Impromark
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2018
Our Visit, Part The Second
In case you missed it, this post’s corresponding pictures can be found in a gallery here.
Missed Part The First? Click right here!
Star Wars Launch Bay
I could easily have stayed on the Tron coaster in the single rider lineup and ridden the rest of the day, but we still had other things to do. Tucked in behind he coaster building, looking lonely and almost ignored, is the Star Wars Launch Bay. Barely paying lip service to the multi-billion dollar franchise Disney owns, it’s really just a mini museum and cosplay corner where you can take some pictures. I still ate it up and had fun posing for the same pictures I’d otherwise have done at my local comic expo. The mockup of the Millenium Falcon cockpit was extra fun though. There’s also a Lego corner, build-a-lightsaber thing and the usual gift shop, but we got what we wanted an moved on. Perhaps a full-on Star Wars attraction will be built in this location later on?
Peter Pan’s Flight
By this time, our sole FastPass time had come. We hung around the area’s shops for the fifteen or so minutes prior to our time and then headed in, and after the confusion surrounding how the FPs worked between our phone and printed tickets, we got in for a fifteen minute wait. This wasn’t a must-do on my list, but as with POTC we’d schooled our DD on the original movie and she loved it. Shanghai’s has their more modern spin, and the way our ship banked and dipped felt more contemporary to the technology available than any other version I’ve ridden. I haven’t ridden the one in Paris but it looks most similar to it, though every version has different character placement (especially at the beginning). We’re glad we used our FP on that, anyway, as the main wait time was still almost an hour in the mid-afternoon.
Return to Treasure Cove
Instead of returning to the Tron coaster (nope, not gonna let that one go), we found it was time to head back to Adventure Isle for the Tarzan live show, so we returned for our third circuit around that area. However, we were surprised to find the attraction had shifted its showtime to over an hour later! We couldn’t get a reason out of the CMs but found ourselves with time to kill before that show and then Peter Pan. Consulting the app, Soaring was still over an hour wait, but POTC was there at ten minutes – practically inviting us for a second ride! Having loved the first time through, we needed little more convincing, and off we went.
Afterwards (and yes, it’s just as thrilling as the first time – there’s just so much detail to take in on this ride!), we still had some time left over. Finding a bench just outside the Siren’s Revenge walkthrough, I went off for a couple minutes to buy my DW the OTHER “seasonal” drink & collector’s bulb, and then let her enjoy that and rest her feet while I took DD aboard the pirate “ship”… But not before we were approached by a pirate-clad CM who spoke English well enough to ask her if she was having a good time, liked the pirate lifestyle, and gifted her a “pirate map” of her own – she was so happy!
The Siren’s Revenge attraction was fun enough, with tons of things to do – including video screens of “wanted posters” featuring characters from the movie, which react to you when prompted (or stand around long enough). A fun highlight was a similar poster you could stick your head through to pretend to be the subject; as I was posing in my best pirate’s “Arrr Matey” face, several kids wandered by and I’m pretty sure they thought I was part of the attraction. We eventually found the canons, but couldn’t get to pretend-firing them at the hapless Explorer Canoes going by, as SW was summoning us back ashore. It was time to head to the jungle!
Tarzan: Call of the Jungle
I was looking forward to this live show for a variety of reasons. Mostly, I was going to spend the following night “off” and go to an improv comedy show in Shanghai (which I try to do at most every city I visit) while the wife and daughter go to the Chinese Circus show. I figured this would be consolation prize enough, so I was happy things lined up for us to go see.
Unlike the earlier POTC stunt show, this one had very little dialogue to go on besides the Chinese language versions of the songs. Aside from that, it was a visually spectacular show that entertained us as much as we were expecting! There was an assortment of “classic” acrobatics and tumbling numbers, with ribbons, juggling, and so on mixed in. While some of it was definitely not quite real (the opening number featured some plate spinners, and those plates were certainly not able to fall off their sticks!), and of course there were safety lines for the numbers performed at altitude, the show was really fun and entertaining from all sides of the “theatre in the round” style stage. The theatre was probably just over half full, and we managed to secure front row seats down at stage right despite walking straight in.
The story itself was a condensed version of the Tarzan movie, told more visually than with any dialogue. Most notable was the replacement of antagonist Cecil Clayton with an assortment of generic pirates, but otherwise there was no real need to understand Mandarin, or even have seen the movie, to enjoy this show.
Heading to Disneytown, and Back to the Hotel
“The sun’s getting real low”, as Black Widow would say, and our stomachs were rumbling yet again. By this point we’d gone round the Adventure Isle / Pirate’s Cove three times, and done every other area of the park at least once. The dogs were barking, and it was decided that it was time to eat and then forego the last open hour to head back to our hotel and rest our feet for the following day of planned hiking around Shanghai. However, I really, REALLY wanted to go on the Tron Lightcyle Power Run one last time, and so we decided to head over to Disneytown for a full meal, whereupon I’d return alone into the park and do Tron while the DW and DD shopped. Settled, we moseyed through the Mickey Avenue part of the park, didn’t find any dining option that would tempt us away from the restaurants we’d seen in Disneytown on the website, and then used the dedicated (and practically queue-less) Disneytown gate to leave the park.
Dinner was at the Xin Wang restaurant and featured Cantonese / Hong Kong cuisine. Quite tasty, and overall not expensive! It was tough getting a seat as we were in the middle of the dinner rush, but a little patience and getting a hold of the non-English-speaking staff got us results. We have sweet & sour pork back home, but by gum, you haven’t tasted it till you’ve done it in China!
It was around 7pm when I made my way back through the Disneytown gate, taking all the paper tickets as I didn’t know which one was mine, and they checked it against the photo in the file (naturally, I showed my wife’s ticket first). I bee-lined straight to Tomorrowland… To discover that the Tron coaster had closed for the evening! I wasn’t the only one disappointed, as there was a stream of people approaching and being turned away. My hopes of a re-ride under the neon outdoor lights of the attraction were dashed! In hindsight it wasn’t a huge loss, as the majority of the ride is indoors and under darkness anyway, but I’m not kidding when I say that this coaster is really, REALLY good. I rode Everest three times in WDW on my honeymoon and would have loved to do something like that here.
I made up for it though – I used the time to head down to Buzz Lightyear and its now five-minute wait time, and basically walked onto the attraction to do something I’d wanted to do since my first time on the ride in WDW nine years ago. A solo ride, dual-wielding my astro blasters! I didn’t come near my high score, but MAN did I look cool in the picture at the end.
Satisfied (enough), I made my way back to exit via the main entrance. It was almost 7:30 by that time and there was a definite crowd gathering around the castle for the closing fireworks. I quickly picked through the shops one last time and then went through the main gates; the fences around the security area had been reconfigured to usher everyone to the Disneytown anyway, so I was able to meet up with my DW and DD with no issue. They'd spent the little bit of time apart picking through the shops, and DD had picked up her main "item" for the day, a Lego set to continue her collection.
The walk to the Disney station and the hour-long trip home was uncrowded and uneventful, save for my girl falling asleep on the way, necessitating her dad to carry her part of the way. Our day at SDR was over!
TO BE CONCLUDED…
In case you missed it, this post’s corresponding pictures can be found in a gallery here.
Missed Part The First? Click right here!
Star Wars Launch Bay
I could easily have stayed on the Tron coaster in the single rider lineup and ridden the rest of the day, but we still had other things to do. Tucked in behind he coaster building, looking lonely and almost ignored, is the Star Wars Launch Bay. Barely paying lip service to the multi-billion dollar franchise Disney owns, it’s really just a mini museum and cosplay corner where you can take some pictures. I still ate it up and had fun posing for the same pictures I’d otherwise have done at my local comic expo. The mockup of the Millenium Falcon cockpit was extra fun though. There’s also a Lego corner, build-a-lightsaber thing and the usual gift shop, but we got what we wanted an moved on. Perhaps a full-on Star Wars attraction will be built in this location later on?
Peter Pan’s Flight
By this time, our sole FastPass time had come. We hung around the area’s shops for the fifteen or so minutes prior to our time and then headed in, and after the confusion surrounding how the FPs worked between our phone and printed tickets, we got in for a fifteen minute wait. This wasn’t a must-do on my list, but as with POTC we’d schooled our DD on the original movie and she loved it. Shanghai’s has their more modern spin, and the way our ship banked and dipped felt more contemporary to the technology available than any other version I’ve ridden. I haven’t ridden the one in Paris but it looks most similar to it, though every version has different character placement (especially at the beginning). We’re glad we used our FP on that, anyway, as the main wait time was still almost an hour in the mid-afternoon.
Return to Treasure Cove
Instead of returning to the Tron coaster (nope, not gonna let that one go), we found it was time to head back to Adventure Isle for the Tarzan live show, so we returned for our third circuit around that area. However, we were surprised to find the attraction had shifted its showtime to over an hour later! We couldn’t get a reason out of the CMs but found ourselves with time to kill before that show and then Peter Pan. Consulting the app, Soaring was still over an hour wait, but POTC was there at ten minutes – practically inviting us for a second ride! Having loved the first time through, we needed little more convincing, and off we went.
Afterwards (and yes, it’s just as thrilling as the first time – there’s just so much detail to take in on this ride!), we still had some time left over. Finding a bench just outside the Siren’s Revenge walkthrough, I went off for a couple minutes to buy my DW the OTHER “seasonal” drink & collector’s bulb, and then let her enjoy that and rest her feet while I took DD aboard the pirate “ship”… But not before we were approached by a pirate-clad CM who spoke English well enough to ask her if she was having a good time, liked the pirate lifestyle, and gifted her a “pirate map” of her own – she was so happy!
The Siren’s Revenge attraction was fun enough, with tons of things to do – including video screens of “wanted posters” featuring characters from the movie, which react to you when prompted (or stand around long enough). A fun highlight was a similar poster you could stick your head through to pretend to be the subject; as I was posing in my best pirate’s “Arrr Matey” face, several kids wandered by and I’m pretty sure they thought I was part of the attraction. We eventually found the canons, but couldn’t get to pretend-firing them at the hapless Explorer Canoes going by, as SW was summoning us back ashore. It was time to head to the jungle!
Tarzan: Call of the Jungle
I was looking forward to this live show for a variety of reasons. Mostly, I was going to spend the following night “off” and go to an improv comedy show in Shanghai (which I try to do at most every city I visit) while the wife and daughter go to the Chinese Circus show. I figured this would be consolation prize enough, so I was happy things lined up for us to go see.
Unlike the earlier POTC stunt show, this one had very little dialogue to go on besides the Chinese language versions of the songs. Aside from that, it was a visually spectacular show that entertained us as much as we were expecting! There was an assortment of “classic” acrobatics and tumbling numbers, with ribbons, juggling, and so on mixed in. While some of it was definitely not quite real (the opening number featured some plate spinners, and those plates were certainly not able to fall off their sticks!), and of course there were safety lines for the numbers performed at altitude, the show was really fun and entertaining from all sides of the “theatre in the round” style stage. The theatre was probably just over half full, and we managed to secure front row seats down at stage right despite walking straight in.
The story itself was a condensed version of the Tarzan movie, told more visually than with any dialogue. Most notable was the replacement of antagonist Cecil Clayton with an assortment of generic pirates, but otherwise there was no real need to understand Mandarin, or even have seen the movie, to enjoy this show.
Heading to Disneytown, and Back to the Hotel
“The sun’s getting real low”, as Black Widow would say, and our stomachs were rumbling yet again. By this point we’d gone round the Adventure Isle / Pirate’s Cove three times, and done every other area of the park at least once. The dogs were barking, and it was decided that it was time to eat and then forego the last open hour to head back to our hotel and rest our feet for the following day of planned hiking around Shanghai. However, I really, REALLY wanted to go on the Tron Lightcyle Power Run one last time, and so we decided to head over to Disneytown for a full meal, whereupon I’d return alone into the park and do Tron while the DW and DD shopped. Settled, we moseyed through the Mickey Avenue part of the park, didn’t find any dining option that would tempt us away from the restaurants we’d seen in Disneytown on the website, and then used the dedicated (and practically queue-less) Disneytown gate to leave the park.
Dinner was at the Xin Wang restaurant and featured Cantonese / Hong Kong cuisine. Quite tasty, and overall not expensive! It was tough getting a seat as we were in the middle of the dinner rush, but a little patience and getting a hold of the non-English-speaking staff got us results. We have sweet & sour pork back home, but by gum, you haven’t tasted it till you’ve done it in China!
It was around 7pm when I made my way back through the Disneytown gate, taking all the paper tickets as I didn’t know which one was mine, and they checked it against the photo in the file (naturally, I showed my wife’s ticket first). I bee-lined straight to Tomorrowland… To discover that the Tron coaster had closed for the evening! I wasn’t the only one disappointed, as there was a stream of people approaching and being turned away. My hopes of a re-ride under the neon outdoor lights of the attraction were dashed! In hindsight it wasn’t a huge loss, as the majority of the ride is indoors and under darkness anyway, but I’m not kidding when I say that this coaster is really, REALLY good. I rode Everest three times in WDW on my honeymoon and would have loved to do something like that here.
I made up for it though – I used the time to head down to Buzz Lightyear and its now five-minute wait time, and basically walked onto the attraction to do something I’d wanted to do since my first time on the ride in WDW nine years ago. A solo ride, dual-wielding my astro blasters! I didn’t come near my high score, but MAN did I look cool in the picture at the end.
Satisfied (enough), I made my way back to exit via the main entrance. It was almost 7:30 by that time and there was a definite crowd gathering around the castle for the closing fireworks. I quickly picked through the shops one last time and then went through the main gates; the fences around the security area had been reconfigured to usher everyone to the Disneytown anyway, so I was able to meet up with my DW and DD with no issue. They'd spent the little bit of time apart picking through the shops, and DD had picked up her main "item" for the day, a Lego set to continue her collection.
The walk to the Disney station and the hour-long trip home was uncrowded and uneventful, save for my girl falling asleep on the way, necessitating her dad to carry her part of the way. Our day at SDR was over!
TO BE CONCLUDED…