Shanghai Disneyland. Often when I mention it to people you get one of two reactions:
- There’s a Disneyland in Shanghai!?!
- 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).
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.
The Hopkins of Hangzhou 