Day 3 [part 1]: SO MUCH EXCITEMENT! LET’S GO TO DISNEYLAND!
We woke up and took the elevator down to level 1, where Sunnyside Cafe is located! The lobby is on floor 2. Here is a video of the elevator ride down to level 1 haha
There were a few options for food for breakfast… You could choose between dimsum, noodles, or American breakfast. Jenna and I both chose to get the dimsum, Glendon got some curry noodles, and Brian went with some American breakfast!
Here is Glendon’s curry noodles and my dimsum on one tray.
With your food order, you also got to choose your morning breakfast beverage: coffee or tea!
Here is Brian’s American breakfast of sausage, eggs, hash brown
Mickey shaped hash brown!
Close up of my dimsum breakfast:
The pixar ball plate is so cute haha. The buns on the left, one is a pork bun and one is a veggies bun. The dumplings are crab meat.
Sorry, blurry photo but look at the Mickeys on the chopsticks!
Mmmmmmmm pork bun
And veggies wasn’t bad either!
And close up of the Grand Opening paper cups!
SO then after breakfast we got onto the bus to take us over to the park! It’s the same bus that takes you over to Disneytown. This time instead of walking into the shopping area, we walked to the right! And there was already huge lines for security. We waited and this was our first experience of the “no personal space” business that we were expecting in China. It wasn’t TERRIBLY bad… we decided to incorporate the 4-person wall strategy and most of the people understood. We also noticed a ton of signs around the park that tells you that when you’re waiting in line, you have to have your entire party with you. The way that you redeem your park ticket is to bring your passport with you, and they scan it right in at the turnstile! Pretty neat. Also, we discovered that they have hidden cameras that take a photo of your face as you walk in. I’m sure this is because we had a 2 day park ticket and now they secretly have a photo of you for when you walk in the next day.
Ticket! Park! PARK!!! (Sorry focus is off)
ENTRANCE
From here, I don’t have any photos until we got to our first ride haha. We were quite overwhelmed and excited to be in the park. So far, the park didn’t seem to be too awfully busy. When we were waiting in line at security it felt like a lot, but once we got into the park, it seemed like the park was soooo vast that the huge amounts of people just… dispersed. Anyways, so our plan was to run over to get ourselves a Soaring (SoarinG with a G and not Soarin’ in Shanghai!!!) to get a fastness, as we didn’t want to wait the 120 minutes in line. We ran over and turns out… they didn’t have fast pass running for Soaring!!! AND the line up already hit the 120 mark. Ahhhhh. So THIS is where all the people we were waiting in line with are. They are ALL here. At the Soaring line up. We had heard that it’s the same as in the American parks (the updated, around the world version) so we decided we’ll skip it for this morning, and watch the app for wait time all day to see if it will drop down. SO we decide…. let’s run over to PIRATES! Because that was our most anticipated ride of this park!
PIRATES!
EXCITED JESSICA IN FRONT OF PIRATES!
The wait time was about 15 minutes, so we definitely went for it! So so so much excitement!
Sign
The spot where the lineup splits to two lines
At this point, we realized tons of other people also decided to skip Soaring and came to Pirates. The wait became closer to 25-30 than the 15 minutes posted outside. But never fear! We were very fascinated with all the stuff to look at while we waited! I do believe we chose to go with the line up on the right hand side.
Our view to the right
Just about at loading area!
Guess who’s next!
HERE COMES OUR BOAT
Our very first ride selfie!!!
Glendon and I had cheated before coming to Shanghai and watched as many videos on youtube as possible on this ride, only because we were TOO excited. So we already knew what was coming, yet we were so excited to see it for ourselves. Jenna had purposely not watched any videos whatsoever. How she did that, I have no idea hahaha. Anyways… all four of us came out of that ride with our mouths open. It was AMAZING. Glendon and I aren’t ones to like too many screens in a moving ride… but somehow Disney managed to make this beyond amazing. All of the effects and animatronics and scenes were just… perfect. The story is in Mandarin so really we had no idea what the plot was, but just the overall experience is mind-blowing. Easily became a ride we would love to ride over and over! (Glendon and I’s only disappointment though… If you have seen some videos already, like Glendon and I… you’ll have seen the really crazy skeleton-Jack Sparrow scene. From all the videos we’ve watched, it looked like literal magic. Lots of reviews were saying that they couldn’t figure it out, etc. So Glendon and I were so ready to see magic. Unfortunately, during even our first ride through, we easily figured out the trick!!! In fact, we thought it was pretty obvious! That’s okay, it’s still really cool)
After Pirates, we were on a little bit of a new-park-high haha. After riding our very first brand new ride, we decided to make our way over to our next brand new ride: Tron. Our plan was to get a fast pass and explore the park.
We walked by Peter Pan’s Flight. And from the outside… it doesn’t even look open. There was literally NO line up. PETER PAN HAS NO LINE UP?! Oh my god, my last two trips to Florida, and my last trip to Disneyland, I had to cut Peter Pan out of my trip because the line up was constantly hovering 120+ minutes. So needless to say, we all had our minds blown in a different way than Pirates hahaha.
Ride selfie #2!
The flying ships seat 4 (2 rows of 2)
Yay! The ride is very similar to the classic Peter Pan rides, except that it’s clearly newer. The paint is brighter, the ride vehicles can adjust to different speeds. It was nice! I know lots of people love Peter Pan’s Flight for it’s very classic ride through. But the new-ness and effects in this one are nice.
Now here we go! Walking in to Tomorrowland! We walked from the Fantasyland side
View of Tron!
Coaster track views!!
Got our Fast Passes!!!
More views
(I actually don’t know why I took this photo. It doesn’t show anything haha)
And lastly… I was super excited about our Fast Passes.
You can tell that so far, the park isn’t very busy. Considering we’d already spent a big chunk of our morning NOT getting fast passes, and after already walking around the perimeter of the park when we attempted Soaring first thing then hitting up Pirates, we still got a return time of 10:55-11:55!
This was our ridiculous path of our morning haha… WHY? Because we were stubborn and didn’t walk around with a map. We just went with it. End result… racking up the km’s on vacation haha
Up next… Voyage to Crystal Grotto!