Hong Kong Disney: Part I
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 8:54PM
Arielle in Hong Kong

HKD Welcome Mickey

Good morning, Hong Kong Disneyland!  So happy to be here!

As part of our tour package, we had booked travel to and from Disneyland along with our Disney tickets.  It was quick and easy and we didn’t have to worry about anything other than having a ton of fun.  That being said, if we ever went back again, we’d feel very comfortable purchasing our own passage by train and our own Disney tickets at a train station (who would have thought they’d sell them at a train station?!) as long as it was during off-season.  They actually have a rail station right at the entrance of Disney and you can ride from Kowloon Station to Lantau Island with no problem.  (Yes, folks, if you’re keeping track, we visited two islands and Kowloon [Kowloon is attached to the mainland] on our trip.)

HKD Castle

Hong Kong Disneyland was the proud home of Tinkerbell’s Castle (at least temporarily- they redressed their usual Sleeping Beauty Castle in celebration of their 5 year anniversary.)  Definitely shorter than Cinderella’s Castle (Florida’s Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland) and different than Sleeping Beauty’s Castle (California’s Disneyland and Euro Disney.)

The entrance to the park has this great Disneyland Railroad building and Mickey plantings!

HKD Train Station

All day long people did double-takes of Brandon’s shirt.  It’s a mash-up of Monsters Inc. and Star Wars with Sulley as Chewbacca and Mike Wazowski as Han Solo.  Dale in particular LOVED Brandon’s shirt!

HKD Brandon Welcome

Since we were there in November, we were just in time to admire their Sparkling Christmas displays.  Wish it had been throughout the park, but we thoroughly enjoyed the decorations in Main Street, USA.  It might be interesting to note that English, Cantonese, and Mandarin are all spoken in the park. 

HKD Christmas

The giant Christmas tree was a great focal point and very festive!

HKD Christmas Tree

And we just couldn’t get over how cute the streetlamps looked all decked out in their Christmas glory!

HKD Lightpole

This was the first Disney park where the lines to meet n greet the characters weren’t obnoxiously long.  Could be because we were there during off season.  We took full advantage of it while still riding all the rides on our list.

Dale was adamant (without talking, of course) that Brandon be at his height.  He threw an arm up around Brandon’s shoulders, pulled him down, and wouldn’t let him up until the photos were taken.  He also gave Brandon many thumbs up regarding the Monster Inc/Star Wars shirt.  Very fun!

Chip&Dale Standing

We stopped to listen to these “sweepers” on Main Street and thoroughly enjoyed their performance.  Who would have thought you could get that many sounds out of a bunch of buckets and garbage cans and weave them together to make music?!

HKD Drummers

Toy Story Land was the newest addition to Hong Kong Disney and opened a week before we arrived.  It was definitely a hot spot for visitors!  We took a quick wander through and stopped for photos, then high-tailed it out of there and on to the rest of the park.

HKD Toy Story Land

Me posing with some Tinker Toys and showing off my new Cinderella shirt.  “Casting a Tiny Spell – Dreaming of Magical Somedays”  Can you tell I found the shirt on Okinawa?

HKD This Is It

The details were of course awesome!  I especially loved the bright colored lights hanging everywhere.

HKD Woody

Cooties and Tinker Toys?!  Do you remember playing with these as a kid?!  What fun!

HKD Cooties

And the “balsa” airplane was a great touch!  I definitely remember playing with one of those.  Also loved the fencing.

HKD Plane

While we were standing in line to get photos, the Green Army Men came through for a short performance.  The kids loved it!  (And the adults did, too!)

HKD Army Men 2

Dominoes and monkey escapees were fun to look at as we waited for our turn in the Barrel of Monkeys.

HKD Barrel of Monkeys

Woody was surprised at how tall Brandon was (the person in Woody’s costume was on risers in the boots and his eyes were at Woody’s mouth.)  I got a big hug from Jessie.  What fun!

Jessie & Woody1

Definitely a great start to the morning!  Onto Adventureland next!

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