I just booked! Going to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo-update Disneyland Shanghai day 5 - 01/06

Yikes...a lot of Chinese families go on holiday in August before kids go back to school. I would definitely go in expecting long lines, but hopefully it is better!

Oh, right before closing the line for Pirates went down considerably. Like from 40 minutes down to 5-10 minutes. A lot of people line up super early for the fireworks, so the park thinned out a lot. We also walked on to the Challange Trail right at closing, and had it all to ourselves! Maybe it will be similar next week!

I hope my research is correct. That this week is the last week of holidays and that next week only the international school still have days off before returning to school. Fingers crossed! (Or hope for rain, I just saw that several outdoor rides were closed at the same time, so must be raining now!)

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It's now 3 days before departure, last week still quite anxious about the 144 hours and possible discussions with check in agents as not flying direct into Shanghai. But somehow more relaxed about it now. Will see what happens.

It's really counting down now. Tomorrow one more day at work, then a day off and then... HOLIDAY BEGINS! Today is about doing laundry, cleaning up the house and I have started packing and collecting all the stuff I need. Can't believe it's finally going to happen! :)

A friend gave me a pillow case of Flynn Rider a while ago, and while it's a very nice gift...I am not the person for decorative stuff. I like my interior more neutral, so with the help of my mother and an old canvas bag, we transformed the pillowc case into a tote bag!


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Have a fantastic trip! I am looking forward to reading about it afterwards.

Have a nice trip will look for your trip report

Thank you! I will do my best to write a full and complete(!) Trip report! :)

I just checked in and left work Vacation has started! Tonight/tomorrow is for packing and cleaning and then leaving on Wednesday!

Nikki also checked in, we decided not to sit together on our flight Dubai-Shanghai as we both want a window seat. But I did send her my seat number and so did she, I check her row and tell her: "You do know that this is the baby row...?" When she travels for business, she always has weird or smelly passengers next to her or loud children/crying babies. I have warned her, but she decided to leave it like that. Okay...

Speaking of packing, last night we realized because we have such a cheap fare, we only get 20k check in baggage! And 7k for hand baggage!! As we might want to bring back some souvenirs, I checked Emirates' excess baggage fees and they are per 5 kilo 250 EURO!!! I was shocked. Now I know hoe Emirates makes their money with tickets this cheap! So everything not completely necessary will not be packed ;) We also checked putting it in the mail, a 5 kilo package from Japan the Netherlands is about 100 Euro, still a lot, but better than paying it to Emirates.
 


Live from Amsterdam Airport!
Everything going well, waiting at the gate. It took 3 check-in agents and 15 minutes before they decided to let me through. They had last week a passenger who they let through to Shanghai, but was refused upon arrival and was send back, so they were really careful.
Flight is 40 minutes delayed, but we should make up for this in the sky.
 
Live from Amsterdam Airport!
Everything going well, waiting at the gate. It took 3 check-in agents and 15 minutes before they decided to let me through. They had last week a passenger who they let through to Shanghai, but was refused upon arrival and was send back, so they were really careful.
Flight is 40 minutes delayed, but we should make up for this in the sky.

Yay! Similar to my experience: very careful checking, takes some time, but in the end all works out! Have a great trip!
 


Testing Emirates on board Wi-Fi. Not very strong connection. You get 20mb for free, but it is very slow.

Food is okay, dessert was a bit top sweet. Just watched Hidden Figures, nice movie, but I wonder if everything went as easy as they show. They make it seem as the only problem they ran into is Jim Parsons' character glaring at her. For the rest as soon as they speak up, everything is solved. Now started to watch Muppets Most Wanted. They have a good selection of movies and shows.

Flight is good, Lucky enough to have a 3 seater to myself, so laying down with 2 blankets. Kids behind me are reasonably quiet. Crew is polite, although service started a bit slow. They take polaroid pictures of you if you want. With flash on. On a night flight... Okay... weird kind of service.

About 2 hours till landing. 30 minutes delay.
 
Small update from Shanghai!
Really nice city. Reminds me of New York, I had the same feelings when I walked through Nanjing Road as when I walk on Times Square. Only more bikes and motor cycles. A bit of a mix between Amsterdam and New York, with Chinese peopple :P Also it is much cleaner than I had imagined, and not just in the touristy area we are staying. Not a lot of smokers, what I had imagined.

The subway is super easy to use, if you can navigate in the subway of a major city like New York, London, Amsterdam, you can do it here too. Ticket machines are in English and easy to understand. Do make sure to get bills of 50 Yuan or lower, as ticket machines don't take the 100 yuan bills. Only once saw extreme pushing on the subway, and ony once had to push myself ;-) the Bund was extremely crowded at night, but the views were gorgeous.

Today we went to Qibao, nice non-touristy area, with lots of shops and eateries, and a beautiful temple. Discovered today that my new make up stays on extremely well eventhough it was today 35 degrees (Celsius, that's 95? in Fahrenheit?) and I was sweating like a pig. :) We spend about 3-4 hours here. We went then to Pudong to make pictures of the Oriental Pearl Tower by day and go to the Disney Store (it's just next to the Pearl Tower. They let us in in groups. They had special 50% discounts due to Chinese Valentine's day.

We are staying in the Charms hotel, which is a budget hotel I would recommend. We pay 50 euro a night for a room without windows, but we were 'upgraded' to a room with window :D Also very decent size room. We do have a neon sign near our window, but the curtains are dark enough not to let through. T It's old and in need of refurbishment for new wall paper and carpets, but overall for this prize, no complaints! They were also very flexible at the reception when we checked in to split the bill. They don't speak a lot of English, but we manage to make ourselves understandable. One time the recepitionist pulled out his phone and opened a translation app and asked me to type in my question :) The only thing I would report to the hotel is that the shower needs to be fixed. We could shower, but the shower head needs to be adjusted.
Oh, I don't need a converter, my European plug works here too.

We had breakfast at MacDonalds, we weren't feeling very adventurous, ;-) but I did order one of the Asian buns of the menu, which was like fried donut dough. Lunch we had in the mall in Qibao (as we needed the air conditioning) at a restaurant called Superheroes and was dedicated to DC heroes, mainly Batman. On the wall was a mural of the Penguin, the Joker, Two-Face and the Riddler. Lots of memorabilia and the Dark Night was playing on the tv screens. Today and yesterday we had dinner at Shanghai Grandmother's on Fuzhou Road, which was nice and cheap. Not all dishes were a success, but most were.

Tomorrow morning we go to Yuyuan Gardens and Fuxing Park, then around 3 we go to Disneyland and the Royal Banquet Hall! :)
 
Great to hear how the trip is going! The heat sounds horrible!! But great news about the make up! :rotfl2:

Hope it all continues to be so great and easy!
 
Today was a bit of a mixed day. We both very jetlagged. So not a lot of sleep. Result: both a bit grumpy and snappy. We did see Yuyuan Gardens, Temple of the City God, Fuxing Gardens and a bit of the French Concession.

We went earlier than expected by taxi to Disney. And oh my God it was zo crowded! Problems with setting up Photopass, Tron 150 minutes waiting time, single rider was 105... Pirates out of order. So busy we didnt get a decent look at the parade... :( and all I was thinking: This morning, I liked the Temple better.

We went back to the hotel after the parade to get changed for dinner and get to our room (as not ready before 3), and then back to the castle to have dinner. Dinner was nice and worth the money. It was about 6.30 and in the last 3.5 hours we were able to do Pirates! (First ride, first row :) ) posted 45 minutes, reality 50-55 minutes. Single Riders was closed. Then 7DMT single riders, posted 30, reality 15. Same train, different cars. Tron posted 40 minutes, reality 30-35 minutes, single riders closed. Then in the last hour we dus with 0-10 minutes waiting time: Peter Pan, Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, Once Upon a Time and met Mickey at 2 minutes before closing time. So all in all, not bad. :)

I hope that tomorrow we can get a fp for Soaring and see what else happens! Probably shows and character meets! :)
 
Yesterday was a bit of a mixed day. We both very jetlagged. So not a lot of sleep. Result: both a bit grumpy and snappy. We did see Yuyuan Gardens, Temple of the City God, Fuxing Gardens and a bit of the French Concession.

We went earlier than expected by taxi to Disney. And oh my God it was zo crowded! Problems with setting up Photopass, Tron 150 minutes waiting time, single rider was 105... Pirates out of order. So busy we didnt get a decent look at the parade... :( and all I was thinking: This morning, I liked the Temple better.

We went back to the hotel after the parade to get changed for dinner and get to our room (as not ready before 3), and then back to the castle to have dinner. Dinner was nice and worth the money. It was about 6.30 and in the last 3.5 hours we were able to do Pirates! (First ride, first row :) ) posted 45 minutes, reality 50-55 minutes. Single Riders was closed. Then 7DMT single riders, posted 30, reality 15. Same train, different cars. Tron posted 40 minutes, reality 30-35 minutes, single riders closed. Then in the last hour we dus with 0-10 minutes waiting time: Peter Pan, Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, Once Upon a Time and met Mickey at 2 minutes before closing time. So all in all, not bad. :)

I hope that tomorrow we can get a fp for Soaring and see what else happens! Probably shows and character meets! :)
 
Does anyone have any feedback on Tokyo airporter car service? I am going from Narita to the Toyko DL resort in early November and we may get there too late for airport limo bus. I just want to make sure there is nothing negative about them.
 
Does anyone have any feedback on Tokyo airporter car service? I am going from Narita to the Toyko DL resort in early November and we may get there too late for airport limo bus. I just want to make sure there is nothing negative about them.

Maybe better ask this on the Tokyo board instead of my trip report, if you want to get a better response.

Today in Shanghai we had some Disney Magic and pixie dust. Crowds were massive but we managed without the premier passes. We rode Tron, Buzz Lightyear twice (broken gun in the first round), Voyage to the Crystal grotto (this time by day), Pirates, we saw Rapunzel, Belle, Cinderella, Timon, Rafiki (2×, 2nd time out of pity, no one was meeting him) and King Louie, saw the parade, Pirates stunt show and the Tarzan Show. Also saw Mickey conduct the Disneyland Band and Tai Chi with Character. Probably missing something...

But we are now waiting for the Fireworks in the VIP area!! And we were made Star Guests! Before the parade Nikki was drawing Disney Characters for the characters to sign and this she does often in line and as more often, she got the attention of several CMs, they were amazed by her talent and gave her stickers and some Donald Duck Paper art and a button of the Lion King. And then supervisor Jenny joined the group (Nikki was surrounded by 3-5 CMs) and we started talking about out trip. Then she gave us both buttons to recognize as Star Guests so we were very happy and grateful, and she goes back to her work. Right before the parade starts, she returns and sits in your area. As soon as the parade is over she came back to us with another supervisor and said they arranged VIP seats for us for the fireworks!!!

We are sitting in the area right in front of the castle with maybe 100-150 other people, that sound like a lot but we have lost of personal space ;) and no one in front of us!

We had planned to ride rides during the fireworks, but this was zo pixie-dust-y, we didn't want to refuse :)

@katt789 is your friend Steve still working at Disneyland Shanghai? I think we sat next to him today while we were watching Tai Chi with characters. I wasn't sure so didn't ask, thought it was too awkward ;) 'hey you don't know me, but are you the friend of a girl from Canada who I also don't know?' :p
He was on his own, sounded North American and has a Shellie-May(?) bag and was talking to another guest about all the Disney parks in the works. Not sure, but could it be him?
 
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Very cool read Karin. Really cool because ill be there on sunday and also from The Netherlands! Please keep up the great reporting, hope i get a bit more lucky with the crowds.

Quick question if i may, can you get WhatsApp to work on park wifi? And is the wifi at Toy Story hotel decent?
 
So nice to hear that you got some pixie dust! Sounds truly wonderful!

Since you mentioned single rider line for Pirates being closed, this reminded me of one tip for Tokyo: There we had trouble finding the single rider lines and when we asked, we were let into the FP-line. When you get to the second CM collecting the FP, you tell them that you are a single rider and there just before load they put you into the real single rider line. Works great! So, don't think the single rider lines are closed there because you can't see them.
 
Very cool read Karin. Really cool because ill be there on sunday and also from The Netherlands! Please keep up the great reporting, hope i get a bit more lucky with the crowds.

Quick question if i may, can you get WhatsApp to work on park wifi? And is the wifi at Toy Story hotel decent?

Hello fellow Dutch-y! Crowds are manageable, but it takes experience with Disney parks to make the best of it. If you had never been to a themepark this would have been overwhelming. Next week low season starts, this week is last week of Summer vacation, starting next week the park closes at 20:30, so I think from then the crowds will die down.

The wifi at the park was spotty, it works but I ran into a lot of trouble, also connecting wasn't the easiest. You have to fill in your phone number, the system texts you a code and you have to fill this in. But after I had filled in the code, the system kept texting me at random the code again and again. 23 times on the second day. Also at 3 o'clock in the morning... Today only 13 times...The first time to use the wifi at the park, I let a CM do it for me at the Photopass shop. The Wifi wasn't strong enough to download the Photopass app in the park. I downloaded it at night when I was at the hotel.
I can recommend Express VPN (7 day free trial) if you want to use Facebook & Google.

Wifi was good in the line of Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, but wouldn't recommend that ride to Whatsapp your friends and family ;-)

So nice to hear that you got some pixie dust! Sounds truly wonderful!

Since you mentioned single rider line for Pirates being closed, this reminded me of one tip for Tokyo: There we had trouble finding the single rider lines and when we asked, we were let into the FP-line. When you get to the second CM collecting the FP, you tell them that you are a single rider and there just before load they put you into the real single rider line. Works great! So, don't think the single rider lines are closed there because you can't see them.

Today single ride for Pirates was open during the day, closed at night. Also tonight at Tron it was weird. It said 60 minutes, but as we had several times that they couldn't post the waiting times correctly, we'd go for it, also it was one of the last things we want to do on our last day. We get a ticket that said 'single rider' and are directed into the normal queue. I ask again, but yes we have to be in this queue. Okay... that defeats the purpose of Single Riders lines a bit, almost like they wanted to discourage the use? After about 30 minutes, we reach the next CM and she opens the door to the designated single rider's line and we walk to the beginning of the line... It takes a while as the CM assigning the seats splits up groups. Like when you have a group of 3 and 5, she fills 4x 2 seats, while in other parks, they would most of the time they fill 5x2 seats using 2 single riders.

Tonight single riders for SDMT was closed, open during the day.
 
Today was our last day :( *sad face*

I really loved it here, it's a nice park, but next I will be back when it's not so hot. It was 36 degrees Celsius at 14:00 hours. We managed to do Roaring River Rapids, Pirates, Tron, saw the Summer Blast show again, met Rapunzel again, checked out the Garden of the Twelve Friends (I'm a rat!) saw the Frozen show, the Travelling Troubadours show, saw Timon and Rafiki again (wanted to check for Judy and Nick, but they were not meeting) and the parade twice. The same CM manager recognized us from yesterday and moved us to the reserved viewing for the parade :) More pixie dust! He also offered us again to use the reserved viewing for the fireworks, but we declined. We wanted to use the time at night to do more rides. Also did Voyage to the Crystal Grotto (Nikki loves ths ride, @night, but I still don't see the appeal) Nikki met Belle and Mickey again and I did Soaring (FP) and Pirates (last ride of my visit on the front row!)

So basically we did the parks with only one FP... Not my normal routine, but it's okay. We had some words about buying FP, we had discussed it in advance, but after the first day when we got so much accomplished during the firework/last hour, Nikki changed her mind about the necessity. I gave in, as we are on vacation together, I stuck to only buying one FP for Soaring, as Nikki didn't want to do this ride. In the end, I am happy to have saved the money, on the other hand, it would have given me peace of mind to do every ride more than once without waiting.



What did I like:
I love how the park looks, it's really well designed, lots of details and I didn't take enough pictures to capture it all. My camera doesn't do well in this heat.

Speaking of heat, they had manay arrangements for the heat, not just the Summer Blast show and the Pre-Parade where you can get soaked/drizzled with water. There were cooling areas with mistng fans, their were air conditioned tents, CMs with carts of water and other chilled drinks everwhere, most of them were holding a small misting fan, and they thought it hilarious that we asked them to spray us. Most queues have (misting) fans, which don't help that much, but it makes it bearable in this weather.

The CMs were amazing, not just because we got pixie dusted twice with reserved viewing for parade and fireworks, but also very nice. We were singled out easily as we were one of the few Western guests in the park (today on Monday there were more).
As a side note, I don't mean anything by it, just as an FYI, people with darker coloured skin, be aware that you might be the only one in the entire park. I saw more Caucasian people visiting, but maybe 3 people with darker coloured skin in total in Shanghai and in the park. I have been asked at least 5 times to take pictures with other guests as pale skin and red hair is something they only see on tv.

The music, Shanghai has very good music tracks, I heard Hunchback and Hercules, Enchanted and other Alan Menken songs Paris or US parks skip. An amazing violin version of I see the Light, Let it Go played by an oboe, which was lovely, but I am not sure who thought we would need a ukelele version of Let it Go? Oh, and in Remy's Patisserie I heard an up tempo Big Band version of I see the Light, and all I could think was: I want that CD!!!

Rides, I love Tron, don't do this ride on a full stomach, but the feeling of the forces pressing you in your seat... wow :) and I love love love Pirates. How the boat moves in all directions, how you are in the middle of the movies, the amazing and huge animatronic of Davy Jones... one of my favorites.
I liked the parade, although it was short and a bit all over the place when it comes to style or theme, the Frozen float was missing, but hey, I got several good interactions with Flynn Rider :P what else does a girl need! No, also good interactions with other characters on the parade, but again, being Western and standing out from the crowds was a huge plus.

Clean, overall, the parks were cleaner than I expected. 2 exceptions, right after the fireworks and in the queue of Tron on Saturday night. But all the bathrooms were clean. Didn't encounter many smokers most of them stuck to the smoking areas.

What didn't I like:
No matter how nice the CMs were, they spoke very little English. Sometimes asking where a ride/restaurant/show was or at what time was too much to ask for CMs at Guest Services throughout the park. So first question became: Do you speak English. As soon as I asked this, they got a colleague, but usually they weren't much of an improvement. If you want to have Engish at a decent level in the parks, you have to look for CMs with a Supervisor pin. At the hotel at the reception it is better.

For example, I encountered only 1 'cultural' incident, and am not 100% sure, but 99%, 2 minutes before the Frozen show started, 3 rows down a toddler has to use the bathroom, as I saw her father pull down her pants (I could see the girl's private parts) and held her down in a weird position. As mentioned, I am not entirey sure, but I think she was peeing. I am willing to understand a lot of cultural differences and little kids doing their business in the streets, okay... but inside and in a theater?! Sorry, that's where I have some issues. But the show was about to start, I didn't speak Chinese, and I was 3 rows to the back, what can you do? After the show was over, I wanted to alert a CM, so they could clean before the next show started, but none of them understood what I meant and as the crowds left the theater, I was dragged away by the crowds. I couldn't go back inside to show them.
That was a situation where I wished they spoke better English. I can figure out most things in a park, but this was something I'd like to have reported properly.

One tiny thingy about the music. What I like at Disney is the theming, that it's not just random throwing stuff together, when in Paris I sit in the Hakuna Matata Restaurant, all I hear is Lion KIng music, when I am the Tangled Tavern, all I wanna hear is Tangled music, not the same random music you hear in Fantasyland. Also heard You've got a Friend inMe in Fantasyland and sorry, that's just not the right place :P

We didn't encounter line cutters, except maybe once or twice when getting in when we saw people getting together with their group. For the rest of the time, we both held on to the railing/wall to make sure people couldn't sneak through. We did run into some people who never heard of 'personal space'. But also maybe two or three times, so not that bad.

Okay, closing down my laptop, it's almost 23:15 here and our taxi leaves to Pudong at 6:15 in the morning!

Night night!
 
While we wait at Shanghai airport to go to Hong Kong, I will write some more thoughts on Disneyland Shanghai.

Photopass
The price is good, we paid 199 yuan per day (about 20-25 euro?) Which is incredibly cheap.

The setting up of the pass is not as easy as it could be, for non-Chinese that is. I still don't really understand how it works. We bought 2 day passes and let the girl in the store set it up. She added the several cards to our passes. But there was also something that some photographers didn't want to re-use a card because there was no Mickey sticker on there? I get the feeling someone in the US came up with the system and some things got lost in translation.

The app was some getting use, but was easy enough to understand. It is nice to get a pop up message on your phone as soon as new pictures have been uploaded to the app. All pictures end up 2-3 timeson the app, already with borders. I will have to try at home to modify the borders and to see if there are more options.

The photographers themselves were a joy. Much better than in Paris and Orlando. They all understood to make pictures during character interaction, they made suggestions for poses in front of the castle etc. I think it was in @PrincessInOz (?) trip report that she wrote Western guests got only one pose, in comparison to Chinese guests who got complete photoshoots, this was not our experience. In front of the castle we got 4-5 poses, and at characters they kept snapping.

Even with the weather and some photgraphers stood in the blazing sun, they stayed friendly and cheerful.

Characters
Meeting characters isn't really a thing in Shanghai and queues were never long. 20-30 minutes for princesses and 30-40 minutes for Mickey mid-day at maximum. All face characters were Western and spoke English and I think basic Mandarin. Face characters were all good at interaction, maybe it is because they were happy to interact in their first language but they were good at improv.

For fur characters, it was hit or miss. At Happy Circle it was all great, most likely because there were hardly any people who wanted to meet Jungle Book/Lion King characters. There were guests at the front of the line and when Rafiki appeared, most of them just left. :(
At the Royal Banquet Hall dinner, Donald was good, Mickey, Minnie, Daisy okay. Maybe it was our mime skills, not a lot of fur characters (or their handlers) spoke English. Some did, when we met Pluto and Goofy on Mickey Avenue Pluto spoke English, Goofy didn't.

Food
Better than in Paris. It is almost all counter service and the quality was better and it was all very cheap (for Disney prices). The pork & rice dish at Celebration Café was a favorite. There was a lot of variety at the different restaurants/snack carts.

Queues mid day for lunch were long, but it all moved quite quickly.
 
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We are now in HDL, waiting for Elsa, hardly a queue but all sets are short.

Before I forget this detail, we have seen several cleaners at the restaurants who had Down syndrome, I think it is amazing of Hong Kong to have such a variety in their employees, I have never seen that at other parks. Thumbs up to Hong Kong.
 
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