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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.​​​This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.
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If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.
If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.
If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.
If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.
If you want to read about our amusement park/desert experience in the U.A.E, then click here.
If you want to read about our desert/beach experience in Oman, then click here.
If you want to read about our jungle ruins experience in Cambodia, then click here.
If you want to read about our elephant/beach experience in Thailand, then click here.
If you want to read about our beach/city experience in Australia, then click here.
If you want to read about our adventure/beach experience in New Zealand, then click here.​​
If you want to read about our under water adventure in the Maldives, then click here.
If you want to read about our Taj Mahal adventure in India, then click here.
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The Journey Continues - Hong Kong (Disneyland)
Cochin to Hong Kong (via Bangkok, where else?)
DAY 201
We got out of the hotel at 10pm and went to the airport. After we checked in, we had about 60 minutes before the flight was supposed to board, so Megan and I went to the Thai Airways lounge to get some food and such. On the way we passed a money exchange, and I tried to exchange rupees for Hong Kong dollars, but they didn’t have them so I exchanged them for Chinese Yuan. There was a 10k rupee limit per transaction (similar to the limit on ATMs, which was part of the reason I went to about 6 ATMs while we were there), so I needed Megan’s passport too. The woman was overwhelmed, and didn’t have a computer program to do the conversions, and was doing everything by calculator. It took about 20 minutes and we were quickly running out of time to enjoy the lounge, so we stopped her at the first transaction, and I left, still with 3k rupees still in my wallet.
We got to the lounge and it was pretty poor. Not great food, few places to charge things, etc. We were there for about 15 minutes when Keira texted that we had to go because the flight was boarding. I guess that the upside of the bad lounge was that we were already planning on going, so we quickly raced to the gate and boarded.
This flight was a tough one for me. It was only 4 hours long and they tried to serve dinner, so I only got about 3 hours of really bad sleep in cramped economy tickets. Liam slept the whole time, he actually started sleeping at the gate.
Then we got out at our favorite airport - Bangkok airport (now the 5th time in the airport on this trip). We had three hours until the next flight. Liam was asleep in the stroller when we left the kids again to go to the lounge. Having learned our lesson, we got back to the gate much earlier than the stated boarding time. When we got back, we saw that Liam was curled up on Keira’s lap, fast asleep. Then we boarded the flight, and Liam quickly went back to sleep on the flight. It was clear that he was the only one who would be well rested when we got to Hong Kong.
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At least someone got some rest on this trip.
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As the plane was landing, Liam started crying that his ear hurt, and we weren’t sure if he just couldn’t get his ears to pop or if he had an ear infection. He was largely inconsolable, but eventually I got him eating Oreos, and that seemed to do the trick. Later, he seemed fine again, and Megan, who was looking into how to get him to a doctor, decided he didn’t need one. Its never a dull moment with health issues. The good news was that Keira was feeling better.
We ordered an Uber and got to our hotel. We had made reservations at the Crystal Lotus, a special dim sum place that made things in the shape of Mickey, Winnie the Pooh characters and Duffy and his friends. We made the last reservation of the lunch time (the themed dim sum was only available for lunch) and prayed that our flights wouldn’t be delayed. But we got there with what we thought would be plenty of time to check in, but because Megan was ordering birthday decorations and birthday cake for Elenna, it took nearly the whole hour to get everything straightened away and we rushed over to the restaurant in a private shuttle to just barely get there on time.
The food generally tasted fine, but it looked amazing. We ordered some real food including some noodles with wonton, but the menu didn’t mention it was shrimp wontons. Liam likes soup dumplings, so he would eat the noodle part of it. Later during lunch, we noticed that he had hives on his back, and we started to worry that he might be allergic to shellfish. After 15 minutes or so it died down, but left Megan worried for the rest of the trip.
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These dishes looked too cute to eat. But we did eat them.
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A quick word about Duffy - Duffy is Mickey Mouse’s teddy bear - a fact which is rarely mentioned at all in the US. We found out about Duffy on a Disney cruise about 10 years ago, and since then, I have joked that its Keira’s favorite Disney character and I buy her Duffy things whenever I can, to the point where Keira hates Duffy. And although Duffy is almost completely unknown in the US, he is HUGE in Asia. We were lucky enough to be here during a special Duffy event, and about half of everything in any of the hotel shops is Duffy themed, probably 10x more than things are Mickey Mouse themed.
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We are huge Disney fans, and yet I only know Duffy and couldn't pick anyone else out of.a lineup.
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Megan wanted to have everyone rest for the rest of the day so we would be ready to go non-stop for the next two days. Hong Kong Disney is a small park - really a park you could do in 1 day, and we would have 2 days, so she felt no need to rush. Conversely, I always feel like if we are here, we might as well be in the parks. After a brief discussion that I lost, I took Liam on a walk to the resort where the dim sum place was because there was a hedge maze that I figured he would like playing in. As we walked over we stopped at a playground and the Hollywood sign (we were staying at the Disney Hollywood Hotel).
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Disney has a lot of Hollywood themed places.
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Then we got to the other hotel and the hedge maze. Since it was Duffy week, there were a bunch of Duffy themed things to find in the maze and I had him go find them all.
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Hedge mazes are cool, and Liam was the perfect size for it, because he couldn't see well over it.​
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Then Liam and I went out to dinner. Everyone else said that they weren’t hungry, and truth be told, I wasn’t that hungry, I just knew that breakfast would be in 16 hours and I couldn’t last that long. We ate at the Explorers Lodge, which in theory was based on the Explorers Club which is highly featured in the Mystic Manor ride in Hong Kong Disney. When we were last in Hong Kong, after the ride, we started seeing references to the characters from the Society of Explorers and Adventurers in some of the Disney cruise ships, a restaurant in Magic Kingdom and even in the water parks, and thought that was really cool - only real Disney fans would know about it. But as I walked around that hotel, there wasn’t any reference to the explorers, and I felt like Disney really messed that up.
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A little more hedge magic.
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We came back home and went to bed by 9 to be ready for the next day.
DAY 203
Hong Kong Disney is a relatively small park and isn’t very crowded, so we didn’t buy fast passes or anything. We boarded the shuttle bus and got to the park a little before open (10am).
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​​​Main Street in Hong Kong.​
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Elenna was supposed to plan the Hong Kong Disney trip, but didn’t really do a whole lot around it, but she said that she wanted to start in Frozen Land. The area was themed as Areindale and as Disney normally does, it was done very well.
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​Ana and Christoph met us in the line to the Frozen ride.
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I’m not sure it makes sense that I should give a ride by ride review. So instead I’m going to summarize a few things that are different. They have a Frozen roller coaster that is OK, but very short. There is a runaway mine car ride that is much better than what they have in Magic Kingdom. They also have a version of Space Mountain that is Star Wars themed and pretty cool. There is also a couple of Marvel rides, including an Iron Man ride that is so so and Ant Man and the Wasp shooting ride that we loved.
When it comes to shooting rides, I generally get the highest scores in our family, but Keira is also super competitive, so it was no surprise that I had the highest score, followed by Keira. Later in the day, we did the ride again and then Elenna beat Keira who beat me, and then we did it again, and the same thing happened. As we went on Hyperspace the next day, Keira took Liam on the ride and then got a score that broke all of our scores. Luckily, we went on one more time and I got the highest score again, restoring order to the world (although it didn’t beat Keira’s highest score).
But I think that the highlight of the park is Mystic Manor. The ride itself is nice and fun - about a jewel that has the power to turn inanimate objects to life, and when a monkey unleashes it, all of the artifacts in the Manor come to life. There isn’t anything like it at any other park. But the best thing is that the person who owns the Manor is part of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, and there are understated references to this society in Disney Cruise ships, Magic Kingdom, Disneyland, etc. These are references that the average person misses, but are really cool when you start to notice them.
There is also a an area across the street from the manor with a bunch of optical illusions.
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A nice photo spot.
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The biggest difference around the park is just how Duffy is everywhere. Right when you come into the park, there is a giant flower arrangement in the shape of Duffy, where you would normally have a Mickey homage. The Disney train was Duffy themed, not Mickey themed. And there was a giant statue of Duffy and his friends at the circle right when you come in, where they had Mickey and his friends in Magic Kingdom. At one point, we were in a store and after passing 100 Duffy shirts, key chains, hats, etc, I saw one of Mickey and his friends, and I turned to Megan and said, “Who are these characters? I don’t remember seeing them.”
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A Duffy and Friends themed train around the park.
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We ate at the Explorers Club restaurant, which gave us priority seating for the castle light show. The castle is pretty neat - there are parts of the castle that pay homage to 13 different princesses, so its a little bit of a hodgepodge, but it comes together nicely. The light show projects scenes from Disney moves on the castle, playing songs over it, and its pretty neat. That said, Megan, and I think the kids, like it a lot more than I do. Its not worth sitting in front of the castle for an hour to save our seats and get a good view.
​A pretty cool castle at night.
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When we were in line at Mystic Manor for the second time, Lily suggested that we start ranking the rides and the parks, since we are going to be going to all of them all over the world. The rest of the family quickly lost interest in the endeavor, but I am quantitatively focused, and really like the idea, so as we went through, we came up with different aspects of the rides, lands, etc to rank, so we could come up with a score.
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The second day at the park was Elenna’s birthday, so we started that day opening presents for her and the vast majority of her presents were Disney themed. There was a really soft Micky pajama set that she liked and I got for her even though it is 90 degrees and for the most part we will be in really hot places for the next 3 months. But about 10 hours later, we started looking at the weather for Shanghai, and although it was 90 degrees, it was going to drop down to a high of 55 when we got there, so I guess she knew what she was doing. She also got to pick what rides we were doing, and she wanted to go on all of the roller coasters 2x each, which was really easy to do given the short wait times as well as the ability to child swap Liam.
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Elenna got a lot of Disney themed presents.​
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With our goal of ranking all of the rides, Lily and I wanted to make sure that we rode on all of the rides, so we did the Toy Soldier parachute drop even though the line was generally longer than we thought it merited. It also led us to at least have Liam and Elenna ride the tea cups, but I can’t stand them.
We tot to meet Cinderella.
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We got back to the hotel, all full from the snacks that we ate. But, we had ordered a cake for Elenna, so we picked that up at 9:30pm and ate some in Elenna’s room.
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A very artistic cake for our artist daughter.
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