We promised ourselves that we’ll get up early today as we want to make the most out of Hong Kong Disneyland but holy crap we overslept! Well actually, I woke up just in time but Ryan was still sleeping. Seriously dude, if you’re reading this, you’ve got some sleeping problem. It’s alright though because we managed to be at the Yau Ma Tei MTR station by 10am.

   

Cutting to the chase…around 20 minutes and an interchange station later, we arrived at the Sunny Bay station. Nothing special, except that the platform is above ground than under it and then the train arrives…whoa! It has mickey-shaped windows. The surprise doesn’t stop there…cushion seats, disney figurines, mickey shaped stuffs everywhere. We arrived at the Disneyland Resort Station in a while and the magic continues…disney songs playing in seemingly hidden speakers and costumed characters hanging out in the station. It seems like the train took us to another world, a magical one.

   

We missed the bus terminal at the back of the MTR that would take us to our hotel so we had to walk for what seems like several hundred miles carrying all our heavy luggage. We arrived at Disney’s Hollywood Hotel all sweaty, left the baggages at bell services, took a shuttle bus to the park and we’re in! Since it’ll probably take a novel to talk about our Disneyland experience in detail, I’ll just give a quick rundown of the attractions.

Space Mountain - The greatest theme park ride ever. Beats any daredevil coasters out there as Space Mountain takes you into outer space with synchronized music! Astronomically cool.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blazers - A letdown. It’s mindless shooting targets inside a slow moving vehicle. A bit boring but Ryan seems to love it…maybe because his score ranks him as Space Ranger.

The Golden Mickeys - A personal favorite. It’s a live show featuring different Disney characters performing musical acts from the movies. Though the dialogue is in Cantonese, all musical numbers are in English and you could spot a number of our fellow kababayans performing including the host (who speaks good Cantonese, by the way)

Jungle Cruise - Also boring. Why would we want to learn more about fake animals? Our host looks like Chocolate and even though she speaks english we can barely understand what she is saying.

   

Lunch Time at the Royal Banquet Hall! I had a bbq pork roast. I guess it’s authentic chinese food ‘Coz it came with chopsticks and chinese tea. Haha. We’re too cheap to order drinks so we settled for the hot tea but it tasted horrible. Food’s great though even though it costs HK$45 (300 pesos) for something that would cost less than 100 pesos back in Manila.

Mickey’s Philharmagic - Another favorite. One million times better than Enchanted Kingdom’s 4D attraction. Makes me fall in love with Disney movies and songs all-over again. Alladin and Jasmine in the flying carpet coming out of the screen singing A Whole New World? Nothing can ever beat that.

Pooh’s Storybook - Also for kids. You basically just sits inside a hunny whatever and go around and watch moving animatronics. Never really liked Pooh specially if you step on one on the street.

Cinderella’s Carousel - Uhmmm…we didn’t ride this one (though Ryan wanted to, I said it’s lame) but there was this really really hot chinese girl riding one of the horses in a really short shorts.

Disney on Parade - Awesome! Though the one in Anaheim is much more grand, this one will do. Some of the costumes rock like the plastic soldiers of Toy Story and of course Buzz! The Disney princesses also possess uncanny resemblance with the cartoon version.

On the way to the Festival of the Lion King, we pass by the hot chinese girl again who speaks Tagalog! Ohmigod! Pity we never saw her again after that because I’m determined to to talk to her. Really. Ok, maybe just ogle not talk.

The Festival of the Lion King - Another awesome broadway-style play. You just have to see it to believe it.

Disney on the Stars - Less than spectacular fireworks but spectacular presentation. Be sure to pick a spot right in front of the castle to see the full presentation or else it’ll just be a lame fireworks show.

Can I just say that we rode Space Mountain for like 5 times just to have a perfect ride photo? It helps that the ride doesn’t have a long wait time that day.

Shopping for souvenirs is also fun…except we cannot buy anything we want because we do not have money. Sad, I know. Though I traded tomorrow’s lunch money for a nice mickey ringer tee and a necklace to give someone back home.

That sums up our very magical day. Don’t believe the rumors or the bad reviews, Disneyland is a very very nice theme park indeed. Stay tune for the next post as I review Disney’s Hollywood Hotel.