We made it to our fifth Disney Castle!
My "struggle" was in how to balance just living in the moment and experiencing a new park, trying to take it all in, while simultaneously capturing pictures of things I wanted to remember and as a result, I was overwhelmed in the very best way! I think the pictures in the post capture some of the absolute magic that Shanghai Disneyland offers, although there were probably a thousand more I could have taken!
It's difficult to describe this park because I will quickly run out of words and still fall short! It is INCREDIBLE. The layout, the theming, the castle, the attractions, the nighttime show...I could go on and on. It exceeded every single hope and expectation we had and I literally have only one negative to say about it: the park serves Pepsi products. Very disappointing! LOL!
It's hard to pinpoint the very best thing about Shanghai Disneyland because everything is so well done. The castle is stunning, and I admit I went in with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, convinced it couldn't be better that the Disneyland Paris castle, which was my favorite. I'm more than okay with have been incorrect on the matter! Overall, though, I think I would have to say that it's the attractions that really set the park apart. Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan's Flight are just two that we rode multiple times because of how amazing they are, and we were completely blown away by the entire Zootopia area!
While we were there, it was extremely hot and disgustingly humid, and a literal typhoon was causing some disruptions to park operations - on Saturday, no fireworks with snack carts and attractions closing early, and then a delayed park opening on Sunday. In spite of these things, nothing could dampen our opinion!
We arrived just after noon on Friday, and had a flight leaving Shanghai on Monday afternoon, so we bought an "after 3pm" ticket for Friday (due to our arrival time) and Sunday (due to the park not being open in the morning thanks to the typhoon), and a regular full-day ticket for Saturday. Unlike Disneyland, WDW, Disneyland Paris, and Tokyo Disneyland, there is only one park, so we were able to see and do a lot during our visit!
One interesting thing was that park tickets are associated with your passport (I believe this is for foreign visitors and that domestic visitors can used any government-issued identification), so any time we entered the park, the cast member scanned our passports. If it was our first entry of the day, we got paper tickets after our passports were scanned, but if it was a return visit on the same day, only our passports were scanned, without scanning the paper tickets they'd given us earlier that day or without printing new paper tickets, so I do not at all understand the purpose of the paper tickets. Clearly I'm missing something here because bothering with the paper tickets at all seemed like a waste of time and resources to me!
Shanghai Disneyland is pure magic!
I've loosely organized the photos into groups, so they are not in chronological order, but this made the most sense when I was going through all of them!
Park Entrance:
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| scanning my passport at the entrance turnstile |
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| the paper tickets were cute, but as far as I'm concerned, served no purpose! |
Enchanted Storybook Castle:
Mickey Avenue (aka Main Street, USA):
Attractions and Things Around the Park:
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| this Pixar Adventurous Journey was so great! |
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| you choose a fish type, customize its colors, and your design appears up on the big screen so you can watch your fish swim around! |
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| this was my design! |
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| on Friday night, we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves! |
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| there were no people anywhere near us! |
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| this was the only let down in terms of attractions - it was so odd and the queue was blah and the storyline was a stretch at best |
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| prior to this, the longest wait time I'd ever seen was a 300 minute wait to meet Elsa during the post-Frozen insanity... this is for the character who is part of the Duffy storyline and who was created in this park (and don't get me wrong, the character is adorable and I love her, but six hours!!!) |
Food and Treats:
And finally, I've saved the best for last...Zootopia!
the audio animatronics are insanely good!
the attraction is so immersive!
We absolutely love, love, LOVE this park! We're already trying to plan out when we can come back!
Happy Tails to you!
