Culture Shocks and Disney Magic... in Asia!!! A TR on all Asia Disney Resorts! [Update Dec19!]

Day 4 [part 3]: Photos in Mickey Avenue! Shanghai Disneyland Hotel!


Since the parade was on, this was the perfect opportunity for us to take over Mickey Avenue and take some photos, especially to have the castle in the background as a backdrop.


Balloons! Castle! People people people! (And Brian)
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Here are the silly photos of Glendon and I that Brian took
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They were almost all overexposed! Brian didn’t notice until the end of our photos, and so he decided to back up and try for new photos. But we figured it was time to swap over for them to have photos… Because….


THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED
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He had backed up into the fencing and fell over into the hedges. Omg, none of us had ever imagined that this incident would ever happen to one of us. Isn’t this one of the things that we laugh at other people about?! Oh goodness, we died laughing. And of course had to capture this moment ahahahaha. So we decided to swap over. So, here are Brian and Jenna’s photos.


Nice one
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Slightly silly one
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(Are you noticing that smog filter yet? Where our faces look beautifully golden??? Our faces and skin look so nice, but the sky looks icky haha)


Zoomed in photo of the castle with the parade coming by
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More zoomed in photo, of Mickey with Donald behind him!
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Goofy’s
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Some of the store front facades on Mickey Avenue
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And the other side
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One more view of the castle…
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Leaving the park… view of the “Train Station”
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And the view from the other side (the entrance side) and the flower Mickey
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Here is an example of the courtesy signs they have around the park
(friendly reminders on how to be a “star guest”)
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“When ya need to go just hop on over to the nearest toilet” Be a Star Guest!

And now it’s time for our walk over to Shanghai Disneyland Hotel. From Disneytown you can see across the lake towards Disneyland Hotel, and there is a walkway and bridge to the right that you can walk across that will take you to the backside of the hotel.


Start of the walkway with Shanghai Disneyland Hotel in the background
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Crossing over the bridge now!
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View of the hotel!!! Just outside of the fenced off areas
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There were beautiful pathways with greens and shrubs and plants that were going in. If you were spending an extended time at this hotel, it looks gorgeous!!!


Then we found the gated entrance
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You can see that there is a security guard just on the other side… We hit the call button and the security guard asked us something, to which we assumed he asked us to see our room key. We just replied that we were going to have lunch. Not sure if we got through based on a language barrier or because you are allowed to go for lunch without a room key from the back side, we will never know. Either way they let us through haha.


View of the backside of the hotel now that we are INSIDE the grounds!
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HUGE tiled mosaic fountain! So grand!
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Grand staircase!
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It was starting to feel hot after a long walk… and now add on climbing stairs
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But the walk seemed worth it when you look back at the view. The grounds are HUGE for a hotel that’s not terribly large. Only thing is that there isn’t much shade. On a warmer day than late winter it would probably be SCORCHING out here!


Garden view
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And now that gorgeous look back at the park!
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Wow from this perspective the Roaring Rapids mountain looks soooooo far from Enchanted Storybook Castle. And then to the left you can JUST see Tron! Goodness when you look back and trace your previous day’s running around the entire park it makes you think how crazy you must be haha. Anyways, finally we have decided to head inside!


And this is what you first see! A lounging area and GINORMOUS pillars
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View towards the front
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Closer look at the seating area
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In the middle of the lobby they have this very cute statue
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To be perfectly honest, we didn’t do much research about food at the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel. We were hoping that they would have a cafe of some sort similar to Sunnyside Cafe in Toy Story Hotel. We knew that they had two restaurants, Aurora and Lumiere’s Kitchen. We knew we wouldn’t be doing Aurora since it’s rather fancier and a little bit out of our budget from what we could guess haha. So we decided to take a peek at Lumiere’s, which is down a flight of stairs from the main lobby.


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And a statue of Belle and Beast in the middle of the winding staircase
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Turns out, Lumiere’s kitchen is a character buffet restaurant. And they normally serve breakfast and dinner. Weekends they also do brunch. So since it was now for us, lunch time… they were on the tail end of brunch. And also turns out… more dollars than we were anticipating spending for lunch. We were mostly hoping for something quick, so not a full sit-down. Bummer! There was also a small cafe in the hotel that had some pre-packaged grab and go items… but that wasn’t what we were feeling like grabbing pre-packaged food. SO! Change of plans, we decided to do a teeny bit more exploring, then head back over to Disneytown to grab lunch in familiar territory.


Another fun path (I think this leads to the pool???)
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And we decided to take the bus back to Disneytown haha. Now that we are tired from the walk over, and starting to get really hungry… we didn’t want to make ourselves grumpy.


Look at our cute friends right at the bus stop
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Another view of the hotel but from the bus stop!
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Aurora is up there where it looks all fancy. I can only imagine how beautiful of a restaurant it would be. But alas, we felt a little bit awkward wandering this hotel for some reason, so although it was nice to visit, it was time to go. I’m sure we would have felt differently if we booked rooms to stay, though! I’m not sure how we would have enjoyed staying here, since we’ve been having all our breakfasts at Sunnyside Cafe. Didn’t seem like we would have been able to get something similar here. At least, not price wise. Would have loved to have tried something here though. It looks like a different hotel experience than Toy Story Hotel. One day!!!






Up next… Finally lunch! And the answer to our big question since arriving at Shanghai Disneyland… What IS Bread Talk / Toast Box???
 
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Day 4 [part 4]: Lunch! … What IS Bread Talk/Toast Box? Seven Dwarfs Mine Train!


Why was it so important to us to know what this Bread Talk/Toast Box is? There is a building in the middle of Disneytown that has two sides to it. One side says Bread Talk and the other side says Toast Box. But the bags that come out have both names, so we assume it’s the same thing. But what the most intriguing thing is… it seemed like every single Chinese person visiting the park was carrying bags of Bread Talk/Toast Box and carrying them into the park, and the place was packed with people. We’d never heard of this place before, so it didn’t occur to us to check it out. But literally everyone was carrying Bread Talk/Toast Box. We watched people go through security with it, put the bags into their day bags, etc.


SO when we got to Disneytown we figured why not go and take a look. Turns out… Bread Talk/Toast Box is a BAKERY! (We figured it must be since it was called Bread Talk… but we thought it sold just straight up bread. Maybe sandwiches.) Have you ever been in an Asian bakery? OMG! ALL OF THE CUTE STUFF AND TASTY SMELLING BUNS AND PASTRIES! One side was the bakery side, and the other side was pre-packaged goods like sandwiches, cakes, and beverages.


I don’t know what this is other than some cute alien bun thing… but LOOK HOW CUTE
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After taking this photo we got scolded for taking photos. We completely missed the small signs in every display case that photos are prohibited. Oops. But still I kept the photo because I had to share with you all at how cute the buns are. They also had other things like donuts and biscotti. Pork buns and custard buns. ALL OF IT. Ahhhhh so lovely so lovely. But, it wasn’t what we had in mind for an actual lunch. Definitely a stop to pick up snacks, though. Especially since pricing wise was very affordable. No wonder everyone was grabbing Bread Talk. We left without picking out any buns or treats… but it was definitely in the backs of our minds.


Walking through Disneytown we saw this really cute poster with the Aristocats on it by a bank.
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We decided to go to a place called DonDonYa. I think it’s another Japanese chain, and they serve stuff like udon and curries. Glendon is obsessed with Japanese curry, so we decided this was a good place to stop for lunch.


Menu! Easy to read with English, and photos of their food!
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They had lots of happy hour specials for both food and beverages, including 2 for 1 beer. Brian and Glendon decided why not!
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Glendon got the Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowl Set (It was only 48 Yuan!!!)
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I ordered the Deep Fried Pork Cutlet with Egg Rice Set (58 Yuan)
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Brian decided to try the Wagyu Rice Bowl Set (78 Yuan)
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And Jenna got the Deep-Fried Pork Cutlet Curry Udon Set (92 Yuan)
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Other than Jenna’s set, all of the rest of ours were on happy hour special. It ended up being a really good deal. The sets came with soup (except Jenna’s since her bowl was basically a soup… hers came with a desert), a vegetable thing, and a tofu thing. We tried everything but we didn’t really know what it all was so we didn’t finish the stuff that came in the set. But we did all enjoy our meal! We were all really surprised that Glendon didn’t grab a curry. But poor guy, his stomach still wasn’t the happiest so he thought it was safest to just get teriyaki chicken. At least he wasn’t disappointed. And it was soooooo cheap. Also, funny story. When we ordered the 2 for 1 beer, we said we’ll have 2 beers (for Brian and Glendon.) Somewhere, lost in translation, they thought we wanted 2 orders of the 2 for 1 beer. SO they ended up bringing out 4 huge mugs of beer!!! In the end we all laughed about it. We didn’t argue for them to take it off, Jenna and I decided we could have a little bit. Even at regular price the beers were cheap so it wasn’t too big a deal that we ended up with 4 instead of 2 haha. Unfortunately, we didn’t grab a photo of all of us holding a mug. But that’s okay. Enjoyed our meals. (Brian wasn’t over the moon about his Wagyu. He was hesitant in ordering Wagyu outside of Japan, but the happy hour deal was too inviting haha. He said that he liked it, but probably wouldn’t have thought it was worth it if he paid full price.)


So! After lunch we decided to pop into some stores we hadn’t been to yet, including the candy store: Spoonful of Sugar
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The sign is cute!


And I liked the line entrance sign too
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Inside is just like your regular Disney confectionary though, so there wasn’t anything too special about it. Then, we all decided we wanted to go back to Bread Talk and buy some snacks to bring with us back to the park! It was a lot of fun going through all the displays and trying to figure out what was in everything. We had a little bit of troubles since the English on the signs only gave the name of the bun/pastry, so we went ahead with the guessing game based on what they looked like and the name of the item. Brian pulled out his phone to use a photo translator app but we got scolded because they thought we were trying to take photos, even when we were trying to explain we’re trying to translate to figure out what was in the buns. Anyways, we all decided to pick out a couple of items, so that we could have one right away, and be like a local and bring some into the park for later snacking time!


Waiting in line you walk by the coolers, where you can pick up some of the pre-packaged items.
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I don't know why, but the clear bottles of white milk really amused me.


Success!
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Glendon and Brian both got one of these delicious looking cheese and herb buns, that also has a cute squirrel flag.
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I am a sucker for egg tarts so I HAD to have this delicious looking one
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And Jenna got this bear bun, which turned out to be kind of like a chocolate fluffy cake
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We didn’t notice that there was even a Lego sculpture up on the roof as well!
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When we got back into the park, we decided we should go check Alice in Wonderland again, because Brian wasn’t able to stamp his passport the night before. We went to the exit, and the cast member said the machine was working! But unfortunately, since the machine was at the exit, he said we had to go around from the entrance all the way through in order for us to stamp the passport. SO this time, we did not take our time, and went the shortest route possible to get through. But here are some more pictures of the maze!


View with the mad hatter tea party in the background, can see some of the strung lanterns
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View back towards the Queen of Hearts courtyard.
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I still think it’s neat how different the feel is when you compare going through the maze in the daytime to when we were there last night. I definitely think it’s much more fun of an attraction at night. It might be different when the shrubs grow taller (if they are planning on letting it grow tall, that is). Anyways, now it’s time for us to use our Seven Dwarfs Mine Train fast pass!


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Entering the Mine!
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Believe it or not, none of those photos had a filter put on them, or had any editing done to them. This is what I mean by the whole “smog filter” look! All of those photos look so interesting!!! I love it, even though I know it meant the air was basically brown hahaha.


Ride selfie!
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Omg. The singing is in Mandarin!


Snow White’s cottage
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And cute Dopey basically waving goodbye to us as you leave haha
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I had heard that the version in Shanghai is the same as the one in Disney World, and turns out for the most part, it is! The coaster parts are the same. The dark scene was all in Mandarin though. But it sounds almost exactly the same as in the movie, so if you weren’t paying attention and you are singing the song on your own, you might even have missed the Mandarin haha. But the biggest difference in this ride is that they don’t have the cottage scene at the end of the track. Without it, for some reason, the ride feels soon much shorter.


After exiting the ride, we walked around a little bit and came upon this area here
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This is something special to Shanghai Disneyland, and you don’t really see this in other parks. It’s a picnic area! When the park first opened, they soon realized that a lot of locals didn’t eat at the restaurants in the park. Instead, everyone was bringing food in. Which was never a big issue with the other parks, since the majority of people ate at the many food options inside the park. Anyways, since everyone was bringing in their own food, there wasn’t many places to actually sit down and eat. Which then, people were sitting wherever they could to have their meals. Can you imagine, just everyone getting hungry around the same time, and everyone deciding it’s time for a brought-meal? SO these picnic areas were put in. I guess in the end it keeps the parks cleaner. Anyways. What was funny about this is that, we actually didn’t see too many of these areas being used, and most of them were closed off. Including this one!!! But you can still see people sitting inside. For some reason I thought this was funny haha. Anyways, we decided we wanted to eat the rest of our Bread Talk. So we sat down on this area that faces the picnic area.


BEAR bun!
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I was very excited about this
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Group bun selfie!
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We weren’t in any secret area or anything. We were just by the sword in the stone. But it was nice and quiet
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The Sword in the Stone
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Still to come... Photo adventuring!
 
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Day 4 [part 5]: Photos around the park!

After lunch, we decided to check the wait times on all the rides. It was definitely a busy day. Most rides were at 30 minutes and more (Soaring actually hit 270 minutes at this time of day…) Even Peter Pan, which was literally a walk on the day before, was at 30 minutes. The ONLY thing that was less was Buzz Lightyear. SO we decided why not make our way over there. We can always take photos of everything on our way there, etc. Luckily, we were happy with the number of rides we got in the day before. So we decided, since it seemed mid day on a Saturday was packed with people, we can do the gruelling work of hunting down all the passport machines to fill up Brian’s Passport this afternoon. (The passport tells you which areas of the park the machines are in.)


On our way to Tomorrowland, we got caught right where the parade enters in the park
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But luckily we were near the end of the parade and got to see warrior Mulan again!
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And of course, the music is so catchy that we kept humming the tune along with the parade. I’d say it was pretty cool for us to have gotten to experience the full parade the day before, and from the one watch through we had remembered the tune (still to this day I can hum it out haha). I also love that people in China love the day time parades with the big floats just as much as in North America. I honestly don’t know why I love the parades, but I do think you have to watch every single one of them at least one time, right?


We walked onto Buzz Lightyear
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Then, it was time to hunt down the passport stamping machines! We decided to cut through Gardens of Imagination to get to Adventure Isle for our first two passport machine stops. One in Gardens of Imagination by the Dumbo ride, and one in Adventure Isle, in the gift shop. We’d been seeing them run a few test vehicles on Roaring Rapids, so we were really hoping they would do maybe run a few vehicles in the middle of the afternoon. It was a slightly warmer day!


Caught a photo pass photographer in front of the castle!
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We were definitely the group of crazy Canadians not dressed in heavy winter coats. It had actually hit a “balmy” 14 degrees celsius AND the sun was “out” so with us running around it got a little bit warm! I put these words in quotation marks because although it was warmer, it still wasn’t all that warm. And even though the sun was out, it was a weird experience since the sky had the smog brown filter so you could feel the sun, but not directly. Does that make any sense?? But anyways, because it was “warmer” we got ourselves kind of psyched up and thought, FOR SURE they’ll do a few runs of Roaring Rapids!


Aww, what a sad sight
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Ahhhh, look at how much fun this ride looks
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We asked a cast member, and they said they would not have it running for the day, they're just doing testing. Roaring Rapids was definitely on our list of “unique to Shanghai” rides that we were really excited to experience. Prior to our trip, there was no definite yes or no as to whether or not it would be open during the time we would be there, so we remained hopeful that yes it would be open. But alas, it was not in our cards.


Here is another view of the ropes course with the mountain in the background
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And a different view!
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Here is a map of the actual ropes course
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In our wandering of hunting down the passport stamping machines… we walked by a meet and greet area and it was ZOOTOPIA! NICK WILDE AND JUDY HOPPS WERE MEETING!!!! The meet and greet is kind of close to Soaring… but the line up was so long technically it would have covered up the meet and greet entrance. We almost didn’t see the area, but the cast members had partitioned the line so that the entrance for the meet and greet stayed clear. We decided to line up for Nick Wilde first, only because the line was shorter.


SO MUCH FUN!
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And then when we hurried over to the other line… the cast member told us that Judy was finishing her last meet, and then going for a break. AWW MAN!!! So sad. We asked who was meeting next, and they said Jungle Book. So we decided okay maybe we can wait and see who will come out. Which was good, because at least we got to SEE Judy…


She looks so cute…
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There were a few groups ahead of us still, so we only wanted to stay if it was Baloo. Cast member brings out…. King Louie. I think all four of us said rather loudly, “King Louie?! Darn…” Ooops! For some reason we just weren’t in the mood to meet King Louie, so we decided to leave. Apparently he’s not a favourite character to meet, because other people in the line turned around to leave also. We’re not entirely sure if that’s because he’s unpopular, or because we may have exclaimed a little too loudly our disappointment haha. SO next stop we decided to pop into Treasure Cove.




WOW! There was a HUGE lineup for turkey legs! Earlier in the day, around 10am, we had walked passed this area and we noticed a few people in line. We thought okay that’s not too many people maybe we can see what this line up is for. We looked at the stand… TURKEY LEGS. Okay maybe we can give turkey legs in shanghai a try! But keep in mind, this was 10am, and the stand didn’t open until noon. People were waiting for TWO hours to get turkey legs?! We didn’t want to spend 2 hours standing in a line for turkey legs haha. SO that’s what we came to now that it was afternoon. Loads and loads and loads of people. It’s not a 2 hour long lineup, but still it’s huge for a food cart!


We saw lots of people sitting around eating the turkey legs. They did look tasty and smell so good.
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Some silly photos Glendon and I took while we waited for Brian to get his stamps
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We didn’t notice this guy the day before!
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From here, we decided to go back towards the castle. There was supposed to be a machine somewhere around the castle, so instead of going directly off to the right from Treasure Cove into Fantasyland, we headed back to the centre of the park towards the great Enchanted Storybook Castle.


To which… we discovered THIS
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There is an official Treasure Cove land sign?! How on earth, from an entire day of exploring the day before, did we miss this HUGE GIANT PIRATE SHIP OF A SIGN?! Plus it never occurred to any of us that every time we entered Treasure Cove, we didn’t walk by a sign. We kind of laughed ourselves silly. We had never actually gone directly to Treasure Cove since entering the park. We had always entered it via another land. Never once had we gone into the park, to the castle, and then towards Treasure Cove. We had always entered either through Adventure Isle, or from Tomorrowland then through Fantasyland. But hey, here it is, and we finally got to appreciate it. And we love it!


Heading towards the castle, the sun was starting to get lower in the sky. I thought this was such a phenomenon. The sky actually had an orange-brown to it.


Look at the interesting glow the sun has behind the castle
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I have no idea why I am so fascinated by this. Or why I’m obsessed with the look of all our photos with the sun out behind smog. For some reason everything just looks so different. I never thought I could think of smog as magical. But my photos… they kind of do look a little magical.


I don’t know why I have this photo but here we go walking through the castle
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The stamp machine is close by to where Voyage to the Crystal Grotto is, so here is a photo from the castle where they have this cute set up in the water by this boardwalk where they have this boat from Tangled
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Omg. Golden hour in Shanghai Disneyland.
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Literally obsessed haha. Look at all that extra golden-ness. (I seem to be golden crazy.) So obsessed I even took selfies with the golden-sunlit castle.


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ONWARDS TO TOMORROWLAND! (Earlier in the day before lunch Brian ran over to Tron to get us a fast pass.) On our way, we needed to use a washroom. So we stumbled upon this little area that’s not really marked on the maps.


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Interesting little future food serving place? You can just see the Tron building back there. And there is fencing to the right of this path. From what we had heard… eventually this path will lead to the future Toy Story land! There were cranes going behind the fence so they were definitely working on stuff there. Interesting and exiting to see how they’ve got Toy Story land planned for Shanghai!!!


It wasn’t QUITE time for our fast pass yet, so what do we do? Ride Buzz Lightyear of course. Twice.
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(OMG I actually had a higher score than Glendon?!?!)


But then next round he goes and REALLY ups his score haha
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(This was an exciting round because all 4 of us broke 1 million on the same ride through!)


Fast Pass time!
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My other obsession: The magic wall during the lineup for Tron.


Glendon wanted to sit at the back again. I would have preferred to have been able to be on the last bike before the seated vehicle, but he didn’t want to upset his stomach. That’s okay, because I decided to be bad and I took my phone out of the pouch once we left the station. And I took a selfie video of us during the launch hahaha.






Up next… Our last night in Shanghai Disneyland. Already?!
 
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Nice couple of updates! You guys seem to be having a great trip. It is really cool to get to see the differences from the US parks since it is very unlikely I will ever get there, much as I would want to.

It's cool to know they have some regular seats at the back of the Tron ride for those who can't get on the bikes.
 
Nice couple of updates! You guys seem to be having a great trip. It is really cool to get to see the differences from the US parks since it is very unlikely I will ever get there, much as I would want to.

It's cool to know they have some regular seats at the back of the Tron ride for those who can't get on the bikes.
Yes!!! It was a lot of fun for sure! I think that if you can ever do this in the future, definitely try. We knew that it would be tough for us to do more than one trip, so that's why we planned to do all of the Asia parks in one go. Took a lot of planning and saving but worth it in the end!
 
Loving this trip report! Looks like the trip of a lifetime, and I can't wait to read more
Thanks for following along, and glad to hear you are enjoying! Sorry it's taking me a long time to get this guy finished, seems like I have sooooo much to go through haha.
 
Day 4 [part 6]: OUR LAST NIGHT IN THE PARK?! ALREADY?!


After riding Tron, it was starting to get a little bit dark. And by this time, it has occurred to us that goodness, these are our last few hours in Shanghai Disneyland. Whoa! Our first day it seemed like we had all the time in the world. Now that it’s our second NIGHT, it all seemed to have flown by. We decided we better hit up our other Shanghai favourite: Pirates.


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Nighttime fortress
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Here we go!
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Front row!!!
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Jack Sparrow
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Underwater scene


I love this photo because it shows you their beautiful mix of screens with their HUGE set piece
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Davy Jones animatronic




By this time of night, the wait times started to go down (exception being Soaring) so we decided to go and ride it again!


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And this time, since it was likely our very last ride on Pirates, Glendon wouldn’t let me take any more photos haha. Experience it as it is!


But I had to. I loved this view
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I know I’ve said it already and that it doesn’t look like much, but this transition from the screen room to the giant pirate ship battle scene… AHHHH I love it. I get so excited thinking about this ride. LOVE LOVE LOVE Battle for Sunken Treasure! Every single time we were on it, my eyes just wanted to look at everything. It definitely lived up to all its hype.


Here is the nighttime shot of the snack booth that serves the seafood churros
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Driftwood Derwin’s Snackin’ Kraken


Another night time view of fortress and wall art
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We needed to RUN over to Tron to get in our night time ride of Tron. We didn’t have a fast pass, but we were hoping to be able to get in 2 more rides before they closed down for the night.


Oh Tomorrowland, what a beauty you are at night!
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We all rode on our stomachs since it was likely our last ride. We didn’t even stop to take a photo of our ride photo, because we ran through as fast as we could. Unfortunately, we missed the cut off just by 2 minutes. They only let on one more ride vehicle after the one we got on, so really we didn’t have a chance haha. A little bit sad, but ultimately we felt we got a good amount of ride throughs of Tron in within the 2 days we had in the park haha. So for the last little bit, we took photos around Tomorrowland!


Tron Tron Tron
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This was also our only chance to finally get a photo at the photo op with the test ride vehicles by the entrance to the ride
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(I didn’t get the memo to look like we’re on a poster for the grid haha)​


This was also a really neat time because basically Tomorrowland has cleared out. The fireworks show was on, so just about the entire population inside of Disneyland was in the hub to watch the show. We got a neat view from Tomorrowland!


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To be perfectly honest, since we’d already watched the fireworks show, I thought of Tron and Tomorrowland with no people in it felt was what I wanted to look at more. While I love fireworks, the Shanghai show isn’t the same calibre as any of our favourite Disney fireworks back in Florida or California. SO more Tomorrowland photos.


Ahhhhh Tron
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And Tomorrowland stairs
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Finished watching the fireworks show from Tomorrowland
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Can you tell I loved being in Tomorrowland? I love the lights. I love the atmosphere. I love seeing Enchanted Storybook Castle in the distance. Ahhhhh how lucky I felt to have been able to stand there in that moment. But alas, we were now drained, and we needed to pack for leaving the next day. Plus we still hadn’t eaten a dinner yet haha. We just wanted to get in as much as possible coming back into the park. So it was time for us to head back to the hotel. (Brian stayed a little bit more to try and get some more photos before getting officially kicked out)


Goodbye Steamboat Willie Mickey!
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Steamboat Willie fountain whistling




Up next…
Arriving back at the hotel, Brian’s closed park photos.
Then… our day in the CITY before officially leaving Shanghai!
 
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Day 4 [part 7]: And that’s a wrap! Our last sleep in Toy Story Hotel




Ahhhhh, it didn’t occur to us just how exhausted we were until we got back to the hotel. Our original plan was to pack for our travels for the next day. Instead, we got out of our day clothes into something comfy. Then we went down to Sunnyside Cafe to grab something to eat for a very very late dinner. Brian joined us in the room not too long after we got in, so we all went down to eat together.


Hotel hallway carpet
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More carpet
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We were on the galactic wing, so this is what the flooring in our hallway looked like
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The other wing was the western side, so it was covered in Woody and Jessie and Bullseye where as our side was all spaceships, aliens, and Buzz. Personally, I prefer the galactic side! How do you choose anything over the aliens? Plus the colour scheme was a little bit more pleasing on the eyes. Galactic was all blue and green, where as the western side seemed to be a lot of… red haha. The actual hallways themselves seemed to look…. darker!


Green hallway
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For dinner I got some short rib fried noodles dish thing
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And when we looked up, we saw that the guys that do TDR Explorer were sitting right by us. =O. What were the chances that they’d be there in Shanghai at the same time as us AND also having a late dinner? Hahahahaha I wanted to say hi but I didn’t know how to not be a weirdo. “HI YOU GUYS ARE TDR EXPLORER HI SOMETIMES I FOLLOW YOUR BLOG BUT MOSTLY I LIKE YOUR INSTAGRAM. MAYBE WE WILL SEE YOU WHEN WE ARE IN TOKYO IN TWO DAYS WILL YOU BE BACK IN JAPAN BY THEN OR DO YOU PLAN TO DO MORE OF SHANGHAI OKAY NICE TO SAY HI BYE NOW” Yeah that’s how I imagine it would have gone ahaha. So instead, I just did the whole “o.o” from afar. At one point I did the awkward wave from afar thing. Thank goodness… no one saw hahaha.


Aliens kite on the ceiling
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Not going to lie… we were tired and needed to think about what we’d want to wear the next day and what to pack, etc. So we indeed went downstairs in the room slippers. No one said anything, so I guess that it was okay.


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Our plan for the next day was wake up at a decent time, finish packing, have breakfast, check out, leave our bags at the hotel, and head out for the city! So it was an uneventful night at the hotel as we just wanted to sleep.

Here are the photos from Brian on his big camera from after park closing before he got officially kicked out


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Next up….
Adventures into Shanghai, the city! Pre-Adventures first.
 
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Day 5 [part 1]: Pre-Adventuring into the city, AKA final wanderings of Toy Story Hotel


We didn’t have a set time for departure (other than checking out on time), so we just woke up and finished packing. Then, we went back downstairs to Sunnyside Cafe to have breakfast before heading back up to grab our bags for checkout!


Some more views of the character kits on the ceiling
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We were actually happy to come down to Sunnyside Cafe everyday to have our morning breakfast in Shanghai! It became a little bit of a home haha. Plus the prices made it make so much sense.


I got a pork knuckle noodle soup
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Glendon got the same curry noodle dish he got the first day
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While we were still on the hotel wifi, we decided to check the weather and air quality. Prior to coming, the air quality and amount of smog really worried me since I have minor asthma that I’ve previously had problems with (during my last trip to Beijing.) I was worried I’d get pretty sick in the city… We did come prepared with some of those 3M masks just in case… but who really wants to wear those out in public??? Only if it meant not being sick ahah.


Unfortunately…
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OMG!!! That’s what the internet gave us when we looked it up ahahaha. We laughed at the cartoon, but also that looks a little worrisome! But the sun was supposed to be out so we were still hoping for a good day. Visibility didn’t look terrible so we were hopeful it’d get better throughout the day!


Big Woody statue outside
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We walked up the stairs from Sunnyside Cafe up to the lobby level because this wall mural is cute
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After breakfast we went back to our rooms to grab our bags and… check out…


View from our room
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Visibility doesn’t look too bad we can see the park! (Tron show building and just barely the spires from the castle haha)


Elevator ride from our room floor to lobby


Check out was seamless and guest services was great with holding our bags for the day. While we waited for the bus to take us to the metro station, we decided to do a last wander through the resort!


“Pool area”
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IT’S SO CUTE
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There’s an alien on the side too
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Technically the pool area was closed since it’s still cold out. It’s not much of a pool area, more a splash zone haha. Either way, the entire area is alien themed and so cute. At least they let us go and take photos!


Love the theming, the popsicle stick benches are even partially coloured like they were actually from dripping popsicles
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(Can also see sort of a green roof in the background)


Apparently these areas used to be open for exploring and walking? But they’re closed off now
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View of the staircase again!
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View from a walkway down into Sunnyside Cafe
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Featuring Slinky kite


Butt end of slinky
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WHY IS EVERYTHING SO CUTE
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Even these signs !!! x.x
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Fire hydrant and fire extinguisher
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Aaaaaaand right when we were just finished exploring LOOK
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(All the staff members beckoned us to go outside with them)


Our own private meet and greet!!!
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Hahahaha I couldn’t help but laugh at the way they walk


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Crew photo!
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Thank you! Thank you!
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And then we went to get our photos in the door entrance where it looks like a toy box!
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(I didn’t get the memo to look like a toy)​


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I guess it’s goodbye
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Brian and I were so sad… We kept meaning to walk out to this sign so we could get a close up photo but we forgot and never got around to it… So from the window of the bus it is!
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GOODBYEEEE
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(Excuse my finger…)


And we have arrived at the metro station…
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So sad to see this BEHIND us
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And okay. Now time for us to try and figure out… how to get to where we were planning on heading???
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JK. We’re okay, they have a map with English as well
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TICKET PURCHASED!!!
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AND HERE WE GOOOOOOO





Up next….. ADVENTURING INTO THE CITY OF SHANGHAI!!!!
 
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So many great photos!

That air quality analysis would have worried me big time.

How do you get so many photos in one post? I seem to hit my limit in my reports with many fewer.
 
So many great photos!

That air quality analysis would have worried me big time.

How do you get so many photos in one post? I seem to hit my limit in my reports with many fewer.
I think there's a media limit of 35? I usually use close to the full 35 in each post!
 

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