Hong Kong Disneyland {Deetour}

Most families go to Disneyland, and mine finally did last month, though the “kids” were already all grown up. Better late than never, right? Haha! We all felt like kids when we went there anyway, so it really doesn’t matter what age you visit. 🙂

We rode the MTR to Sunny Bay station where we took Disneyland’s own train to the site itself. It’s not difficult to know if you’re going to the right direction because there are signs all over the MTR stations pointing out “this way to Disneyland MTR.” Tourism at work, people!

I took loads of photographs and thought it best to collage some of them to reduce the number of photos to upload in this post. Thanks goodness for Macbook’s iphoto book function! I used the “family album” theme as befitting the pics. So take a look at our virtual album!

This is the perfect cover photo as it shows our entire family on the famous entrance to Disneyland Resort. You don’t need a ticket to get a picture here, though. We actually encountered some fellow Filipinos who said they were just taking pictures here but couldn’t afford to go in the resort. Tickets cost 450 HKD per person but Mom’s only cost 100 because she’s a senior citizen (65+ yo). We bought them online at the official website in advance, but I later found that the hostel where we stayed at offered them for less than 400 HKD each. Tsk tsk.

Mickey’s PhilharMagic is a 4D show, hence the 3D glasses worn by my parents. And look, cutie mini Disney princesses Snow White and Sleeping Beauty! The show was very entertaining and should’ve been named after Donald Duck instead of Mickey, LOL. Seeing snippets from so many Disney films from my childhood made me feel young and emotional. I even sang along to all the songs I knew – The Little Mermaid’s Part of Your World, Lion King’s I Just Can’t Wait to be King, Aladdin’s A Whole New World – and I surprised myself that I still remember the lyrics after all these years.

We rode in a boat through a river where we saw Tarzan’s house and a bunch of other artificial animals doing animal things. We made sure to ride the “English” boat with an English-speaking tour guide who explained everything we saw as well as constantly tell people to please sit down. It was quite fun and nobody got wet, even though at some point they will trick you into thinking that you are about to be drenched.

I had read that The Festival of the Lion King was one of the best shows in Disneyland, so we made it a point to look for the place and ask for the time slots so we could go back in time for it. There were so many people though that even though we came a bit earlier than the show time, we still didn’t get front row seats. The theatre was filled with seats in a circle surrounding the stage. During the show, the performers revolved so that they faced different portions of the audience so that everyone got to see their stage front at one point or another.

The show, by the way, is a live stage musical of the abbreviated story of The Lion King movie, and they use the same songs from that movie. There is dancing, singing, acrobatics and even a fire twirling. It was really enchanting. Now I want to watch The Lion King movie again!

Sleeping Beauty’s Castle is beautiful and majestic but the age is showing, and I couldn’t help but notice it because I have seen Far Far Away Castle in Singapore’s Universal Studios which is a lot newer and more striking.

I admit that I was not as impressed as I would have been if I hadn’t been to the much newer Universal Studios in Singapore, but it was still a magical trip that brought me back to my childhood and most importantly, the whole family enjoyed it. 🙂

P.S. Check out my Sunday Comics. The pictures used there were also taken in Disneyland.