We spent spring break in Asia, which means it’s time for a trip report! Join us on part 3 of this adventure, when we spend our first afternoon at Hong Kong Disneyland!
About This Post
A version of post originally appeared in the newsletter. Subscribe to see the latest ASAP. This is part 3 in our report on this trip:
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 1 - Planning and Booking
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 2 - Heading to Hong Kong
Spring Break in Hong Kong, Beijing, and China Part 3 - Afternoon at Hong Kong Disneyland (you are here)
Over the next…many weeks, I'll be sharing my trip report for our recent trip to Hong Kong (w/ Disneyland), Beijing, and Shanghai (w/ Disneyland). These won't be just two entries, one about each of the parks we visited. Rather, they'll be extensive and cover from booking the trip to getting home, including plenty of non-Disney content (for more recent non-Disney stuff, visit Emjoyable Explores). This post covers our first afternoon at Hong Kong Disneyland.
An Afternoon at Hong Kong Disneyland
It was a cloudy Thursday afternoon, but I could see from the waits in the app that it was an unusually busy day at the park. Luckily for us, most of the waits were concentrated around Duffy and Friends greetings, which we had no interest in.
On the one hand, maybe it’s worth getting your kid invested in Duffy before heading to the Asian parks—he is huge there. On the other hand, you don’t really understand how popular Duffy is until you go to these parks and see the massive lines, which reached around six hours while we were in Shanghai later in this trip. We were glad to be mostly free of this burden.
Our ticket situation at Hong Kong Disneyland was a little annoying, requiring separate 2-day and 1-day tickets for our three days of visits (Shanghai Disneyland, by contrast, has half-day afternoon tickets available to hotel guests). Klook is probably the best option for buying Hong Kong Disneyland tickets—I could not get the direct website to accept any of my credit cards, and the Klook tickets worked perfectly. The Klook purchase immediately provided a Disney-styled ticket voucher I could scan at the turnstile.
As we entered the park around 4PM, my hope was to check off some of the major attractions, but since we were arriving to peak waits, shows and snacks were also viable options. We started off with ice cream bars and the castle stage show (I liked the characters’ outfits). We followed that up with a stop at Festival of the Lion King—not a "must-see" show for us (not as good as the Animal Kingdom version), but one we were happy to fit in while ride waits were high.
For dinner, we headed over to World of Frozen’s Golden Crocus Inn where we paid about $50 total for two servings of the pasta dish. The different international Disney parks use different apps with different features. You'll find some similarities, and the Hong Kong Disneyland app offers mobile order. Initially I just assumed I wouldn't be able to get it to work, but as we walked into the restaurant, I was happy to find the mobile food order option in the app actually worked perfectly.
With waits starting to dissipate around 6:30PM we finally decided to get on some rides. Zoe is a huge fan of the Buzz blaster rides, so we started with Hong Kong’s Ant-Man version, Ant-Man and The Wasp Nano Battle! We all enjoyed it, Zoe especially. It very rarely had waits over 15 minutes during our trip, so we rode it plenty more.
This is a good chance to talk about language at Hong Kong Disneyland. There is a very robust mix of English, Cantonese, and some Mandarin in the park. If you’ve been to Disneyland Paris, it’s very similar to how that park balances French and English. Throughout this ride queue, for example, Ant-Man and The Wasp speak in English, while another character speaks Cantonese, with subtitles for both. (FWIW, I also found Hong Kong to be like France in that my attempts to use local “thank you” (“m goi”) didn’t get much interest. In mainland China, my “xièxie” was always very well received.)
Zoe is a Marvel fan, so we headed to Iron Man Experience next. I was a little nervous about this one because Zoe isn’t really a fan of Star Tours, which uses the same ride system. But this was a hit, too! And another good one, because this one actually rarely has waits above even 5 minutes (a bit of a shame because the queue has some cool stuff).
I’d hoped to get on The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but the posted wait was something like 25 minutes despite not looking that long (after spending two more days there, I’m now sure I was right), so we skipped it in favor of “it’s a small world.”
Zoe made a friend in line, which was adorable. ICYMI, Zoe has long blonde hair, which tends to garner a lot of attention in Asia. When we were in India a few years back (hair shorter then), locals often asked for pictures. In China, only one person in Beijing at the Temple of Heaven asked for a photo, but parents and kids alike would often take interest. As Zoe put it, “yea I noticed that, one kid asked me why my hair was yellow.”
After “it’s a small world”, Mystic Manor was posting just a 10-minute wait. Riding it would check one big box for us and put us close to Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, the most popular of our “must-do” rides.
Zoe didn’t fall in love with Mystic Manor, but this was probably our fault. I think Emily and I made the mistake of comparing it to Haunted Mansion. Zoe is 50/50 on Haunted Mansion and sometimes feels it's too creepy. I think we teed this up wrong, and if we'd just said it was about a fun monkey making a mess in a magical house, it would have gone better. (It’s still as great as I remember, though.)
Around 8:15PM, Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars was posting a 35-minute wait, but it wound up only being about 20 minutes. Zoe had a great time, suggesting that we’re finally closing in on certifiable "coaster kid" territory (they also opted to wait 30 minutes for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland earlier this year).
We had just enough time to hustle over to Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleighs, which was posting a 15-minute wait (wound up being even shorter) just as closing time came around. Zoe felt Oaken’s was noticeably more intense than Barnstormer or Chip ‘n’ Dale’s GADGETCoaster. Emily and I felt it was longer, but not more intense. It sits pretty well between those coasters and, say, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, in our minds.
As we exited Oaken’s, we were treated to a view of the drone portion of the nighttime show. Without any music to help me, I couldn’t figure out who this red-haired woman was:
It’s actually Miguel, from Coco.
I remarked in Part 1 that we basically always “hit the ground running” when traveling. This is just an example of how well this can work at theme parks, as we've now already tackled some highlights like Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, Mystic Manor, and Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleighs. It won't always go this well, but even getting just a few key shows and rides out of the way on your arrival day can really relieve the pressure for the remaining days.
We didn't take time to watch the nighttime show, instead saving it for the following night (by the time we got to Main Street we'd missed half the show). The crowds really packed it in all the way down Main Street:
It took us about ten minutes to make the walk back to the hotel, and we packed it in for the night.