Day 5 (and 6) - Shanghai
The next day is Sunday and I'm flying out to Shanghai Pudong. My flight was mid morning, so I left the Hollywood hotel around 7:15am. There's a taxi rank at the front of the hotel and while I wasn't sure if there would be any available so early, fortunately there was and I jumped in the first available. The journey to the airport was uneventful and we got there within 15 minutes or so, plenty of time before my flight. Check in and baggage drop at the airport was straight forward as was security, and I soon got through into departures with a couple of hours to have a look around the airport shops and grab some breakfast.
The flight to Shanghai was on time and was a nice and short 3 hour duration. Unfortunately it was getting through Immigration that proved to be a slight (major) sticking point for me.
To provide a bit of background, to enter mainland China as a tourist you realistically have 2 options. The first is to apply for a proper visa which is fairly costly and involves applying, attending a centre in person etc. The alternative option is to utilise the visa free transit policy. This basically allows you to travel into mainland China and remain there for up to 240 hours so long as you have proof of onward travel and transit into another country. To qualify for this visa free transit, you must come from one country, travel into China and on to a different country afterwards. Hong Kong is classed as a separate country, so Hong Kong > Shanghai > the UK qualifies for this visa free transit.
I spent a lot of time researching for this holiday and checking and double checking the visa and conditions to make sure everything was okay. I'd done multiple checks to make sure that Hong Kong to Shanghai and onto Manchester, UK afterwards was in keeping with the policy. Unfortunately I'd forgotten one thing and had completely missed it in the resources I'd consulted beforehand - my return flight from Shanghai to Manchester wasn't direct, I was getting a connecting flight in Hong Kong and this is not permitted in the visa free transit policy. You cannot return to the country you came from.
I didn't class my connecting flight in HK as a return as ultimately I wasn't stopping there and simply transiting to my final destination in Manchester, which I thought was what mattered. Turns out I hadn't read the resources as well as I'd thought! I didn't find all of this out until reaching Shanghai immigration, when they wouldn't let me in...
So in short, I wasn't allowed into Shanghai because my return flights didn't qualify for the visa free transit and they had to return me back to Hong Kong. So around 3 hours after landing in Shanghai, I was on a flight back to HK. Thankfully the immigration staff in Shanghai were really nice and helpful and reassured me that i could return as long as I sorted out the right return flights to the UK. So on landing back in HK around 9pm, I checked into the airport hotel to get a bed and shower while I sorted out the mess I'd gotten myself into. I booked the first flight back out to Shanghai at 9am the next morning, and booked new return flights to the UK on my original return date, this time with a connection in Dubai which I was certain would qualify me for the visa. To say this was a costly error on my part would be an understatement! Not one I'll forget any time soon.
After little sleep, I headed back into the airport early the next morning, Monday, for my second flight to Shanghai. I landed in Shanghai around lunchtime and I'm pleased to say that fortunately this time, with my return flights out to Dubai as a third country, I was allowed into the country!
After that, the journey to the Toy Story Hotel was very uneventful. The taxis are well signposted at the airport and while the driver didn't speak any English, I had the name of the hotel in Mandarin on a piece of paper and the driver used a translation app the one time he needed to communicate with me.
The hotel was incredibly cute with the Toy Story theming, although the inside was pretty chaotic to say the least. I've never seen a Disney hotel so busy in the lobby! There were so many people waiting around and pretty long queues for the check in desk. Fortunately there were so many incredibly helpful cast members around to help and they were all so nice - and this seemed to be standard across the board every day, their customer service was faultless. It also helped that Bo and Woody came round to say hello too:
After around 20 minutes or so, I was all checked in. Despite being a day late (I had informed the hotel in advance just in case), I Had no issues and made my way up to my room. The room itself is laid out like any other Disney hotel room, but with the really cute quirky Toy Story theming. There were a lot of really nice design features, like the Slinky lamp and the Rubik's cube cupboard. And I loved the themed mugs, shower curtain and the jigsaw as nice little additions (not all pictured):
On Sunday I hadn't planned on doing anything after arriving, however my plan for Monday had been to spend the entire day in the park. My visa immigration error had cost me most of the day in the park, so after getting my luggage delivered to the room and having a short rest, I headed out to the park. As I wasn't entirely sure where i was going, I jumped on the free hotel shuttle that was waiting outside and in less than 10 minutes we were in Disneytown.
Hotel guests have a separate entrance in Disneytown, however there was a sign up stating that those entering for the first time that day had to use the main entrance (more on that later) so I headed round to the front entrance and fortunately there was no queue, so I headed in through the usual security. Park entrance here is linked to your passport, so rather than presenting a ticket you present your passport and they enter it into the system to validate your entry. I found this a bit odd but it worked and I never had any issues and soon I was in the park.
It was a bit of a grey and miserable day so I didn't take many photos, instead waiting for the sunnier days to come the rest of the week. What struck me first was how busy the park was. I'd heard Shanghai was quieter during the week, and all I can say is that if this is Shanghai quieter, I'd hate to see it at the weekend!
A lot of the rides were showing very long queues (in excess of 90 to 120 minutes), but Tron was less than 90 so after nosying around Mickey Avenue (their version of Main Street), I headed up to Tron and joined the queue. This is one of my favourite rides from WDW, so I was really looking forward to riding this again. While the queue was long, it wasn't quite as long as expected and in maybe 70 minutes or less I had made it on. The ride itself is no different to WDW and was everything I remembered, that launch is so quick! My only disappointment is that the Tron: Ares overlay appeared to no longer be in use which was a shame as I was looking forward to that.
One slightly personal thing to share with you all that impacted on how I tackled Shanghai, is that I suffer from what I like to call bladder anxiety. If I drink too much coffee then I need the toilet fairly frequently, however I also seem to get anxious when I can't go to the toilet (i.e. because I'm in a queue) and wind up feeling that I'm bursting and need to go when in reality, I actually don't. It's only become a problem over the past few months and wasn't an issue in HK with it being quieter, but it proved to be a big hurdle in Shanghai as I felt like I couldn't get in a queue longer than say 90 minutes without worrying about needing the bathroom.... bit of an overshare there!
Due to the above, I was limited as to what rides I felt I could go on with it being so busy however I was in luck as Pirates of the Caribbean was only showing a 30 minute queue, so felt it'd be rude not to go on. I'd heard great things about this ride and it does not disappoint. It's such a unique take on the Pirates ride and the technology and mechanics in this are brilliant, it is such a fun and enjoyable ride. Over the course of the time I spent there, I went on it more times than I can count! Admittedly all of the dialogue was in Mandarin, but it really didn't spoil the enjoyment at all.
After this I grabbed a bite to eat from Pinocchio Village Kitchen, a pulled pork pizza that I forgot to grab a picture of but was okay but nothing thrilling. Filled my empty stomach and gave me a nice warm place to sit down for a while. One thing to note about Shanghai is that it was so much colder than HK - it was between 3 and maybe 10/11 degrees celsius, and with the wind and lack of sun, it felt a good few degrees cooler than that.
With the long queues and cold weather, I decided to have a walk around the park and then head in some of the shops, mostly to keep warm. A lot of the people here were wearing these cute hooded poncho fleece things, mostly character based and while I was very tempted, I couldn't find a character I liked enough so ended up buying myself a fleecy jacket and gloves as all the layers I'd brought with me were nowhere near enough! (I'm not a die hard Chip n Dale fan but I preferred these over the mostly Zootopia and Duffy other options available):
After this, I decided to head back to the hotel to keep warm and get an early night and some rest in advance of my full day in the park tomorrow. Stopping by Donald on the way of course!
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On coming back to my hotel, I discovered my room offered me a great view of the fireworks in the park (if you put the sound on you might hear Finding Nemo in the background):
Next up, i'll report back on my proper experience at SHDL and a full day in the park!
