Hong Kong Disneyland and the Lantern Festival

Disneyland on a holiday Sunday. We'd planned and re-planned our trip itinerary but there was just no other day to do it. Our friends and co-workers warned us that it was going to be crazy busy. We had convinced ourselves that we'd just spend the whole day waiting in line to ride maybe two or three rides. But you know what? It wasn't so bad.

In Hong Kong, Disneyland is connected to the subway system, so getting there is ridiculously easy. In the morning, we left our apartment in Kowloon and we were at the park about 45 minutes later. The subway cars connecting Disney to the metro are awesome: they have Mickey-shaped windows and handles. Everyone was having a photoshoot on the subway as we traveled!

Here we are at the entrance to Hong Kong Disney.

 

And there's Jason waiting in line for the park to open. We'd heard it was best to get there early to avoid the crowds, so we arrived for the 9:30 opening time. Since our apartment's bedroom had no curtains, we were up early anyway! Judging from the number of people on the subway and then the number of people waiting in line to get into the park... we were worried. It looked like it was going to be pretty busy.

But, after the gates were opened and the crowd stampeded into the park (we ran too- when in Rome, right?) everyone seemed to just disappear. Above is Main Street, USA and you can see that it's totally crowd-free.

Probably my favorite ride at any of the Disney parks in Florida is Space Mountain, and that's exactly where we ran to first. We were planning to get fast passes so that we could ride without waiting in line later in the day, but... there was no line when we got there. So, we walked right on to Space Mountain. I've waited more than an hour to ride Space Mountain in Florida! This was so cool! And the ride seemed different than I remembered, even though it was basically supposed to be a re-creation. After we rode Space Mountain a few more times later in the day (always with less than a 5 minute wait!) we realized why the first ride had seemed so different: they hadn't turned on the lights yet when they let us ride! I thought it had seemed a little dark! The ride is supposed to be lit up by stars and planets, as if you're traveling through space. It really makes you wonder what else they forget to turn on sometimes?

The centerpiece of the Disneyland park is Cinderella's castle, and in Florida the castle is truly impressive, but in Hong Kong it looks like they shrunk it by about 50%. It's kind of ugly, really. In Florida there's shops inside the castle and there's some beautiful stain glass art that tells the story of Cinderella, but this one has nothing inside. Actually, we thought that the magic castle ripped off by Lotte World in Seoul was a much nicer castle than this official Disney one in Hong Kong.

We'd finished all of the rides in Tomorrowland, so we moved on to Fantasyland. The first ride we hit up was "It's A Small World" and we were pleased to see  it was only a 5 minute wait here, too!

Actually, the only reason it took 5 minutes to get on the ride was because it took so long to walk through the line holding area!

Totem poles and mounties: Canada's representation on the ride!

Next, Jason braved the teacups while we took pictures (I don't like spinny rides) and then we went back to Fantasyland for some lunch. The food here is definitely pretty sad in comparison to the US park, but at least it's cheaper! I got a burger and fries combo for $7-8, and they have to be charging close to double for that in the States by now.

After lunch, we noticed that a 20 minute line had developed, so we cashed in our fast passes for the "Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh" ride. I don't think they had this one in Florida the last time I was there. It's a very tame ride, but cute- especially if you had kids with you. We started to notice that the only busy rides were the little kiddy rides- it was like an hour wait to ride on the Dumbo ride, when you could still get on Space Mountain in less than 5 minutes. Perfect for us, but had to be boring for the little kids. But, hey- they get in for free.

Pooh just can't get enough of that honey :D

Next, we rose the carousel, and then we decided to get in line for character pictures. We hit up Mickey first, of course (Minnie had this long, winding line for some reason) and when there was only one group ahead of us, Mickey suddenly left. All of the characters left, actually, and then the best excuse I've ever heard in my life for anything was given to us by one of the cast members: "Mickey has a phone call". MICKEY MOUSE HAS A PHONE CALL, brb! It was hilarious.

Within 2 minutes, a new Mickey was back on the job and we had our photo.

Pounding it with Goofy.

We only went over to Pluto out of pity- no one was in line for him- but he took about a dozen pictures with us. He really worked the camera, that Pluto. That's him hitting Jason in the eye with his hat in the photo above.

A unique part of the park in HK Disney is Toy Story land!

There are only two non-kiddy rides in Toy Story Land, the first one (in the above photo) is the RC Racer ride. Maybe it doesn't look like much- it's just a car that goes straight up and then down on a curved platform- but it is intense! At the peak on either side, the car gets so high and is at such an extreme angle, that you wind up staring straight up into the sky or straight down at the ground. In both situations, death feels imminent. I had tears in my eyes when the ride was finished, and that doesn't usually happen at Disney parks.

The other ride in Toy Story Land is a parachute drop ride, which is pretty fun too. You get pulled up quite high- high enough to have a view of the whole park- and then the ride suddenly drops, then raises back up and drops again. You get the idea.

On our way out of Toy Story Land, we could see that some cast members were roping off a section of the park next to a big blue barrel. A few families had started lining up, so we knew it was photowhore-with-the-characters time! We waited for a few minutes, unsure of who would come out, but we love the Toy Story movies so it would be TOTALLY worth it. We joked that with our luck they'll send out somebody like Jessie, and guess who marched out?

Next, we went over to Adventureland to ride on the Jungle River Cruise. We waited in an English line, which- predictably- was about 1/10 of the length of the Chinese line. Our tour guide, Jason, had a joke that he really liked to tell- that everything we drove by liked to eat children.

"Ahhhhh be careful, hippo like to eat children ahahahaha"*hears joke for 12th time*

Next up should have been the Big Grizzly Mountain Mine Cars roller coaster, but Jason was feeling queasy from the RC Racer ride and our many consecutive trips on Space Mountain soooo it was snack time instead! I got a Mickey waffle, and whoever put the whip cream on his ears... they know what they're doing.

We went back to Adventureland to watch the Festival of the Lion King stage performance. It was a pretty fun show and they sang all the hits from the movie.

After going back to ride the mine cars (they were fun!) we went to the Golden Mickeys stage show. The show was hosted by a reporter named BeBe, who was covering an awards ceremony called the Golden Mickeys. The show was in Chinese but there were English translations on a screen for us to follow along. The awards were for like "best hero" and "best friendship" and then the winner would come out and sing a song from their movie. It was a fun enough show and a good excuse to sit down!

Since the restaurants kind of sucked, we wound up going back to the same burger shop for supper. Something interesting to note about ordering fried chicken in Hong Kong is that instead of being given a fork to eat with, you're given plastic gloves.

Main Street USA all lit up in preperation for the fireworks show. By this time, the park had gotten pretty busy. Luckily, we'd ridden everything we wanted by the early afternoon!

Fireworks! The SECOND they were finished we bolted for the subway. There were so many people in the park by that time and we did not need to be behind them in line to get out of there.

Suckers for punishment, we took the subway all the way over to Causeway Bay to check out the lantern festival. Around the same time, about a hundred thousand Chinese had the same idea as us. This was right up there with New Years Eve at the Taipei 101 in terms of biggest crowds we've ever been in. I mean, the lantern festival was spread out over a space more than two football fields wide, but every available space had a person standing in it. It was a real struggle just to walk around, let alone get a good look at anything. In the large glowing dome thing in the above photo there was a cool looking lantern display, but the line to get in was unbelievable, so we skipped it.

Turns out, the entire festival is sponsored by Lee Kum Kee, which is the company that makes all the Asian sauces sold in the supermarket both here and at home. Here's Jason and I posing with a giant bottle of oyster sauce.

Lights, heads.

Cool dragon display set up on the far end.

We decided to walk back to the subway through a park adjacent to the lantern festival instead of trying to push our way through the crowd again, and we were very surprised by what we found in the park.
 

Everywhere, for as far as we could see, were families sitting together having picnics, and they'd brought their own lights, candles and lanterns to decorate the park. It was so cool. I never knew that so many Chinese families had this tradition during the holiday, and I was instantly jealous that I hadn't brought my pic-a-nic basket and some tea light. The atmosphere was great.

The whole family took part in this event. In this photo, they've even wheeled out grandpa and hung a glowing light around his neck.

So, Disneyland on a holiday Sunday was a huge success and the lantern festival- while annoying- was interesting and I'm glad we didn't miss it. By the end of the day we were BEAT, and it was time to head back because the next day we were going to Macau!