We went last year. I have similar answers. I carried Kleenex and there were a few times I used them and handed one to each women in our group. In some of the public restrooms, the toilet paper is in a common area, and you take some into the stall with you. Do try the squatty potty(as we called them). There are usually one or two western toilets and a bunch of the other. All the hotels are beautiful and western.
We got money at an ATM right near the hotel. We found it difficult to use credit cards in stores even thought we were told we could. You could use a debit card, but they didn't want our credit cards at restaurants either. The food was fairly similar to our Chinese food, and I think that is because Disney arranged it that way. It was not the same, but not so unusual. Some of those on the trip found the food too weird and ate a lot of McDonalds. On our night out alone in Beijing, we ate at Made in China, which is a fancy restaurant recommended by a cousin who lives in China and travels to Beijing often. They are famous for Peking Duck and if you want to have Peking duck, you must pre order it with your reservtion. They encourage you to order way more food than you can eat. We never found out if this is for everyone or just American tourists or a communication problem but it happened every time we were on our own. Disney serves you unbelievable amounts of food too. Dessert is interesting.
I'm pretty sure there was alcohol available for purchase in most of the places they took us. I only had a beer in Cheng Du and a glass of wine in Guilin (which they way overcharged us and we had quite the problem with the hotel staff and our guides tried very hard to fix they problem, but couldn't-they don't go to that hotel anymore).
We also didn't buy too much, or at least nothing big, so we just packed it.
For clothing, it was pretty hot and humid. Shorts and tshirts were fine. There was a nice dinner in Shanghai that we dressed nicer as most did. We didn't use hotel laundry, but I'm sure they had it, the hotels were REALLY nice. Shanghai Pennisula was probably the best hotel I have ever stayed at. My husband is the king of travel clothing (kids and I are not royalty in that area). He buys quick drying clothes and washes them in the sink at night and lets it dry to wear again a day or two later. I ended up doing the same since I sweated up all my clothes more than planned. One thing to bring is a small travel sunscreen. When you fly into Xian, you just stay for the afternoon and fly out that day, so our sunscreen was packed and we didn't have any under 3 oz size one that we could bring on the plane. We weren't outside a lot, but it was very hot and we burn easily. Chinese women carry these beautiful silk umbrellas and use them for sun protection, I wanted to get one, but never did. We had and needed light raincoats in Hong Kong, so those are good to bring.
If you are coming in early, hire a guide to show you some of the sights that Disney misses. Try the subway in Beijing, it is very clean, easy and cheap (like 30cents I think).
I'm happy to answer more questions. The trip was fantastic.
