MinnieWebster
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2017
- Messages
- 438
Hi friends! DH and I went to Asia this spring, to visit his birth mother in Seoul, South Korea. To make the trip a little more exciting, since I was pretty nervous to be traveling to a foreign country (where I do not know the language, and the person we are visiting doesn't know English), we decided to visit Hong Kong Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Resort before getting to Seoul.
A little background, DH and I are both in our 30's, no kids. DH was adopted as a child, and recently his birth mother has found him and his bio brother, so we have been slowly getting to know her. We are frequent visitors to WDW, trying to get there at least once each year. We have recently decided we want to try to visit all of the Disney parks eventually. DH went to Shanghai Disneyland last April, after an impromptu visit to Seoul to see his birth mother.
After a lot of research, I decided our best itinerary for travel would be to go to Hong Kong first, then Tokyo, then Seoul. I wanted non-stop flights so we wouldn't have to try to figure out immigration/baggage/customs for connecting flights, and was eventually able to book all non-stop flights.
For our first leg of the trip, we flew out of Chicago O'Hare International Airport. It's about a 3 hour drive from home, but our flight left at 3:20pm, so we had plenty of time to get up in the morning and drive to Chicago. There wasn't much for traffic, even though DH was worried we would have some.
It looks like we packed light, right? Deceiving! We packed smaller suitcases inside the large suitcases, because while our first flight allowed 2 checked bags per person, our smaller 2 flights in the middle of the trip we had to pay for bags, and I was initially only able to add one bag per person. So I thought we could try to keep things condensed for the first part of the trip, but still have more space for souvenirs at the end of the trip.
Finally, we're off!!
I was nervous about such a long flight, having never been on a flight so long. 16 hours from Chicago to Hong Kong felt like an eternity! However, we got through it just fine, and I didn't have any problems with motion sickness (I have in the past, so we brought along lots of Dramamine!). They had a halfway decent selection of movies to choose from to watch onboard. First movie I watched was Wall-E, it's so cute!
I was very surprised about the size of the meals they served on the flight!
That was my pick. It was pretty good.
And DH picked this choice.
Dessert!!
Not long after the first meal was finished, the lights went out so passengers could rest.
DH and I managed to get some rest, although not a whole lot, since we are not used to long flights like this and it is hard to get comfortable on a plane....
The second meal served later in the flight, DH and I picked the same thing:
Again, pretty tasty, considering it's airplane food
I decided to watch Aquaman, even though we watched it in theaters.
Towards the end of the flight DH got me a "snack" of some ramen, which they provided chopsticks to eat it with. Now, I had tried to use chopsticks maybe once before this trip, and it didn't go so well. I had wanted to practice in the weeks before we left, but it didn't end up happening DH wanted evidence of my first attempt during this trip:
I must say, I didn't do too badly I did manage to eat all of the noodles without too much trouble Go me!
One thing I found really interesting about our flight, was that we didn't go west, over the western US and the Pacific Ocean, like I expected we would. Instead we went north/south, over Canada and Russia/China.
Eventually we made it to the Hong Kong International airport, where we made it through immigration, baggage claim and customs without issue. We then (after a little wandering) found a blue Lantau taxi to take us to Disney's Hollywood Hotel.
It was a long day, so after checking in we did a little getting ready for the next day at the park and went to bed
A little background, DH and I are both in our 30's, no kids. DH was adopted as a child, and recently his birth mother has found him and his bio brother, so we have been slowly getting to know her. We are frequent visitors to WDW, trying to get there at least once each year. We have recently decided we want to try to visit all of the Disney parks eventually. DH went to Shanghai Disneyland last April, after an impromptu visit to Seoul to see his birth mother.
After a lot of research, I decided our best itinerary for travel would be to go to Hong Kong first, then Tokyo, then Seoul. I wanted non-stop flights so we wouldn't have to try to figure out immigration/baggage/customs for connecting flights, and was eventually able to book all non-stop flights.
For our first leg of the trip, we flew out of Chicago O'Hare International Airport. It's about a 3 hour drive from home, but our flight left at 3:20pm, so we had plenty of time to get up in the morning and drive to Chicago. There wasn't much for traffic, even though DH was worried we would have some.
It looks like we packed light, right? Deceiving! We packed smaller suitcases inside the large suitcases, because while our first flight allowed 2 checked bags per person, our smaller 2 flights in the middle of the trip we had to pay for bags, and I was initially only able to add one bag per person. So I thought we could try to keep things condensed for the first part of the trip, but still have more space for souvenirs at the end of the trip.
Finally, we're off!!
I was nervous about such a long flight, having never been on a flight so long. 16 hours from Chicago to Hong Kong felt like an eternity! However, we got through it just fine, and I didn't have any problems with motion sickness (I have in the past, so we brought along lots of Dramamine!). They had a halfway decent selection of movies to choose from to watch onboard. First movie I watched was Wall-E, it's so cute!
I was very surprised about the size of the meals they served on the flight!
That was my pick. It was pretty good.
And DH picked this choice.
Dessert!!
Not long after the first meal was finished, the lights went out so passengers could rest.
DH and I managed to get some rest, although not a whole lot, since we are not used to long flights like this and it is hard to get comfortable on a plane....
The second meal served later in the flight, DH and I picked the same thing:
Again, pretty tasty, considering it's airplane food
I decided to watch Aquaman, even though we watched it in theaters.
Towards the end of the flight DH got me a "snack" of some ramen, which they provided chopsticks to eat it with. Now, I had tried to use chopsticks maybe once before this trip, and it didn't go so well. I had wanted to practice in the weeks before we left, but it didn't end up happening DH wanted evidence of my first attempt during this trip:
I must say, I didn't do too badly I did manage to eat all of the noodles without too much trouble Go me!
One thing I found really interesting about our flight, was that we didn't go west, over the western US and the Pacific Ocean, like I expected we would. Instead we went north/south, over Canada and Russia/China.
Eventually we made it to the Hong Kong International airport, where we made it through immigration, baggage claim and customs without issue. We then (after a little wandering) found a blue Lantau taxi to take us to Disney's Hollywood Hotel.
It was a long day, so after checking in we did a little getting ready for the next day at the park and went to bed