For our third day in Shanghai, we once again hopped out of bed early, ready to take on the day. Josh and Kinley grabbed breakfast for all of us at the cafe in the hotel. We just had to have another one of those Mickey doughnuts!
One thing I really like about this cafe is the way things, especially the strange-looking bottled drinks, are labeled in English. When we walked around Shanghai on our first night, we saw lots of shops selling these same types of bottled drinks, but there was no English in site so I wasn't brave enough to try any.
No idea what this tastes like, but I'm much more likely to try it with the description in English than I would be with only the Mandarin.
I think what they mean to say is, "Drink mineral water. It's good for you."
Again, no idea. But the tiny little picture of the bowl full of fruit paired with the English name leads me to think it prune flavored.
Isn't it interesting that all of these plants and fruits are available in the US but we only eat two of them? I mean, I have a mulberry tree in my own yard that is full of fruit as I write this, and yet I leave all of the berries for the birds and deer. And, of course, we pretty much only use aloe as a houseplant for use on kitchen burns. I guess some people drink it in smoothies or juices, but most people don't. But in China, I guess both are common yogurt flavors!
The food offerings had English labels, too, but I would have tried many of them even if the only labels had been in Mandarin. They look so yummy!
I wish I had tried the chocolate passionfruit thingy.
I can vouch for both the blueberry and chocolate chip ones! Yum!
We
got into the security line by 7:52 and were through the ticket gate and into
the park by 8:44. This day was colder, so Josh wore his coat and Knox put
up the hood on his jacket. Once again, we had to link arms to keep people
from pushing past us in line.
We went straight to Soarin' again, once again passing
by the massive line of people getting Fast Passes for the ride instead of just
following us to get on immediately with no wait. Go figure. After
Soarin', we went straight to Treasure Cove for another turn on Pirates of the
Caribbean where we only had to wait for 10 minutes. We could have gone to
get FastPasses for another ride after Soarin', but we decided that we were
willing to risk getting a late FastPass time for the benefit of a 10 minute
wait at Pirates. We think we made the right call.
After Pirates, we split up. Josh and Kinley used
their crazy-long legs to hustle back over to Adventure Isle to get FastPasses
for Roarin' River. This ride is similar to Kali River Rapids in Orlando,
and, frankly, I wasn't sure I wanted to ride it. It was quite chilly
outside, and the prospect of getting wet and then staying that way for the rest
of the day didn't sound like my idea of fun. But Kinley really wanted to
do it, and since we might never get to come back to Shanghai, I decided to go
along with the plan. While Kinley and Josh hoofed it across the park,
Knox and I made our way to Tomorrowland to the Buzz ride where Kinley and Josh
met up with us. By this time it was no later than 9:25. The park
hadn't even been open for an hour yet, but the FastPass times for Roarin' River
were already late afternoon time slots. We took what we could get.
We were able to walk right on to Buzz, so we rode it twice, and then we decided
it was time for some caramel corn and a Donald Duck ice cream treat.
Since there hadn't been any characters at the Marvel attraction the day
before, we headed to that area in hopes that Knox could get a picture or two.
We were in luck! He got to meet both Captain America and Spider-Man!
In case your'e wondering, yes, Captain America was 100% American. He seemed happy to have someone to speak to in English!
Spidey was silent, so we assumed he was NOT an American.
After the character greetings, we made our way back to Fantasyland and the castle to check out an attraction in the castle called Once Upon a Time Adventure. This was a walk-through attraction that told the story of Snow White, but it was all in Mandarin. Of course, we knew the story well and enjoyed the interesting surprises in each room, but we probably got tired of each room faster than the other guests who were walking through at the same time as we were because we couldn't understand the narration.
While I wouldn't do it again, and I certainly wouldn't wait more than about 20 minutes for it, there were some engaging feature and effects. The boiling cauldron in the witch's lair was cool, and there was a lovely little courtyard with a fountain on the second floor that was part of the tour. But one odd thing was that Snow White looks different. I can't quite put my finger on it, but ti seemed like she was rounder somehow. Not plump, just, I don't know, rounder. You may be able to increase the size of the picture below to see what I mean.
Knox tries to see over the other guests as we begin our tour. The modified Snow White can be seen here.
You could look down into the cauldron for a surprise.
In this room, Snow White is kissed by the prince.
This is the beautiful little courtyard that is at least two floors up in the castle.
We came out just in time to catch the end of a show in front of the castle that I wish we had been able to watch completely - Golden Fairytale Fanfare. We stood in the front row on the left side and had a great view. A moat separates the audience from the performers.
Merida rides her horse (which is operated by two puppeteers!) through an inventively-staged meadow made up of costumed performers that move in waves as if they are fields of heather.
Josh took a really short clip of the part of the show featuring The Little Mermaid that shows how the fountains in the moat are incorporated into the show and he also pans around to show the huge crowd. Also, I may or may not be singing along.
Since we had rushed straight to Soarin' both mornings, we hadn't had any family pictures taken in front of the castle. We decided to take a few minutes to track down a photographer or two for some pictures.
I'm usually not a huge fan of the graphics Disney puts on PhotoPass pictures, but I like that this one says "Grand Opening."
Can you believe we did all this and it wasn't even lunch time yet? Holy cow. We might be nuts.
Following family pics, Knox wanted to try to greet some more characters at the Star Wars Launch Pad in Tomorrowland. Kinley had little interest in watching her brother greet fictitious space people, so we let her go off on her own and ride the Buzz Lightyear ride. I realize that the fact that we'd let our 15 year old go off on her own in a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language is horrifying to some of you. But we're Boyds. This is kind of just what we do. And besides, it's Disney. It's not like we dropped her off in the middle of Shanghai and told her we'd see her next Tuesday. The friendly confines of the Magic Kingdom seem like a relatively low-risk area.
While Kinley enjoyed some freedom, Knox met Kylo Ren, CP30 with R2D2, and an apparently nameless Rebel Pilot.
It's important to be willing to ham it up. And besides, this was one tall Asian dude.
These are totally the droids we are looking for.
This guy spoke English (just all all Rebel pilots, I guess)!
Also in this attraction were museum-type cases with Star Wars costumes and artifacts, so Knox spent some time checking those out. There was also a mock-up of the Millennium Falcon's cockpit, so Knox and Josh embraced their inner Han Solo for a few minutes. Knox put his much-practiced sound-effects-making skills to good use.
Josh is a much-less-hairy version of Chewbacca, but Knox seemed to think he made a decent co-pilot.
Returning from a galaxy far, far away and meeting up with Kinley, we went on to do a little shopping before making our way back to Fantasyland's Tangled Tree Tavern for lunch. This is a quick-service option that has some interesting menu choices. Josh and I shared a stir fry dish, and the kids got fish and chips. But the best thing was the Rapunzel's Refresher. As I said in my previous post, every single specialty drink we tried was fantastic, and this berry, pineapple, and coconut version was no exception.
We liked the outdoor seating at Tangled Tree Tavern.
Yay for specialty drinks!
With
our tummies full, we walked over to Treasure Cove to check out a live show we'd
heard about called Eye of the Storm - Captain Jack's Stunt Show. This
would not have been high on my priority list if I hadn't heard about it on a
podcast, but the host of the podcast waxed eloquent about how cool the stunts
were and about how even the language barrier didn't take away from the fun.
And the podcaster was right. It was a really cool show. You
start out standing in a theater lobby, and pirates come in and begin talking to
the crowd in Mandarin and doing silly Keystone-cops-style comedy. Even
though we couldn't understand, we got the gist of the story and enjoyed what we
saw.
The show began inside the theater lobby.
The cast members performed up on this balcony for most of the first part of the show.
After this part of the show, we all moved into a
traditional theater and found a seat. Once the show resumed, the stunts
grew more and more impressive. There were swashbuckling sword fights,
gravity-defying airborne acrobatics, and even a human cannonball. The
most impressive part was a sword fight in MIDAIR thanks to the massive
air-blowing machine under the stage that suspended the actors in space.
Inside the theater, the show continued.
Poor Captain Jack Sparrow is nearly hanged for piracy!
I wish they would bring this show to the US (in
English, of course) so that I could experience the full effect of this show's
awesomeness!
Once Captain Jack was freed from the grasp of the British soldiers, we made a
beeline for Adventure Isle to use our Roarin' Rapids FastPasses.
Unfortunately, that ended up being ore difficult than we expected, but
that's a story for a later post.
We went and rode TRON again (always a god idea) and then had another ice cream
treat (also always a good idea).
Back in Fantasyland, I wanted to check out the Alice in Wonderland Maze which is a walk-through attraction in the shadow of the castle. There are some cute features, but I wouldn't call it a must-do by any stretch. Since it's new, it is, of course, in much better condition than the Alice in Wonderland walk-through in Paris , and this one is the Tim Burton Alice rather than the original Alice that Paris has.
These fun cakes made me think of my sister's creations!
Knox stands under one of the many hats you can try on for size at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party section of the walk-through.
Next came a visit to the Garden of the Twelve Friends where twelve mosaics use Disney characters to represent the twelve Chinese zodiac animals. We quickly Googled our birth years and then snapped pictures beside our animals.
1971 was the year of the pig, and Hamm from Toy Story is the representative.
1972 was the year of the rat, and Remy from Ratatouille does the honors.
2001 was the year of the snake, so Kaa from The Jungle Book is the chosen character.
2006 was the year of the dog, and Pluto is the perfect pup for the job!
After a few more pictures and some shopping, we finally got to do Roarin' Rapids. Again, it's not a must-do, in my opinion, but in warmer weather it might be a lot of fun.
By this time we were hungry for dinner, so we headed to the quick-service restaurant inside Pirates of the Caribbean called Barbossa's Bounty. We ordered the Pirate's Feast to share, but it ended up being FAR too much food for the four of us. We ate as much as we could, and enjoyed the atmosphere.
Outside Barbossa's Bounty in Treasure Cove
Inside Barbossa'a Bounty with our massive tray of food
There was no shortage of meats on the Pirate's Feast!
After eating our fill, we wanted to do Pirates once more. Unfortunately, it wasn't working, so we headed to Fantasyland to see if we could squeeze in one more ride. Pooh's Hunny Pot Spin had no wait, and since the US doesn't have this ride, we hopped on. It's like Pooh-themed teacups. Again, not a must-do but fine if you have time.
Our last ride at Shanghai Disneyland was this one!
Finally, we ended our day with the fireworks show and headed back to the hotel, ready to pack for Hong Kong!
As I mentioned in a previous post, we made the right call by
ignoring the guy at the check-in desk and assuming that the park would open
earlier than 8:30. One positive thing
about drastic time changes during travel, especially when traveling to Asia, is
that you’re usually up raring to go early the first morning. Of course, I guess our family is usually
pretty easy to get up and going for a day at Disney wherever we are in the world, so maybe jetlag doesn't really matter when it comes to a day with The Mouse.
These are called moon cakes, I think, and they were delicious. The pastry was flaky and the sausage was delicious. The red Mickey ink didn't seem to have any taste at all to me.
This is the Mickey doughnut, though it's not as doughy as a US doughnut. It's more the consistency of a soft pretzel. We thought it was yummy. Oh! And notice the Grand Opening packaging. We were surprised to still see Grand Opening on all types of things even though the park has been open since June of 2016!
Our family really likes pomelo, the largest citrus fruit. You can get it in US grocery stores sometimes, and it looks like a giant green grapefruit. This drink was honey-pomelo flavored. It tasted a little bit artificial to me, but Josh loved it.
After I paid
and started walking back to the elevator with my tray, I could tell that the
girls at the hostess stand were troubled. Their English wasn’t perfect, but I eventually figured
out that they didn’t want me to take the tray.
I had to go back in and ask for everything to be bagged up.
After we ate in the room, we went to catch the shuttle bus
to the park. We had asked several cast
members (Disney calls all of its employees cast members) how to walk to the park,
and without fail, each one assured us it would take 30 minutes and that we shouldn't try it. We could see the park from the hotel
driveway, so we couldn’t understand how this could possibly be true, but we
gave up and walked to the queue for the shuttle. We were first in line, and the cast member standing
there told us we’d need to wait until 8:00 for the first shuttle. It was chilly and about 7:40, so we weren’t
excited about that. But five minutes
later, the shuttle arrived and we hopped on.
The ride was only about five minutes (again, how could it possibly take 30 minutes to walk that distance?), and we were deposited
at the shuttle drop-off area. Interesting side note here. I had read online about people selling knock-off souvenirs and even FastPasses at this park, and, apparently, Disney turns a blind eye to this. Well, as soon as we got off the shuttle, we encountered this guy trying to sell us tickets to the park. He suddenly became camera shy, but guys like him were all over the place! And the security guys seemingly intentionally kept their distance. Go figure. Capitalism is clearly creeping in to Communist China.
This guy isn't waving; he's trying to stop me from taking his picture since he's scalping tickets. You can see them in his right hand.
Upon reflection, I'm pretty sure ALL these guys were scalping Disney tickets!
We arrived at the line outside the gate by the fountain by 7:51. Even 39 minutes before opening, we were at the back of a large crowd. We hopped in line and tried to maintain our position in spite of the many, many people who tried to push past, around, and between us.
You can see the biggest World of Disney store in Asia behind us as we stand in line for our first day in the park.
This is only half of the crowd. To the far right outside the frame of the picture is another set of identical gates with just as many people in line.
At 8:00, these gates opened to allow us to walk through metal detectors (though a mother and child in front of us blatantly just walked around them with no repercussions) and have our bags checked. The security guards must never have to bring food from home, because the amount of just-add-hot-water noodle bowls they confiscated should keep them fed for a lifetime. So if you were considering stashing away some ramen to munch on during your day at Shanghai Disneyland, think again.
Another set of gates was ahead of us, and those didn't open until 8:30. We went to the far left side which seemed to have a slightly shorter line. Once inside, we decided not to stop for pictures, but I just had to snap this one of a cast member holding a sign reminding people not to run. It was completely ineffective.
Bless her heart. Standing there holding this sign was having exactly zero influence on the crowd rushing past her.
One thing that was odd to me was that this area of the entrance appeared to be the train depot, just like the entrances to all the other Disneyland and Magic Kingdom parks. But there is no train here. It's just an elevated area of some sort. Kinda weird.
We did stop long enough to snap one quick picture. This is the weird looks-like-the-train-overpass-and-depot-but-isn't-the-overpass-and-depot thing.
I was looking for the sign that's always on the train overpass at the other parks that says, "Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy," but it wasn't there. (Later I discovered something similar in front of the castle.)
Shanghai is different in another way, too - it doesn't have a Main Street USA. Instead, the area leading up to the castle is called Mickey Avenue. It's much shorter than Main Street USA, and is really only the length of a couple of storefronts. I had read that there is a slight shortcut to Adventure Isle just past the first storefront, and as I veered off to take it, I saw Minnie Mouse coming out for pictures. We quickly walked up to her and got the PhotoPass photographer to take a picture or two.
After rounding the corner on our shortcut, we encountered another character. Duffy the Disney Bear is not a favorite of mine, but Knox really likes him. Kinley wasn't interested in a picture with a bear that she thinks doesn't count as a real Disney character, so our stop was brief.
Knox and Duffy pose for a picture.
We continued walking briskly to Adventure Isle, trying not to give in to the temptation to break into an all-out run, knocking over anyone who dared to get in our way. We also tried not to intentionally trip the inconsiderate people who were running. We did not, however, avoid making snarky remarks in English about said inconsiderate people.
A thin yellow line indicates the route we took on our first morning in the park. Two little yellow stars show the spots where we met Minnie and Duffy. You can get a sense of how massive this park is by following that yellow line which was a good ten minute walk even at a brisk pace.
We passed the FastPass kiosk area and went straight to the most popular ride at the park, Soarin'. We hadn't ridden this ride at Walt Disney World or at Disneyland since the ride had been changed from Soarin' Over California to Soarin' Around the World, so we were excited to see the changes. Because we knew that this version had a Shanghai-specific ending, we didn't want to skip it even though we knew it was very popular. For us, this was the right choice! There was no line, and we even enjoyed the queue since it's very different from the airplane-hangar-themed versions in the US. This one was more of an ancient stone temple theme. The attraction has a brief film at the beginning to set up the story, but it was all in Mandarin. I entertained the family (and perhaps some English-speaking Chinese guests) by pretending to translate the whole thing from Mandarin into English, and then we took our seats for the main part of the attraction. It was fabulous, and we all agreed that if we could swing it, we would do it again.
The themeing of the queue for Soarin' is very different in Shanghai than it is in the US.
We were excited to see Iguazu Falls get a cameo as we exited!
From there, we went over to the Fantasyland FastPass kiosk to get Seven Dwarfs Mine Train FastPasses. We hadn't been to Walt Disney World since this attraction opened, so we were excited to experience it for the first time. This was also our first experience using a kiosk that had FPs for multiple rides, but there were pictures, cast members, and an English option, so it wasn't hard.
Next, we back-tracked to Adventure Isle to do Camp Discovery. I wrote about this attraction briefly in a previous post, and our family really enjoyed it. The harness and rope system kept me feeling secure even when I could see lost shoes, Mickey ears, and sunglasses in the waterfall beneath me. Before you get your harness and ropes, though, you must stash all of your stuff in a free locker. You're not even allowed to take a cell phone. (Remember my comment above about the lost shoes and stuff? Yeah. Don't take your cell phone.) The wait for the locker was about 15 minutes since you have to wait for other people to finish the course and empty out their stuff before you can get a locker of your own. I was expecting the harnessing-up part to take a while, but Disney cast members perform this with impressive efficiency, so the locker line really is the longest part of the wait.
After getting all of our stuff out of our locker, we stopped for a picture in front of Camp Discovery.
After exerting ourselves by jumping from rock to rock and balancing on moving logs, we decided we deserved some caramel corn. It was a fairly small box, but it was delicious. From there we grabbed Roarin' Rapids FastPasses (the return time on those was late evening) and headed to the largest castle in the Disney parks system for a walk-through.
We made quick work of this little box of caramel corn!
You can't enter this castle from the front as you can Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella's castles; you enter it from the back or the sides. Since we were coming from Adventure Isle, we entered from the side. The Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boutique is inside if you have a hankering to be primped, pizzazzed, and princessed, and the Royal Banquet Hall is also in there. Also inside are beautiful mosaics that depict not the traditional princesses and their stories but the more recent Disney heroines Ana and Elsa, Rapunzel, Tiana, and Merida. These are beautiful pieces of art with stunning detail, and we enjoyed looking at them on our way to Fantasyland.
As we exited the back of the castle, we took a right to head to our first-ever ride on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train since our FastPass return time had arrived. While the ride was fun, I thought it was kind of short. I guess I was expecting more of a Splash Mountain-type length of ride with the story and the roller coaster part mashed together. I enjoyed it, but I certainly wouldn't wait more than 25 minutes for it without a FastPass. Here's a 30-second video of the ride that I took. It's kind of cool to hear the song switch to Mandarin after the Heigh-Ho part!
We thought the ride was too short, but we did enjoy singing "Heigh Ho" along with the dwarfs!
After the mine train, we went back up to the area near the castle to check things out. We happened upon another character greeting spot where Belle was posing with guests. We zipped over into the line, and admired the lovely princess as she interacted with her admirers. We tried to listen in to see if she spoke Mandarin, but we couldn't tell from our spot at the back of the line. When our turn for pictures came, I intended to ask her if she spoke Chinese, but I was instead more entranced by all the other guests who wanted to take our picture while we posed with Belle. People were smiling and waving and taking pictures of us!
The lovely Belle graciously chatted with us in English while cameras all around us snapped away.
This wasn't my first Asian rodeo, so I shouldn't have been so surprised. When we've done mission work in Thailand or traveled in places like Viet Nam or Cambodia, our little, fair-skinned, blond-headed kiddos have been tourist attractions all on their own, but I guess I just hadn't thought about the possibility now that they're so grown up.
At a store in Thailand and shopping for souvenirs and walking through the park in Viet Nam, Knox and Kinley were constantly stopped by strangers for pictures. If I had a dollar for every stranger in Asia who picked up my babies, I'd be a rich lady.
Knox was patient and charming as all three of these girls wanted pictures with him,
Kinley was more than happy to take a picture with this little cutie patootie.
This same thing actually ended up happeneing to ME later that evening. Two girls wanted pictures with the kids and me (Josh was happy not to be included), so Jssh filmed the whole thing. The video is dark, but short.
After the impromptu photo sessions, we noticed that the line for Peter Pan was fairly short, so we hopped into the queue. After a 10 minute wait, our flying ship (which seated all four of us comfortably) was ready for takeoff. In this version, flying through the nursery is a more developed part of the ride's beginning. But for us, the neatest change was seeing the Peter Pan statue from Kensington Gardens in London! We visit that statue each time we're in London, so it was a nice surprise to see it added to this version of the classic Disney ride.
Nearby was the Pinocchio Village Kitchen where we decided to each lunch. We each made our choices and then we sat out in the courtyard to eat. I think that no one had noticed that the doors to the courtyard were unlocked until we went out, because the tables out there were completely empty until about 10 minutes after we sat down.
These empty tables filled up quickly after we sat down.
Kinley and Knox got the pork ramen soup combo. Kinley also tried the restaurant's specialty drink which was matcha, pineapple, and coconut flavored. I suggest trying every single specialty drink you can since they were uniformly yummy.
Josh had the Village Minced Pork with Rice. (The pork is inside those dumplings.)
I had read good things about the Peking Duck Pizza, so I tried that. The sauce was a little too sweet for me, but I loved all the julienned green onions on top.
One thing that I noticed at a kiosk past the checkout was that there were two spigots where you could get free hot water. I'm not sure what these were for since I saw the security guys confiscating all that instant ramen at the front gates, but maybe it was for making your own tea?
After lunch we made the trek over to Tomorrowland to get FastPasses for TRON. While Josh and Kinley went to the FastPass kiosk, Knox and I went to the Marvel Universe/Be Iron Man attraction. Knox played a video game that allows you to be Iron Man'
Knox takes a turn as Tony Stark.
After grabbing our TRON FastPasses, Josh joined us to play.
Once we finished playing, there weren't any characters at the meet and greet stations inside Marvel Universe, so we moved on to ride Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue where the wait was about 20 minutes. It's very much like the other Buzz attractions in the US parks, but the AstroBlaster design is better here because each blaster has a red laser at the end that allows you to see where you're aiming. Another difference is that all of the targets are a red Z. The result for us was far higher scores.
All of the explanations and directions were written in both Mandarin and English.
The bigger the target, the smaller the point value in this version of the popular ride.
Josh and Knox paired up to save Planet Pepperonia from the Evil Emperor Zurg!
After this we enjoyed a DELICIOUS ice cream treat in the shape of Minnie Mouse. The inside was raspberry ice cream and the outside was white chocolate.
While we munched on our snack, we noticed that the app was displaying a 30 minute wait time for the Voyage to the Crystal Grotto attraction in Fantasyland. This is a ride that begins behind the castle and is very much like the Storybook Land attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim. It tells several favorite Disney stories as guests float along in boats, ending up under the castle in a crystal cave. We got to the end of the line, and the sign there confirmed the 30 minute wait. We joined to queue.
This ended up being the most frustrating part of our day. The wait was actually almost double the listed time, but by the time we figured that out we were too invested in the wait to quit. We had already wasted 25 minutes in line, so giving up seemed foolhardy. We stuck it out, but the attraction wasn't worth the wait. I would do it again if the wait were 25 minutes or less, but otherwise, I would skip it. After all, the stories are completely in Mandarin.
The boats for this attraction remind me of the ones on the Jungle Cruise.
Mulan, Aladdin, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Tangled, and The Little Mermaid are a few of the tales told on this attraction. In Mandarin, of course.
These are the doors to the Crystal Grotto under the castle. Unfortunately, none of our pictures of the inside were very good.
Hot, frustrated, and more than a little bit disappointed, we grabbed a churro and a mickey pretzel to perk ourselves up before the parade.
I'm munching on a churro as I wait for the parade and update my notes on my iPhone so that later I'll be able to remember enough details to draft this post!
These people were asked repeatedly to get out of the trees, but they just kept climbing back up there.
Before the parade, the cast members kept asking people to stand behind the lines so that they wouldn't get hit by the floats in the parade or to get out of the trees to avoid injury. But the cast members' requests didn't have much effect on the behavior of the people. Once the parade started, it was even worse. I literally had to keep my arm out the entire parade to keep a 20-something-year-old-girl from pushing in front of me and Knox. I mean, my arm was stiff and flexed, actively pushing her back the whole time. Because of this, one parade was enough for me in Shanghai.
Ana, Elsa, and Mulan were the stars of the show!
After the parade (which ran up Mickey Avenue and then between the castle and Adventure Isle), we went back through Fantasyland to get to TRON in Tomorrowland since our FastPass time had arrived.
The outside of the TRON ride is almost as awesome as the inside! The Disney Imagineers who worked on this project rocked it!
When you get to the queue, just like at Camp Discovery, you have to first wait in line for a free locker. There's not enough room on the ride for you to store bags, so the lockers are for keeping your stuff until your ride is over. Then you line up for the actual line, which was at least 20 minutes long, even with a FastPass. There is a single rider line, but most people come through the line in pairs, so even the single rider line takes a while. I would estimate that the single rider line took twice as long as the FastPass line.
This is the view of the loading area for the TRON ride as you're standing in line. The interior reminds me a lot of a more modern Space Mountain.
I waxed eloquent about this ride in my blog post titled "Ten Things to Love About Shanghai Disneyland", so I won't go into great detail. But seriously, people. I love this ride. It's mostly inside in the dark with lots of blue neon, but it does go outside for part of the ride. Spectators entering the ride can watch riders whiz by screaming, so Kinley and I made sure to squeal extra loudly.
Kinley screams like a banshee on the TRON ride while Knox looks a little less sure about the whole thing.
As the ride whooshes by outside, curious onlookers get a taste of the thrill.
After the ride, you grab your bags from the lockers and then exit through an attraction called TRON Realm. Knox enjoyed this area because he likes the TRON movies so much, but I certainly wouldn't call it a must-do.
This attraction was similar to the Iron Man one except that it was TRON themed.
Josh and Knox check out a TRON-themed game.
It was now time for our character dinner at the castle. A week before, we had Skype-called Shanghai to make a reservation for the dinner in the castle at the Royal Banquet Hall. At Walt Disney World, you have to reserve dinner in the castle at Cinderella's Royal Table 180 days in advance, and your chances of getting in are still slim. But here, a week out was plenty of time. In fact, from the looks of the dining room, we could probably have booked the day of.
We checked in at the hostess stand and got to have pictures with Princess Minnie before heading upstairs to the dining room.
During the meal, Mickey, Donald, and Daisy stopped by our table for pictures, too.
The food was delicious, plentiful, and less expensive than Cinderella's Royal Table in Orlando. I think we each got a three-course meal for a total of about $160. The menus had pictures which helped us to make our decisions. (This is fairly common in Asia, and it helps to bridge the language barrier. Sometimes, especially in Japan, restaurants will even have fake food sitting in a display case so that you can see life-size versions of everything on the menu.)
Josh and Knox look over the menus. Knox was still young enough to eat from the child's menu ( and pay the child's price!).
We tried to all order different things so that we could try each other's food, so we had soup, salad, and the crab cake for our appetizers.
The soup was yummy!
Knox doesn't like shrimp, but he loved the Mickey-shaped crouton. Josh and I ate his shrimp along with our own salad and crab cake appetizers.
The entrees were yummy, too!
Knox loved his kids' meal salmon.
The desserts were showstoppers that were also super tasty.
And now I come to the part of our trip that was the most magical for me. We Boyds end every single family trip with a big powwow where we debrief about our favorite moments, meals, memories, and experiences of the trip. After it was all over and we were on the plane headed home, this was mine.
My dessert is pictured above on the bottom left. It was a white chocolate slipper filled with berries and a raspberry macaron filled with apricot filling and topped with a tiny apricot-flavored macaron and some spun sugar. I ate the berries and slipper first with my fork, and then decided to eat the tiny macaron and spun sugar with my fingers. It was delish, but I felt kind of gauche eating with my fingers in a nice restaurant. I decided to eat the last macaron (which I had saved for last because it was what looked yummiest to me) with my fork. As I cut into it, it skittered across the table and onto the floor, Pretty-Woman-escargot-scene-style.
I'm pretty sure I audibly gasped followed by an unintentionally-dramatic moan that was easily overheard by the staff stationed nearby. I actually stared at it for a moment and considered eating it anyway. I tried to mentally calculate exactly how many feet had stood on that square of carpet since the restaurant opened in June and whether or not those feet would really have been that dirty. But before I could make up my mind, a cute little server quickly came over and asked what had happened. I told her what I had done and how irritated I was with myself, and then I bent down to pick it up. She said she was so sorry and whisked away my much-anticipated macaron. As I licked my wounds and tried to recover, she returned with a fresh macaron on a new plate and proudly presented it to me. I was thrilled and completely surprised. I mean, it was my own fault that the silly thing ended up on the floor, and Disney certainly shouldn't have had to replace it. But without my even asking, they did what they do best - make magical moments.
And you'd better believe I ate that bad boy with my fingers. I wasn't taking any chances.
A reservation for dinner in the castle comes with a special perk - the right purchase tickets to a private viewing area for the fireworks. It would have cost us about $40 to do it, but, unfortunately, we had FastPasses for Pirates of the Caribbean during the fireworks show, so we couldn't take advantage of the opportunity.
And, let me tell you, Pirates was breathtaking. I wrote about this ride in my previous post as well, so I'll just reiterate that IT IS AWESOME. If I get to go back, I could seriously spend my days doing TRON and Pirates over and over and over. I could post lots of the pictures inside the ride that Kinley took, but it doesn't come close to doing it justice.
Knox and I check out the scenery in Pirates as our boat meanders past the dining area where you can eat while viewing a section of the attraction.
I think maybe Kinley was trying to put away her phone as we went down the drop during the ride so that she didn't drop it Or maybe she's elbowing her daddy?
After Pirates, we caught the very end of the fireworks and then went into a photo shop to try to make sure our PhotoPass was working correctly. While Josh and Kinley went to ask about that, I went to look at pins. A few minutes later, I turned around to see this.
Bless his heart, he was asleep on the floor of the gift shop. He later told me that this was the most tired he had ever felt in his entire life. The combination of jet lag, an early morning, and walking a 936 acre park for 14 hours wore him completely out. I decided to let him sleep until Kinley and Josh were done, and then we gently woke him up and made our way toward the park exit. We stopped for a quick picture, and then went back to the hotel to get some sleep to be ready to do it all again the next day!
