A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: Day 11 – Hong Kong Disneyland Part II

We stop by the room so Lucy can change, and we take a look at what afternoon snacks they have in the lounge. They definitely have a decent selection, especially in comparison to the night time options. We stash a bag of gummies to snack on later.

We head down to the Crystal Lotus for the Dim Sum

The menu is definitely a bit different that what we’re used to at home.

Despite not being a huge fan of the menu we were still dying to do the Disney Dim Sum. When we saw pictures of the dim sum it spawned the whole idea to go to the Asia Disney’s. The dim sum was just sooooo cute. The menu was definitely not to our taste, but it was without some of the cutest food we’ve ever had in Disney.

I ate a couple of the items, but most were just not to my taste. Kendall and Lucy ate some of the fried rice, but aside from that it was also not their favorite. It was absolutely adorable and that was without a doubt the highlight. This, ‘Ohana, and Blue Bayou in Disneyland were the only scheduled sit down meals we had all vacation. We are not foodies, but if there is a unique experience, we’ll venture outside our comfort zone to try something different.

Afterwards, we walked back to the park. At this point there really wasn’t much left to do to be honest as we had done almost all the major attractions. There were two shows, a Moana show and Mickey and the Wondrous Book that we wanted to see. We also still needed to see the “World of Frozen” which is the newest land in Hong Kong where there are two new rides, but other than that no other major headliners. For that reason, we are able to take our time and do some side attractions. We go and do Tarzan’s Treehouse as Lucy really wanted to take the raft to the island to see it. This is basically a combination between Tom Sawyer’s Island and the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.

It was just ok. It was nothing great. The Swiss Family Robinson Tree House is better, but it burned some time, and Lucy got to burn some energy. We get back on the raft and come back. We then head back to Fantasyland.

And of course we ride Lucy’s favorite, the tea cups.

We missed the Moana show earlier as it’s not a big theater, so it fills up fast. Then went to get a seat at the Moana show. We had tried several times today, but we were never early enough so went 44 min. early just to be safe.

I go and fetch some ice cream while Kendall and Lucy save our seats. They have some ice cream options we don’t have in the US.

We each decide to try something different. Lucy got a Stitch bar, I chose a Mickey Bar and Kendall got a Minnie Bar. Sorry Luna Belle, no one picked you.

Kendall also got some popcorn. I wish the US could get these popcorn containers. They are so cute!

The Moana show was pretty weak in our opinion. I was at minimum expecting to hear at least some singing of the songs from the show. Apparently there was no singing at all. It was basically just a abbreviated retelling of the movie in a play format, with no singing.

The cast was a decent size for the size of the production. Think there were maybe 10 performers or so.

The lack of singing just killed it for me, or really the lack of any music from the movie. The movie is known for its super catchy soundtrack and to have none of the music was a bit of a letdown. Lucy was totally jet lagged at this point and took a short nap during the show.

The performers had good energy though and the costuming was good.

After the singingless Moana show, we head over to It’s a Small World.

The Hong Kong version has the most characters of any It’s a Small World we’ve been on. It’s also more spacious than Paris but not as spacious as Orlando. We definitely like the added characters other It’s a Small World’s have. Adds something fun and different, especially for kids. They like to point out when they see a character they know.

As we exit It’s a Small World, we see a drone show going on. I honestly had no clue there was a drone show in Hong Kong and missed the boat on that one. There was no music at least from what I could tell, but it went on for quite a while and went through a bunch of different formations, primarily Christmas themed. I later find out this was part of the Holiday Wish-Come-True tree lighting ceremony and that’s why I didn’t know about it. It was part of the tree lighting ceremony and a tree lighting ceremony was not a top priority so I never read about it. It was definitely a pleasant surprise.

It’s now time for our second show of the night, Mickey & the Wondrous Book. Luckily, it’s literally right next to It’s a Small World.

We were excited to go indoors as the temperature had been dropping fast and it was starting to get cool outside. Unfortunately, to our dismay the theater did not seem to be heated, and it was barely warmer inside than outside. We knew absolutely nothing about this show going into it. It ended up being an excellent show, and one of our favorites this vacation so far.

Some parts were in Mandarin and some in English, so we at least understood enough to know what was going on. Even if they were currently speaking in Mandarin, there were two scrolling text LCD’s to the side of the stage that had both Mandarin and English as well that was subtitling the entire performance. They started off with some song and dance routines from The Jungle Book.

There was one section devoted to several Disney Princess movies including The Little Mermaid, Brave and Tangled.

They even had some of The Princess and the Frog.

The show went through a plethora of Disney movies by the end. It had excellent production value with big set pieces and good use of lighting, fog and costumes. Interestingly enough, they used the song Happily Ever After, the theme song for the Magic Kingdom show with the same name, Happily Ever After, as the intro and exit song. We were all very entertained and it was definitely one of the better stage shows we had seen this vacation. It was 100 times better than the sonless Moana show we saw earlier today.

It’s starting to get late, and we still hadn’t visited the brand new area, World of Frozen, so we head that way to try and go on the Frozen ride.

Frozen Ever After is all the way in the corner of the land so we start walking to the end.

Arendelle is absolutely gorgeous at night.

This part of the park is actually pretty crowded and the first time we felt crowded all day. The land just opened up in the last year, so it’s definitely the new hot thing.

Unfortunately, when we get to Frozen, it was closed for some reason. It’s about dinner time, so we go get some food at the Royal Banquet Hall in Fantasyland. We stay close as if Frozen opens back up, we’ll go do it real quick before the nighttime show. This is a massive quick service restaurant with 4 different bays, Entrèe Royale, International, Japanese, Grill that served different items at each. The Japanese line was the longest by a mile, with the Western food being pretty much a walk on.

We opted for some pizza, pasta and dumplings. It is absolute madness inside, and we spend over 10 minutes trying to find a seat. We eventually opt for outdoor seating despite the cold due to the inability to find a place to sit. We eat our food, as I watch and wait to see if Frozen reopens. We finish our food and go to the bathroom.

Right after we get out of the bathroom, I notice that Frozen had reopened in the app and we immediately dashed to go on it before a line had a chance to form. It didn’t even take 10 minutes from the time we entered the line to when we were on the ride. Even though we’ve been on the Frozen ride in Epcot many times, I really wanted to see the differences and newer animatronics that did not have the projector faces like what they had in Epcot.

The ride was definitely an improvement over the Epcot version. Given it was custom built for this space rather than just shoehorned into the Maelstrom’s old location makes a big difference in just overall layout.

The change from the weird screen faces to standard animatronic faces is easily the best decision ever.

We found it definitely superior to the Epcot version. Not that the Epcot version is bad, it’s just this one improves on Epcot in almost all aspects. We chose not to do Oaken’s Sleighs, it is the shortest coaster in any Disney Park on the planet at 25 seconds long and has a 40-50 minute wait or you can pay about 50 USD for Premiere Access. For the cost or wait time it just did not seem worth it.

It was getting close to fireworks time so we start to walk out of Arendelle. We love the little and not so little details they add to the land to give it a real Frozen vibe.

Momentous, the nighttime spectacular is starting in 45 minutes so we get to the main hub and find a spot. We stake out a spot and Kendall and Lucy go to Main Street to try and find some small gifts for friends and family, and a magnet. We truly buy minimal stuff when we travel, as we just in general do not like clutter in our home. There is only one thing we do buy as a souvenir from everywhere we go and that is a magnet. Magnet options have been pretty thin in Hong Kong so far, but we are hopeful Main Street will have something. Thankfully, Kendall did manage to find one, albeit not exactly the best, but beggars can’t be choosy and we were begging at this point.

The castle like any Disney castle looks gorgeous at night.

The show starts on time as expected. Overall, the show was great as most nighttime spectaculars are with a montage of Disney songs and video, combined with fireworks, water, and projections.

It was very nice, and I liked it better than the fireworks portion of Illuminations but not as much as Happily Ever After.

The story has some heart to it and it’s not just a random collage of pictures and videos. The fireworks were not as elaborate as other nighttime shows, so they definitely cut the budget there some, but the lighting, laser effects and water features make up for it as they were very impressive.

After the show, we walk back to the room on the same pathway we had used previously.

I go settle our bill at the desk as we have an early morning out of the airport. Yep! SURPRISE! I forgot to mention we aren’t staying our third night in Hong Kong. We had originally had 3 nights here, but after seeing the park today and how long it would take for us to do everything, we decided we could instead take that extra night and head to Shanghai, so throughout the day I was also cancelling and rebooking us to get us to Shanghai.

So we ARE going to do all 12 parks, rather than just 11. It would have gutted us to have been so close to doing all 12 in one trip, so we decided we’d tough it out, and fly to Shanghai for one night so we could make it to Shanghai Disneyland for half a day. We’ll obviously have to go back someday to do a more extensive park day, but we’ll at least be able to make it for a short bit this trip.

Thankfully, since our Hong Kong to Tokyo flights were booked with Delta miles there is no penalty to cancel that. I luck out and find some business class availability on Cathay Pacific for 84,000 miles total, so we book that from Hong Kong, and then book an economy flight on China Eastern from Shanghai to Tokyo for about $500 dollars. I also do a last second booking for the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel. Given we were flying an Asian carrier out of Hong Kong we figured the chance of them not understanding that we DO NOT need a visa was slim to none, as Hong Kong IS part of China.

On another celebratory note, today we hit ANOTHER milestone. I have tried to avoid writing about Kendall’s injury too much, as that is not the focus of these articles, but today we accomplished something that we truly never thought would be possible after the accident. Previously, in Paris we started the day at about noon so it wasn’t quite a full park day, but Kendall did manage to walk it. While Hong Kong is a very small park, Kendall walked an ENTIRE day in the park with no wheelchair assistance!!!! She walked over 22,000 steps!!!! This is massive and a true cause for celebration as we truly believed that walking a full park day would never happen again. On this trip she continues to break down the walls we believed were unbreakable.

Day 11, December 29th, 2024 Step Count – 26,362 Steps

Total Step Count – 177,050

Continue to the next day here.

Read about the first half of the day here.