Martin and Cheryl Go to Hong Kong

 

And Chuck, thank you for bringing Burgess Meredith to life again, if just for a moment.

 

That looks like a great park! Hopefully you have to pay before you can have bird contact...

Ocean Park has changed a lot since TPR was there the first time. This better be on the itinerary for 2016!

Great trip report, hope you enjoyed it over here. It's a shame you didn't get to ride the Mine Train at Ocean Park, that ride has great views. I haven't actually been on the observation tower yet, there seems to be a ridiculous queue for that even on the emptiest of days. I also love the old Hong Kong section, it seems that the look of old Hong Kong and Singapore seems to be making a come back in popular culture and I can't wait to see it. I saw Kowloon Walled City in one of my brothers games the other day.

Great park. Awesome use of space. The "train" up through the mountain is a must.

And I loved the section called Old China Town. Mostly arcades and things to buy,

but very nicely done and all the trim on the buildings was perfect.

 

Some great water view shots there, Martin. The park really lends itself to several

outstanding locations for photo shots. And yes, that tower just helps add to the

beauty of the overall location of Ocean Park, etc.

 

Yeah, it's definitely on the 2016 China Tour, I have no doubt.

The "train ride" up the mountain at Ocean Park is very cool, and possibly a precursor to the Hogwarts Express train ride at Universal in Florida (at least in the technology it uses).

Edited February 9, 2014 by cfc

Both parks in Hong Kong look great! Hong Kong Disneyland may not be the biggest Magic Kingdom-style park, but it sure does have the most unique attractions of any of them.

Ocean Park is an amazing park and the location is perfect! Can't wait to see how their water park turns out.

 

Great reports!

Thanks for all these pictures Martin & Cheryl - lots of fun to look at

 

Also, work on those selfies, Martin

I'm so sorry for not finishing up this report yet but those stupid things "my job" and "my career" have unfortunately crept into my life and have taken all of my time away from me. Add winter depression and I've really slowed down. We finally squeezed another trip in last weekend and I then realized that I hadn't finished reporting on this one, so here goes.

We had another day at HK Disneyland, so we took in the Festival of Lion King. It's pretty much the same but there's no audience participation and there are a couple of animals translating the story into Chinese.

There was a scene with this aerialist, and then she just kept swinging in circles. Eventually a voice announced that there were technical difficulties.

Her cable wasn't reeling out, so they had to rescue her, but the show went on!

We walked through Toy Story Land many times, but mainly just to get to different areas.

RC Racer is there, but the parachute jump is the big draw. The land sorely needs a Toy Story Midway Mania.

Fantasyland was very nice.

Lots of nice theming and landscaping.

It's not Tokyo, but it's an nice Pooh ride.

With a nicely themed shop.

It's A Small World was down for a rehab.

We also caught the 3:30 parade.

All of your favorite characters!

And of course we hit MM a few more times until the lines got too long.

One of the few still pictures I took.

The "Jungle River Cruise" was bizarre. Do they have this scene in CA and FL?

I don't mean to be a hater, but our guide was terrible. We waited for the English language boat but our guide wasn't super fluent. She was like, "Oh no, lion! Oh no, cannibals!" I guess sarcasm and corny jokes are hard to do in another language.

But it's worth it for the big finale!

The next day, we jumped on a ferry to Macau. Cheryl and I gamble a little so we wanted to check it out. In terms of gambling revenue, Macau is 7x the size of Vegas.

The trip takes about an hour.

Big crackdown on public smoking there.

Yes, that's the Macau Tower. Did we go? No. For some reason, our hearts weren't into it. We heard the Skyjump was really expensive, and we just didn't bother.

Instead, we went to the Venitian!

Yes, it's the Ice World show with your favorite Dreamworks characters. We had never been to the ones at the Gaylord Palms in Florida so we decided to check it out.

They give you those parkas, and you can buy other accessories for the cold.

Santa! This was in January.

Does the Gaylord do this too?

How to Train Your Dragon

Kung Fu Panda

The Croods

Madagascar

Cheryl on the ice slide!

Madagascar

And of course...

Shrek and Fiona

Dragon

Donkey and Puss

The Venetian is so fucking big. We walked around their giant mall for a while.

And we found a really great restaurant there. This was just so yummy.

It did bug me that they had shark fin soup on the menu. We definitely have seen restaurants in Asia with "Shark Fin Free" stickers on the door, but this was not one of them. Still, this was good food.

Thank you Venetian. Back to the free buses to the ferries.

Another hour back to HK.

Our last stop was to the Peak Tram, but it was so crowded, and late, that we said fuck it and paid an outrageous price to take a cab to the top.

At the top you get your money shots like this.

And your shitty selfies, like this.

We were waiting in line for another cab back down, when I ran into one of my fraternity brothers from college! He was there on business. I work very near where he lives, but we never see each other. So this was cool. I even had my Columbia sweatshirt on!

We finally got back to Disneyland. here's the train station at night. It's crowded when the park closes. We decided not to deal with the crowds getting onto the hotel busses, so we walked.

Here's the centerpiece fountain at night.

The path to the hotel is very beautiful. It's incredibly peaceful and empty at night.

I think the walk to the hotel was 20 minutes max. It was gorgeous. We saw one person, a watchman, the entire walk.

Thank you for visiting Hong Kong with us!!!

^ I've wanted to do that walk too Martin, from the park to the hotel on foot.

On overhead photos it just looks so lovely. Thanks for taking photos of it.

 

Damn, I miss HKDL already.

I didn't realize Macau was that big. Great pics!

looks like a great trip, thanks for the report. Definitely moved Hong Kong up on my list. Maybe 2015...

Thanks for a great trip report. Looking forward to checking the Hong Kong parks out in June!

Thanks for finishing your report, Martin. I really enjoyed Hong Kong Disney and Ocean Park back in 2012, and your video of Mystic Manor really makes me want to go back.

 

We had the same experience with the English-language Jungle Cruise boat, but, like you said, the big finish makes the ride worth it.

We felt the same way about the jungle cruise, we found the native language tours much more engaging and with a better atmosphere even though we didn't understand what was being said since the cast member was (understandably) more at ease.

 

I'm surprised you found the taxis price outrageous though, obviously more expensive to the subways or buses, we found those taxis extremely reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other Asian countries we visited: Korea, Japan, Singapore (although it was 4am so my memories of that taxis cost are fuzzy) even our taxi driver was telling us there are so many taxis in Hong Kong compared to how many people need them. That and the cost was so worth it at night-time compared to the bus, we took it down and so far it's the only time i've ever been travel sick in my life. It was weird how that peak tram would have two hour lines at night to go to the peak but it would be less than a 10 minute wait during the day time. But then people do the same thing for the cable car in Korea at night even when there are buses pretty nearby despite the fact your packed into the cable car so tight there is almost 0 chance of being able to take a good picture.

I can't wait to get out there someday, when I have money.

 

I'm surprised you found the taxis price outrageous though, obviously more expensive to the subways or buses, we found those taxis extremely reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other Asian countries we visited: Korea, Japan, Singapore (although it was 4am so my memories of that taxis cost are fuzzy) even our taxi driver was telling us there are so many taxis in Hong Kong compared to how many people need them. That and the cost was so worth it at night-time compared to the bus, we took it down and so far it's the only time i've ever been travel sick in my life. It was weird how that peak tram would have two hour lines at night to go to the peak but it would be less than a 10 minute wait during the day time. But then people do the same thing for the cable car in Korea at night even when there are buses pretty nearby despite the fact your packed into the cable car so tight there is almost 0 chance of being able to take a good picture.

 

No, the taxis in Hong Kong were perfectly reasonable, except for late at night when the Peak Tram queue was super long. We hailed a cab and he asked for a huge premium because he knew that our option was waiting two hours for the tram or trying to figure out the busses. I don't remember the price, but it seemed outrageous at the time. Coming down was a fraction of the cost because we ran on the meter and our destination was an MTR station.

 

Thanks for the love, everybody!

Thanks for the great TR! I've been to both HKDL and Ocean Park, but there's been so many great looking additions that I need to find an opportunity to visit again!

 

I mean, if nothing else - PENGUIN RESTAURANT!!!