Hong Kong Disneyland

A litte background information:

 My first trip to a disney park was in 1994 to Walt Disney World with my parents. Since that trip I have been on more than 21 vacations to a disney resort including Disneyland California, WDW and Disneyland Paris. I completed my first internship as an Attractions Hostess at the Magic Kingdom at WDW in the summer and fall of 2009, and am still employed there seasonally. Without a doubt going to Hong Kong Disneyland was a dream of mine, and being so close there was no way I wasn't going to go. These pictures capture the events of the day, and I'll go ahead and let you know IT WAS AWESOME!

Waiting to board the MTR Disneyland Resort Line. Yes, Disney is so special it has it's own line and....

of course the train is decked out Disney style : )

All the way down to the rings. Hidden Mickey anyone???

The seats were plusher than any other train, and we loved it! Can you tell? I call this "Roomies make it to Disney"!

 Justin our resident photographer

Donald! He was my favorite statue at the entrance.

If you've been the WDW you might have seen custodial cast members doing this, and I thought it was awesome that they do it in HK Disney as well! My friend told me though that instead of using water they use tea. Not sure how accurate that statement is.

Bakery! Smelled so delicious. I resisted this time, but next time a hot chocolate and chocolate croissant might become mine. : )

The Castle!!! It is soooo tiny. All of HK Disneyland felt like it was mini sized.

According to the menu description online, Starliner diner serves American Style quick service. From what everyone ordered, I'd say it was American Style with a Chinese twist.

Lunch! We actually didn't arrive until 3:30pm, so we were starving by the time we got food. I had a cheeseburger with fries and a coke to drink. The cheeseburger was okay, but I think I'd get the chicken sandwich next time. The beef is just not the same here. What I did find deliciously awesome were the french fries. They taste almost exactly like the ones in WDW.  If you've ever had Disney fries you understand my excitement!

One thing I found very interestng was seeing everything in English and Chinese.  The wrapper my cheesburger was in had both English and Chinese, all signs were in both languages, and all of the preshow and postshow dialougue was in both.

Friends in Tomorrowland! Since we ate in Tomorrowland we headed straight for Space Mountain. You sit two per seat in this version and the track is incredibly smooth. Some of our group who are taller than most, definitely were afraid to put their hands up throughout the ride.

If I had to rate it against the one in Florida I would still give the edge to Florida. I really loved this version, but the queue is fairly boring. The only reason it didn't matter for us was because there was barely a line. Also this version isn't as dark as the one at WDW.

Home! This was on my must do list of attractions and I wasn't dissapointed!  In a way seeing this attraction did make me incredibly homesick. I've spent so many hours working is attraction in Florida, and have so many wonderful memories from it.

 The United States! I find in fascinating to see what other countries think of when they think of the US. You can't see it, but Pocahantas was also included.

TEACUPS!!! Now not everyone in our group chose to participate, only the most daring souls did. We split into two groups of three as instructed by the cast member named Fish. (Yes, that was the name on her nametag) We scoped out which teacup we wanted, deciding to pass on any pink one as we had just scene the custodial crew cleaning one out (ick). When the gate was opened we raced like little kids to our goal: THE PURPLE TEACUP! And we would not be denied! We spun round and round and round! We threw our hands up and screamed "WooHoo!" We worked so hard our arms felt like jelly! It was an awesome minute and 30 seconds.

Sadly one of our friend in the other teacup didn't fare to well. She felt sick afterwards, but was okay after taking a rest.

One thing I kept forgetting and the noticing again was the mountains in the background. Only China.

I'm a huge fan of the themeing for this Philhar.

 Again, I'm a fan : )

Rebels! Can't no one tell US when to put on our Opry glasses!

 Out of order, but back at the train stop after park closing. Got to love the detail.

Main St. USA.

Yes, I took a picture of the trashcan. lol

We made it! In roughly four hours our group of 11: watched the parade, rode Space Moutain 3 times, had lunch, rode It's a Small World, Teacups, Philharmagic and Jungle Cruise, shopped many times, saw the Castle Lighting show and watched the fireworks. The crazy thing? I wasn't even tired after having walked around the whole park. It really is mini-sized, but don't let anyone tell you it isn't worth a trip. As long as you have good friends with you who are willing to embrace their inner child and have some fun Hong Kong Disneyland is the place to be.

Hong Kong Disneyland Castle at night. All lit up thanks to Tinkerbell.

Credit to my friend Sanna for taking this photograph.

I plan on writing a more detailed recap of our day at Disney. For this blog I've kept it short, but if you want to read more keep an eye out. I'll post a link when I finish my trip report.

Oh and yes, I'm planning a second trip already!



HKDisneyMarch11

Alrighty, my plan for today was to write an awesome blog about my first day at Hong Kong Disneyland, but due to a crazy bus ride that turned dinner from an one hour event into an almost three hour event, so that awesome blog will have to wait till tomorrow, which is actually today now, because I made a video last night to take the place of my blog, but it took about an hour to upload and in that hour I fell asleep. Sooooo here is the video, and I may or may not be posting again today. Next week mid-terms begin, so I'm in full project/study mode. Enjoy the video and disregard the "my movie" title. I was tired and forgot to retitle it last night. lol For all of you waking up back home in a couple of hours have a Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah day!

Just a little teaser...

It is getting late, and Tuesdays are my busiest so a full blog of the weekend will have to wait. No worries though, I do have a few videos to share. NOTE: For those reading this who do not know that I'm a huge disney fan; Just know that I'm a huge disney fan. : ) Let the videos begin!

Who are those amazing dancers??!! Johanna, Sidsel and Jatana of course!

Muppet Mobile Lab - Funny to hear Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew in Chinese

Space Mountain! I took two videos to compare listening to the preshow in English and Mandarin. This one is the English version.

Here is the Mandarin version. Not sure if it is just the fact that I can't understand what she is saying, but the crowd noise seems louder in this video.

Home! Nice to see home half way around the world. It's amazing how much this made me miss work. I wasn't sure about how I would feel about the disney characters, but they were much better than I was expecting. Pictures of those to come tomorrow!

That is all for now. Signing off from Macau. Everyone in have a wonderful day. It's bed time for me.

Videos from Zhongshan Film City

These guys were performing when we first arrived. They were so awesome!

4 Year anniversary

This will be a very short update as I need to fall asleep so I can wake up for class tomorrow morning, but I wanted to update today because March 24, 2011 marks four years for me and my wonderful boyfriend Tyler Jones. :)

The two of us agreed before I left that we would celebrate his birthday, which is also today :), before I left and our anniversary when I returned. Of course I still wanted to celebrate a little so today I: Slept in and wacthed Big Bang Theory, Ate lunch with two of my friends at McDonalds becasue it sounded good, Went shopping and bought my self a belt and got my ear pierced! (More on that later) Went out to Taipa for more shopping, Dinner of duck and rice from the corner stand, and a girls night complete with movie, ice cream and facials.

Today was a really great day. It's hard being away from Tyler, but with skype and good friends and the simple fact of being in such an amazing place helps to make time fly. I love him very much and feel very lucky to be in such a wonderful relationship.

Mainland China Heritage Trip

The weekend before last I went on a trip with IFT's Heritage Club to mainland China. We visited Cuiheng Village and Zhongshan TV and Film City in honor or the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution. Hope you enjoy this photographic tour!

Out in front of the Zhonshan TV and Film City. It was kind of imposing pulling up to the place.

Giant map outside the village. The area is divided up into different sections like Japan Scenes, China Scenes, USA town scenes, European scenes. The maps were all in Chinese, except for a few phrases and all the information plaques around the village were only in Chinese. A bit of a bummer, but I wasn't that surprised.

This was in the Japan scene. As you can kind of see from the photos, the place is pretty run down and there really wasn't a whole lot of people there. It was like this through the entire park, and I found it to be a bit depressing. I would have loved to know more about it in its heyday, but I think that time is long gone.

I loved all the American signs they had up.

Friends up in the Japanese tower that was there. My friend Sanna and I went up later, and got stopped by a Chinese couple who wanted a photo with us. SIDEBAR: This would become the theme of the day. Our group was the only group I saw with any westerners in it, and people were fascinated by us. By the end of the day I had been asked to be in about 5 different photos, and had many people just try to take our photos on the sly. It was hilarious. My favorite was a little girl who's mom wanted her to take a picture with me. I honestly think the little girl was a bit afraid of me, but she sat next to me, we smiled and then she skipped back to her mom. Mainland China is a whole other world. SIDEBAR DONE

The very top of this sign reads "The redskins are here." It's interesting to see what the Chinese think of when they set up an "American" scene.

Looking down on the New York Street Scene! Ahhh looks just like I remember it. : P

In the western scene.

Out in front of a "bar".

Sanna and I both had to go up and feel these flowers before we realized they were fake. From afar they relly looked real. It was pretty cool.

I thought this was cute. It was on the back of a wedding carriage.

Would you like to buy a hat????

We made it to Japan!

Inside what we think was meant to be a tea house.

A very kind Chinese man took this for us. He was so cute. He took one and then was like "no,no one more" (of course he just use head nods and hand shakes to communicate this) and then took another.

The most adorable waste bins in the world.

Now we are at Cuiheng Village. This house is the only original and was where the revolutionary leader, Dr. Sun Yat Sen.

Everybody around the world loves to leave there mark. Cool though to see it in Chinese and not English. Hope this doesn't say anything offensive!

The museum which was actually pretty good. Most exhibits were in both Chinese and English. The first floor took you threw Dr. Sun Yat Sen's life and the revolution. The second floor is all about his family and wives.

After a long day of walking we were ready to get back on the bus.

But we walked some more! I'm not really sure if this was even a part of the village, but we strolled around for awhile. My friend told that he thinks they plant rice here.

There was a very odd mini zoo. There weren't many animals and I didn't really know why it was even here.

Some bunnies!

And a chicken. There were also some piegeons and some house cats. That was the oddest to see, and I really wanted to let the cats out and say, "Run free!"

So at the end of a very long day we decided to celebrate by getting frozen yogurt! It's very similar to YogHut, but not quite as good. Still it hit the spot right then.