that you can pay for separately. They are…

ATTRACTION	ADULTS	KIDS (4-12)
Howl’s Moving Castle	1000 yen	500 yen
The Okino Residence	400 yen	200 yen
The House of Witches	400 yen	200 yen

Even if you buy them all, it will only add 1800 yen to the price of an adult Standard ticket.

This is a considerable saving on buying the Premium ticket (4700 yen vs 7300 yen), but remember, you don’t get access to the Hill of Youth or Dondoko Forest with a Standard ticket, and there is a risk that one or more of the above might sell out, so prioritise them carefully.

Securing Your Same-Day Tickets

For Howl’s Castle, the House of Witches and Okino’s Residence, you buy your same-day tickets in the Valley of Witches.

The system for these differs by attraction.

For The House of Witches and Okino Residence

Just go to the Ticket Truck in the Valley of Witches and buy your tickets. It is open from 10.30 am on weekdays (9.30 am on weekends) to 4.30 pm. On the day we went, these did not sell out super early.

For Howl’s Moving Castle

Howl’s has a slightly different system. Head toward the area of the Ticket Truck, but don’t queue up here. Instead, find the person handing out tokens for Howl’s. This secures your ticket from the day’s allocation.

The token you are given has a time on it. This is the time from which you can come back and buy your actual ticket. The faster you get into the queue, the earlier your return time will be. Don’t worry if you get a late time, though. While tokens do run out, your actual ability to buy a ticket is confirmed once you have one.

I guess they do it like this as a way to stagger how many people try to enter at the same time; Howl’s is very popular, but the rooms are quite small. They open the queue for tokens at 10 am, and it closes when the tickets run out – and they do run out.

4. Fitting it Into Your Itinerary

Ghibli Park is located near the city of Nagoya. Most people don’t stay here, so here’s how long it takes and how much it costs from some more common tourist destinations.

FROM	TIME ON TRAIN	ADULT COST
Tokyo Station to Nagoya Station	100 minutes	From 11,170 yen (kids pay half)
Kyoto Station to Nagoya Station	33 minutes	From 5,170 yen (kids pay half)
Shin Osaka to Nagoya Station	50 minutes	From 6,480 yen (kids pay half)

Fitting it into Your Itinerary

If you are only visiting for the day, it’s quicker and cheaper to go to Ghibli Park from Kyoto or Osaka than from Tokyo.

Don’t Discount Staying in Nagoya

Nagoya is a fantastic city to visit, especially with kids, as it has attractions like Legoland, Nagashima Spaland and the Maglev Museum nearby. It’s also a great base for day trips – there are many small towns nearby, or a slightly longer bus ride can take you to places like Gujo Haichman or Shirakawa-go.

If you’re travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto or Osaka, you might want to add 2-3 nights in Nagoya on the way to explore.

Related Read: How to Spend Two Days in Nagoya

The Park is an Hour Away from Nagoya Station

This is important when planning your day, especially if you are travelling from further away.

The easiest route from Nagoya Station is to take the Higashiyama Line, then change to the Linimo Line to the park.

This costs 670 yen from Nagoya Station. It is all very clearly signposted.

5. Tips for Navigating The Park

Buying same-day passes is one essential thing to know once you arrive in the park, but it’s not the only one. Here’s what else is important.

Know Where to Queue For Entry

Ghibli Park is not entered like any theme park I have ever been to. There is not one entry gate where your tickets are checked, and then you go off and do your thing. Instead, you walk down from the station, go past the Family Mart, past the steampunk-inspired Elevator Tower and then head toward the park itself.

Eventually, on your right, you will find the queue for the Grand Warehouse. If you are here at opening, only join this queue if you have the first slot for the Grand Warehouse. If you are going into the other areas first, then you need to join the queue that forms on the left.

If you arrive early, this may not have formed yet, and you’ll be really confused as to where to go, but just keep walking up the road, past the Rotunda Kazegaoka, and head toward the Earwig and the Witch-themed gate. There were lots of staff around the morning we arrived, so if you’re confused, then ask. They’ll check your ticket and point you in the right direction.

And Expect to Queue a Lot

Ghibli Park is an exercise in patience and tolerance. You will queue for everything. Here’s what we surmised when doing so…

Do not queue for merch in the morning

The queue for the shop in the Valley of Witches at 10 am was probably 200 people deep. When we went back around 2.30 pm, after doing everything else, we walked straight in.

There is a risk of things selling out, and I think on the day we were there, there was some new merch that people were buying, but you’ll waste hours if you join the morning queue if there is one. Go later.

If you want to go to Kiki’s Bakery, go there first.

Guchokipanya Bakery in the Valley of Witches is a bread shop based on the bakery in Kiki’s Delivery Service. You can buy treats here and go up to a replica of Kiki’s bedroom. It had a constant, enormous queue all day; for this reason, I have not eaten Guchokipanya bread or seen Kiki’s bedroom!

The Grand Warehouse mega queue is for the No Face Picture.

Once you enter the Grand Warehouse, you will come to a yellow building with red balconies – and a queue snaking around outside and, often, back up through the building. This queue is for a picture with No Face.

This is not spelled out to you, and if you don’t know, it looks like you need to stand in this to enter the downstairs level of the Grand Warehouse. You don’t – you can just walk in the entrance to the side.

Only stand in the long queue if you want the photo. We did, and it took us about 45 minutes to get our moment with No Face.

The next longest queue is for the picture with the Robot Soldier from Castle in the Sky – that’s it pictured below: By this point, we were done with queues, so I don’t have that picture!

Don’t stress too much, there are heaps of other photo opportunities in the Grand Warehouse without queues – including CatBus and Totoro – but No Face and the robot seem to be most popular.

The Rides Cost Extra

They aren’t the most thrilling, so this didn’t matter for us, but if you have smaller kids who might want to ride them, remember they aren’t included in either ticket.

Much of the Park Is Outside

Dress accordingly. There are buses to take you between the areas if you want to use them, but you will still be outside a lot, and there isn’t much chance of finding cover between the houses and other attractions. If it’s raining as it was when we went, you’re going to get wet.

This did provide a fabulous ‘only in Japan’ moment, though. Before we entered the gift shop in the Hill of Witches, the staff dried off our rain jackets with towels!

Go Around the Grand Warehouse at Least Twice

Grand Warehouse is the only part of the park you can’t re-enter – and it’s a bit like a maze, with displays hidden in rooms all over the place. Make sure you have covered everything before you exit.

You can get a paper map at the Information Centre by the NoFace building, which shows everything inside.

If You See Something in the Grand Warehouse Shop – Buy It

The shops had different merchandise, and once you leave, you can’t go back into the Grand Warehouse – no, not even to spend money!

You Can’t Photograph Inside Some Areas

This was one of the big surprises in the park.

While the Grand Warehouse is an exercise in selfie-taking, when you get into Howl’s Castle, no pictures are allowed – which is a shame, as there are so many details in there you can’t take them all in while walking around, as the space is small and there are always people behind you, so you feel you need to keep moving.

I’m not sure if this is the same for the inside of the other houses, as we didn’t go in them, but it was a bit disappointing, as I know I missed loads.

6. Where to Eat and Drink

There are two main restaurants in the park, the Flying Oven and the Transcontinental Flight Warehouse. You’ll also find some snack stalls, a cafe and some food trucks by the Rotunda Kazegaoka between the Valley of Witches and the Grand Warehouse.

Look Out For Cute Foods

We only snacked on the cute things we walked past – the paw bun (1050 yen) hot dogs from the Hot Dog stand in the Valley of Witches were adorable (and pretty good) – but, if you choose the one with the black bun, make sure you check your teeth before going to pose for photos!

Then on the way back in, we got the frog-shaped taiyakis (Kaeruyaki) from outside of the Flying Oven – these were 1000 yen each.

Other themed dishes include the breads from Guchokipanya Bakery, Eyeball Pannacotta and Eyeball Soda float from the Flying Oven and the buns and cake from the Milk Stand Siberian.

There are Three Places for Sit-Down Meals

If you’re looking for more substantial meals, though, the Flying Oven by the entrance to the Valley of Witches has strangely British-style meals like Cottage Pie, Meat Pies and Roast Pork – they cost around 1700 yen a dish.

The other option is the Transcontinental Flight Warehouse attached to the Grand Warehouse. You can only eat here during your time at the Grand Warehouse. It sells sandwiches and pizza. You can get a small meal here for about 1000 yen.

If you’d prefer pasta, head toward the cafe in the Rotunda Kazegaoka. The food trucks here also sell things like burgers.

You Can Buy Alcohol

If all the queuing is getting to you, relax with a Valley of Witches beer with a cool label. They also sell wine in the Flying Oven!

My Overall Verdict of Ghibli Park

If you are a massive Ghibli fan, you will love it here. You will easily fill the whole day.

If, like me, you only know a few films and you like them, but aren’t obsessed, you’ll still have a good time, but the Standard ticket will probably be enough for you to get a taste for the place.

The Grand Warehouse is amazing. I’ve heard people say it’s one big line-up for a selfie after another, and there is definitely an element of that, but there is also so much else to it if you find the smaller exhibits.

We didn’t get to see the film in the cinema as we just missed a screening and didn’t want to wait, but as this is an exclusive work just for the park. Any big Ghibli lover is going to feel that’s a must-do. If it is, check the timings so you’re not waiting around.

Of the outside areas, I only visited the Valley of Witches. Here, Howl’s Moving Castle was amazing, but the rest of it passed me by a bit, and even my friend, who is a big Ghibli fan, felt the same.

I think the big issue is that while the theming is good, something about it is off. I don’t know if it’s because it is in such a big space, so everything is a bit disjointed, but you don’t feel like you do in the streets at Disney or USJ, where you’re completely enveloped by the atmosphere.

It will help improve your day if you are prepared for the queuing. You will be standing in a lot of lines, and they are boring as well. People say Tokyo Disney is bad for queuing, but you can either pay to jump those lines, or at least the queuing areas are themed and interesting; here, they are just lines of people. If you have easily bored kids, bring something for them to do.

Don’t get me wrong. I had a fantastic day, and The Grand Warehouse and Howl’s Moving Castle alone were worth the entrance fee. If the weather had been better, we probably would have stayed a bit longer and headed to Mononoke Village, or seen some of the other things like the shrine in the grounds. As it was, we were happy to leave when we did.

Overall, I’m really glad I went, but I don’t feel I need to go again unless they open something fabulous.

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