Hey Hey it's Katie from Creative Travel Guide and today I'm going to talk to you
about my time at Disneyland Shanghai. If we haven't met before me and my husband
are British expats living here in Tianjin, China and vlogging as we go so
if you like this video and want to see more traveling and living in China
videos make sure you hit subscribe.
So just to give you a bit of background knowledge about me, I am a primary school
teacher living here in Tianjin and working at an international school. My
colleague and I took our year fives down to Shanghai a few weeks ago and today I
wanted to share my experience of our happiest day ever visiting Disneyland
Shanghai. So Shanghai Disneyland is about an hour away from the city centre
and the park actually opens at 8 a.m. So fairly early. We arrived at 9:30 a.m. and
there were absolutely no fast passes left for some of the more popular rides
like Roaring Rapids and Soaring, so if you want to make sure that you ride all of
the rides, then get there for opening time. So we first off my children and I
went to the Buzz Lightyear ride, this is very similar to the Buzz Lightyear ride
that you'll get in Florida, Magic Kingdom and it's one of my favorite ones in
Florida and the kids absolutely loved it so it was good fun.
One thing that I found really helpful is the Shanghai Disneyland app. You can
download it before you go and on the Disneyland app you can get a fast pass
for Rides when you arrive. So how Disneyland Shanghai work is slightly different
to the ones in America, everyone gets a Fastpass however, you can only use one at
a time. So when you get in, scan your ticket and you can find all of the fast
passes available for that day. The app also shows you a map of Disneyland
Shanghai with the waiting times of all of the rides there. This was super
convenient especially as I was taking around a group of children that wanted to
ride as many rides as possible and really didn't have much patience to wait
for long queues either. We then headed to the Toy Story Land, now this is a brand
new section here in Disneyland Shanghai, they also have one very similar in the
Hong Kong Disneyland so a super exciting but it was really busy because I think
it opened about two weeks before we arrived there. I found it really interesting to
see some of my favorite characters like Woody and Jessie speaking in Mandarin
the whole time.
That is actually one thing that I did notice that was different in Disneyland
Shanghai to other Disneylands. Now we haven't been to Disneyland Hong
Kong yet but from what I've read and researched is that most instructions and
characters speak in English and Mandarin but one thing I did notice about Disneyland
Shanghai is there was all Mandarin, there's very little English spoken. So
back to Toy Story Land. In Toy Story Land, they have a Slinky Dog ride that
looks like great fun for families and Woody's Roundup which I really enjoyed
it looks like a really kind of simple ride but it was a really good fun ride
as well.
You can also jump on Rex's Races which surprised me with how big of a drop it
went. It was a little bit like a pirate ship but it was really steep and I had
like a vertical drop.
After visiting Toy Story land we headed over to a ride called the Voyage to the
Crystal Grotto. Now this is a boat ride that takes you around different scenes
from your favorite Disney movies. It's a pretty calm ride and it's really good
for families but my kids enjoyed it and so did I.
Next up we headed to the Alice in Wonderland maze, which was a great little
fun maze, that ended up in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. We then headed back
to Tomorrowland to try the Tron ride because we had managed to get fast
passes for this. Now this is a really popular ride I don't believe that they
have the Tron rise in other Disneyland parks which is why this was so popular
at Disneyland Shanghai. One thing I did notice and it might just be the day that
I was at but past three - four o'clock that ride became a 10 - 20 minute wait
queue time, in the morning it was 2 hour queue time wait, so maybe it's one of
those rides that gets quieter later on in the day. After a quick lunch we headed
past the Enchanted Storybook Castle towards Treasure Cove. Now one thing I
did find really interesting and I didn't know this actually, one of my children
told me this, is that the Disneyland Castle in Shanghai Disneyland is
completely different to the other castles in the other parks. So in the
other parks in Hong Kong, Paris, Disneyland LA and in Magic Kingdom in
Florida, the castles are based on princesses. I believe it is the
Cinderella Castle in Magic Kingdom and Sleeping Beauty Castle in Hong Kong but
this castle isn't based on a princess at all I'm not entirely sure the reason why
but it's just an interesting fact about Disneyland Shanghai I found out. The
Explorer Canoes had a super short queue, so we jumped onto that straightaway. This is
a really fun ride, it's not really a ride actually, you jump on a literal canoe and
you canoe your way around and it's like a big lake that you go around, we had
some really good fun, the children really enjoyed it and it's a good physical
workout as well. Then we headed over to the Eye of the Storm
Captain Jack Stunt Show. Now one thing to note about these shows in Disneyland
Shanghai, is that they do not permit food or drink into the audience so make sure
that you don't bring ice cream or anything like that in like we tried to do
when we went to see the show.
Now this show is all in Mandarin but it's really good fun and I don't speak
or understand Mandarin in the slightest but I still enjoyed the show. Then we
finished our time in the park by popping back over to Tomorrowland and enjoying
the Buzz Lightyear ride and Tron. These were our favorite rides and my kids
wanted to ride them one last time before we left. After leaving the park we headed
onto a boat that is just on the lake next to the entrance of Disneyland
Shanghai and it took us over to Disneyland Hotel. Here we went to Lumiere's
Kitchen which is a buffet restaurant complete with characters that came out
and said hello to the children which was really good fun.
To finish off the night we headed to the top floor of the hotel. The people at the
hotel were really kind and let us look at the fireworks from the top floor and
it was really nice. The weather was starting to look a little bit gloomy, it
started to rain, so it was nice seeing the fireworks from a distance and the
children had a really nice time.
Then we headed back to our hotel and had a good night's sleep but that was
our day in Disneyland Shanghai and I can't wait to go back in the summer. Me
and Calum are hoping to go back in the summer when we travel China and we will
give you some more travel vlog days there, that are a little bit more detailed than this
I hope because we'll be able to film a little bit more. Anyway, I hope you like
this video, if you do please make sure you give us a thumbs up and hit
subscribe. Remember, Stay Creative. Bye!