The Set is Complete!

[Nomarian]

This will be my first TR ever, so please bear with me as I try to remember the details from our two week trip via the pictures that I took. Our family of 4 which includes myself, my wife and our two boys ages 13 and 16. I travel a lot for work, so once a year, we use all those points to book a big two week trip. It only made sense to us that the next trip would be to China as we have never been and that would also cover the last two Disney Parks for us as well.

Planning
I began planning this trip back at the end of 2017. I knew we would not only be visiting the Disney Parks, but spending a lot of time in the cities as well. I decided that the 144 travel visa would not be enough time and got us 10 year visas via the consulate here. I also had booked all our hotels and flights before I went down to the consulate as well. I knew I would be able to change them later, but they require you to have an set itinerary before you apply.

The Flight
I had booked us on a flight out of Houston to San Francisco and then onto Hong Kong. I used my miles to upgrade us to business class as I had a lot of them.

Hong Kong
Our flight landed around 6 pm in Hong Kong and we went straight to Customs. No issue here and we were able to get out pretty quick. We went straight to the taxi line and wave off the guys who tried to get you to ride with them instead of the official taxis. Our taxi got us to the Cordis hotel which I had booked 6 months ago and was in the Mongkok district in Kowloon. I choose this hotel because it was centrally located and my wife likes a nice hotel during these long international trips. We also choose this hotel as most hotels have a occupancy limit of 3 per room. The Cordis had a family room which gave my wife and I a king size bed and two doubles for the boys. The room also had 1.5 baths which made things much easier for us.

Once we arrived, we unpacked and since it was so late, we just got ready for bed and slept. The next morning, we went downstairs for the breakfast buffet included with the room. While the Cordis is attached to the Langham mall next store, nothing there is open until 10 am and we get started early. FYI, there is a Starbucks in the mall for those that need one. The buffet at this hotel is incredible and I am glad that we got the package that came with this. It allowed us to build up our energy reserves for the long day ahead.

Day 1
Today, we started off going over to the Avenue of the Stars, but found it was undergoing renovation, so they moved most of the items to a park nearby. This is where you will find the famous Bruce Lee statue and hand prints of famous movie stars.

Once that was done, we went over to the Hong Kong Museum of History as I head they had an incredible timeline of Hong Kong there. We got there about 10 minutes before opening, but the crowds were very light. Once it opened, I went straight to the ticket booth and asked for 4 adult tickets. They asked if I only wanted to see the Hong Kong timeline exhibit and I said yes. They noted it was free and would not cost anything. Just go over to the entrance and go in. I thought this was great! I will say that this is very worth it. The exhibit is broken down into 8 sections over a few floors and is very expansive, but the exhibits are great. Well worth a detour here.

From there, we were hungry and one of the top places on our list to eat as Tim Ho Wan which is a Michelin Star Dim Sum restaurant. Dim Sum is basically Chinese breakfast made up of a lot of little plates like a Tapas restaurant. When we got there, there were a lot of people outside waiting. It almost made us want to leave, but we decided to put our names in and stick it out. Surprising, the wait only took about 15 minutes and we were in and at a shared table with another family. Now I have been to a lot of Dim Sum places and I would not say that this was the best overall, but there were certainly some good items. The BBQ pork buns are probably the best I have ever had.

Now that we had eaten, it was time to head off to the tram and Victoria Peak. I had booked tickets for the Tram and Victoria peak ahead of time as I was told that if you try and go and get tickets, you will be waiting in line for at least an hour. At the same time, the tickets I purchased allowed us to use the Express Pass line. All I can say is that I am glad that I did this. Once we arrived by MTR and walked over to the Tram, the lines were extremely long. The fact that it was a Sunday probably did not help either. I used my prepaid tickets and went straight past the ticket booth into the Express line and we were on the Tram in 20 minutes.

Once up at the top, you are dropped off into a mall area and then you can walk up to the top of the viewing area. We walked up to the top and it was PACKED! You could hardly move around and people just stayed where they were and did not move. We did manage to get some very good pictures, but it was just too crowded to stay. I found out later that you can walk some trails from here down a bit to less crowded areas and we should have done that.

Once we got back down, we took the MTR back to our hotel area as we wanted to explore the markets and streets around there. We visited the Ladies Market (not selling ladies) and the Temple Night Street market. Most of the stuff was a lot of knockoffs, but there are deals to be had if you can haggle.

After all this, we were tired and wanted to get back to the hotel to sleep and ready for the next day which was Hong Kong Disneyland! Stay tuned!

 

[Nomarian]

Sorry for the edits. I am still trying to figure out the whole picture thing.

 

[Nomarian]

Day 2 - Hong Kong Disneyland

We woke up at 6:30 am on this day to have breakfast as soon as they opened, so we could then get back up to the room and pack our backpacks. We knew that we would be gone all day, so we wanted to make sure we had everything. We all ate a lot for breakfast and then got our packs and headed for the MTR. I have to say that the MTR is very easy to use. The hotel even sold us an Octopus card with $100HKD already on it for cost. We then used the card for all our travels around Hong Kong. The only time we ever used a taxi was to and from the airport. The MTR to Disneyland was pretty simple according to Google Maps. It was two different subway lines and then onto the dedicated Disney line. Google maps said it would take 40 minutes, but we arrived at the Disney line in about 20. Soon we saw our train pull up and we were very excited!

The train stopped at the station and everyone started to climb the steps to the exit. I would say the train was about 25% full and I was not too worried about the crowds. Once we got out of the station and started to walk, we saw the entrance:

We also stopped to take some pictures of the fountain as well.

Once past the fountains and sign, you see another long boardwalk to the entrance of the park.

We were about 30 minutes too early, so we just walked around and took pictures. There was definitely not a lot of people here waiting to get in and not what I am used to. When everyone did line up to get in, I would say that there was no more than 100 people for the park. I realized that a lot of people getting off the train were castmembers, so that thinned out the park goers even more.

I had purchased tickets ahead of time and had the tickets on my phone ready to go. Once they started to let us in, they scanned my phone for the 4 tickets and off were down Main Street. They stopped us from going in any further and had us queue up, but you could see the Castle and the work being done on it.

Once they released us from the queue, we went right towards Tomorrowland as I wanted to get on Iron Man the Experience first. It was funny as nobody was running and we all just walked over to the ride. I would say there was probably 10 people ahead of us. The queue was also pretty nice as there was a lot of things to keep you occupied while in the queue.

This was taken at night as I forgot to take one during the day.

Once we left Iron Man, we grabbed a Fastpass for an hour later and went straight over to Hyperspace Mountain. We have done Space Mountain a lot of times, but this would be the first time we have done Hyperspace Mountain. I have to say that we enjoyed this much more than Space Mountain, probably because we are Star Wars fans, but we did this ride 3 times in a row since there was no wait.

Easter was still around the park.

Once we were done there, we casually made our way around the park to each section and each ride. Next up was Small World.

Next up after that was the Jungle Cruise.

I will say I was surprised by the fire aspect of the ride. I don't remember this in the other Jungle Cruises.

From there, we walked through Toy Story and while I love Toy Story, the rides were all pretty much geared towards younger kids and my older boys did not want to ride any of them. At least we stopped to watch a few.

We then arrived at the ride I was most excited about. I had read a lot about it, but avoided videos so I would no spoil anything. I have to say that this was a great ride and we did it at least 4 times during our day at the park.

After Mystic Manor, we were getting hungry and it was lunch time. We stopped to eat a the Explorer's Club. This is a quick service restaurant where you get your food and then sit down at an open table.

I had the Nasi Goreng, which had a prawn, chicken leg, chicken satory and a cone of rice.

My wife had the Hainese Chicken Rice Combo

Both of the boys had the Korean BBQ Ribs combo

I have to say that we all though the food was really good. The price was about $17 per plate, but you got a lot of food and it was all very good.

After that, we just casually did rides, but we did have one show we wanted to see and that was the Lion King show. We queued up about 30 minutes before the show, but there were plenty of seats.

The show was very good. They speak a mix of Cantonese Chinese and English. While I speak basic Cantonese, I was able to follow those parts, but my wife and kids were able to follow along with no problems and they do not speak Cantonese.

So for the next few hours, we just walked about the park and queued up at most 10 minutes for each ride and pretty much did everything until it was time for Dinner. We finally decided to go into the Plaza Inn for dinner which was supposed to be higher end Cantonese food. The food was pretty good, but not worth the price in my opinion. I thought you could get better cheaper outside Disneyland, but were in the park.

Beef with Veggies and Mickey carrots

Roasted goose.

The rest are some random pics of the park that I took.

That is one expensive Pooh.

We stayed and watched the Main Street Projection show, but I have to say that we were pretty underwhelmed by it. I understand that it is a temporary show until the Castle is done, but that is going to be a few years, so I wish they would have put more effort into it. After the show, we did a little more shopping and then hopped on the MTR back to the hotel.

 

[CaptainCook]

Really enjoying your report so far - thanks for sharing! I have a few questions for you:

• I'm guessing your trip was in mid-June. How was the weather? Was the heat oppressive and how much rain did you get overall?
• Did you buy your tickets to the Victoria Peak tram from the official website? How does that work - do they assign you a designated time to ride? (I'd like to pre-purchase those tickets, but I don't think we can predict our arrival time.) Is it a separate ticket for the tram and to visit the peak, or just a single ticket that covers both?
• I'm glad to see your photo of the HK Disneyland castle - I thought we'd see a lot less of it than that (of course, we won't be there for another 3.5 weeks).
• Which Tim Ho Wan location did you visit?
• Did you need power adapters on your trip? I have a couple of universal adapters that I am planning to bring along, but I've read that they might not be needed.

 

[Nomarian]

Really enjoying your report so far - thanks for sharing! I have a few questions for you:

• I'm guessing your trip was in mid-June. How was the weather? Was the heat oppressive and how much rain did you get overall?
• Did you buy your tickets to the Victoria Peak tram from the official website? How does that work - do they assign you a designated time to ride? (I'd like to pre-purchase those tickets, but I don't think we can predict our arrival time.) Is it a separate ticket for the tram and to visit the peak, or just a single ticket that covers both?
• I'm glad to see your photo of the HK Disneyland castle - I thought we'd see a lot less of it than that (of course, we won't be there for another 3.5 weeks).
• Which Tim Ho Wan location did you visit?
• Did you need power adapters on your trip? I have a couple of universal adapters that I am planning to bring along, but I've read that they might not be needed.

1.) We traveled the end of May into June. I knew that heat was going to be a factor which is why we did Hong Kong first. We live in Houston where the heat is already oppressive, so we were prepared for it. It is also the rainy season, so we saw rain 4 out of the 6 days we were in Hong Kong. The temperatures in Hong Kong averaged 85 to 90 degrees F. We saw much milder temps in Shanghai, but it was still very hot during the middle of the day. The mornings started out in the low 70s and went straight to the upper 80s by 1pm.

2.) I used a provider called Kday for the Victoria Peak tickets. This ticket does set an arrival time, so you need to make sure you can make it. As for the Tram, there is really only one ticket for that, but you can do a combo package that includes the Sky Terrace which is extra and another combo package which includes the Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. We did this package: https://www.kkday.com/en/product/2322

3.) Yes, you can still most of the castle, but around the back you can definitely see the large machines such as bulldozers and cranes working to build the new castle.

4.) We did this location as it was close to our hotel. It seems to be a newer location. 18 Hoi Ting Rd, West Kowloon, Hong Kong

5.) You will need the power adapters in Hong Kong as it was a British colony for a while, so they use the European power plugs. I did not need them while we were in Shanghai as they use the same as the US.

Hope that helps!

 

[Nomarian]

I am not sure if anyone wants to read about our next days in Hong Kong or the days in Shanghai before Disneyland, so let let know and I can do this in chronological order or just skip to Shanghai Disneyland.

 

[CaptainCook]

Thanks for your replies.

I'm interested in your whole trip, so - whatever's easiest for you to report on, I'm happy to read!

 

[Disney127]

I am not sure if anyone wants to read about our next days in Hong Kong or the days in Shanghai before Disneyland, so let let know and I can do this in chronological order or just skip to Shanghai Disneyland.

I am enjoying your trip report, please continue. We are headed to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo next month - DD wanted to visit all the Disney parks while we are there. We are also staying at the Cordis Hotel in HK after our two day stay at HKDL Explorer Hotel. It's always nice to read about other's experiences.

 

[Nomarian]

I am enjoying your trip report, please continue. We are headed to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo next month - DD wanted to visit all the Disney parks while we are there. We are also staying at the Cordis Hotel in HK after our two day stay at HKDL Explorer Hotel. It's always nice to read about other's experiences.

You will definitely enjoy the Cordis. The service there is very good. They really bend over backwards to make you feel comfortable and happy.

 

[Nomarian]

Day 3 - Po Lin Temple

Today was a day trip to the one of the largest sitting Buddhas in the world at the Po Lin Temple. We started off this morning having breakfast at the buffet again in the Cordis. Here was my first plate which was a mix of different foods from Shanghai dumplings to some Dim Sum and Congee. Congee is basically a rice porridge, but we loved it here at the Cordis. While we were having breakfast, one of the hostesses took our picture and put it into a nice cardboard Cordis frame for us as a souvenir. It was a very nice gesture.

Once that was done, we we back to the room and got our backpacks and headed out to the MTR. The MTR is very close to the hotel. You just need to cross one street and there is a fairly large station entrance there. We took the same line as we would to Disney, but instead of getting off at the Disney station, we took the train all the way to the end. Once you get exit out of the station, you are in a large courtyard area. The courtyard has a mall on the right side and if you go past that, you find an escalator that leads up to the Ngong Ping 360 Tram service. Now the temple is high in the mountains and there is only 3 ways to get up to the temple. You can take a bus which take about an hour or a taxi which takes about 40 minutes. The best option from an experience perspective is to take the cable car up the mountain which takes about 20 minutes. Now to take the experience a step further, I opted for the glass bottom cable car which I knew would freak my family out. Since today was a weekday, I knew it was not going to be busy so when we went up the escalator, there was probably less than 20 people in line. I was able to get our tickets and get into the cable car line in 15 minutes.

This is what boarding looks like.

The cars move very slow when they get to the station and you just walk slowly and board your tram. Even though they say the tram can old 10 people, they were not stuffing them too the max. They allowed our family of 4 to have our own tram car. Once we got in, we sat on the seats and pulled our feet back as it was a bit nerve racking.

The tram will come to a few stations that allow it to change directions. Once you come out of the main station, it goes over a small section of the river as seen above, but then hits a substation and you being the climb up the mountains.

Eventually, the boys become used to the glass bottom and have fun with it.

After about 20 minutes, you read the top and exit the tram. From there, you only have one way out and that is into the small village before the temple. Right before they village they have these nice looking drums, that you are not allowed to hit.

After that, you enter a quaint looking village and you think that you are transported back to ancient China. NOPE! There's a Starbucks.

There is also a Subway if you need your sub fix as well.

Once you make it through the gauntlet of tourist traps, you enter the temple gardens. The first thing you will see the entrance arch.

After that, you will see the path is lined with guardians.

Once you past that, you have a choice, you can go right towards the Buddha or left to the temple. We went right and saw this.

Now I should note that before you see the steps when you go right, you need to go through this little ticket area. We thought we needed to buy tickets so we went up to the ticket window. I found out that they were just selling food tickets in case you were hungry and wanted to eat after you came down. There is no cost to see the Buddha, so you can skip this and head for the steps.

1/2 way up!

My wife has to stop to take a breather as did a lot of others, but my kids raced to the top. Once you are up top, the beauty of the Buddha is incredible.

The view around the Buddha is also incredible, so make sure you walk around slowly and take it all in.

Once we spent enough time at the top, we walked back down and walked over the to the temple grounds. As you walk towards the temple, you will see the area where you can buy and insert incense sticks. Most buddhists buy the sticks and pray with them before inserting them into the urns.

Once past that, you will read the actual temple. As you can see, it rained a bit while we were here on and off. In fact, it rained almost every day we were in Hong Kong. The only upside was that it was never a constant rain. It would rain for 5 minutes and stop.

Right before you walk into the temple, there was an area where you could pour water over a little statue which helps to purify the soul.

Now I noticed most people just went to this temple and left, but if you go through this temple and through the courtyard, you will come to another temple.

If you go through this temple to the back, you will come upon the Grand Hall of Ten Thousand Buddhas. This was actually something that was very cool. This room has literally 10,000 Buddhas in it of all sizes. There are the 5 large ones in the center and then a smaller middle row, but if you look closely, the walls are carved with little Buddhas as well.

Here are more pictures from that day as well.

Statues inside the temple

One of the statues offering to Buddha

We spent a good amount of time on the mountain and after probably 3-4 hours, we started the tram ride back down. I forgot to mention that if you buy the round trip on the tram, they put a wrist tag on you, so you can just walk up and get in line to board a tram back down. Once back down, we walked into the mall as they have food and stopped at a restaurant for a quick meal. We had few rice plates with BBQ pork/Goose and some veggies on the side.

Once we finished eating, we walked around the mall a bit just to see what was there, but it was pretty much the same as any other mall you have been in. We decided to head back to the hotel to drop everything off and do some street walking. Once back at the hotel, we freshened up and started to walk some of the markets close by. Here are some of the interesting sites we saw.

Fresh chickens. You can buy one and they will kill it and clean it for you.

Same goes for frogs too I guess.

Lots of seafood choices too.

I saw a stall selling egg custards and I had to buy a box. I love these. They are so good and cheap! It was like .33 cents per one. After a while of walking, the family was hungry and they did not want to eat Chinese, so we found a Korean BBQ place and had dinner there.

After this, we were tired and just wanted to get back to the room to shower and sleep. Tomorrow is a open day for us, so we just planned on taking it easy. More to come.

 

[CaptainCook]

Regarding your experience with kkday - you had no trouble meeting your guide to obtain your tickets (or is there another way to get them?) and there was no expectation that you stay with them while visiting the Peak?

 

[Nomarian]

Regarding your experience with kkday - you had no trouble meeting your guide to obtain your tickets (or is there another way to get them?) and there was no expectation that you stay with them while visiting the Peak?

We had no trouble meeting the guide. They tell you to meet them outside a specific MTR station and they carry a flag. We found them pretty easily and they will give you the tickets. They even say that once they get you on the Tram, you are free to do what you want. They got us into the express lane of the tram and we never saw her again.

 

[CaptainCook]

Awesome - thanks.

Are the egg tarts savoury, or sweet, more like a custard or creme brûlée than an omelet?

 

[Nomarian]

Awesome - thanks.

Are the egg tarts savoury, or sweet, more like a custard or creme brûlée than an omelet?

They are sweet like a creme brulee. You will love it as a dessert.

 

[ChanduTail]

I'm really enjoying your TR. When we went to HKDL, we stayed at the same hotel & also ate at Tim Ho Wan, so I know you had a great trip!

Your pictures are great, too.

 

[Shock13]

Your TR is great! I'm glad you are putting in non-Disney stuff too.

 

[Nomarian]

Day 4 (Technically 5 since the real Day 1 was a jet lag day)

Today was technically a rest day since we hit the ground running and I know my wife wanted some down time. We took the day to relax and get some things done before our trip out to Shanghai tomorrow. We woke up a little later today since we had been waking up very early everyday and doing over 20,000 steps according to my phone. I am sure everyone appreciated sleeping in today. We finished with breakfast around 9 am, so the first order of business was to wash some clothes. With a family of 4, the dirty clothes pile up and since we only brought 8 days worth of clothes for a 14 day trip, I already planned on doing some washing. I was not going to wash our clothes with the Cordis since they charge per item and the cost would have been at least a hundred and fifty US dollars. I had found a laundry service that was a block away called Wah Mei Dry Cleaning and Laundry Company which charged you by weight, so you bring all your clothes in a bag. It was a little hard to find, but with pictures, I found it quickly. (I have a map below for you) It is just a normal shop with a single woman working there with washing and drying machines all around her. We gave her our huge bags of laundry which was in a two black garbage bags courtesy of the Cordis and she stuck them on a scale. She said she would do them all for 100HKD or about $12.75USD. We agreed to the price and I asked if we could pick it up today and she said they would be done by 3pm. We left happy that we would not have to wear used underwear later in the trip and started to walk around.

We took the MTR two stops and got out and walked over to the harbor to watch boats and enjoy the view.

I had to take a picture of this package I found in a store. I like squid and all, but lukewarm sweet and sour squid? Ewww..

We walked all of Langham Mall next to the Cordis and found that they have a massive grocery store at the very bottom of the mall. If you want to shop for items for your hotel room such as snacks and sodas, you could pick them up there and easily take them back. I wish we found it sooner as we would have picked up some snacks, but my younger son found some candy that he wanted that we had not seen since Tokyo. He bought a lot of it.

We walked around to more markets and around downtown taking pictures and just enjoying the city.

This is some crazy sized ginger! I wish we had this in the states

We eventually got tired and went back to the hotel area. We stopped to get our laundry and the woman had them in 3 bags all folded for us. When we got back the room, we pulled them out and smelled everything and they were nice and clean. Where else can you get a huge load of laundry washed and folded for under $13? We started repacking all our suitcases for next hour or so and got ready for bed because tomorrow was Shanghai!

 

[Disney127]

I had found a laundry service that was a block away called Wah Mei Dry Cleaning and Laundry Company which charged you by weight, so you bring all your clothes in a bag. It was a little hard to find, but with pictures, I found it quickly. (I have a map below for you) It is just a normal shop with a single woman working there with washing and drying machines all around her. We gave her our huge bags of laundry which was in a two black garbage bags courtesy of the Cordis and she stuck them on a scale. She said she would do them all for 100HKD or about $12.75USD. We agreed to the price and I asked if we could pick it up today and she said they would be done by 3pm. We left happy that we would not have to wear used underwear later in the trip and started to walk around.

Thanks for this information on the laundry service. We need to do laundry too, didn't want to drag along 3 weeks worth of clothing ... need the luggage space for all the stuff my daughter wants to buy! LOL

 

[Nomarian]

Thanks for this information on the laundry service. We need to do laundry too, didn't want to drag along 3 weeks worth of clothing ... need the luggage space for all the stuff my daughter wants to buy! LOL

Heh. We were in the same boat. We brought 2 empty luggage containers and they were both full when we went back!

 

[Simba001]

Thank you for sharing your trip with us.

I was planning on bringing one empty suitcase for our trip, but now wondering if two might be better.