Month: Sep 2019

Shanghai Disneyland. Often when I mention it to people you get one of two reactions:

1. There’s a Disneyland in Shanghai!?!
2. Oh that’s nice. Did you get the annual pass?

There is indeed a Disneyland in Shanghai. And quite a robust one as well. Now I may have only ever actually been to two Disney parks (Quite a long time ago as well actually, last time I stayed at a Disney park I was 12.) but as a possible consequence of my brother in law and my own youtube video addiction, I’ve become something of an expert in regards to the Disney parks. For anyone not in the know, this may seem strange. How and/or why would you be obsessed with a theme park based around a Cartoon mouse? Well for me, it’s the details and imagination that has always gone into these parks. They are theme parks in the purest sense, engineered (Or is that imagineered?) escapism to the greatest degree. A few fun facts which I feel convey this:

• The parks ground shifts slightly so that you can never see other ‘lands’. For instance, if your in Tomorrow Land, you can’t get clear view of Thunder Mountain or Toy Story land.
• Forced perspective. buildings are designed and positioned to create an artificial sense of size/space.
• Music-shifts. The park has a very very extensive sound track which shifts the second you walk into a different ‘land’. The shift is near instant thanks to clever positioning of speakers which themselves are often hidden in bushes.
• Themed uniforms. Employee’s wear costumes/outfits themed to each land.
• The parks are pretty much indestructible. Disney World has been hit by hurricanes with minimal damage…what the hell is that castle made of!!?

Those are just a few of the weird little things the Walt Disney Corporation does with there parks to create an other-worldliness to them. There’s also a ton of weird urban myths tied to the Disney Parks. So yeah, I’ve got a mild obsession with these strange, ludicrously expensive theme parks. My wife Katy has a similar obsession though I think it’s more tied to a love for the films (Which I also share). Thus we have decided to spend an awful lot of our now grossly inflated salaries visiting as many Disney Parks as conceivable this year.

Shanghai

Tokyo

Hong Kong

Orlando.

We got the ball rolling by visiting Shanghai Disneyland near the end of our travels across China. It was pretty great! Though I think Hector enjoyed the park just outside of the park than most anything else!

Maybe it was just too much time spent being dragged to museums and up and down mountains, because Hector was absolutely jubilant when he saw other small children running up and down slides.

We arrived in Shanghai from Xi’an and made out way haphazardly to Shanghai Disneyland which is on the complete other side of the city. Shanghai Disney is the newest of the parks having just opened a little over 2 years ago. Unfortunately unlike other Disney parks located in mega-cities, this one isn’t really well linked to the metro system. I mean you can totally get there by subway, it just takes like 95 minutes from the airport.

First thing we did was check in at our somewhat dodgy airbnb and then hit up ‘Downtown Disney’ a little shopping/eating area just outside of the park proper. It’s a bit like a weaker version of Pleasure Island in Florida, still it was a nice change of pace.

They do have an absurdly large Disney Store, the above image shoes 1/4th of the total store. Downtown Disney also has a few dozen restaurants , including some big american brands like. The Cheesecake Factory. A place I would never have any interest in going to. At all…but then I ate Chinese food for 3 weeks straight and…well…

They had giant chicken Parmi. I…I could not say no to the giant Chicken Parmesan. I mean, the table service was impressive, the food was very generous and it’s an up market american brand some how functioning in China. The meal for us 3 came to 40 GBP. Considering we got beer as well, I think we did pretty well.

Perhaps that’s the most jarring thing about Shanghai Disney. Everything is so expensive. But it’s also…just not? That’s one of the weird things about living in China. You can get an entire meal at a cheap place for about 1.50 GBP (13 RMB). Or you can go to a fancier place and pay 120 RMB! (13 GBP) So your left wondering, was it worth spending nearly 10 times the amount of money? Can you really feel ripped off when you would have spent the same or more in the UK or Canada? I’m not so sure yet…sorry for the Tom aside, lets get back on topic!

So the next day we eagerly got in line to enter the park. Now, that was harrowing. Shanghai Disney is an amazing place and I had heard rumours that it had the rudest crowds. So I was prepared for typical line jumping and madness. It…wasn’t as bad as I had expected, still wasn’t great though. The line to get in was filled with mothers shoving their 6 yearold children forward like a wedge, penetrating the line further and further. Other than that, though it wasn’t so bad. Once we were actually in the park people completely stopped jumping the lines!

One thing you may notice/may not notice is that Shanghai Disneyland is huge compared to California or Paris’ Disneyland. It’s also got a loooot of green space around it. This is because Disney intends to expand/grow the park exponentially. At the moment it is kind of nice to have so much space/no real sense of over compactness which I hear you get at some of the other parks. Right now they’re building a Zootopia Land expansion. You know Zootopia? That movie which everyone wont’ stop talking about…

What no you don’t? Well that’s probably because your not Chinese. In China Zootopia made more money than any other animated film ever. It’s….very popular here. In fact I bring it up because one of the most interesting aspects of Shanghai Disneyland is what the park has chosen to focus on.

Hong Kong and Tokyo Disney were made for the local but also the foreign market. Shanghai Disney was built because they had worked out that about 400 million people could get to it in 2-3 hours. It’s not made for foreigners, no, it’s made for the Chinese. Thing is the Chinese government put a limit on how many foreign films could be released in China for years. This mean that the vast majority of Disney animated films Pre-2000’s never made it out here. The Disney Princess brand has made inroads, but for the most part, people don’t know who the hell Dumbo the elepant, or Pete’s dragon is. They don’t know what a Mary Poppins is or Donald Duck. They aren’t super familiar with the Tiki Room or any of the archtypical Disneyland attractions. So instead, the park was built around what they knew the Chinese market would recognise. Thus…

Pirates of the Caribbean Land!

It’s actually really cool. But yeah, Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow is very popular in China. So in addition to Adventure Land you have an entire Tortuga lookalike town. It’s pretty great.

They got awesome Turkey Wings. (Not legs but…ah well).

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Hector tried to drive a boat here. It didn’t work out obviously. As he has no nautical skills what so ever. The Pirates land has 3 rides, a show and more importantly, a lot of atmosphere. Cast Members (The fancy work they have for employee at Disney Parks) wander about dressed up like pirates and occasionally engage in sword fights in the street. It’s great.

Similarly Tomorrow Land has no space mountain. It has Tron. Probably the most bad ass roller coaster I’ve ever been on in a Disney Park. It also has a lot of Marvel superheroes.

The Tron Light Cycle ride is a bit like Space Mountain. Except it’s themed really well and you ride a quasi-motorcycle through a dark and neon lit wonderland. I went on this no less than 5 times…mostly because me and Katy worked out the best Shanghai Disney Hack. Will tell you later.

Overall the park was endearing and definitely took two days to fully enjoy. A lot of the standard ‘Disney’ lands have extensions to them. Adventure Land has pirates, Tomorrow Land has Marvel and Tron, Magic Kingdom has the Crystal Grotto, and there’s even a 100 Acre wood area because Chinese people really really love Winnie the Pooh.

Hector wasn’t too into Pooh.

The results are a Disney Park which definitely feels a lot more ‘recent’/new. On the downside however you have a lot less of the typical Disney rides you’d expect. There is no Small World After All (THANK GOD), no Jungle Cruise, no Haunted Mansion, No Hall of American Presidents, and no Main Street USA. Then again, I suppose if that’s what your after and you don’t live in China…why would you come all this way?

Now for the big Hack. So the fireworks are nice, though you can’t really see them as the crowds stand up and hold their phones up in the air making it quite difficult to actually see anything.

Me and Katy grew rather frustrated very quickly and found ourselves stomping away from the fireworks show and into the rest of the park and found the wait times for rides which you can always check on the Disneyland Park App (Super handy) had dropped from 50 – 110 minutes to about 1-5 minutes. That’s right. The moment the fireworks start up (At about 7:45pm) the crowds gather around the castle and utterly abandon the rides. After the show ends around 8:30 people just walk straight out of the park. This is despite the fact that Shanghai Disneyland at this time of the year is open till 10:00 pm. So want to go on all of the awesome but far too long lines rides? Don’t bother with fast passes-just wait till the final 2 hours of the park being open and go on all the rides! Me and Katy went on Tron over and over again.

Oh and one last thing, they do have this great policy for visitors with Hectors (I mean babies) if you line up together they let one person wander off with the child + a skip the line pass. When the person not baby sitting finishes standing in the line and going on the ride their partner can immediately go straight onto the ride. This worked out pretty well as it meant we didn’t need to keep Hector in the line (Screaming) and the person looking after Hector could spend an hour wandering around the park, checking out shops and stuff. Pretty good trade off I thought!

With Disney Shanghai done, me and Katy made our way back to Hangzhou. We didn’t get the season/annual pass in the end. We decided that whilst it would only require us visiting 4 more times to make us break even, we would rather use some of that money to visit ALL the other PARKS!

So next up. Hong Kong Disney-wait no…

Next up Hangzhou and getting used to Basis…

See below a gallery of amusing images from Disneyland Shanghai. Think we didn’t take too many photos as we had thought we’d be back again. We probably will.

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Of the above four locations you may be familiar with one, or maybe even two, if you have a passing interest in Chinese History however you should be fairly familiar with these three cities and one particularly impressive mountain. Firstly Luoyang, Xi’an and Nanjing all hold the lofty title of Ancient Capital. Primarily because at different times over the past 3500 years each has been the seat of centralised Chinese Governmental power. (The fourth ancient Capital is Beijing , though I am not convinced that the term ancient is entirely applicable there. Although you will find that the Chinese have a funny habit of using the word Ancient for things which are over 200 years old…maybe it’s just a bad translation of ‘Old Historic Thing’.

Anywho after an hour and a half bullet train ride we arrived in Nanjing. In retrospect I probably should have planned less cities and more time to visit each as all we really managed to see in Nanjing was the rather impressive National History Museum. We did however get a great chance to acclimatise the different climate, weather and culture of China. People often speak of culture shock and I suppose we had read enough about what to expect to not be too overwhelmed. That said, the constant spitting on the ground and into garbage bins is rather unsavoury. It was also at this point we realised that we had really brought too much luggage with us as we were now hauling. Three suitcases, a stroller, 4 backpacks and a pop up tent. The stroller helped us carry quite a lot of the stuff, but we were heavily reliant upon museums/attractions having a luggage drop off point.

In Nanjing we managed to visit the National History Museum, wherein Hector screamed. A lot. So that kind of ruined it. Next we attempted to climb up Purple Mountain Scenic area to visit the mausoleum of Sun Yat-Sen. Sun Yat-Sen is considered to be the father of modern China by both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (China and Taiwan respectively) and his burial place is quite impressive looking.

Which is hilarious if just because the man lived a fairly modest life and actively asked for the still quite young Chinese Republican Government to not build statues or monuments to him…oops. This was a bit of a mad adventure as we couldn’t yet order a DiDi (The uber of China) and we only had a loose understanding of how the buses worked. So we ended up effectively begging a cab to take us there. He did not. He took us to a very nice McDonalds wherein’ I discovered that Mcdonalds in China whilst not costing much more than it does in the UK is shockingly only a bit cheaper than eating at Pizza Hut.

EXHIBIT A: A Big Mac Meal 60 RMB. (6 GBP)

EXHIBIT B: A Large Stuffed Crust Pepperoni Pizza 75 RMB (7.50 GBP)Still the break gave us the energy we needed to tackle the long hike up Purple Mountain to visit Sun Yat-Sen’s mausoleum. One thing I have begun to notice in China is the tendency for anything culturally significant/touristy to have a long maze of vendors, souvenir shops and restaurants leading up to it.

I suppose this is true of any tourist site anywhere, but the ones here really feel labyrinthine. Furthermore, most sell the exact same stuff so I’m not really sure how they manage to all stay in business. After a long hike up we found uh…that you needed to book your tickets in advance. So we couldn’t go in…damnit.

That’s okay though because we were about to fix our luggage problem and have far, far worse things happen than not getting into a national monument.

On the train ride between Nanjing and Luoyang, at some point my suitcase was either stolen or accidentally collected. Inside of it was nearly 5000 RMB (500 GBP) my laptop, tablet, chromebook chargers, all of the clothing I was currently not wearing, and a variety of other personal effects. Thus the following morning we went shopping at a very large and very empty shopping centre. Another funny thing about malls in China. Most sort of suck. Not because they’re messy, or full of shut stores but because well…they’re full of expensive boutiques with over priced clothing. Fun fact, most Chinese people now actually just buy things on their phones. Groceries, clothing, food, toys, etc. So shopping malls have taken on a different life. They’re a place you go to eat (as they often do have very nice restaurants ranging from cheap to expensive. ) and more importantly, be seen…I think? I can’t quite work it out. Most are 3-7 floors high with lots and lots of designer stores but no one ever seems to actually buy anything.

I’ll need to look more into this. So after much hassle I bought some over priced T-Shirts and shorts and resumed adventuring!

Luoyang is the most ancient of cities featuring the ruins of tombs and palaces from multiple dynasties which made the city their home. Once again however we didn’t really have the time to see all of that, so instead we ended up defaulting for the two biggest sites just outside of the city. Longmen Grottoes and Song Shan.

Song Shan is a towering monolith of lime stone and granite. Whilst maybe not your arch-typical Chinese mountain, it does cut an impressive profile of solid uncovered white stone. It’s also where Kungfu Monks come from. Shaolin monks built their monastery at the foot and up along the side of this mount and developed martial arts practices which TODAY YOU TOO CAN ENJOY! YES REALLY, YOU TOO CAN JOIN THE HUNDREDS OF FOREIGNERS WHO COME HERE DAILY TO SHAVE THEIR HEADS AND BECOME MONKS! For like…1-4 weeks. Maybe I’m too stuck up, but I don’t really get this. I mean it makes the Shaolin a ton of cash for sure, but it kinda feels like it cheapens the whole monastic life choice thing. I mean, the compound for foreigners learning Kungfu is actually 3 times the size of the actual temple (As seen on Baidu maps).

Still the temple is quite beautiful and it was here Hector’s celebrity status became evident. In Hangzhou and even in Nanjing I imagine the locals see foreigners often enough that it barely warrants a second look. But deeper into China and in a Tier 3 city like Luoyang…me and Katy got a lot of looks, Hector being an even rarer commodity (A White Toddler) had crowds forming around him if we dared to stop walking for a few moments.

Luckily Hector really enjoyed the attention and got into the habit of actively waving at strangers, I think he just likes the attention.

We took a cable car up Song Shan under the pretense that it would make the hike easier. Yeah no. Hector’s backpack carrier helped, but it was still a lot of weight and the cable car took you only a bit more than half of the way up. After about 4 miles of walking we decided to turn back and head down. Officially because we didn’t want to keep our taxi waiting, in actuality I think we were just tired.

The next day we went to Longmen Grottoes. One of the largest Buddhist sites still standing in China, it was largely built up during the Tang Dynasty (About 1300 years ago). Facing a river the temple complex looks to be made up of thousands of shallow caves. Of course these caves were in fact hand carved by artisans, often with some of the natural stone being carved out into monolithic Buddhist sculptures. The largest and most famous is perhaps modelled after the one and only female Emperor Wu Zetian.

The next day we were off again, this time with me paying extra close attention to our suitcases as we travelled by train to Xi’an. Originally I had wanted to spend half of the travelling day going up Hua Shan (another mountain along the way) buuut yeah. That didn’t happen. Xi’an is perhaps the most famous Chinese City in the West, perhaps not for itself but rather what it has within the city limit. The Terracotta Army. Xi’an itself is definitely worth spending a few days in. It’s a truly ancient city still sporting impressive City Walls which have encircled the city (In various states of repair/disrepair) for 2,000 years. It was also a major pit stop for the silk road and consequently during the Tang dynasty became a hot bed for immigrants/foreigners. Today the city still sports a sizeable Muslim quarter in the old city. (It’s actually more like a third of the old city, which itself is a 3 by 4 mile block.) It was here we discovered something I had only vaguely heard of.

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Chinese-Muslim food. It’s totally a thing and one of the few subsets of food you can seemingly find all over China. One thing Katy had complained about is the lack of ‘variety’, to which you might say. “Chinese food is incredibly diverse!” Which it is. I think it’s more so we are used to utterly different types of food in the UK/Canada. Curry, Chinese Food, Italian Food, Greek Food, Mexican Food, Caribbean Food, just to name a few. We are spoiled for choice. In China the most common alternatives to ‘Chinese food’ are American food (See expat bars/Mcdonalds/KFC/Dairy Queen) and Chinese-Muslim food. Chinese Muslim food is actually pretty good. Tends to involve big huge noodles, lamb/beef and a lot of mild spices.

Anyway back in Xi’an, we found an ATM to get cash out (Yay) and visited the Big Bell Tower and the Big Drum Tower!

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I rented a bicycle and road up and down along the City Walls and finally we got up stupidly early (5am) to visit the Terracotta Warriors. This was a good plan. The gates opened at 7am and we more or less sprinted to the excavation pit which they are still in. We managed to get a good 10-15 minutes looking at them before Hector became too much of a nuisance. It’s a good thing we did as well, as when we came back an hour later the place was nightmarish jam packed with people. They don’t really seem to limit attendance out here.

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By 8am the excavation pits’ viewing platform was 10-15 people deep. The downside to beating the crowds to seeing the warriors was what we faced in the museum. The Terracotta Army has a nice modern museum wherein they store some of the better preserved and impressive figures. Here we attempted to see the bronze chariots. Rather impressive 1:4 scale models of what Qin era prossional chariots looked like. The room, if it didn’t have air ventilation on, would have been a death trap if just because of carbon-monoxide. The hall was utterly filled with people pushing and shoving over one another to get a better look at the sculpture. I ended up Losing Katy and Hector in the humid-nightmare that was the exhibit. One man actually walked over Hectors stroller in his desperate need to view something he’d no doubt seen before.

After visiting the First Emperors enormous and still excavated burial mound we got back on the train again for the longest journey yet, all the way back past Hangzhou and to Shanghai. Shanghai Disneyland!