A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: Day 12 – Shanghai Disneyland

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far.”

I was hoping to get a decent nights sleep but I ended up waking up at 4:00 AM due to jet lag so I try and check in for our flight with Cathay Pacific and not too surprisingly it was asking for a visa to finish online check in. This was not surprising as a I knew that was what was required from the beginning, but it does also state that additional documents maybe required to check in and to provide those at the airport. The additional documents in this case were documents proving that we had a flight leaving China within the 240 hours that we were allowed to transit in China.

What did worry me was that as I was checking in I noticed my name was Ramon Ymalay Ymalay.

When I first set up my frequent flyer account with Cathay Pacific a year ago I messed up inputting my name. I tried to fix this back in July of this year and sent in a picture of my passport, but they for some reason they were still unable to change my name. I did not think that would be a huge deal, as I just booked an award ticket as though it would be for someone else except it was for me so I could change my name to my correct name. That’s what I did when I booked our original Shanghai to Hong Kong ticket prior to our itinerary change.

I totally forgot about this when I booked another award ticket, and it automatically used the name listed with my frequent flyer account. 99.9 percent of the time your middle name does not matter on your ticket and it can be incorrect and the airlines will gloss over that error. That being said, 99.9 percent of the time an airline does not deny someone with a perfectly legitimate itinerary, and well above 99.9999 percent of the time people do not get run over on vacation, so I was starting to get REAL paranoid and my anxiety was going through the roof. The fact we were going to China which is notoriously strict with EVERYTHING just sent me panicking. I just rebuilt the itinerary and found a way to still accomplish our goal of doing all 12 parks in one trip and yet here I was again, this time of my own fault, with an error that could kill our goal AGAIN. I just wanted to die. I was pretty tired but I needed to make some phone calls, so I call Cathay Pacific at 4:00 AM.

I talk to the representative on the phone, and he tries multiple ways to change my name, but they all fail. Ultimately, he says since it was an award ticket he cannot change my name as the award ticket is tied to my name. He says my best option is to go to the airport and hope they don’t care that my name is wrong. If they deny me boarding he says you will have to rebuy the ticket on the spot with your correct name. So at this point I feel better, as the worst case scenario is that I have to buy ANOTHER ticket. Through hell or highwater we ARE getting to Shanghai today. It’s not exactly ideal, but I can live with that, as it was my fault in this situation.

Our taxi was schedule for 7:15AM which will give us 3 hours prior to our flight to check in and go to the lounge. The front desk calls the room and lets us know our taxi has arrived. We finish packing up and I peak outside from our balcony one last time. It’s a beautiful morning.

We head downstairs, and walk outside. Strangely enough there is no taxi to be found. We talk to bell services and they make some calls to figure out what happened to our taxi. Apparently our taxi had mechanical issues and left, so they then call another taxi.

A couple minutes later another taxi arrived. This taxi is definitely on the older side of taxis. There is a single speaker that is playing classical music and it sounds like when in a movie or video game you find an abandoned bunker or home and it’s playing classical music on a crackly old speaker. It was kinda eerie to be totally honest. Our cab driver is nice enough and knows enough English to be able to understand which terminal we needed to go to at the airport.

We head toward the airport and hit heavy traffic. We literally are not moving AT ALL. I am in no way worried as we still have 3 hours till our flight and aren’t even a 1/2 mile from the airport so in the worst case scenario we start walking. As a matter of fact many people actually had gotten out of their car and had started walking.

Thankfully, that was not us. Due to the traffic the taxi was way over expected at $215 HKD. I only pulled out $200 HKD from the ATM at the hotel as bell services said it should never be over that. Luckily he was willing to take the $5 USD which more than covered the difference.

Once we arrived at the airport, we searched for the check in area. This was the moment of truth. We were denied once before 8 nights ago in Miami. If we tried to get to China and were denied again, I think I might just die or at least melt into a puddle of goo at the check-in counter. We finally found the Cathay Pacific check in counter. It’s a younger Asian woman. At this point we have totally optimized our chances to not be wrongfully denied. We figured it can’t get a whole lot safer than booking a Hong Kong carrier out of Hong Kong into China. Probably the only thing safer would be a Chinese carrier out of Hong Kong into China. We handed her our passports, and she proceeded to type in our info. At this point I am shaking as this is the point where in Miami it all fell apart, and I was just waiting for some denial out of nowhere again.

After finding our booking she saw our itinerary from Hong Kong to Shanghai. I confirmed that, and then I handed them the rest of our flight info and they typed it in no questions asked. Literally zero questions. I just handed them a paper copy of our outbound flight from Shanghai the next day and they just typed it in. Not one word about it AT ALL. It absolutely kills me this was all caused due to incompetence of Air France, and their complete inability to listen to reason or ability to read the rules that were not just posted on THEIR OWN WEBSITE, but also the Chinese Embassy and US Travel.gov. They just shut us down the moment it said that a visa was required and refused to read the exemptions.

At this point we are at least past the initial denial. The second hurdle was my name. The worst case scenario is we have to buy a new ticket on the spot. I really don’t want to outlay more cash, but if that’s what it takes I can live with it. As she checks us in, I notice she notices my name does not match. She then brings over a supervisor and they chat in Mandarin for a bit. I have no idea what they are saying. Eventually, she prints my boarding pass, stamps it, and then initials it. She hands it back to me stating that for some reason their system printed my surname twice. She said it’s been ok’d, but just wanted me to be aware. CRISIS AVERTED! We are good to go.

We head through passport control, which is thankfully a pretty short line. They notice the name discrepancy as well, but I guess the stamp she puts on means ok to board, and we have no issues.

We were all pretty hungry and while we had access to one of the top ten business class lounges in the world, Cathay Pacific’s The Pier, we stopped and had some McDonald’s. Anyone that knows me knows this is my one true love, and I try to eat it in every country I travel to.

While Hong Kong is technically an SAR of China, they do have an Olympic team so it kinda lives in a grey zone. For my purposes, I consider it eating in a Chinese McDonald’s.

After finishing the greatest meal we’ve had on this vacation we start the 20 minute walk to The Pier Business Class lounge. I was super excited to see this place as it has gotten so many great reviews and thankfully it just was just conveniently located right next to our gate. Hong Kong is pretty sizable airport, so it could easily have been a 15-20 minute walk from our gate, so we definitely lucked out on that.

The Pier definitely lived up to the hype.

It is by no means the biggest lounge I’ve ever been in, but it’s definitely not small, and is packed with amenities such as sleep spaces, work spaces, showers, tea room and a noodle bar.

It had probably the most “homey” feel of any lounge I had ever been in. It was very cozy despite its size and felt like a nice living room rather than business class lounge which is what most lounges obviously feel like.

To me the food was by far the most exciting aspect. They had a room for both Western and Asian options. The Asian options even consisted of a noodle bar and dim sum. They had quite an extensive selection.

Not as good as the McDonald’s McGriddle I had just consumed but pretty good nonetheless. The rooms with food were setup more like a restaurant which was nice.

I was not even remotely hungry but the food was so tempting I still had some noodles.

Lucy absolutely loved the noodles and had several plates. There was also a bar unlike the Air France lounge in Paris.

We chilled here until it was time to board our flight. It was a great lounge overall and definitely in my top 3 lounges I had visited primarily due to the food options alone. It was definitely some of if not my favorite food I’ve ever had in a lounge and I loved how cozy it felt compared to most lounges.

It was eventually time to board our plane and we left the lounge and walked to the gate which was literally right next to the lounge. Even though this was a short 2 hour flight, Cathay Pacific has enough passenger load to use their wide body aircraft for this route, so today we are flying on an A350-900, the same plane we used to get to Hong Kong.

For that reason, we lucked out and got the nice pods with lie flat seats.

It was a little worn, but still nice enough, especially for a two hour flight. It was definitely the best seat we’ve ever had for a two hour flight and felt like a bit of overkill.

Our takeoff was delayed by 30 min, but they build in a buffer on the schedule so I’m not exactly worried. The business class cabin was split into two parts, and I picked seats in the smaller section so it felt very private.

Despite the flight only being 2 hours long it impressively had a full three course meal service on the flight.

After the McDonald’s and the lounge we are all absolutely stuffed. I do order the dessert though, the yule log. They also have some custom cocktails and I order one of those as well.

The yule log was had good amount of taste to it. I feel a lot of these airline desserts lack sugar or really any taste, but this one was actually sweet. I then take a brief nap to rest up for our half park day. Despite the delay, we do manage to land about 30 minutes early. Random note, the bathrooms had a window in Business Class. The only other time I’ve seen this so far was on Qatar in their business class. Definitely one of the best views I’ve ever had while emptying my bladder.

After we disembark, we walk a short bit to the immigration. We then fill out an immigration card and go to an automated machine to do our fingerprints prior to going through immigration. Typically they hand out immigration cards on the plane to speed up the process on landing if they are required, but for some reason Cathay Pacific did not. In our travels, I have found immigration cards to be becoming increasingly rare, and it’s been several years since we filled one out. We then go to passport control. They thankfully speak English well enough to be able to get by without Google Translate. I then hand them my outbound flight and hotel info along with our passports. We have no issues at all. They just stick a sticker in our passport stating 24 visa-free transit stamp it and off we go.

We walk out into the terminal and unlike in Hong Kong have zero issues finding our meet and greet. Lucy spots the driver with the sign with our name on it immediately. He speaks no English, but we use Google Translate without issue for times we needed to communicate. We then head to the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel which is about a 30 minute drive away.

As the car approaches the hotel entrance, the bell hop team immediately starts mobilizing. They eagerly await for the car to stop to offer any assistance. It was impressive service and the best we had received thus far this trip. We only had carryons and a backpack so we were happy to move our own bags. They truly wanted to do everything for you. Most spoke minimal to no English, but they were always smiling and very courteous, and with gestures you could typically get your point across. We got here right about 3:30 PM and check in was incredibly hectic.

You could start checking it at 3:00PM, and I suspect that’s when everyone arrived. There was a cast member moving through the lines handing out forms you could prefill to expedite the check in process when you got to the desk. She spoke pretty good English thankfully. Once I get to the front of the line I was directed to a Cast Member that spoke some English which made things a lot easier. She explains to me some things about the property and the transportation to the park.

Interestingly enough, she is totally shocked we don’t have a visa. I try to explain the 240 hour visa rule, but obviously things get lost in translation. I eventually show her our visa free transit sticker in our passport, and she then finally understood, or at least pretended too. Apparently, the Chinese are not super up to date on their own immigration laws. I find that totally reasonable, as I am not up to date with our own US immigration laws either. I do expect a larger international carrier like Air France to be up to date on the laws though, as there whole business is moving people from one country to another.

While I was checking in Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto made an appearance in the lobby, which was some added magic to our day.

To be continued here.

Read about the previous day here.