Back. I got a room!!! I'm going to outline my adventures with getting a hotel at Tokyo Disney in case anyone has these issues in the future.
Step 1. Figure out that a "twin" room means two beds. A "double" room means a single bed that's doubled in size (meant for two co-sleeping adults). A "triple" room has three beds. (I wish they had this option at WDW!) Never having been to Japan before, this confused me so much until I figured it out and then it was just funny.
Step 2. Wrangle your login info. The Tokyo Disney website has its own system, which shares some login info with the US system, but not necessarily all. It found every old account for online Disney stuff that had ever been associated with my email, including my Toontown login. (haha!) I ended up creating a new account under a different email address because I was having password issues.
Step 3. Get frustrated over your stupid banking card. I have an ordinary bank debit card with the MasterCard logo that I use for all my online purchases, which did not work at all. My bank never even saw the transaction attempts, so it was rejecting it at the website level. After discussing it with the bank, there are two possible reasons it was being rejected -- it was a debit card, not a "real" credit card, or the MasterCard SecureCode security layer was causing issues. If you haven't used this before, normally what happens is when I try to make a purchase on certain websites or over a certain amount, I will be given a small popup window and sent to the MasterCard website to supply a password OR MasterCard generates a temporary code for me. The Tokyo Disney reservations website will ask you for a short numeric code along with my card number. This is NOT the number on the back. It wants a securecode or password of some kind. If you can figure out how to generate one on your own, that's probably it.
Step 3b. Panic over paying for things while in Japan. In all my research, it seems that MasterCard may be somewhat limited in Japan. We went ahead and ordered a "real" credit card to make sure it had one of the new chips in it, which my debit card does not. I don't know if AmEx, Visa, or others have the same issues in Japan. It seems like a good idea to make sure you have more than one form of payment when traveling to Japan and make sure your CC is up to date.
Step 4. Call Japan at least 7 times. Their reservations system is only open during business hours. Their lines get very busy and they have a limited number of English-speaking agents. Call early in the day (Japan time) and you can opt to wait on hold. When I called later in the day, it would let me know that if it can't reach an agent, the call would be disconnected, so you have to call back. Once I was actually speaking to an agent, making a reservation was very easy. They still do it old school over the phone -- just name and number and reservation info! I think they don't take CC numbers over the phone for safety reasons.
Step 4b. You do not need to dial 011 when on a US cell phone. It's just 81 + local number.
Step 5. Freak out! because you're going to stay at the Hotel Miracosta and it's been a dream of yours forever and now you're going and I'm gonna go cry now.
and all is well.
