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

Read the first part of the day here.

I must say the service we receive in the lobby was truly amazing. Everyone we met from the moment we got out of the car was super enthusiastic to assist. We only had carryons and backpacks so we don’t mind moving our luggage ourselves, but they basically refused to let you do it. After finishing check in we were then walked to our room like they used to do on cruise ships.

Also to add a little pixie dust, we were upgraded to a lake view room albeit the lake is definitely a bit far off.

Our room was very nice and we wish we would have had more time in it. It was originally supposed to be 4 nights, but I guess 1 night is better than no nights. What was really cool was our headboard had LED lights that would twinkle. It wasn’t just twinkling though, it was like a wave across the headboard. It was a neat effect and definitely looked tinker bell was sprinkling pixie dust over the bed. Lucy and I tried several different things to see if we could trigger it, but we never could figure it out as I really wanted to get a video of it. It was a really neat effect and definitely added some magic to the room.

There was mini Murphy bed underneath the TV that pulled out similar to the Polynesian. Lucy absolutely loves these beds and was excited to sleep on it.

The room also had some holiday touches like winter static clings on the mirror and headboards and some fun free presents like a plastic cup and wash cloth in a tin. Unfortunately, we have zero space to bring the plastic cup home with us.

It also had the standard amenities like a robe, slippers, and amenity kits. The bathroom was fully stocked as well, and very nice.

We freshen up and then head out the door as we don’t have a lot of time at this point as it’s already past 4:40PM. By the time we get out to the shuttle stop it’s about 4:45PM. Unfortunately, we forgot our passports in the room. This is normally not a big deal, but Shanghai Disneyland on December 23rd, 7 days prior to our arrival started requiring a government ID to enter the park. This was to cut down on park ticket scalping. The ID must match the name that the ticket was purchased for. I remember at the last second right as the shuttle arrived, so I had to run back to the room and get our passports and we have to take the next shuttle.

By the time we get on the shuttle and dropped off at Disneytown it’s 5:30PM. Up until 5:30PM the shuttle will drop you off at the Disneytown stop where hotel guests can enter a more convenient and exclusive side entrance. Disneytown is the Shanghai equivalent of Downtown Disney. After 5:30PM they drop you off at the West Parking Entrance which is a bit of a walk to the main park entrance. It’s an overcast cool day today, but luckily, not painfully cold.

We get to the side entrance and there is a bit of confusion regarding our park tickets. I purchased our park tickets on Klook, which is basically a more international Viator. It is VERY well known and established company outside of the US. I show them the QR code for the ticket, and they seem very confused. I attempt to use Google Translate, but they speak a small bit of English and ask if I am staying at the hotel. I say yes. They ask for our room key, and I show it to them. They then ask for our passports, and they scan them. They then tell us to just walk through the turnstiles. They never scanned our QR code or looked at the Klook Ticket. When I bought our tickets on Klook I inputted out passport info and names. I’m assuming that they no longer need your ticket and just use your passport and that it is linked to your park ticket. It was all very confusing, but they let us in, so I wasn’t going to argue.

At this point we only have 4 hours maximum at the park as it 5:30PM, but that doesn’t matter to us. What mattered is WE MADE IT!!! We honestly had just accepted that despite all the planning we were going to somehow come up one park shy of doing all 12 parks in one trip. We had already mourned the loss of our goal, and accepted the death of our dream. While we would absolutely have loved to have more time here that was not in the cards this trip. We were absolutely exhausted and jet lagged, but at this point, the adrenaline just kicks and we were just pumped to have actually made it to Shanghai Disneyland.

Typically the first thing we do after entering a park is to rent a wheelchair, but today Kendall decided against it. We at most had 4 hours in the park, and Kendall had done much longer park days this trip including a WHOLE park day yesterday so we figured she’d be able to make it without one. So first thing’s first and we go take our castle pic. It is an absolutely huge castle.

The scale is very impressive and dwarves all the other castles we had seen thus far this trip. Given Tokyo is a carbon copy of Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle and Sleeping Beauty’s castle in Disneyland is pretty small, it’s safe to say that the Enchanted Storybook Castle is definitely the biggest of the Disney Castles.

After getting our picture, we had two things on our list that we absolutely had to do in our short time and that was Pirates of the Caribbean, as it’s supposedly the best Pirates in the world and we also wanted to see Zootopia as it’s the newest ride here. Today seems to be a pretty slow day for Shanghai as the majority of rides times are 5-25 minutes at most with a handful of outliers such as Tron. Pirates was just a 10 minutes line when we arrive to the entrance.

The ride system was pretty much identical to the other pirates in that it is a dark water ride.

It was absolutely stunning technologically. The scale of the ride is only matched by Rise of the Resistance.

The set pieces are absolutely huge, and the ride is very long.

This ride was based off the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and included many characters from the movies, unlike the other Pirates that at most have Barbossa and Jack Sparrow.

It was entirely in Mandarin, so I have no idea the plot of the ride, but the effects of the ride are stunning.

The animatronics are incredible and one of the Jack Sparrows truly moves like Jack Sparrow.

It was just overall VERY impressive, and easily the best Pirates in the world. It did not disappoint. I was impressed they built something of this scale in Shanghai to be honest. I was not expecting the set pieces to be as big as they were. I’m honestly shocked they have not tried to incorporate the technology they developed for this ride into newer rides as it is impressive.

At this point it’s time for dinner, so we get some potstickers for dinner from the Snackin’ Kraken right across from Pirates. This is just a snack stand with no place to eat, so we walk over to a Barbossa’s Bounty, a quick service restaurant with some indoor seating to eat as it’s getting a little chilly. Of note, unlike the other Disney Parks this vacation, there is very little pop in Shanghai Disneyland. Your options are primarily water, tea and maybe Gatorade. Occasionally you may find a Pepsi. There is absolutely zero Diet Pepsi or diet drinks in general in Shanghai Disneyland.

We then walked over to Zootopia which is right next door to Pirates. This is a the newest land that just opened up in December of 2023. There is typically a wait to get into the land, and you can see the queues set up for people to line up to get into the land, but the crowd today is very low, so there is no queue and you can walk right in.

The land is beautiful at night, and definitely feels like the Zootopia from the movie.

There are lots of details everywhere, and lots of advertisements for the Zootopia equivalent of Taylor Swift, Gazelle.

We find the ride entrance to Zootopia: Hot Pursuit and get in line. It’s just a 10 minute wait. The queue was very well done with tons of details and an animatronic Clawhauser.

The line moved sooo fast we had zero time to appreciate the queue unfortunately.

There were some English subtitles in the preshow on a screen that helped understand the plot. Between the queue and preshow, you could get a pretty good idea of what the plot of the ride was.

The ride had pretty much no English, but you could figure it out what was going on for the most part. The ride was fun, and for a trackless dark ride was better than most.

They had some impressive animatronics, especially for Gezelle, the Gazelle impersonator.

Gazelle was just as good if not better.

It was better than Remy’s but not on the level of something like Rise of the Resistance as it didn’t have the same scale. It definitely had some fun moments to it and was cute.

Afterwards, we started walking toward the front of the park. We then went on Voyage of the Crystal Grotto which was a walk on. There is no Jungle Cruise in Shanghai, and this was basically the Jungle Cruise with an entirely different theme.

This was basically a cruise through a river that passed by a variety of different scenes from various Disney movies.

Think of it as like a bigger grander Storybook Canal Boats. they had some nice touches such as lights in ceiling of the boat that changed color based on the scene you were passing by.

Overall it was very cute. It’s not an earthshattering ride, but it was relaxing. It was entirely in Mandarin so not sure if there was any story to the ride at all, or if they have any dad jokes like the Jungle Cruise but there was some commentary throughout the ride.

We debate staying for the nighttime spectacular, but we weren’t sure just how the crowd is afterward, and we needed to be out the door of the hotel at 5:30AM to make our flight per the front desk of the hotel. For that reason, we decided to not wait it out for fear the crowd right after would delay us getting to our hotel for a considerable amount of time as there is just a ferry or the shuttle to get us back and we aren’t sure just how backed up they get at the end of a park day. If it’s anything like Magic Kingdom that can easily be an hour wait after the fireworks show. We absolutely needed to get some rest tonight as we were running on fumes as in the last 62 hours we have flown from Paris to Hong Kong, did a full day in Hong Kong Disneyland, flew to Shanghai, and then did a half day in Shanghai Disneyland. While we would love to have spent more time here we need a little rest. We know we’ll back sometime in the next several years, and figure we’ll just see the rest then.

The hotel is pretty close to the park just across a lagoon, so we were hopeful there would likely be a place we could watch from at the hotel. I tried to google if they pipe in the music from the show, but there is VERY LITTLE info in English about Shanghai Disneyland. This in complete contrast to if I searched a topic like “Does the Polynesian Resort play the music for Happily Ever After?” and get a ton of blog articles, social media posts, and videos showing you the absolute best places to watch Happily Ever After. Knowing Disney, I figure they almost assuredly would play the music for the show if you are in a place where you can see it.

On the way out we shop for a short bit in the Main Street shops looking for our magnet. Unfortunately, the magnet selection is nearly nonexistent. We weren’t excited about the magnet from Hong Kong Disneyland, but the one from Shanghai is even worse. There was only one magnet that said “Shanghai Disneyland” and that wasn’t even the focus of the magnet.

This was our first time on Main Street as we entered via side entrance. Like other Disney Parks, given its Christmas season it’s decorated for Christmas and it’s snowing. To be honest, this is kind of shocking simply because there isn’t really much Christianity in China. There was even a tree lighting ceremony earlier today.

It’s about 8:30PM when we leave the park and we take the ferry back to the hotel.

We aren’t totally sure where the shuttle pick up is to be honest as it’s totally different than where they dropped us off but we see the dock immediately upon leaving the park, so figure we’ll just use the ferry. We figured it’d be nice to take a different form of transportation anyway.

At about 9:00PM we get back to the hotel. The hotel looks gorgeous at night.

The show Illuminate, the nighttime spectacular, is at 9:15PM so we go to the cafe which has quite a selection of Disney themed snacks.

They also serve some pizza and pasta. We order some pasta and Lucy get’s a Mickey Donut.

Conveniently the cafe has a balcony outside that has a GREAT view of the castle, so we go outside and watch the show while we have a late night snack. They pipe in the music as I figured they would and it was a magical way to end the night.

We couldn’t see the projections that well, but we could still see the lights and fireworks great. We really enjoyed the show, however, it’s tough to give a review of it without having seen the projections. Even with just the music and fireworks it definitely stirred some emotions which is what I look for in a nighttime spectacular.

We buy some pastries for us to snack on while getting ready at 4:30AM tomorrow as our taxi will be here at 5:30AM to pick us up for our flight to Tokyo. We walk through the lobby and it’s notably quieter than earlier in the day. Like all the lobbies this vacation it is absolutely beautiful at night.

It’s just a short walk back back to the room. We all get ready for bed, and despite the jet lag due to the speed of the last two days we have no difficulty falling asleep.

Day 12, December 30th, 2024 Step Count – 18,025 Steps

Total Step Count – 195,075

Continue to the next day here.

Read about the first part of the day here.