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DAY 206

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The next day we went to the airport to fly to Shanghai, and we were all a bit tired from two full days at the Hong Kong park.  The good news was that since it was only open from 10-8:30, Hong Kong really wasn’t what we would call a normal “full Disney day”, which routinely could be 7:30 to midnight, so it could have been worse.

 

When we first went to China 6 years earlier, I had to go to the Chinese consulate in NYC and wait on a long line to get our visas, which required a separate trip to 3 different pass port photo places before we found a place that could take our photos to their specifications.  For this reason, we really weren’t planning on going to Shanghai Disneyland.  But then we heard about visa-less traveling to China, which allowed you to be in one city for 4 days, if you flew in and out of the same place, and only stayed in that city.  This allowed us to book a stay in Disney, and late last year they extended it to 10 days, making it even more convenient (but too late to help our trip).  But, you have to tell the airline you are flying on that you were going without a visa, and they were supposed to help you get the approval for the temporary visa, so it felt like there was some sort of chance there could be an issue and it kept me awake some nights. Luckily, it seemed like all we really needed to do was to show them our outbound flight reservation so they knew we didn’t plan to stay too long. 

 

There is no Uber in Shanghai, so we had to get two taxis to take us to the hotel. As we exited customs, we were mobbed by people trying to get us to use their taxis.  People were offering vans, which appealed to us to some degree vs splitting up, and some people even had pins that said "Airport Employee" but we were used to not taking rides with unlicensed drivers, so we staunchly said no and kept walking.  

 

However, these people kept coming.  We were probably approached by literally 30 people during the 5-10 minute walk to the taxi line.  It got to the point where Megan, Keira and Lily were surrounded by people and they all just gave an exasperated “NO!” at the same time.  To this, the people laughed and then walked away, but were soon replaced for another wave of people.

 

Keira, Elenna and I were in one taxi and I was trying to deal with an email message that one of our Tokyo planned trips would have to be canceled, and was trying to find a replacement trip, so I wasn’t paying much attention to our drive.  But at one point I looked up and realized that we were absolutely speeding and weaving through traffic.  We would accelerate to stop lights, and as we finally pulled into the driveway for our hotel, there was a gate that was closed, and our guy came sharply around the curve, accelerated to the gate and then slammed on the brakes.  Once we got through the gate, he accelerated again down the street, even though it was only a few hundred yards, and at a hotel that was geared towards children which should have argued for caution.  We got out of the taxi, thankful that we were still alive.  Keira said that at one point we almost ran over 3 people at a cross walk.  Apparently, Megan had a similar experience with her taxi, and we were starting to wonder if we should have taken the unlicensed drivers.

 

We were staying at the Toy Story hotel, which is a cute themed hotel, and the girls had a Buzz Lightyear room, while Megan, Liam and I had a Woody themed room.  Everyone was tired, but Keira and Elenna wanted to go on a “side quest” - something that just the two of them would do together.  I think that the original plan was to go out and do something, but Keira was tired, so they just stayed in the room and watched a movie.  Meanwhile, Lily and Liam came to our room and watched Wreck It Ralph, allowing Megan and I to go into their version of Downtown Disney and go out to eat.  

 

We ate at a Singapore restaurant (instead of the Cheesecake Factory) because it felt a little more appropriate in China, albeit not entirely on the mark.  But it didn’t have a wait.  Food was ok, but what was interesting was that the waitress didn’t speak English and used Google Translate to communicate with us.  After going to so many countries and having almost everyone speak English, it was a little strange that some of the biggest language barriers would be in Disneyland.

 

Not only did going out to eat give us some alone time, but it also allowed us to scope out how to walk to and from the park.  We didn’t do it exactly right in either direction, but by the time we got home, we felt like we could do it correctly the next morning, which is important if you are going to rope drop (i.e. show up at the opening of the park).

 

The next day we left the hotel a little before 7am to walk to the park.  Our hotel gave us early park access (an hour before it opened broadly) so we ran to 7 Dwarfs Mine Train, and then to the Zootopia ride.  We had bought some fast passes for many of the rides, but had heard that the line for Zootopia had cool theming, so we wanted to go on it once and walk through the actual line.  Overall, we really liked the Zootopia ride, as well as the theming for the whole Zootopia land. My one regret was that half of the things were written in Chinese and we did google translate some things, but we found that to be spotty, as often we would take a picture of something and the translation would be different if we did it again a minute later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Zootopia ride line was well done (although Elenna still hasn't learned how to smile in pictures), and the Zootopia area was well themed, including Gazelle horn pretzels.​

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Pirates of the Caribbean is different from the ones in the US and WAY better.  They also had a Buzz Lightyear shooting game that was different and better than the ones in the US. Once again, Keira had a higher score than me initially, but by the end of the two days, I had the high score.  

 

The biggest problem with the park was Mother Nature’s fault - it was COLD.  It was around 40 degrees but the apps said it felt like 28 degrees.  So we ended up buying a bunch of warm clothes.  They sold these big fleecy things that were incredibly soft and had the character heads on them.  I chose Duffy because I think its funny that a character that no one in the US knows is so well known there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This was as close as our family got to meeting Duffy.

 

We ended up buying Liam a Nick Wilde shirt, tie and winter hat, so he could fit in with Zootopia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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​Liam enjoyed waving to Nick Wilde at the parade, who came over and gave him a high five.

 

Liam was a trooper on the rides - he often likes rides once he knows them, the trick is getting him on the ride in the first place.  He was scared to go on Pirates, but once he did, he wanted to keep going on it. He refused to go on 7 Dwarfs, but we convinced him the second day, and he loved it.  

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​It was cold in Shanghai, but at least we looked good.

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The food was pretty good, but after months of not eating any chicken fingers, I was going through withdrawal and ordered them twice over the two days.  We had also heard that there weren’t churros in this park, but the second day we were there, we found a restaurant that served them - although they could certainly have been better.

 

We stayed until the park closed, watching the light show/fireworks at the castle.  This meant that we were at the parks for 14 hours straight and by the end of the day I had walked over 24,000 steps.  We got home around 10:15 and by the time we actually went to sleep around 11:30, I was starting to wonder why we would be getting up again at 6am to do it all over again.

 

The park was relatively small, but there were still a number of rides that we hadn’t done on the first day, in part because we did a few rides numerous times.  There wasn’t much of a wait, so the second day we bought a cheaper and more narrow list of fast pass rides.  But the second day was a Saturday instead of a Friday, and it wasn’t actively raining, so it was much more crowded.  But at least we were still getting our money’s worth from the fleecy things that we bought the day before.

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The biggest snafu of the day happened when we tried to go on the ropes course.  Liam said that he wanted to go on, which more or less shamed Lily and Elenna into doing it too.  We read that they required close toed shoes, and although we had just bough Liam some new sneakers the night before, he still would only wear his sandals.  We got through the first round of security and suited up with the rope course gear when someone finally stopped him.  He bawled when he found out he couldn't go, but as we were going through the line, I saw some of the things that he would have had to walk across and I'm not sure that he would have actually done it.  Lily and Elenna breathed a sigh of relief when we decided we would all leave, and they gave us fast passes to Winnie the Pooh because of the inconvenience.  Unfortunately, when we tried to use them at Winnie the Pooh, they didn't show up, but eventually the people at the ride let us through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The second day, we were much more prepared for Zootopia land.

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Since Lily and I were ranking all of the rides, we had to make sure that we went on all of them.  The biggest one that we were worried about was the Roaring Rapids, which is a water ride where you would fully expect to get wet.  Since it was about 45 degrees, we decided to wait until the end of the night and then do it and just leave to go home.  Liam loves those rides despite the sharp drops, so we decided that after my “birthday dinner” in the castle, we would go there.  

 

Keira complained about dinner at the castles, because it was always a prix fixe menu with three courses, usually with nothing on it she would eat until the dessert course. And this comment proved prescient, as she had to order off of the kids menu.  But the food was served in cool little settings - her salad was served in a glass slipper, while my soup was served in a Cinderella coach. There were desserts shaped like Snow White’s apple, which seemed to me to be a poor shape for a dessert (after all it almost killed Snow White).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Us in front of the castle.  Plus we got to meet Mickey and friends in the castle, but for some reason they were dressed like race car drivers instead of in the royal outfits it showed when we made the reservations.​

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We had fast passes to Tron, so Lily and I ran to do that while the others finished paying and met us, so we could take Liam to the Roaring Rapids.  We ran across the park, hoping that we would have time to do another ride too after the Roaring Rapids.  

 

We got there, and it was one of our fast passes, so we went right on the ride.  It was night time, so when we went up to the top we got a decent view of the castle all lighted up and of the park more generally.  Liam was a bit scared because a good portion of the ride is through a cave and there is a dragon there (I guess why its called Roaring Rapids), and as the ride was winding down, he said that he didn’t like it.  But then, randomly water shot out of the river in a geyser and got Lily all wet.  At this point, Liam decided that it was a good ride, in part because he and I were essentially dry.

 

We got off the ride at 9:15, and at first we were thinking that we might run the Buzz Lightyear, but since that was on the other end of the park, we decided to do Pirates one more time and we got there just in time.  Then the three of us walked home and met everyone back at the hotel where they gave me my birthday presents.  Overall, a great way to celebrate a birthday.