Day 9 - Final Day in Shanghai
And so comes my final day in Shanghai, before my flight back later in the night. My flight home wasn't until 11pm, so I had the entire day before I needed to head to the airport. Prior to arriving in Shanghai, I'd decided to spend this last almost full day in the park and had already bought my ticket.
Check out at the hotel wasn't until 11am and considering the long haul travel I had coming up, I treated myself to a lie in and a lazy morning. I left my room around 10:30am and headed down to the lobby. Check out was super simple, I just gave my room number to a cast member and that was it, and dropping my luggage off at Bell Services for the day was really easy too. It was so quick and easy, I was on the shuttle to the park before 10:45am.
So the hotel guest entrance to the park I've mentioned before in Disneytown is available all day, however after 10am it has a sign up stating "Same day entrance after 10am" with a notice saying any guests entering the park for the first time have to go through the main entrance rather than using this one. Makes perfect sense, and this is what I did on the first day I arrived in Shanghai. However this day when I arrived and walked round to the main entrance, the queue was immense. I have genuinely never seen a queue like it at any of my times at Disney parks. The queue wound round the entrance plaza and back past Disneytown towards the car parks and main road, and it also appeared to be around 8 or 9 people deep at all times.
The thought of joining this queue struck fear in me, so I decided to try my luck at the hotel guest entrance thinking the worst that could happen is they turn me away for not following the rules and reading the sign. Fortunately they let me in this entrance without issue or comment, and within 5 minutes I was in the park. Not entirely sure why the sign is there if you can get in regardless, but I was certainly grateful for it and worth bearing in mind for anyone else visiting!
First stop was Camp Discovery Challenge Trails, which I had completely forgotten about so far. This is a rather unusual attraction for a Disney park for me, 3 rope trail style courses traversing mountainous terrain, but I couldn't come to Shanghai and not go on this. The queue was short, only 10 minutes, most of which taken up by waiting to be correctly fitted and attached to your ropes. I was a little nervous about this especially on my own and with a slight aversion to heights and obstacles I can fall off, but after seeing some of the girls in front of me acting even more terrified, it soon put me at ease. I can't lie that i was holding onto my tether 99% of the time, but it was a really fun and different attraction and I wish I had spent more time on it so I could try all 3 trails.
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Next up was a small bite to eat, ticking another item off my list from Il Paperino, a Donald Duck themed gelato/ice cream parlour. Not only is the interior super cute, but the gelato is incredible too. I opted for Daisy's Sweet Kiss Gelato Sandwich and as I could choose my flavour, I went for their seasonal gingerbread - the minute I see anything gingerbread flavour I'm sold! Similar to the gelato at HK, this sandwich was incredible. The sandwich itself was some sort of sweet donut (or a bun that tastes like a donut), and the gingerbread gelato was really good. Not overpoweringly ginger, instead subtle but still distinctive. It was tough not to go back for a second!
Whilst savouring my gelato sandwich, I purchased a few Premier Passes. Not something I wanted to do but with the wait times and my issues with long queues, it seemed necessary for today otherwise I'd end up not going on anything. I opted for Tron, Seven Dwarves and Rex's Racers, and after finishing my sandwich headed to Tron first. I have to admit, the organisation for single riders on Shanghai's Tron seems a bit poor. Admittedly they didn't have a single rider queue open, but when you reach the end bit of the queue close to the ride (where they'd usually start asking for numbers to fill rows), they seemed oblivious to asking for singles and kept leaving empty seats. For me this was a tad frustrating!
What I will say is that despite the individual Premier Passes being quite costly in my eyes - £19/¥180 each - they are worth it for jumping the queues. I had a small wait for Tron (5-10 mins), similar for Seven Dwarves and I walked straight to the front of Rex's Racer. Had I had less time in the parks, these passes probably would've been a great investment to get everything done in a day or two.
After hitting out my Premier Passes, I also jumped on some of the other rides that had smaller queues - namely Buzz Lightyear and Pirates. Everything else was hitting ridiculous numbers so I then headed for a late/mid-afternoon lunch. I headed to Lotso Lunch Box where originally I'd wanted an Alien shaped pizza, however these didn't appear to be on the menu at this time so instead I opted for Sichuan Spicy Chicken with Potato Chips. This was basically a Chinese version of nachos, with potato chips/crisps replacing the nachos, guacamole and sour cream on top with breaded, spicy chicken slices. Today was a good day for food as this too was really good. The chicken was just about spicy enough for me without being too much, and surprisingly went quite well with the potato chips. Even better, I got to use chopsticks to eat for the first time with this which I was quite excited about - I'd perfected using chopsticks prior to this trip for this reason!
After this I had another final walk around the park and then decided to head out to Disneytown, to have a last look in the shops and snap some more photos of decor that had either appeared or I hadn't noticed so far.
By the time I'd finished in the shops it was getting on for early evening (around 5pm), so I decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel to head to the airport. A little early, but I was tired and figured I'd be able to spend time exploring the airport. Luggage collection was smooth and the cast members at the hotel helped me with the taxi to make sure I got where I was going. No issues with the taxi and I was dropped off at the terminal with plenty of time to spare, with everything well signposted.
Aside from some frustrations with check-in/bag drop not opening early enough and the departures terminal I was in having a limited number of shops and options to explore, the rest of my experience at the airport was smooth and hassle free. My first flight was a 10 hour flight to Dubai with Emirates, and this is quite sad but I was excited to travel with Emirates as I never had before and their airplanes are something else. Overall the Emirates experience was good and their planes are huge, although the food was a let down.
I spent the first flight sleeping (aka dozing off and not actually sleeping properly for 8-9 hours), and then had a 2 hour layover in Dubai before my final 8 hour flight back to Manchester. The terminal I was in at Dubai sadly as it was 5am was pretty quiet and a lot of things were closed, although I did manage to sneak in a very expensive cheeseburger, fries and milkshake. When I'm travelling home especially I tend to crave greasy fast food, and I would've given anything for a McDonald's or Burger King by then!
The second flight was fairly uneventful, and I spent this one catching up on more films - this time Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, Death of a Unicorn and 28 Years Later. Who needs to go to the cinema all year when you can watch everything on a few long haul flights?!
I landed back in Manchester at around 11am UK time, and of course there was a big queue to get through passport control and an even longer wait for longer luggage and for my Uber to turn up. I finally arrived home just before 1pm after travelling for over 20 hours and not having been to bed for around 36 hours. Needless to say first thing I did was go to bed for a nap, and woke up 6 hours later. After getting up and struggling to stay awake for an hour, I headed back to bed and slept for virtually 10 hours straight. The rest of the the weekend was spent feeling incredibly jetlagged, and that sadly was the end of my holiday!
End of Trip Review
For me this trip was a once in a lifetime to check off 2 more Disney parks, and not places I ever intend on going back to. I was incredibly nervous with it being a solo trip but despite my major immigration issue in China, I am so glad I travelled here on my own and I never once felt lonely or like I was missing out. I'm super grateful and appreciative of the fact that I have now been to both of these parks and been able to visit China, although I do wish I had been able to spend some time in Shanghai itself.
Parks wise, WDW will also hold the main place in my heart and it's difficult to compare due to it's vast size. But I certainly appreciated both HK and Shanghai for the differences they offered both in rides, attractions and culture. From a personal perspective, I preferred Hong Kong. Mostly because it was a smaller park and seemed a lot less hectic and chaotic even when it was busy, but also because my 2 favourite rides of the entire trip, Big Grizzly Mountain and Mystic Manor, were there. Shanghai is still impressive though and the Zootopia land was my favourite thing there. I'd love to see that done on a larger scale.
Being a bit of a foodie, the food was a letdown in some respects. There were some incredible things and some far from it. I probably should've tried more authentic Chinese food instead of the westernised options available at the parks, but everything looked so good and I couldn't eat everything (as much as I wanted to!).
So overall I really enjoyed by time in Hong Kong and Shanghai. I'd certainly recommend them to anyone wishing to tick of all the parks like me, although with some warnings about immigration and wait times! I hope anyone following along with this report has enjoyed it and thank you all for reading
Next up, planning my next trip back to WDW and hopefully to Japan
and this is genuinely the main reason why I take photos! With the other secondary reason being because I feel like I should.
