Asia Disney Double Dip Trip Report Part 5 - More Hong Kong Disneyland

We spent spring break in Asia, which means it’s time for a trip report! Join us on part 5 of this adventure, which wraps up our time at Hong Kong Disneyland!

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 last morning at Hong Kong Disneyland!

Wrapping Up Hong Kong Disneyland

After two days in which we’d accomplished most everything we wanted, I stayed up late debating whether to buy Early Park Entry for our last morning.

We weren’t planning on spending the entire day in the park, and the forecast called for quite a bit of rain. But the park was set to open at 10AM (which is early for Hong Kong Disneyland, which often opens at 10:30AM), so an extra hour would be a relatively big gain before our expected early-afternoon departure.

After way too much agonizing, I decided that even if it was rainy, we’d make the most of an extra hour and try to have a more complete half-day in the park with that extra hour. It cost about $25 (USD) per person on Klook.

The next morning I started with another early run. We opted to skip breakfast, both because of the cost and the timing (Early Park Entry at 9AM, and we had to pack and check out of the hotel).

On the way out of the hotel, Zoe and Emily popped into the hedge maze out back. Zoe had been asking to go in it since we arrived, and I’d promised we’d make time for it. Emily reported feeling generally uneasy in it, calling it “not buggy...just…ick,” but none of us really would recognize the significance of this pitstop until later in the trip…

Leaving the hotel around 8:30AM, we were at the gates around 8:40AM. They started letting Early Entry guests in at 8:57AM. (Based on these two mornings, I infer they allow Early Park Entry guests into the park just before that hour starts. Then sometime during the hour they let other guests in the park and move the Early Entry check to the hub.)

Despite the forecast, this was one of the more scenic times we had in the park.

While I took some time to get some photos around the hub, Emily and Zoe headed to the Duffy & Friends greeting just to see what was up. Zoe had become a little taken with Olu’ Mel, and the greeting happened to offer a choice of a few characters, including Olu’ Mel.

While Emily and Zoe waited for that (it didn’t actually get going for another 15 minutes), I headed to Frozen Ever After. At 9:16AM the posted wait was ten minutes and I boarded around 9:24AM.

I wound up with the most excited boatload of guests ever. These families were thrilled with every moment of the ride—ooh’ing and ahh-ing at the standard dark ride scenes and screaming their heads off at the slightly more "intense" moments. It always brings me a lot of joy getting to see other guests have such fun during experiences that sometimes feel for me, to be honest, a bit mundane.

We reconvened at Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleighs, which had a posted wait of 5 minutes at 9:38AM. In reality we’d fallen behind pace on this one, and didn’t board until 9:55AM.

In general the goal of rope drop is to stay ahead of the crowds one ride after another to start your morning. But if you delay—like stopping to take photos and meet Olu' Mel—you’ll fall behind and find waits going up before you get from ride to ride.

Luckily, our woes didn't extend past Sliding Sleighs, and we were still able to walk right onto Dumbo—one of the few rides we hadn’t ridden yet—at 10:05AM.

ICYMI, there’s a second rope drop at Hong Kong Disneyland when Toy Story Land, Mystic Point, and Grizzly Gulch open 30 minutes into the day. We grabbed some fun Zootopia waffles to snack on in Fantasyland before heading to Grizzly Gulch for a final ride on Runaway Mine Cars.

The crowd waiting for Grizzly Gulch etc. was pretty huge, but I was still surprised that we weren’t on Runaway Mine Cars until 10:59AM. Maybe we just didn’t do well keeping pace with the crowds.

With a successful morning in the books, we let Zoe pick our last few rides, which of course wound up being Nano Battle! and Iron Man Experience. In between, a huge amount of rain fell and we managed to walk onto Orbitron just as it reopened. The vehicles were retaining a few inches of water, and I feel like the person obsessively drying the seat maybe didn’t quite look into the footwell to understand the true depth of her predicament.

There was a light-up floor panel game in Tomorrowland that Zoe had a lot of fun on. Even in the rain, this kid just wanted to run around this floor stomping on lit up squares.

We often underrate the fact that kids don’t need $1billion rides and 60 hours of touring strategy research in order to have a good time. This isn’t at all to say Disney trips aren’t “worth it” (I wouldn't be here if I felt that way). Indeed, I think this “problem” extends way beyond Disney travel.

Zoe is very well-traveled, but their favorite things are still playgrounds and interactive museums—hallmarks of pretty much every city of at least moderate-size in the world.

One lesson for both Disney and non-Disney travel is, I think, to make sure some of it is still for you. I didn’t bring Zoe to India at 2 years old expecting it to create lifelong memories for Zoe—I’d simply been trying for years to make it to India! Maybe Zoe didn't love Mystic Manor this trip, but I did, and Zoe got to appreciate jumping on a light-up floor in the rain. Win-win.

Wrapping up our trip, Zoe did have one favorite activity left—shopping! We allowed Zoe one “toy” purchase from Hong Kong Disneyland, with the main restriction being that it couldn’t be “something we’d probably be able to find at Target.” We wound up with this headband—squeeze the ends and the arms wave.

And with that, we said goodbye to Hong Kong Disneyland.

Altogether, this was a great kickoff to our trip. The full day plus two half days was enough to take in the park without feeling like we'd wasted time. We'd managed to get on our must-dos, like Runaway Mine Cars, Mystic Manor, and Oaken's Sliding Sleighs, more than once. And it's always a win when your kid takes a particular liking to rides with low waits, like Ant-Man and Iron Man.

Hong Kong Disneyland is a great theme park, but even with the addition of World of Frozen, it still leaves me wishing for a bit more uniqueness. From 2005 to 2018, Hong Kong Disneyland's castle was a duplicate of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. The castle's glow-up is, at least theoretically, a part of the park leaving behind its early identity as a mere imitation.

I don't think it's quite gotten there yet, though. Rides like Iron Man, Ant-Man, Frozen Ever After, and Hyperspace Mountain are nice upgrades to Disney classics, but that isn't enough to elevate the park.

Mystic Manor is the closest thing the park has to an iconic experience, but its once-revolutionary technology is less impressive in 2026 than it was in 2013. Even the brand new World of Frozen had the immediate "honor" of being copied and installed in Tokyo and Paris, albeit without Wandering Oaken's Sliding Sleighs.

But that's all okay. It unquestionably works as a locals' park, and the passion of that fandom brought a smile to my face more than once. From a Western perspective, the park certainly offers enough to earn at least a one-day slot in an itinerary visiting this part of the world.

And from a child's perspective, well, we have yet to reach the point where Zoe gets bored of theme park rides, playing in the rain, ice cream bars, and consumerism. After three days of unbridled fun, Zoe put it cleanly:

“I think I like doing Disney at the end of trips instead of the beginning. That way I can look forward to it.”

Don't worry, kid. There's plenty of fun ahead.

That’s all for today! Next up, our Time In Hong Kong!