Disclaimer: If you are thinking to yourself, “What kind of loser flies all the way to Hong Kong and then spends chooses to spend their time at Disneyland which is small and very much like Disney World which is only 2.5 hrs away from your house and you have already been there a bazillion times,” this post is not for you. For the rest of you, and you know who you are, here is what we learned:
There is a beautifully landscaped front entrance. There is a MTR (Hong Kong’s rail system) station on property located not far from the main entrance. The train has mickey mouse shaped windows. It is on its own line connecting it with the rest of the Hong Kong rail system, functioning almost like the monorail. There is a giant fountain with statues in front of the main entrance. The center of the fountain has a statute of Mickey surfing on a wave created by a water spout from Monstro the whale from Pinocchio.
The park is much smaller than Magic Kingdom or Disneyland California, but instead of being surrounded by artificial barriers or the hotels of Anaheim, it is surrounded by mountains. It’s beautiful. It’s clean, and today it was not very crowded. But, it was a cool, if not cold Friday in January. We got lots of pictures of the similiarities and differences, but I will try to write about the highlights.
Buzz Lightyear: Almost exactly like ours, except that the guns detach from the cars, although they are still tethered to the vehicles. You have to pull the trigger for every shot, however which makes it much harder. You must hit the center of the target, but when you do, it lights up and flashes.
Space Mountain: Riders sit side by side. It was very dark and seemed much faster, especially around the corners. The audio was noticeably different. It was a smooth, good ride, but all of the action was like a corkscrew without much up & down.
It’s A Small World: The exterior resembles that of Disneyland California, which also means it looks like the scene in Shrek. I was considering titling this entry “It’s a Small World” and it seemed like an appropriate sentiment for this trip, however, it was closed for refurbishing. Grrrr. No longer appropriate for the title of this entry if we couldn’t even ride it.
Jungle Cruise: One of the most interesting things we discovered today was that Jungle Cruise has separate cue lines for separate languages. There were 3 cue lines, we believe they were English, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese, but we aren’t really sure, because we have no idea what all those characters mean. Although we were tempted to ride one of the other languages, we didn’t. We heard the English version, but there were no corny jokes, not one. Either our guide was totally off script, or they don’t do the jokes.
There is a large tree house at HK Disneyland, but it belongs to Tarzan, not the Swiss Family Robinsons. The treehouse requires a raft ride to get to it, and it located on an island in the center of the jungle cruise. Many of the jungle cruise animals are visible from the main walkways of the park.
There was a Stitch show, and they offered English versions of the show during certain hours.
Winnie the Pooh was exactly the same, as we expected it would be.
Festival of the Lion King was really interesting. It was also held “in the round” as ours is, and they had the large animal floats. They didn’t ask the crowd to make animal noises, however. I found that a relief. Instead of the trampoline part of the stage, they had a rotating stage in the middle (like a circle-think Les Mis), also parts of the stage would rise to create different levels in the middle of the rotating circle. The monkeys did not do the gymnastic-like trampoline tricks. Instead, they served as Chinese translators. The music was played/sung in English, with subtitles overhead on screens.
It still had an African flair, with Asian people making up the bulk of the ensemble. At one point, some men danced with fire, and I believe one even swallowed/breathed some.
We watched several minutes of a High School Musical Show. People were really excited to see it. Adults. Fascinating. All of the performers were Asian, except one, and the choreography included basketballs. It was like a big pep rally, and the crowd had to keep saying “Go!” “Wildcats!” Honestly, I have never watched the High School Musical Show at WDW so I really can’t compare.
They have “The Golden Mickeys” stage show here. So, I don’t know which came first, the Cruise Line version, or the HK Disneyland version. It’s very well done, but Mickey & Minnie speak Chinese. There just isn’t anything else that can be said about this. I thought they spoke English, don’t all mice speak English? All of the music was sung in English. The M.C. spoke Chinese with English subtitles. Again, most of the ensemble looked local, but all of the face characters looked like they would have in Orlando.
Our fast food lunch was served on real plates, with plastic silverware. My cheeseburger and fries came with plastic gloves that we discovered after we finished eating. They have mickey mouse ice cream bars at the carts, but they also sell about 4 other types of treats that are much less familiar.
Overall, I am just humbled and shocked by the fact that we have been here 24 hrs, and have had conversations with no fewer than 20 people and we haven’t found one that couldn’t communicate with us. Some interactions have been smoother than others, but every street sign, subway sign, etc… has English words on it in addition to the others. Although we are clearly a minority here (we maybe saw 10 blonde people all day) we feel very comfortable, we have moved around with no problem on our own. We do wish we had spent a few more minutes in preparation for thinking in Hong Kong Dollars- (about 7.5 HKD to 1 US Dollars) or figuring out the conversions from Celsius to Farenheit, but getting around Hong Kong as English speakers has been easy.
Fuzhou Time
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