Trip Report!! ABD Enchanted China 6/4-15/2017 Update 8/11/18! Day 10 - Shanghai à la Carte

We are currently on our China ABD sitting in the HK airport waiting for our flight to Beijing. So fun to read your trip report and relive our last few days. We were definitely warned via email and by our guides to dress nicely for our welcome dinner. We did not have to traipse through the kitchen. Ha ha! We have Joe as a guide as well as Christian from Cousin Orville's 2014 trip and Bruce was our local guide as well. We have a great group of adventurers and this is the first day we are feeling less effects of jet lag. The weather is hot and humid in Hong Kong. We have only had a couple brief periods of rain but so far have been uneffected by it. HKDL was very fun and oppressively humid even up until the fireworks at 9pm.

So excited for the rest of the trip. We love ABD so far!! Already taking about where our next ABD adventure will be!

Say "hi" to Joe for me, too! So glad you guys are enjoying so far despite the HK heat and humidity. Hopefully it will only get better as it did for us. How many in your group?

Wonderful trip report, Tobi! You really capture the spirit and essence of the experience.

I agree that the tour could skip Stanley Market because it took a long time to get there and it was a pretty lame start to the adventure. I would much rather have had extra time at HK Disneyland. I got to see pretty much everything there I wanted to with the extra add-on day at the park before meeting the group, but could have had another few hours to better pace myself in the intense heat.

Also, the first night meeting ABD there wasn't time to explore HK on your own. I thought we would have all this time after the Welcome Dinner and booked the Symphony of Lights Harbour Cruise, but the dinner didn't get going until after 7:00 PM, so we had to dash out and miss the dinner in order to meet up with our cruise tour. I heard the dinner was amazing, so I was sorry to miss it and the chance to get to know our fellow travellers. On the other hand, the Harbour Cruise was really fun and memorable, and we didn't get the opportunity to see the Symphony any other time because we stayed out at the Park the first add-on night.

I'm divided on Stanley Market. I thought it was okay, and in hindsight I wish I'd taken more advantage of it because there wasn't much shopping later. But, if they could do a tour of the old town instead, I'd be all on board. I had the pre-day at HK Disneyland so maybe I would feel stronger if I only had that one afternoon. I wish we had a chance to see the Symphony of Lights--like SayHello we missed it. I love SayHello's suggestion of trying to incorporate it into that first night. That would be great, although I wouldn't want to miss that restaurant so it would have to be both.
 
Excited to be reading your trip report! China has been on my list for sometime and I'm hoping that I get to do it someday. The list just keeps growing and growing..... :-)
 
Yes, it was definitely less stressful having been to HK Disneyland the add-on day prior, although I think the ABD could have had the earlier dinner Day One and even organized all of us to see the Symphony of Lights Harbour Tour as a first-night activity. If we didn't go up to Victoria Peak and go on the Star Ferry, I'd have little idea what Hong Kong even looked like, as the best perspective is from the water (or looking over it). By having a later dinner, the group missed a fun event, and I missed the welcoming dinner - an earlier dinner solves both problems.
 
Thanks so much for your trip report. My 14 yr old daughter and I leave in just a few weeks for our first ABD trip. Since I've heard such wonderful things about Country Kitchen, I decided to make reservations in advance. Can you tell me the approximate time you returned to the hotel so I can make a reservation?

Thanks!!
Leah
We are in Beijing now. Yesterday we went to the Forbidden City. Due to the heat and a long lunch, we did not leave until they closed at 5pm. We walked a mile to get on the bus and did not arrive back at the Rosewood until 6:45. Rush hour traffic in Beijing is unreal! I would not make reservations before 6:45 for this day. Today is the Great Wall and our guides say we should be back about 4:30. I will post after we get back if it is much different.
 


Yes, it was definitely less stressful having been to HK Disneyland the add-on day prior, although I think the ABD could have had the earlier dinner Day One and even organized all of us to see the Symphony of Lights Harbour Tour as a first-night activity. If we didn't go up to Victoria Peak and go on the Star Ferry, I'd have little idea what Hong Kong even looked like, as the best perspective is from the water (or looking over it). By having a later dinner, the group missed a fun event, and I missed the welcoming dinner - an earlier dinner solves both problems.
I agree. We were sad we missed the Sympony of Lights. We thought we would catch them the night we arrived but our flight landed an hour late.

It would be better to start the dinner earlier as well because of jet lag. It ran long and several of the younger kids left to go to bed in the middle of dinner and adults were fading fast as well.
 
Say "hi" to Joe for me, too! So glad you guys are enjoying so far despite the HK heat and humidity. Hopefully it will only get better as it did for us. How many in your group?
Yes, we are loving this trip! We started with 30 which is a great size. We are now up to 35 due to a family that unfortunately missed their connection to Hong Kong and had to meet up with us in Beijing. Will say Hi to Joe for you and @sayhello . He is great! Both of our guides are amazing which is helping make the trip that much more enjoyable!
 
We are in Beijing now. Yesterday we went to the Forbidden City. Due to the heat and a long lunch, we did not leave until they closed at 5pm. We walked a mile to get on the bus and did not arrive back at the Rosewood until 6:45. Rush hour traffic in Beijing is unreal! I would not make reservations before 6:45 for this day. Today is the Great Wall and our guides say we should be back about 4:30. I will post after we get back if it is much different.

Hi there! Here in Beijing with Kris and ABD and have to echo what she said. Our reservation for Country Kitchen after the Forbidden City was 6:30 and we basically had to walk up to the restaurant straight from the bus. No problem, but not ideal! Lol. Christian felt the traffic was somewhat worse then usual yesterday, but to be safe I would not book anything before 7. They will give a 15 minute or so buffer on your reservation, but indicated that we couldn't be seated much later then that!
 


Thanks, SayHello for this report! I'm loving following along as we travel the same footsteps with our guides Joe and Christian! We have 3 DIS people on this tour and a great group as a whole!
 
Thanks, SayHello for this report! I'm loving following along as we travel the same footsteps with our guides Joe and Christian! We have 3 DIS people on this tour and a great group as a whole!
Glad you're enjoying!! I guess I'd better get my Beijing days up soon! :)

Sayhello
 
SayHello!

I am in Alaska right now and ABD Guide Robyn said to say, "Hi!" We are both excited to hear more about your China experience!
Oh, wow!! That is *SO* cool! Thanks! Please say "Hi!!" back to Robyn for me! :) I should have Beijing up pretty soon.

ENJOY ALASKA! It's a fabulous trip, and Robyn is wonderful!!

Sayhello
 
Hi
Thanks for writing this, really enjoying it. We're going on a similar trip in October and this is really giving us a feel for what to expect.
Unfortunately I cannot see the photos just an error message, saying please update your account to enable 3rd party viewing. Is this something I need to do?
Thanks again.
 
Hi
Thanks for writing this, really enjoying it. We're going on a similar trip in October and this is really giving us a feel for what to expect.
Unfortunately I cannot see the photos just an error message, saying please update your account to enable 3rd party viewing. Is this something I need to do?
Thanks again.
Oh, crap. Photobucket, after 14 years, has decided that they don't like me using my account for "3rd party viewing". But if I get a paid subscription, it's OK. I'm going to have to find out how much it is. I'd HATE to have to re-host all my damned photos to another service, and change all the links on all my Trip Reports. But I really hate extortion, too. :( Shoot. Well, Beijing may not be posted for a few days until I resolve this...

Sayhello

ETA: :eek::eek::eek::eek: Cripes!! The plan that will let me do "3rd party viewing", the "Plus500" plan, is $400 a year!! :faint::faint::faint::faint: No way in Hell am I paying that. Damn! Looks like I'm shopping for a new photo hosting site, or breaking my reports up into small enough chunks that I can embed the photos here directly. This really, really sucks!

What photo hosting services do you folks use?
 
Last edited:
Continuation of Day 0, 1 & 2. Had to break it up into smaller posts. New stuff will be posted soon!

Ralph, Joe, Bruce and the Paddle of Power.

IMG_0093.jpg

There had been 3 choices for lunch. I believe it was a chicken dish, a burger and a vegetable curry. I had the chicken, but I heard good things about all 3 dishes.

After lunch, we found out, unfortunately, that the famous Peak Tram was closed for refurbishment, so we would not be riding the tram down. It was news to our Guides, also. So we headed back to our motorcoach, which took us to the Star Ferry Pier to catch the Ferry across Victoria Harbor.

IMG_0098.jpg

It was a fun ride. I saw this boat also crossing the Harbor, and thought it looked pretty cool. I wonder if it’s a Pirate Cruise?

IMG_0101.jpg

IMG_0112.jpg

The group, looking back across Victoria Harbor to Hong Kong Island.

Group 1.jpg

We made a quick pit stop in the terminal building, and something happened to me that has never happened before on any of the 8 ABDs I’ve previously taken. I was one of the last ones to get to the bathroom, and waited for a Western toilet, and ended up the last one out. Now that is hardly remarkable. Anyone who’s traveled with me will tell you I’m frequently the last one out. But when I got out, no-one was there. Zip. Zilch. No-one. And I wasn’t 100% sure which exit was the one we were supposed to go out of. I ran to one exit, but I was pretty sure it was the way we’d come in, and I didn’t see anyone there. I ran around, found the other exit, and there was still no-one there. Panicking just a *little* bit, I pulled out my phone and started to dial one of the Guides’ phones (I’d fortunately put them in my Contacts the first night). But just as I was dialing, Joe came running up, dialing his own phone. He was so apologetic. They’d apparently gotten all the way to the bus before they did a head count & realized someone was missing! I think he was way more freaked out than I was. I have to say, it *never* happened again! There was always someone waiting there when I got out of the restroom, and frequent head-counting!

Our next stop was – Hong Kong Disneyland! It was a gorgeous day, but by this time, it had gotten pretty seriously humid. We took family photos under the Welcome sign, and then headed into the park.

IMG_0129.jpg

It took a while to get all our tickets, and get through the gates, but then we were set loose. I was really pretty hot and didn’t want to do any of the rides that would upset my stomach, so decided to do some solo touring through the park. I caught a bit of the parade that was going on, and a few shots of the pretty miniscule castle.

IMG_0132.jpg

IMG_0137.jpg

IMG_0138.jpg

IMG_0140.jpg


Continued in next post.
 
The lines weren’t quite as short as they’d been the day before, and I tried to do rides that were mostly indoors and had short lines, like Winnie the Pooh and PhilharMagic, which I ended up sitting through 3 times just because it was so cool inside.

IMG_0142.jpg

One of the Fastpasses we got was for a show called “Mickey and the Wondrous Book”. (I’m sorry, I don’t remember what other Fastpasses we got; I’m sure someone else will chime in here). We were directed to a side entrance (there was actually quite a line for this show) and seated up front for the show. It was all in Chinese, but they had a display with the translation up over part of the stage. You could tell mostly what was going on even without the translations, though. It was a very cute show that had Goofy & Mickey trying to find Olaf throughout the settings of various Disney movies.

IMG_0149.jpg

IMG_0151.jpg

IMG_0154.jpg

One thing I started to notice though, was that I was becoming truly exhausted. I stumbled walking out of the show, and bumped into the person in front of me. I decided to try one last ride – Mystic Manor again, which was a very cool ride.

IMG_0155.jpg
After I got off of Mystic Manor, though, it was obvious I just could not keep going. I was literally falling asleep on my feet. I felt it was the heat and humidity. I suppose it was possible it was a bit of jetlag, too, but I had felt fine jetlag-wise since the day before, so I’m not so sure about that. Anyways, there was about an hour left until the meeting time for the fireworks, which I really wanted to see, but I just didn't think I could make it the way I was. So I took myself to First Aid and asked if there was somewhere I could lay down & take a nap for about an hour. They took me to a cool, quiet room, where, of course, several doctors showed up, and one of them examined me, I’m sure to make sure it wasn’t heat stroke or something. Luckily it wasn’t, and they just left me in the room to nap peacefully. I set the alarm on my phone, and then, just to be sure, called CG and asked her to call me in time to make it to the fireworks (fortunately, First Aid was very close to the meeting point for the fireworks, which was the hub in front of the castle). I managed to get in a nice nap, which REALLY helped, and then was woken up by CG’s text. I got up, thanked everyone at First Aid, and headed out to our fabulous meeting point.

I had to work my way through quite a bit of crowd to get to our roped off area, but fortunately they had given us special wrist bands that identified us, and I just flashed that and one of the Cast Members raised up the rope for me to duck under. The temperature was much more tolerable at that point, too, so we all enjoyed a wonderful view of the teeny-tiny castle and the beautiful fireworks display.

IMG_0165.jpg

After that, we met up at the fountain just outside of the park.

IMG_0169.jpg

We then headed out to our waiting motorcoach, and then back to the Peninsula to pack in preparation for our flight to Beijing tomorrow!

IMG_0172.jpg

Next: Day 3 – Beijing or Bust!
 
Last edited:
Actually, I like the quality of the photos when uploaded directly to the DIS much better than those hosted on photobucket. So photobucket can just stuff themselves. "3rd party viewing" is the only thing I ever used that account for, so I'll be deleting it as soon as I get all my other photos re-hosted.

Sayhello
 
Last edited:
I agree! It infuriates me when something that ised to be free all of a sudden costs a ridiculous amount! I get it, it costs money for them on their servers and it is a business with the intention to make money,but to ask $40 a month is a bit extreme. I would think you'd have more luck asking something a bit more reasonable and getting more people to use your service.

Looks like you found a work around though and the pics do look great. Excited to read the rest
 
$400 for something that used to be free? That is crazy! The pictures look great from the direct upload. So glad that worked out!
 
Since I can only do 10 photos per post now, I'm going to post Day 3 here, and then will post Day 4 a little while from now. There's no point in doubling up short (travel) days.

Day 3 – Beijing or Bust!

So today we left the Peninsula Hong Kong to head to Beijing! I don’t think it was a particularly early morning. As we all met up after breakfast to get ready to head out, CG mentioned something about her DD finding out that the really lovely carved soap container in the room actually was a gift/souvenir! So I ran back to the registration desk, and they said yes, it was a gift, so they let me run back up to the room and grab mine. It’s quite pretty!

IMG_2297.jpg

The other thing I didn’t think to ask about was the little plastic ABD suitcase that accompanied the chocolates in my room. BUT! But I discovered, when I looked through the Adventure Guides’ photos, that WHAT?? It was CHOCOLATE??? I thought it was cheap plastic! It never occurred to me that it was, itself, chocolate!! I don’t know if I’m happy or sad. It’s not like I had a dearth of chocolate to eat, but if I’d wrapped it up & stuck it in my suitcase, chances are, it would not have survived for 11 days in my suitcase! I wonder if anyone took theirs? The staff probably would have laughed if I asked about taking it…

IMG_0077.jpg

So we headed out to the Hong Kong Airport. This was the only time for the internal flights that we had to check ourselves and our luggage in. Even though Hong Kong is part of China, it’s still like a separate country in a lot of ways. So it was full check-in with our passports. (For the rest of the flights, “Tinkerbell”, assisted by Joe, would check us in -- we’d have to turn in our passports to him -- and we’d be handed our boarding passes and passports when we got to the airport.)

We finally found out what our Gate number was, and were given some time to shop & buy lunch before we had to meet up at the gate (which was “downstairs” from the shopping area). I went to the Disney Store there, and bought a cute little Mickey keychain (with Mickey in a Chinese outfit) to put on my gel seat cushion so that it would not blend in with the seat, and I would remember to take it with me.

P1040254.jpg

I then managed to find some food for lunch. I then headed downstairs to the Gate. Only it turned out, the Gate was not just “downstairs”! The Gate was down the escalator, across the room, back up the escalator, onto a train, back up, etc, etc! It was *MUCH* farther away than any of us thought it was. I went from having plenty of time to panicking about just how long it was going to take me to get there. Luckily, I got there in time, as did everyone else.

It was a relatively uneventful flight (they all were) and we arrived in Beijing! Only once we *finally* got off our plane, after *endless* taxi-ing, we had to use outside steps to deplane, and then boarded a bus and were then driven half-way around the airport to the actual terminal where we were supposed to have deplaned. And that bus was a real “welcome” to Beijing! People just kept shoving their way on, and shoving their way on, until that bus was completely jam-packed. I didn’t think they’d get the door closed!

I’m trying to remember, but I think think the flight had been delayed enough (plus all the time it took them to find a spot to unload us, then bus us to the correct terminal) that we went straight to Duck de Chine from the airport. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me! Duck de Chine specializes in Peking Duck. For those of you not familiar with it, Peking duck is made from duck that has been seared in a fire so that the skin is carmelized, and it is sliced thin in a ceremonial fashion. It is served with very thin pancakes that you put the duck, sliced leeks, cucumbers, radishes and sauce in, then roll up into a little duck burrito.

IMG_0185.jpg

IMG_0190.jpg

IMG_0192.jpg

It was OK, but really not my thing. After all the hype, I was expecting something absolutely luscious. But the fact that it wasn't amazing didn't stop me from eating it! After eating several little burritos, then they started bringing out more food!! LOTS more food! I thought the Peking Duck *was* the meal, but apparently, it was only the start! And I don’t think I was the only person who thought that! The food was all delicious, and of course you had to try everything, so we all left dinner that night thoroughly stuffed!

Then we headed to our hotel – the amazingly gorgeous Rosewood Beijing!

This hotel was just beautiful, and the rooms were spacious and inviting, and just wonderful. I told the others, all they’d have to do was add a kitchen, and you could move into it as a lovely apartment! I think it was pretty much everyone's favorite hotel of the trip.

The dressing area/walk-in closet:

IMG_0206.jpg

Floor-to-ceiling windows with remote-controlled blinds.

IMG_0211.jpg

IMG_0213.jpg

IMG_0218.jpg

I settled in, as we would be here for 3 nights, and then went to bed.

Next up: Day 4 - Beijing: Forbidden Magic.
 
Last edited:

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Latest posts

Top