Photo TR: Hong Kong parks & TPR Korea trip 2007

[nemesis-storm]

I chose to visit Hong Kong before & after the fantastic TPR trip to South Korea.

 

I visted Ocean Park before the TPR trip & Disneyland Hong Kong on my return. I'll post the pictures of Hong Kong before the Korea trip ones.

 

Anyway on to the TR

 

Part 1: Ocean Park

Ocean Park is on Hong Kong Island and quite easy to reach from any part of Hong Kong. I personally was staying on Lantau Island & all I had to do was get a ferry to Central on Hong Kong Island. Walk down to a few bus stops close to where the famous Star Ferry's depart from. Then it's a 25 minute bus journey to the park.

 

Ocean Park is part amusement park & part zoo I suppose. The park is split into part with most of the animal exhibits together & the rides situated on the larger part. However there are animal exhibits within the amusement park side & vice versa.

 

I went to the park on a Sunday, I knew beforehand it would be very busy! So my plan was mainly to get a few rides on the coasters. The park was indeed very busy but most of the rides where no longer than a 30 minute wait. The longest wait was for the cable car which was over an hour.

 

Enjoy the pics.

Honestly, Dragon was'nt too bad. It knocked you round a bit. I had 5 runs but not all in one go.

Dragon was first coaster to feature the "Sidewinder" inversion. They built more coaster with this ! Thanks Arrow....

Yes it's the Tyenol loop coaster or commonly know as the Dragon

It was time for the parks other coaster. Oh look what can I see down there !!

As the park is on a huge hillside. There are some great views when on the coaster & from the park.

Wild West Mine Train is from Zamperla. It was pretty good ! some airtime on this drop which came after the downward helix which you can see in the background.

I headed straight to 'Wild West Mine Train' where Sharks, Dolphins & Tinkerbell are allowed to ride.

It would be a great view from the cable car but due to smog drifting over from China it was'nt.

To get to the rides you can catch this huge dual cable car or catch a bus. The cable car takes 10 minutes in each direction.

Welcome to Ocean Park. All the major rides are on the other side of the big mountain.

[kraken613]

Looks like a nice little park.

[Axman]

Totaly fun looking park. That has mine train has such a cool location.

[Nrthwnd]

Maybe it's the coaster with the great view.

 

Maybe it's those gondolas you take to get to the "other side of the mountain," heh heh.

 

But I would definitely like to take in this park, one of these years.

 

Thanks for posting, and looking forward to the ongoing report.

 

[nemesis-storm]

Part 2: Hong Kong Disneyland or "The blustery day"

 

The day after returning from South Korea I visited Hong Kong Disneyland.

 

To be very honest before visiting the park I was not expecting much of the park. From reading various reports of the park & what others had said about the park . I'd even pre-booked my ticket as I assumed the park to be busy.

 

But eventually when I got there I had awesome time!!. I'll explain & hopefully the photos will do too.

 

I had originally had planned to get to the park for opening time & set my alarm clock to wake me up about 8am.

As I was staying on Lantau Island anyway the travel time was not much. I woke up at 8am & looked out my bedroom window to see torrential rain & very strong winds, turned on the TV to find that Hong Kong was on typhoon alert from a typhoon that was out to sea & all this bad weather was originating from this. The forecast was that weather was to get better later in the morning.

 

At this point I was in two minds whether to go or not but as I had already paid for my ticket, I was more inclined to go. So I went back to bed for a couple more hours. I woke up again at 10am-ish to find the weather better but still raining. So at this point I chose to go. I got to the park just before 12, picked up my ticket & entered the park and by this time the rain had almost stopped.

 

I headed straight for Space Mountain to find absolutely no queue!!. The queue line entrance sign was saying 5 minutes, but I think I was in the queue, on the ride & in the queue line again in about that time.

 

This Space Mountain is more like Disneyland or Disneyworld's versions rather than the Disneyland Paris version. I found it very it enjoyable & a lot of fun. As the park had started its Halloween season & they had added some very cool effects. They had called these effects 'Ghost Galaxy', at various parts of the ride the where you would normally see planets or galaxies they would turn into a space creature or monster which would try to attack your space craft, I thought it was a really nice touch.

 

After going on Space Mountain for 5 times, I headed for Buzz Lightyears Astroblasters. This too was walk on; I'd not been on this ride before & thought it was very good for that type of dark shooting ride. As there was no queue for 'Buzz' I went on it again to see if I could beat my previous score.

 

After going on ‘Buzz Lightyear’ I wanted to go on Autopia, the ride op told me as I entered the queue line that the wait was 15 – 20 minutes. I did not mind so much the wait. After about 10 minutes or so it started to rain, thankfully the queue was mostly undercover. However the rain got heavier & heavier. Once all the cars had returned back to both of the loading areas they decided to close the ride temporarily, but this point I was almost on the ride. It continued to rain very hard for about 10 minutes or so then it started to ease off – then next thing I was told to walk down the line of cars & board the next empty one. At this point the rain was easing off, all the cars were now full & gradually we were told to leave. I was about half way round the circuit when the heavy rain started again, All though I had a waterproof jacket the empty part of the seat soon filled up with rain water, so the time I got back to the station I was sitting in quite a lot of water !!.

 

It was now 2:30 PM, as it was still raining very hard; I went for some food at the nearby ‘Starliner Diner’. After eating I went outside to find it still raining very hard, as Astroblasters was close by, I went on this a further couple of times. I then went over to Space Mountain for a couple of more goes; again the ride was walk on.

 

As I had only been in Tomorrow land since I arrived at the park I chose to look round rest of the park. I noticed ‘The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh’ ride, this was another Disney ride I’d not been on before. The wait was about 15 minutes, I found it to be okay. By the point the rain had finally stopped, I then went over to the castle to take some pictures & then headed over to Adventureland.

 

Robb & Elissa had kindly told me that if I wished to do Jungle Cruise I should get there early. As the cruises are done in 3 languages (Cantonese, Mandarin & English I think) , there are 3 queue lines depending on your language you enter the appropriate line. For the English cruise there was no wait & to be honest I wanted to Jungle Cruise but being on my own I felt a bit embarrassed doing the ride, so I chose not to do it.

 

I then walked back into Fantasyland and noticed people were walking into Mickey's PhilharMagic as the next show was just about to start. This was another Disney attraction I had not done before. I thought it was probably one of the best 4D shows I’d seen. I enjoyed it as much as Shrek 4D in Orlando.

 

After PhilharMagic, went back to Space Mountain for a few more goes. By now the time was 5:30 PM, I headed for main street to get a few souvenirs. I left at around 6 PM.

 

Thanks for reading all of this.

 

Enjoy the pictures

Had 6 hours in the park & really enjoyed the park. Thanks for reading. South Korea pictures soon!

... Until you turn around. The mountain makes the castle look even smaller.

Main Street, could almost be in Florida ?

Being 'Sad & Pathetic' I chose not to Jungle cruise even there not being no queue for the English spoken version.

You can get the raft across to the Jungle Cruise area. Also with the mountains etc in background this area really blended in well I thought.

Castle

The little castle, but I thought it looked OK.

Remember 1 hand on the steering wheel & the other on your umbrella!

Electric version of Autopia, This was the longest wait I had. Due partly to heavy rain closing the ride.

Buzz reminds us how many coasters Hong Kong Disneyland has.

This version of Space Mountain was pretty darn good. Disney had added some really cool special effects for Halloween.

I need not of worried the park was pretty much empty. Yes the wait time for Space Mountain was 5 minutes or less. They were still offering fast passes & the single rider queue was open too !

As I had heard some bad reports on HK:DL, I was not sure waht to expect of the place. So the priority for me was to get the 'credit' first of all. So I headed straight to Tomorrow Land.

Yay! At last I'm here.

On the Disney train.

You catch a special Disney train at Sunny Bay down to the park. It was a very impressive station.

My Journey to Hong Kong Disneyland started at Sunny Bay train station. As there was a typhoon warning at the start of the day I found this name quite apt!

Welcome to the blustery day trip report !

[Axman]

HKDL is pretty small for a Magic Kingdom, but still pretty big for only being open for 2 years. The Autopia looks really well landscaped.

[America Sings Freak]

This park is nice and small, but from what i hear will soon be getting a lot bigger. Also did you happen to see any construction of It's A Small World?

[nemesis-storm]

This park is nice and small, but from what i hear will soon be getting a lot bigger. Also did you happen to see any construction of It's A Small World?

 

Yes there was some construction of It's a Small World going on.

 

They had some tall solid fences hiding the building work so I could not take any decent pictures. But I could see some of the parts of the steel frame for the building.

[Team Thriller]

Very nice pictures. I love how clean all Disney parks are!