Hi all! This is my first post on this forum so maybe I'll introduce myself first! My name is Peter and I've been a huge fan of Disney parks since I first visited Disneyland with my family when I was ten. I've been fortunate to now visit every Disney Resort around the world, most of them multiple times. I've spent the most time in California, Tokyo and Hong Kong and many of this trips have been with my close friend Zach who is featured in many of the photos below. This is a very long trip report so it won't be for everyone but I just had some many thoughts to put down! I've put it in sections so you can jump around a bit.
I also filmed a lot of video of the park and will be editing together a little movie soon. Zach and I are planning on creating some kind of online presence to post photos and videos and thoughts, so if you enjoy this then there may be a lot more coming soon!
To see some photos we took, please view them in this IMGUR gallery! Thanks for reading and looking
TRIP REPORT - Shanghai Disneyland June 16 and 17 - Grand Opening
I have just landed back in Melbourne after a wonderful week-long trip to Shanghai Disney Resort’s opening, with a stopover at Hong Kong Disneyland on the way. This report will concentrate just on Shanghai, and I will discuss Hong Kong a little later on. I am still buzzing from the wonderful time I had and the energy and happiness of the park opening. The cast members were so excited to be there, and everyone I saw was smiling and enjoying their time. My trip to Hong Kong and Shanghai was with my long-time friend Zach - we have both visited every park in the world, most multiple times. Zach also spent some time working at Disney World. Living in Australia I have spent a lot of time exploring the parks in Tokyo and Hong Kong and we thought it was essential that we go to the opening of Shanghai… and we had the best time ever. We were joined on the 17th by a couple of my work friends, Leah from Australia and Zoe from Beijing. All of the photos below were taken by us four.
Grand Opening
We arrived by train around 8am on the 16th and found a group of 200 or so people already queued at the security check area. We didn’t have to sit down for long before they ushered us through the bag check and into the ticketing area where we collected our grand opening tickets. After this everyone was sent into a large open area next to the entry gates where they had sections for groups of people to wait. Once in an area you received a wristband (we were in group 1A - the first group there) you could exit and go to the bathroom or buy water, ponchos and umbrellas. I’m not sure what it was like for everyone after us but I heard there were large queues throughout most of the day to get in, so getting there early was a great idea.
Being part of this very first group was really exciting and really helped calm our nerves for the opening. We all entered a bit early at 11.30 and as we walked into the park and along Mickey Avenue were greeted by hundreds of cast members, from people working in the park to imagineers and executives. Apparently even Bob Iger was amongst this crowd but we didn’t spot him. Everyone was waving and welcoming us, it was a really lovely celebration and everyone had a huge smile on their face! Due to them slowly letting groups into the park it really didn’t get very busy at all for a couple of hours, but even then it wasn’t a very busy day. I assume they restricted the tickets for opening day to make it more comfortable and seamless for everyone and we thoroughly enjoyed every moment.
There were some nice little gifts for everyone on grand opening day (and some even still available on the 17th) - a badge was handed out in the waiting area and after riding the major rides you received a certificate saying you had been one of the first official guests to ride the attraction.
Cast members never failed to be excited, happy and enjoying being with these guests, even after many weeks of previews. I am so glad that I was able to experience the grand opening of such a momentous place, and there really was Disney magic in the air.
General Thoughts on the Park
Some friends of mine wanted to delay going to this park until it was more established and grown a bit… but I don’t think this is something to be concerned about. The park has a great set of rides, heaps of room and already feels well established and built in. It feels at once brand new and also as if it’s been there for ever. You can tell the trees and other plants will continue to grow, but everything looks great and some of the sights are spectacular.
The cast members really took advantage of their training in other parks and the weeks of previews - there wasn’t much evidence at all of inexperience or lack of skills or knowledge. There was help there from parks around the world - definitely from Hong Kong but I heard accents from all over - all visiting cast members had a Shanghai badge with their name in Mandarin which would seems like a great little gift for them.
This park is big. Very big. But it doesn’t feel strange. One of the things I don’t like about Tokyo Disneyland is that it has wide open spaces but they are just large expanses of different colours of concrete. Over at DisneySea you have less open space but nicely textured ground. This blends those two perfectly - lots of open space but everything is well themed. The lands aren’t flat at all and this adds a huge extra dimension to the worlds that is missing from places such as many of the US parks, Hong Kong and Tokyo Disneyland.
The castle is something else. I wasn’t sold on it’s design and the photos of it during construction, but they don’t really represent it well. More than any other castle in a Disney park, this feels like an actual castle. It has a grand scale… and you can explore it. There is a great “Once Upon a Time” Adventure walk through attraction upstairs, the Crystal Grotto underneath, the Royal Banquet Hall restaurant and a Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. It’s utilised and you can experience it. You can approach it from all directions, and from it you can survey all of fantasyland from above. This was a great decision - and the design provides the perfect backdrop for the Ignite the Dream show.
One other experience we had was that one of my friends fell ill during the evening of the 17th. Someone from the first aid team came over to assist and with security guards cleared the way to the First Aid building in Mickey Avenue right after the evening show finished. She was treated by a very caring doctor who spoke English well and was provided with medication with instructions in both Mandarin and English. We were able to wait there until she felt better and was able to leave the park. It’s unfortunate that sometimes this sort of thing happens but great to know that Disney are already well prepared to handle it, and their facilities seemed top-level.
The Lands
I can’t even imagine how much work went into finalising these lands - but there is a great set of environments on offer, some familiar and some brand new.
Mickey Avenue
The most peculiar thing here is the not-a-train-station-train-station that you cross under when entering the park. It wouldn’t be the first Magic Kingdom style park without a train station at the front (Tokyo) so I’m not sure why they thought this was necessary, when they seemed to throw out the rulebook for a lot of the park layout and design.
Mickey Avenue is a nice area - it doesn’t get anywhere near as congested as Main Street’s can be. I have photos at 5pm on opening day in Mickey Avenue where it looks like the park might be closed. You also get a magnificent framing of the castle through some trees in the centre of the entryway. The shopfronts are well themed and there is a nice variety of designs and fun little pieces of Disney everywhere.
Gardens of Imagination
This is one of my favourite areas of the park. I love the shorter entry with Mickey Avenue which brings you to this grand parkland with the castle at one end, and rides and experiences in between. Having Dumbo and the Carousel here really adds nice movement and brings the park instantly alive. This area isn’t as green as I thought it might be from concept pictures, but there are lovely areas to explore, nice patches of water, and many places to stop and take photos of the castle. This park has multiple routes everywhere, places to explore and get lost-but-not-really-lost in, and the Gardens really establish that from the start.
At night this area becomes very hard to walk through as everyone is waiting for Ignite The Dream, but it is nice that they have thought about providing an area for so many people to watch from that doesn’t just feel like a big open patch of walkway. There is ample room to move around the outside of the gardens during this time, so it’s not a big issue.
Ignite the Dream - A Nighttime Spectacular of Magic and Light definitely lives up to its name. It brings together everything that Disney has done in nighttime shows over the last decade - fireworks, lasers, projections, music and fountains. You can tell that accomodation for evening shows was designed into the park itself, and it means that the experience is quite unique. The viewing area is huge - almost the entire gardens of imagination provides a good view. The fireworks launch from the castle and surrounding areas with almost no area being closed down and no rides closing.
An issue I’ve had in the past with night shows at Disney parks is that the firework elements often feel disconnected from things like projections and lighting, simply because they have limited launch areas. Here that isn’t an issue at all - the fireworks feel totally integrated into the entire show - projections interact with where fireworks are launched from and everything feels more cohesive than ever before.
Adventure Isle
This is the one area that will really look different in a few years once all of the natural elements grow in more. It’s also the busiest area at park opening - lining up to get a fast pass here can take a long time as it is home to the two attractions with the longest wait times - Soaring and Roaring Rapids.
The Roaring Rapids mountain is spectacular - one of the best physical creations Disney has ever created. It’s imposing. Huge. The waterfall is dramatic and adds dimension. The ride itself is fun, but not essential in my book. The animatronic was working, but the ride wasn’t open for very long on the 17th so I’m not sure if they are still finished finalising everything. There really wasn’t many story elements here. Definitely more exciting than the two US rapid rides, and you get a good level of wet and almost soaked. Unimaginative queue but well themed ride and the animatronic is HUGE.
I’m not a huge fan of the Soaring rides - they are pleasant and enjoyable but I don’t think they are essential and I’m baffled as to why Soaring Over the Horizon is one of the most popular attraction at this park. I assume it’s lower ride capacity skews the numbers a bit, but it’s definitely the first fast pass to sell out each day. The new movie seems a bit disconnected compared to California, and you can notice quite a bit of CG in some of the scenes. It just feels a lot more static with movement coming from adding in elements creating transitions. As an Australian I felt a bit embarrassed by the Sydney scene…. it was just a slow flight into Sydney Harbour… which is a stunning view but it just felt uninspired. Music is great. pre-show is bizarre.
Treasure Cove
Definitely my favourite area of the park. I love the world of Pirates of the Caribbean, and seeing an entire Pirates area brought to life like this is really cool. The cast member outfits are the best in the park - I would definitely want to work here if I worked at Shanghai.
There is a lot to explore, and some good food options (unfortunately The Snacking’ Kraken wasn’t open - one of the best names for a food outlet Disney has ever come up with!) but the reason everyone will want to keep returning to Treasure Cove is completely because of one of the most spectacular experiences, if not the most spectacular, that Disney has ever created in Pirates of the Caribbean - Battle for the Sunken Treasure.
I really don’t have the words to properly explain my love for this attraction. It has such scale, such spectacle, such magic - they haven’t spared one cent anywhere here. It’s innovative, and everything that is there is essential to the experience. People will compare it to universal rides like Spiderman, but it’s so much more than that. Yes, it has screens, but you very quickly forget they are screens. The video is perfectly mapped to the boats - which never feel like they are on any kind of track - and give a great illusion of 3D space in every environment. I don’t think there is another ride with physical elements on this scale - they tower over your boat. You get lost in them. You never feel like you are looking at a ceiling.
Everything feels cohesive and you don’t feel like you are going from a real place to a video and back to a real place, it all comes together. Being able to make the ride vehicles move in all directions, even up and down is used well to guide you through the story, and because of this they can pull off some great effects like the appearance of Jack Sparrow near the start of the attraction. This is unmissable and I don’t want to make the call now so soon after experiencing it, but this could be my new number one attraction in any theme park.
Tomorrowland
Disney has struggled with theming Tomorrowlands everywhere for decades now. Building an impression of the future will never work because it’ll either be wrong or outdated quickly. Discoveryland in Paris battled this by creating an alternate steam-punk Jules Verne inspired future, and it’s definitely my favourite and is the most timeless. So what have they done here? This is definitely in the vein of creating a look into the future, but a very stylised one which seems like a current, alternate-universe area with elements that probably won’t be found in our future, but look futuristic. Very clean, lots of steel, glass and purple/pink/blue colours. It looks terrific at night and becomes a futuristic dance party each evening. The landscaping is interesting and distinctive, and it doesn’t just look like a sparse panel of concrete - it has staircases and curved ramps everywhere creating a visually appealing and interesting area.
Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue is the best version of this style of ride. The elements look more advanced and there is more movement. Some projections add a nice dimension, and you are shooting at screens that respond and change instead of static shapes. The laser point is constantly on also so it’s much easier to figure out where you are shooting. This isn’t my favourite type of ride but it has a short wait and is enjoyable.
Star Wars Launch Bay was popular, and was a good place to go to meet characters and see some cool things from the movies. It was well themed with an X-Wing hanging from the ceiling and great costumes on the cast members. You could meet Kylo Ren, Darth Vader and R2-D2 when we visited, it was kinda fun seeing kids confused by Kylo Ren not being nice to them! You could also meet Storm Troopers who would walk around Tomorrowland.
Of course the main reason people head to Tomorrowland in Shanghai is for TRON Lightcycle Power Run. This E-Ticket is a great experience but doesn’t quite reach the heights of where it could have gone. Most of the queue is uninspiring, except for some great elements like a wall that appears as a screen before suddenly disappearing showing the lightcycles launching out of the building. The music is great, as it is in the movie. Climbing onto the bikes is an easier experience than I was anticipating - you climb over and sit your shins into comfortable slots. You lean forward (there is a compartment for small items like phones here also) and pull down the handlebars which pushes out a bar over the back of your leg and closes the back of the bike over you. It’s surprisingly comfortable.
The launch is fantastic, and is a great thing to watch at night. The indoor elements are good, but I think could have been better. It’s definitely better to experience this ride from further back in the car - not the front. There are some elements that happen to the actual ride vehicles that you miss at the front, and you take in more of the set pieces from further back. It’s still a really great ride, and a fun, fast and smooth coaster, but I think could have been even better.
Fantasyland
The final area we visited on opening day was Fantasyland. The castle here is imposing and you feel like you are really in the little village behind this huge building. This is a very popular area of the park and has some great experiences. I won’t spend any time talking about The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh as it is indistinguishable from the ride in America and Hong Kong - really exactly the same without any advancements. Hunny Pot Spin is a nice change from the tea cups and looks really great at night - it glows a honey yellow/orange colour.
The Alice in Wonderland Maze is a nice area and gives you great views of the castle. It’s definitely much larger than the maze in Paris, but has less movement. The lamps across the top give this a unique look at night time and the different areas seemed popular with those walking through.
The castle houses a few different attractions and experiences - we weren’t able to eat at the Royal Banquet Hall but did do the “Once Upon a Time” Adventure walk through which involved various rooms telling the Snow White story using different screen, 3D and projection techniques. I enjoyed it and you get to walk through a lot of the upper area of the castle which is really fun and makes you feel really connected with the space.
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is essentially the same ride as in Orlando. It’s super smooth and I enjoy it a lot. I think it’s great having a nice fun family coaster in Fantasyland, and it’s great they were able to add this before the park opened. Peter Pan’s Flight is another ride brought in from other parks, but unlike Winnie the Pooh this one has seen many advancements and they are generally all for the better. This ride uses lots of projections (some projected from the ride vehicle itself), lighting effects and a few updated and larger scenes to create a more modern take on this ride that I love. One of my friends had never been to any Disney park before and we explained to her beforehand the history behind rides like Peter Pan and she absolutely loved it and said it as one of her favourite experiences of the day.
The final ride in Fantasyland is Voyage to the Crystal Grotto - a boat ride that is partially under the castle. This ride highlighted to us that we will never escape flash photography at night and in darkness no matter where in the world you are! This ride is simple and lovely. The boat can hold a lot of people and operates all day and night (we actually were on a boat during the fireworks which was nice).
Food
Food was good, park-wide. About 50% would be chinese, 30% other asian cuisines, the rest western. Most places are quick service and no meals particularly stand out as amazing, but we all enjoyed every meal we ate and there was a good variety. As with all Disney parks they are happy to accomodate dietary requirements and all menus are in Mandarin and English. Every area also had their own signature drink or dessert that you could buy with a souvenir cup. I’ll quickly highlight the food outlets we visited:
Pinocchio Village Kitchen - I had a delicious rice bowl with BBQ Pork, we also shared a mickey-shaped pizza which was adorable and quite a lot more interesting then what you would buy in an American park. I had the signature drink here - a lemon/lime slush drink with strawberry sauce mixed in - it was very good!
Barbossa’s Bounty - I love that instead of putting a more exclusive restaurant attached to Pirates of the Caribbean they’ve put quick-service here. We had a seat right next to the ride and the atmosphere was great!
Stargazer Grill - From what I could see, the only place to get burger and fries in the park. It was good. Also interesting to point out that Shanghai Disneyland has Pepsi drinks, not Coke. So you can get 7Up and Mirinda instead of Sprite and Fanta, along with different sweet teas and other drinks.
Mickey & Pals Market Cafe - most of the quick service places have the multiple counter with different cuisines at each one design, this was no different. It meant that there wasn’t much variety in dining style, but the food was always good. This is the most robust food offering at the front of the park, with Wandering Moon Treehouse around the corner for something a bit fancier.
Rémy’s Pâtisserie - probably the best bakery of any Disney Park in my opinion. A great variety of sweet and savoury, cold and hot items. You take a tray and tongs and serve yourself like in any asian patisserie, and all descriptions were in Mandarin and English so there would be mostly no surprises! We took some treats home from here at the end of the second day.
Snacks
Corndogs - definitely not as great as the corndogs at Disneyland! They weren’t made fresh and it tasted like maybe they were just using a batter more similar to pancakes/waffles then cornbread, but they were ok. Not essential.
Popcorn - you can only buy caramel popcorn here but luckily I love caramel corn and this is fresh and hot and delicious! They had popcorn buckets similar to Tokyo… I saw ones designed like Tron Lightcycles, Cinderella’s Carriage and Dumbo. It’s amazing how much this smell makes you feel like you are instantly at a Disney park!
Ice Cream - We had to buy Mickey Bars! Here they had a special grand opening edition which tasted like caramel with chocolate ears, covered in milk chocolate. They also have regular vanilla with chocolate and a minnie bar which is strawberry with white chocolate. They had a lemonade-flavoured Donald ice bar also. All were delicious and came in little plastic holders so you didn’t drip everywhere, something quite common around Asia.
The also have other Disney staples like Churros, Turkey Legs, and Mickey shaped items like Mickey Pork Buns, but we weren’t able to try these.
Shops
We didn’t spend too much time in the shops across the park, but they seemed quite similar to shops in other Disney Parks. Merchandising was pretty good across the board and you could buy many ride-themed products. Mickey and friends dressed for Tron, Pirates, etc… and each area of the park had specific merchandise like pins, magnets, stationery and ornaments.
One interesting thing I found was that the large shop in Mickey Avenue, Avenue M Arcade, was split into departments - separate rooms for different types of things like ‘Princess’ and ’Mickey and Minnie’ which really made it easy to find items for your interests - sometimes these large format stores can get very confusing!
The Whistle Stop Shop is also where you can have ear hats stitched with your name in English or Mandarin. We had the special blue and gold grand opening hats made with our names in Mandarin on the back which is a nice souvenir - you really need a friend who speaks Mandarin to work this out for you as it may be a bit confusing for the cast members. Because it was so busy on opening day we had to pick up our hats on the 17th. They only had two sewing machines and I didn’t see them doing the stitching anywhere else in the park so I think this might be a bit of a rare thing to have!
I usually don’t purchase too much merchandise at Disney Parks, but there were some nice things I picked up because it was grand opening. All of the grand opening items were dark blue and gold. I have the ear hat, a completely sequin Mickey plush (well it’s not soft, but looks like a plush), a nice key chain and some little cookie gift packs for some friends that had a really nice gold tag and ribbon. They also had the main characters in grand opening dress - I picked up a Donald plush for a friend of mine.
Disneytown
We were bored on the night of the 15th so thought we would head out to the resort (unfortunately we weren’t able to stay in the hotels due to issues with the payment system when booking) and have a look around and get an idea of how things might work on opening day, and to have dinner in Disneytown. Just like in the park itself, most of the restaurants had international staff supporting the opening to make sure everything ran smoothly. We dined at The Cheesecake Factory and it was on par with the one I’ve eaten at in San Jose. Staff seemed to still be learning the ropes but it was a good experience.
We checked out a few stores - the Lego Store is huge and has some really great giant lego creations, as you would know from any of the Lego stores in other Disney areas. World of Disney has almost everything you can find in the park - a surprising amount of merchandise that I had not seen previously. You can also pick up Disney candy and confections at the Spoonful of Sugar store - so you can almost skip out of the park and do most of your shopping in Disney Town if you liked.
The architecture is nice, feels like a little town and that his has a bit of age to it, but it is fairly uninspired… which is ok when you have the Disneyland park next door! You can actually enter Disneytown from the park - there is a walkway between Mickey Avenue and Tomorrowland - and we were able to enter back into the park this way.
The Future
This park is going to do very well. It is already amazing, and a really robust offering of modern Disney. The rides are a great range of everything Disney does well, and some are truly spectacular and show Imagineering firing on all cylinders. The immediate future will bring a Toy Story Land - you can see they have already started on this with a toilet and restaurant that will be themed once the rest of that area is complete. Celebration Cafe has virtually no theming and you can easily see how it will become part of a Toy Story land… it also isn’t really in any other land right now. I’m not sure why they don’t just keep this behind walls as I don’t think the restaurant was ever open from the times I walked past.
But this park is very exciting and has theming and immersion on par with the best Disney has done - as good as DisneySea definitely. It’s modern, fresh with a lot of new experiences for any Disney Park fan. It’s worth visiting now, you don’t need to wait. Hong Konsg and Tokyo are nearby and adding one or both would create a great trip!
A few notes
I wasn’t able to take in any of the other shows - I really wanted to see the Pirates Stunt Show but I wasn’t able to see this. We also skipped a few attractions like Dumbo, Carousel, Stitch Encounter, Jet Packs, Hunny Pot Spin and the Explorer Canoes, mostly because they are quite similar to rides at other parks and we wanted to concentrate on new experiences.
