CaptainCook
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 7, 2009
After almost a year of planning, we are only 3 weeks away from our trip to China! I thought I'd document our story here in case it can help anyone else with their trip planning. There certainly is a dearth of information available for planning trips to the Disney parks in China as compared to WDW and DL.
We are a Canadian family of 4 with two kids - DS(13) and DD(11). We're trying to see some of the world's big sights while our kids can (and will) travel with us.
The planning for this trip began as an idea several years ago, when our kids were smaller. The itinerary intrigued us as a 'maybe someday' idea. That was before Shanghai Disneyland was open, and Shanghai wasn't on the earliest drafts of our itinerary.
But after multiple visits to WDW, a stop at DL on a California road trip a few years ago, and then a day spent at Disneyland Paris last year while on vacation in Europe... we realized that (a) we were halfway through the Disney Parks bucket list, (b) our kids were now old enough for China, and (c) we could knock off another two parks by visiting Shanghai and Hong Kong.
We have never traveled with a tour group before, and did look into using one for this trip. There are some pretty cheap trips to China available these days. But ultimately the itineraries didn't meet our needs, and we decided to strike out on our own. This will be our first trip to Asia and our first trip to a country that does not use the Roman alphabet so... yeah. It's gonna be interesting. No counting on just sounding out words on street signs to make it through!
At the end of the day, Disney constitutes just a small part of our trip. We'll have one day at Shanghai Disneyland to start, and one day at Hong Kong Disneyland to end, and in between will be all of the historical and cultural and scenic stuff. We probably wouldn't be going to China if we weren't interested in seeing the country as well as the parks.
We are a Canadian family of 4 with two kids - DS(13) and DD(11). We're trying to see some of the world's big sights while our kids can (and will) travel with us.
The planning for this trip began as an idea several years ago, when our kids were smaller. The itinerary intrigued us as a 'maybe someday' idea. That was before Shanghai Disneyland was open, and Shanghai wasn't on the earliest drafts of our itinerary.
But after multiple visits to WDW, a stop at DL on a California road trip a few years ago, and then a day spent at Disneyland Paris last year while on vacation in Europe... we realized that (a) we were halfway through the Disney Parks bucket list, (b) our kids were now old enough for China, and (c) we could knock off another two parks by visiting Shanghai and Hong Kong.
We have never traveled with a tour group before, and did look into using one for this trip. There are some pretty cheap trips to China available these days. But ultimately the itineraries didn't meet our needs, and we decided to strike out on our own. This will be our first trip to Asia and our first trip to a country that does not use the Roman alphabet so... yeah. It's gonna be interesting. No counting on just sounding out words on street signs to make it through!
At the end of the day, Disney constitutes just a small part of our trip. We'll have one day at Shanghai Disneyland to start, and one day at Hong Kong Disneyland to end, and in between will be all of the historical and cultural and scenic stuff. We probably wouldn't be going to China if we weren't interested in seeing the country as well as the parks.