Day 3 [part 5]: More firsts… First meal, First parade!
On our way to Wandering Moon Teahouse! From Tomorrowland, the quickest path is to head back towards Mickey Avenue by the main entrance. There are some quirky store fronts haha. I can’t remember some of them, but I’m pretty sure we ended up coming back to take a look at them again.
Balloons!
Mickey Avenue is pretty wide, but it’s short!!
Our first view of Wandering Moon Teahouse! One of the dining rooms
Official entrance
The big dining room
Mini gate
Getting closer
You can just see the TWO strollers in front of the entrance ahaha
So grand!
Very high ceilings
View of the menu… (Can’t really see much, but it’s Chinese food)
What was really surprising was that all your dishes came with a beverage as well! I ended up choosing one of the drinks that are very… chinese? I can’t remember which it was, maybe something like honey pomelo, or plum something? It was kind of sweet, but I liked it. For our dishes, I ordered the one called “Gluten and Mushrooms” … I have no idea what they mean by “gluten” but I ordered it because I reeeeeeeeally wanted the Mickey shaped carrot for a photo. The person at the counter had to tell me it was a vegetarian dish, which to be honest wasn’t really what I was feeling like having, but I was pretty fixated on the Mickey carrot, so I said “that’s okay!!!” (It was the only dish on the menu that had a Mickey shaped vegetable on it!!!) Glendon ordered the Shanghainese Pork Belly.
“Gluten and Mushrooms”
“Shanghainese Pork Belly”
I liked the picture of my food because I liked how orange the Mickey carrot was. I didn’t exactly love my dish though. I THINK the gluten stuff is some sort of mung bean or tofu thing. I didn’t love the dish, because it really was a Chinese vegetarian dish. The kind of stuff you would get to eat if you ever got food at a temple. There wasn’t any sauce with my dish, and I don’t particularly like eating plain rice with tofu stuff hahaha. I’m not big on tofu anyways. But I guess that was my own fault for ordering it even though I knew I likely wouldn’t love it.
Glendon LOVED his pork belly and rice. The sauce was yummy, and the pork belly was soft! I loved it too and I was jealous of his dish haha. But I was pretty happy I got mushrooms. (Jenna also had the Shanghainese Pork Belly, and Brian got the Wagyu Beef Noodle Soup)
We were pretty surprised with our first experience of eating in the park. From what we had been hearing, a lot of the restaurants (even the counter service) were dead because locals thought the food was overpriced. Brian’s dish, the noodle soup, was the MOST expensive one on the menu, at 85Yuan. Converted, that comes to about $16.50 Canadian dollars (just a little over $12 USD). That’s not terribly expensive, considering the fact that it also came with a drink. (Because all our meals did come with a drink, by the end of our trip we realized that Shanghai
Disneyland ended up being the cheapest of our meals in parks this trip!) I think we’re just pretty used to spending a hefty amount sometimes in the American parks for in-park dining, that this didn’t seem too bad. We were baffled that the restaurant was DEAD. Because most of the counter service places in the American parks get SO busy. There were only two other tables taken aside from us out of ALL the dining rooms!!
After lunch, we just planned on doing a little bit of exploring. But right as we stepped outside, we noticed that the street was blocked! THE PARADE JUST STARTED AND WE GOT OUT JUST IN TIME!!!!
We LOVED this parade. Not really sure why, really! It was just a normal day time parade haha. But it felt fun! Plus the music was SO catchy! We ended up humming it all day and we didn’t even mind, because it was just so catchy haha. Here are just some of my photos.
Chip and Dale
Chip [Edit: I thought it was Chip. It's Dale]
Dancing Chip! [Edit: Dale!]
Lots of love Pluto
Daisy and Minnie
Mickey’s Storybook Express! (I think that’s what this parade is called?)
(Looks like Casey Jr??)
And Mickey himself, smiling right at ME (or so I'm pretty sure ME, anyways)
Some of my favourite characters… the Dwarfs!
Toy Story Army Men!
Super cute Toy Story float!
SERIOUSLY HOW CUTE
AND Slinky Dog at at the end!!!
LOVED the Tangled float!
LOOOOOOOK
Frozen Float
There was also a Finding Nemo float, but my favourite were the seagulls haha
There was also a really awesome MULAN float. Of course they would have a great representation of Mulan haha. But that was their most exciting float, that also shot up fire and big drums beating with Mulan sitting atop her horse. I don’t know how we don’t have photos?!
[EDIT: Glendon has photos, I just got them, but I ran out of space in this post, so additional content will be in
THIS NEXT POST!!!]
Anyways, during the parade we unfortunately were standing next to a family that didn’t like to follow rules (they were directly to our left… so in the direction of where the parade is coming from). Most of the people around were pretty good and stayed behind the line. (Only the other side of the street was roped off in our section, our side of the street we were all just standing behind a line.) Every single member of the family next to us took turns standing into the parade path so they could get videos and photos of the parade coming towards us. The cast members kept telling them to stay behind the line! Which they would do when they were asked, but as soon as a new float came by the would step right back out. SO a lot of our photos had the tops of their heads in them. Overall, it was okay because it didn’t bother us too much since it was just them. We mostly felt bad for the one cast member who kept having to talk to them.
So far, pretty good day!
Up next… exploring! Sirens Revenge