Friday, July 20 - Hong Kong Disneyland
We were up at 7 am with plans to leave the room at 8 am. We chose to spend our first full day in Hong Kong at the park so as to avoid visiting on a weekend. We had breakfast at the Chart Room Cafe on the ground floor again. They offer about half a dozen different breakfast combos. I chose one that included congee, fruit, and 2 BBQ pork buns that were quite adorable!
(We had discussed the idea of doing the Disney-themed dim sum lunch at Crystal Lotus, and ultimately decided not to. Mostly because of the limited time we had; but I'll say it was also nice to save the $200+ it would have cost us. I thought this breakfast combo was a great low-cost way to still have the fun of sampling some fun dim sum. I've heard the dim sum lunch looks better than it tastes (and that can also be said of these pork buns; they were OK, but nothing special.))
Another note from this photo - I stopped wearing makeup completely about two days into the trip. With the heat and humidity melting it off my face, there was no point.
We left the hotel about 8:55 am and walked to the park, which took 20 minutes.
The first half of the walk is along the waterfront. Then you turn inland and pass through Disney grounds with theme music and gardens. We got to the gate at 9:15 am and were behind 6 other people in our line.
After our experience in Shanghai, coming through a side entrance, I was happy to get to the front of the park again in Hong Kong and get to experience the walk down Main Street, etc. The Disneytown entrance in Shanghai definitely lacks that magical feeling. There is no separate hotel guest entrance in Hong Kong, for better or for worse.
The official park opening time today was 10 am. At 9:30 am they did the Family of the Day ceremony, and then opened the gate immediately after.
I was also pleased that the Main Street view of the castle did not suffer too much from the ongoing construction. You still got the spires peeking over the top of the construction wall, and that was good enough for me. It is definitely a change of pace to see a Disney castle with mountains behind it. I know I posted this photo at the start of the report, but this is where it fits into things. Here I am again, repping my #ParkGoals. (And note how uncrowded Main Street is!)
We were able to shop and eat on Main Street until 10 am when they dropped the rope in front of the castle. Here is what that looked like. The crowd size is not bad at all, though those awful umbrellas are out in full force again.
Some of the attractions had a 10:30 am opening time, and it wasn't clear to us what we should attempt to do first. We had 3 Fastpasses from the hotel that were valid for 5 attractions (Hyperspace Mountain, Runaway Mine Cars, Ironman Experience, Mystic Manor, Philharmagic) and you can also pull paper legacy Fastpasses inside the park for the Adventures of Pooh, Ironman and Hyperspace Mountain.
We started with Pooh, which was walk on, then did Ironman as a walk on before heading over to Mystic Manor.
This was the ride I was most excited to ride, and it was fantastic. The whole family enjoyed it.
We immediately followed it up with the Runaway Mine Cars, and then declared THAT to be the best attraction in Hong Kong. It's more thrilling than Big Thunder Mountain, while still being a smooth ride that's not too scary.
(More evidence of construction: the turquoise wall runs around the castle and right into Adventureland.)
We headed to Toy Story Land next, and wanted to do the parachute drop, but there was a technical malfunction with it.
We jumped into line for a photo with cowboy Mickey since we were passing by and it was short.
The irony that we had come 13,000 km in order to see Mickey dressed in his American garb was not lost on me!
Then we headed into the theatre to see Festival of the Lion King, which has some differences from other versions we've seen, and is really well done.
We were able to get good seats for the 12 pm show by arriving only 5 or 6 minutes ahead of time.
When we came out from the show, crowds had built a bit. We did Jungle Cruise with a 10 minute wait and Mystic Manor (again) with a 10 minute wait.
Then we went for lunch at the Explorers Club. Meals here were all in the 150 HKD ($25 CDN) range, very expensive compare to the US parks, though they are big meals. My Hainanese chicken combo included chicken, vegetables, rice, a bowl of soup and a drink.
Following lunch, we took another spin on the Runaway Mine Cars, and then on our way into Fantasyland, we stumbled upon a pin trading event that happens one day each month.
There were several cast members present trading their own pins, and a large bulletin board set up with other pins to trade. One cast member also had a blind pin board you could choose from, and of course some of those pins were lucky finds. We saw a lot of pins at the event that we hadn't seen before, and did some serious trading.
We waited 30 minutes in line for It's A Small World, which would prove to be our longest wait of the day.
Love to see Canada represented on IASW at the international Disney parks! (It's not part of the original attraction in WDW.)
We went back over to the pin trading area as they were packing up to get one last look and trade once more. We rode Hyperspace Mountain using one of our Fastpasses, and then found a spot for the Pixar Water Play street party. This parade was much shorter than I expected, and we didn't get all that wet from it; honestly it was a bit of a letdown and definitely not a must-do.
We went back to Toy Story Land and split up. The boys rode RC Racer and the girls did Slinky Dog spin. Both were posted 30 minute waits, and both waits were about half of that. We grabbed an egg tart and some drinks, and went for a spin on the teacups before trying to get into the 6 pm showing of Mickey and the Wondrous Book. Unfortunately, we cut it too close and by the time we got there, 6 minutes before showtime, it was already full. Instead, we did Philharmagic on standby, then did one last walk on visit to Mystic Manor, before coming back to the last Wondrous Book showing of the day at 7:15 pm. This time we got there 22 minutes before showtime, and had no trouble getting seats.
This was a great show and it's unique to this park (I think), so it's well worth seeing.
The show let out at 7:43 pm, and many attractions were scheduled to close at 8 pm. So we walked (quickly) back to Grizzly Gulch and took one last ride on the Runaway Mine Cars for good measure. The "We Love Mickey" light show was happening on Main Street at 8 pm, so we ran over to catch the tail end of that. Then we bought a few souvenirs and some snacks on Main Street (t shirts and pineapple breads and a Pooh shaped doughnut) before settling in to watch the Paint the Night parade at 9 pm. We got there a few minutes after 9 pm (but before the parade made its way that far) owing to some long queues in the park stores, and were still able to find good second or third row spots for the parade. Most front-row folks stayed seated, which definitely helped.
I missed the big circular "Paint the Night" float that they have in California - it was absent from this parade. But most of the floats were the same, and the soundtrack was the same, though it was in Mandarin or Cantonese, I'm not sure which.
There were no fireworks, owing to the construction work currently happening at the castle. So after the parade, we filed out of the park and walked back to the hotel.
We used up the 3 Fastpasses from the hotel, but did not pull a paper Fastpass all day.
Overall, our impression of Hong Kong Disneyland compared to Shanghai Disneyland is this: it's more similar to the Western parks. In fact, aside from the food, it's very like the Western parks, the original Disneyland in particular. Compared to Shanghai, it's cleaner. There's less litter. There's less line cutting, less running, and less smoking out of bounds. There are less umbrellas being used, though still enough to be annoying as hell. Many of the attractions are done in multiple languages, but it felt like they have more English than Cantonese or Mandarin. There are Western toilets that come with toilet paper and soap, amenities I'd nearly forgotten about these past few weeks. There are many more Westerners there, particularly Australians. And we were not a novelty to anyone. Nobody gave us a second glance, asked for a photo or said a shy "hello".
We didn't do everything at Hong Kong Disneyland, but we did what we wanted to do, and we did some of those things multiple times. I've heard Hong Kong Disneyland called a 'half day park', and that's just not fair. There is plenty there to see and do.
I think I *liked* Shanghai more because of how 'different' it is, but I *enjoyed* Hong Kong more, with its smaller size, lack of crowds, and behaviour from other park guests more in line with what I'm accustomed to.
Having said that, I expected Shanghai to have the wow factor attractions, and it did have those, but Mystic Manor and Runaway Mine cars are on par with Pirates of the Caribbean and Tron. For me, anyway. So in terms of which park has the best attractions, I think it's a draw, though Shanghai does indeed have more attractions overall.