Just Got Back From HKDL/Shanghai

RogPalmerUK

Earning My Ears
Joined
Feb 1, 2016
After spending the last 9+ months on this sub, building up to our trip. I wanted just to come on here, give some feedback and hopefully put some people's minds at ease.
So we got back home yesterday from a 2 week trip going to Shanghai Disney, then onto HKDL.

5 days in Shanghai (4 nights at Toy Story Hotel, with the 144 hour visa)... very easy to sort out visa when we got there, airport has a couple of desks at the end that deal with the 144 visas. All sign posted great. hotel was great, though breakfast in the main area was dreadful ( cold toast), so we would get either food from the bakery or head to Disneytown for Starbucks/breadtalk.... park was fantastic.... we had rain forecast on one day, so everything was walk on.... i wouldn't recommend the pirate stunt show, yeah it had a few cool moments at the end, but the first 20 mins is painful to sit through... the POTC ride was closed for repairs, so missed that. Tron is awesome..my legs wouldn't fit in the straps, but they have a "normal" seat at the back...which was still awesome.. rode it twice! next day was much busier. night show was great... overall excellent experience, cast members very friendly, didn't have any of the "issues" like kids going toliet, pushing, queue cutting, people selling merch, it was all very easy going. only thing is, the park is massive!

HKDL - So we ended up doing 4 nights at Explorers and 3 at Disneyland Hotel. originally we were going to stay in the city for 4 nights, but with all the issues, we stayed out at disney.... it was the right choice... mainly because we loved the explorers hotel, fantastic theming... only issue is the outdoor pools were closed off the day we got there, so our lazy day in the week got thrown out the window (it ended up raining so no bother really)...

So protests... if you are at disney, you wouldn't know. we only saw some riot police out walking around when we took the free bus into the city from disney, and one small protest outside a building. the university looked trashed. some graffiti in places.... extra security getting into the airpot. honestly, if we hadn't of seen it on the news, we probably wouldn't have noticed. when we arrived at the airport from shanghai, we grabbed some tourist leaflets and someone from the booth came over, explained about the protests, showed us on the map that to avoid an area on Sunday, showed us where the other issues will be, gave us a website and generally wanted us to have a great time and to be informed. this was great on the airport to instantly have tourists be informed.

the theme parks were empty during the week, we went for 2 days, friday was busier, but everything was walk on for both days. The resorts were empty during the week, it did get busier on the weekends, but they had some big weddings on.... we ate in the restaurants, often we were the only ones in there during the week. lobby empty... rooms were lovely, staff friendly... awesome location as there is a promenade between the hotels and the park, beautiful... made it feel like we were staying in the tropics, could see the skyline in the distance... amazing hotels.... disneyland hotel has an awesome live band playing music in the lobby.... the breakfast/dinner character was fantastic... we didn't know it was a character dining, but we had so much fun we went back in the morning and did it again.....

HKDL is super super expensive... $60 / around $7 for a can of coke during a meal.... we spent a fortune on food at HKDL, very little options... we did eat at all the hotel restaurants, even going over to the hollywood for a steak one lunch time. I can't stress how much the food/drink was... so if your going, make sure to top up on drinks/snacks on day trips etc.... I did walk down to the 7/11 at the lake and spent $500 (around $60) on drinks, biscuits, choc, chips, sandwiches..... i'm glad i went with plenty of spending money, had next to nothing left, but we did eat well, gave up trying to keep costs down....however we were given a pile of coupons for $100 off/ 20% off etc for food... we used them for every meal bar breakfast... just helped a bit.

merch at both parks felt a little lacking.... lots of basic soft toys, pins, plastic rubbish..... lots of main stream merch from hasbro, pandora, funko, lego, hot toys... very little original merchandise, no artwork. most stores had the exact same stuff, most of it i could order at home cheaper from shopdisney or other retailers.... so didn't spend a huge amount on merch. hk again was more expensive than back home, though they did have some coupons and sales going on....

we had an amazing trip, in some ways, the protests made the hk side much easier for us, as hk was just quiet, parks quiet, hotels quiet, we had a double decker tour bus almost to ourselves, the top of the sky 100 deck was almost empty, the cable car/budda statue was quiet. it actually made our trip more enjoyable, because nothing felt crowded.

but honestly, this was such an amazing holiday... it was so nice to do something different, it was a totally different disney vacation, but so much more rewarding than going to WDW again.....
 
Thanks for the report. Food is expensive in both parks. Being native Asian makes it worst because I know how much those food usually cost on the street. At least SDL has Disneytown with third party restaurants having more reasonable price.
 

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