Trip Report 12 parks in 16 days! Disney Parks Around the World Trip Report

Trip report from 12/19-1/6.

Day 1 - Away We Go
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

Enough talk. After over a year in planning, over five years since we last tried to do a similar trip, AND Kendall getting run over by a car in Zimbabwe in that time frame we are finally embarking on our adventure across the globe to do all 12 Disney Parks over Christmas break.

First thing’s first and we had to pick Lucy up from school. Given it’s the Thursday before Christmas break we weren’t too concerned about her missing half a day today and a full day Friday because as everyone knows, the week before Christmas break is spent watching Christmas movies and doing Christmas puzzles and worksheets.

After we picked her up, we went home and waited for our taxi. We had never ridden in a taxi in our town so we were already starting our journey with a brand new experience. Ride sharing does not exist in Ashland, KY and taxi’s are primarily used for medical transport so this was a somewhat bizarre experience for us. Traditionally, we typically just park our car at the airport when we fly out of our local airport because if we go out of Huntington it’s on Allegiant for a quick trip to Florida. This is obviously NOT a quick trip and as such we took a taxi for the first time ever as there are no ride sharing services in our area. It costs $10/day to park at our airport, and when you’re gone for nearly 20 days, it just makes financial sense to take a taxi for $82 dollars round trip.

I cannot even remotely convey the amount of joy I have when we have the ability to fly out of Huntington Tri-State Airport. The convenience of flying out of a small regional airport a mere 25 minutes from our house in which the security line if you have TSA precheck is nonexistent CANNOT be understated. It feels like your own private airport. From when the plane touches down to getting home it typically takes us about 45 minutes. When we fly out of Cincinatti or Columbus, it takes 45 minutes or more from the time we touchdown to just get to our car. Add a 2.5 hour drive after a long day of flying just puts a sour taste in the mouth after a vacation. We would love to fly out of HTS more often but it is incredibly cost prohibitive except when using Allegiant or redeeming award flights on American Airlines.

We arrived at the airport 1.5 hours early which for Huntington is just excessive, but we always budget for a flat tire, or some other bizarre occurrence. As always, the TSA precheck line had zero people in it, and from drop off to gate it wasn’t even 10 minutes. We hadn’t eaten lunch yet today, and unfortunately food options are super limited at HTS, in that outside of one vending machine there often are none. Thankfully today the small kiosk that sells pizza and some snacks was open, and Kendall and I split a small pizza while waiting for our flight.

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HTS is a small regional airport with two gates. Back in its hey day it had a number of carriers, but these days it’s limited to American and Allegiant. It’s small and efficient and we love flying out of it when we can.

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This is the entire terminal. Not the smallest commercial airport I’ve flown out of, but it’s up there.
Today is by far the most pedestrian of the flights we are taking on our trip, being a standard flight on Allegiant. No fancy lounge, no lie flat seat. Just an standard A320, with a seat with about 17 inches of width with no recline that feels like you’re sitting on a 2×4. You get what you pay for and for this flight of just over 1.5 hours it was just $402 dollars for 3 people including the 3 carry on bags so you can’t really complain on the cost front.

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I love this airport!
Boarding and take off and were on time and our flight to Sanford was about as uneventful as it gets. We were seated in row 7, Seats D,E,F.

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We never pay for seat selection so these were the Allegiant assigned seats. For a 1.5 hour flight it honestly doesn’t matter to us. The seats have the standard 17 inch width and 30 inches of pitch. This is one of the ONLY times in life being 5’3’’ comes in handy.

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There are many disadvantages to being short such as a general disadvantage at the majority of sports or a lower lifetime income compared to your taller cohorts in the same field, but there is one advantage that far outweighs any disadvantage. I can fit comfortably in an Allegiant seat! It’s a pretty great trade off in my opinion.

We landed at 5:08PM two minutes earlier than our scheduled arrival time. Thankfully, my parents live in Orlando and as such they are our own personal uber, which definitely saves on cost. I texted them that we had landed, so they could be ready to pull the car around to pick us up and take us to the Disney’s Polynesian Resort where we were staying.

After we landed, we we were picked up, it was getting close to dinner time, so on the way to the Polynesian we stopped at Lucy’s favorite restaurant, Chick-fil-a. I had originally had ‘Ohana booked and timed the reservation for the Magic Kingdom fireworks, but it was pretty hectic couple of days leading up to this trip, so we decided having a quick dinner and early bed time was in our best interest. Just for the record, if you are foodie, THIS IS NOT THE BLOG FOR YOU. We do a wide variety of activities when we travel, but food has never been our priority, and the one area we can skimp on the budget. My food reviews will be composed of words like “Tasty”, “Yummy”, “Standard”, “Adequate”.

Upon arrival at Chick-fil-a we walked in and it was slammed. Chick-fil-a is always crowded but today was excessive in that when we walked in, there wasn’t a free table anywhere and people were even standing around waiting on tables. We didn’t quite know what was going on, until we saw Santa and a Santa Cow in the corner and realized why it was so crowded. Santa Cow and Santa made their rounds to the table like it was a character dining at Disney.

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Lucy clearly is enjoying Santa Cow
Unlike Disney however, it was significantly cheaper. Like $250 dollars cheaper. The food was more than tasty, and tasted just like our Chick-fil-a at home.
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 8 - Paris Park Hopping
“We’re halfway there. Whoa oh, livin’ on a prayer.”

We all slept in due to the jet lag and woke up around 10:00AM. We were not going to miss out on a wheelchair today so the first thing I did after waking up was to go and fetch a wheelchair. Kendall managed to do something we thought was impossible yesterday in that she walked the entire park day. While she could try for that again today, this trip is a marathon and not a sprint, and we didn’t want to risk burning her foot out at the beginning of our trip and then struggling to even get through an airport by the end. For that reason, we still opted to rent a wheelchair. The really nice thing about renting a wheelchair at Disneyland Paris is if you do a multiday rental you can bring it where ever you want and then just return in on the last day of your rental. You don’t need to return it at the end of every park day.

After we were all up and ready we went into Disneyland for lunch which is ironically our closest food option. The park seemed a little busier today than Christmas day. The weather was a also better with clear skies and sun so maybe that had something to do with it.

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There are in-hotel options to eat at but they are pretty pricey and all sit down restaurants. Gibrn our limited time here we’d rather use that time going to the park than sitting down for a full breakfast.

The Market House Deli was the closest quickest thing we could find and we had the “Ham and Cheese Toastie”. It was basically a ham and cheese sandwich and no one really liked it. It was even too cheesy for Kendall and that’s saying a lot. We then leave Disneyland and head over to Walt Disney Studios Paris. A lot of people are not aware that there are actually two parks in Paris. This is probably because the second park has been absolutely awful for so long, that people pretend it doesn’t exist. Over the last 19 years or so Disney has been injecting money into it, building more attractions, and now they are in the process of a full blown reimagining with a new entrance and new lands.

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So much so that they are even changing the name to Disney Adventure World.

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Yes, the name is as creative as it sounds. The walk isn’t even 8 minutes and we pass by the front of the hotel and snap a quick pic.

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As we walk we see the Mickey Water Tower. It reminds of the tower that used to overlook MGM/Hollywood Studios prior to it’s demolition.

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We enter the park, to mark our 6th Disney park this vacation and signifying our halfway point of 12 total parks. There are construction walls up every where and anyone that went to Epcot during the dirt pit days knows just what this looks like. They at least put some pics of what the area is aspiring to look like so you have something to look forward to.

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We can only hope they do a better job with this than the new communicore plaza that literally did nearly nothing to enhance Epcot.

We purchase a Premier Access for Tower of Terror as the wait is over an hour. We’ve been on the Tower of Terror more times than we can count in WDW, so we were definitely interested to see the version here in Paris.

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Our Premiere Access time comes up and we head over. I don’t want to really spoil anything so I’ll be pretty vague, but I will say the queue is relatively similar, albeit the pre show a little different. The ride itself is very creepy and gives off The Shining vibes. There is even a little girl like in The Shining. I am kinda shocked something like this exists in Disney to be totally honest as it is super creepy. We all felt it was scarier than the version in Orlando and actually liked it a little more.

After we finished at the Tower of Terror we crossed over the plaza to the show, Together: a Pixar Musical Adventure. They did not allow pictures at this show, but it was a beautifully produced show.

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There were some slower parts at times but overall it was very enjoyable. The show basically was a conglomeration of music from various Pixar films with dance routines held together by a loose plot. Highlighted films included Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., and Coco. Our favorite part was the Coco portion of the show. The production was great and well worth taking the time to watch.

We then went over to Crush’s Coaster. We purchased Premier Access for this ride as well as it had a 75 minute wait.

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This was our favorite ride in all of Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios the last time we came.

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The ride is really neat in that you ride inside a turtle shell car that freely rotates. It’s somewhat similar to Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, except those cars are controlled in their rotation and this is random and occurs based on weight distribution.

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The loading area is nicely themed, and they have the “Mine” birds all over, saying “Mine”, except in French.

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We loved it last time and loved it this time. It truly is a coaster that makes you feel like you are in rolling through the EAC. It’s very smooth and the rotation and track give you a really smooth whirlwind feel as you ride. I really wish they’d bring this one to the US.

It’s now snack time and we go to a snack stand near the Pixar musical show. Lucy has been eyeing a hotdog there for a while, Kendall and I get a Mickey chocolate chip cookie and Lucy gets her hot dog.

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The Mickey cookie looks better than it tastes. It’s kinda hard and pretty tasteless to be honest. I was not impressed. It was cute though.

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Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We then head toward the Avenger’s Campus as our next ride was Avengers Assemble: Flight Force which was the Rock n’ Roller Coaster last time we were here. On the way we see the Wasp up high on a catwalk.

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The building looks totally different from the last time we were here.

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We use the standby line as it’s just a 25 minute wait. It had a pretty cool looking queue with a high tech feel.

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It even had a fully animatronic Iron-Man. Sadly the queue was moving too fast for me to listen to the French Speaking Iron-Man,

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The actual track system is identical to other Rock n’ Roller Coaster so from a thrill perspective it’s the same. Lucy and Kendall are not Marvel fans and thus preferred the Aerosmith theme more. I personally liked the theming more than Rock n’ Roller Coaster and I enjoyed the addition of the video screens throughout the ride along with a plot that was more complex than making it to a concert.

We were hoping the time for Spider Man W.E.B. Adventure would decrease and we wouldn’t need to buy a Premier Access, so we then headed over to the other end of the park to do Ratatouille : L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy, otherwise known as Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in the US.

Upon arrival to Remy’s they just let us use the Premiere Access line for free due to Kendall being in a wheelchair. Interestingly enough, the Cast Members throughout our time in Disneyland Paris were very insistent on Kendall getting a disability card. We explained many times we did not need it and she just needed a break from walking every now and then, but on rare occasions they’d shortcut us in the queue or on this occasion just give us a Premiere Access for free. This is a stark contrast to the US and the Disability Access System here where they do everything they can to deny people and is NOT for mobility issues. We never bothered to get the disability card while in DLP or this whole vacation in general as Kendall really didn’t need it as she only has some mild mobility problems these days. I just find it interesting the Cast Members were definitely persistent with telling us to get one though every time we approached a ride in a wheelchair.

We then headed over to Cars Road Trip which is right next to Remy, but it was closed for some reason. This was new from the last time we were here. It gets absolutely awful reviews but we had never done it before so wanted to see it just once.

Then went back to Spider-man WEB Adventure hoping the line time would drop, but it had not. The line was still 50 minutes and we were running out of time in the day as we had a scheduled meet and greet at the hotel, and we still needed to park hop over to Disneyland Paris to see the fireworks and also get some dinner. At this point we are out of time so we buy the Premier Access.

This is the exact same ride as in Disneyland, but we have never been on the one in Disneyland. The reshow was very well themed, and had an appearance from Peter Parker.

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For those unfamiliar with the ride, this is an interactive ride akin to a more advanced Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger or Toy Story Midway Mania. You ride in a car and instead of shooting with a gun or other device, you use your arms to “sling” webs at targets.

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It was nothing spectacular but the technology was impressive and worked way better than I anticipated. It was not perfect though, and definitely get’s frantic at times while doing the game. All our arms were pretty sore by the end. This was my first time doing this attraction and I thought it was pretty fun but not great, and nothing I would make concerted effort to do, but if it didn’t hinder our day I’d do it again.

We then went to “Stitch Live!” which I nicknamed Turtle Talk with Stitch. We had been trying to see this all day, but we kept missing the shows which run every 30 minutes, albeit it’s every 60 minutes for an English show.

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It’s the same type of attraction as Turtle Talk with Crush except with Stitch. They have alternating English and French encounters which was great, otherwise doing this in French would definitely have been pretty difficult. There were no pictures or videos allowed during this show. Lucy loves Stitch so I was excited for this. There were no more than 12 kids when we did it and we were hopeful Lucy would get picked from the audience for a question but sadly she did not. We all felt Turtle Talk was a little better and funnier than Stitch Live! but still enjoyed it.

Now it was almost time for our scheduled meet and greet at 7:00PM at our hotel. I was not aware of this until this morning when I saw on a forum that as a benefit of staying at the Disneyland Hotel you can schedule a meet and greet with a princess. You schedule it on the app and pick a date and time. No one had ever informed me of this on check in and had I not seen it posted somewhere would have had no idea. Given the last second nature of this stay I had no time to investigate the benefits of the hotel and was excited for this perk, so we had to leave the park to get back to the hotel in time for our appointment.
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I scheduled the meet and greet this morning for 7:00PM today so we leave Walt Disney Studios and head back to the room to rest just a little beforehand. We then go downstairs to the kids club where our appointment is at. Upon check in, I find out I apparently scheduled it for tomorrow at 7:00PM, but they were really nice and let us do the meet and greet today anyway AND schedule another one for tomorrow as well. I schedule another one for 4:00PM tomorrow.

The wait was short, not even 5 minutes. Prior to entering we were asked if we spoke French or English which was nice so the princess didn’t have to figure out what language we spoke on the fly. We were then called to the room and see that it was Cinderella.

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Lucy really wanted to see Belle but she was still very excited nonetheless to see her. Cinderella thankfully spoke great English, and we got to take our time as this was a scheduled meet and greet.

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We asked how Gus and Jacques were doing, and if she’d lost any glass slippers lately. We love meeting the face characters as they are so great at staying in character and coming up with fun responses.

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Afterwards, we headed to Disneyland to get dinner and walked to the quick service Pizzeria Bella Notte. Lucy was craving some pasta and this was one of the few restaurants with it on the menu so she ordered some rigatoni. It also had something on the menu I had not seen since the early 2000s. They had the Mickey shaped pizza!!!!

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It still exists!
My brother and I used to order these all the time at The Electric Umbrella in Epcot, but they stopped serving them mid 2000s and went to regular pizza. I was so pumped to see it again. Kendall and I split one, and amazingly it tasted incredibly similar to the Orlando version as I assumed it would have a different or more European taste.

After that excitement we headed over to It’s a Small World to see what differences there were compared to the US version.

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We definitely noticed from a space perspective it didn’t feel as open. It also had more characters injected throughout like Arial and others.

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Right across from It’s a Small World was Lucy’s favorite ride in any Disney park. The Tea Cups. So we did it. Twice. I personally am not a huge fan, due to the fact that as I have aged, I do not tolerate spinning rides as well anymore. Lucy absolutely loves it though so we always do it if we have time…. or even if we don’t.

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We then headed over to Big Thunder Mountain. We bought a Premiere Access as we had limited time at this point as we needed to stake out a spot for the drone show, The Electrical Sky Parade, and the nighttime spectacular, Illuminations. This is a totally different show from the IllumiNations that Epcot used to have for those that were wondering. And for those wondering, yes, the only difference in the name is the capital N in the Epcot version.

Big Thunder Mountain here is notably different then the ones in the US and it is absolutely incredible.

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We were lucky and got the first row on the train. This version starts off going into a tunnel underground that goes under the river and you reappear on an island. The ride is faster and has sharper turns than the Magic Kingdom version. Riding at night also decreases visibility due to multiple tunnels and almost feels like a mini Space Mountain at times. We all absolutely love it, and wish we had the time to do it again.

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The island Big Thunder Mountain is on.
It’s now time to start staking out a spot to watch the drone show as it’s about 45 minutes before the show so we head toward the castle. I always love walking through the parks at night as they are so beautifully lit. I see the Rivers of the Far West, the Disneyland Paris version of the Rivers of America, and it makes me a little sad knowing that soon it will be gone at Magic Kingdom.

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Being about 45 minutes early, we manage to get a pretty good spot to watch the nighttime show.

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The Electrical Sky Parade is an awesome drone show, and had the classic Electrical Parade music. It also had some added Christmas theming which was festive.

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The formations were very impressive, and the show lasted about 10 minutes and was well paced.

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We really liked how it broke up the show so it wasn’t 25 straight minutes of fireworks and projections. I can understand weather is an issue with drones and without the drone show, the B mode of just projections and music would be incredibly weak. Seeing it with the drones was definitely unique and made for a great ending to our night. A fun fact, the voice that sings the theme song for Illuminations, was a classmate of mine from Russell High School, Amanda Wilcox Patterson.

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Disneyland Paris closes its night with the nighttime spectacular, so we then head back to the room. Since we are jet lagged, and not sleepy, we figure now is a good time to do some laundry as there isn’t much else to do. Kendall stays back with Lucy in the room getting her showered and to bed. I load up the laundry into a luggage and walked to the Hotel Cheyenne which is about an 18 minute walk away as they are the only Disney Hotel with a laundromat.

Obviously the main negative to being team carry-on is having to do laundry while on vacation. Given you are only doing 1-1.5 loads at any point in time it really doesn’t take long to wash and fold. For us, the advantage and time savings of not having to check a bag or wait for a bag, worry about lost luggage, and never worry if the uber or taxi will ever have enough space for the luggage far outweighs doing laundry. You just move so much quicker with just a carry-on.

I’m about to go into way more detail about laundry than I ever thought I would in a blog article but stick with me on this because this is a true comedy of errors. So I make my way to the Hotel Cheyenne. I eventually make it to the resort, and I must say it was very well themed as a cute little ole’ western town.

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I arrive at about 10:54 PM which was right before the general store closed. Normally hotel laundromats are open 24/7 and this is no different. However, this laundry does have some significant quirks. From reading online, the laundromat here requires tokens. The general store is the only place that sells these special tokens. So to do laundry you need to buy the tokens before the general store closes, and the general store closes at 11:00PM. So I make it JUST in time to buy these special tokens. I don’t know any laundromat that doesn’t just let you pay for the washer and dryer in the same place as the washer and dryer but that’s just how they do it. I buy two tokens to wash and two to dry and head to the laundromat.

The laundromat is a small separate themed building in the middle of the resort. There are only two washers and two dryers.

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There are amazingly people still drying their clothes this late, but thankfully there are two washers available. I use both washers for expediency and that goes uneventfully. I then take one load and stick it into the dryer and start it up. I then take the second load and load it into the dryer set the dryer setting and insert my token to start the dryer.

Unfortunately, instead of hitting the start button, I hit the power button, which turns off the dryer. This effectively causes me to lose my token. I now have no way to dry the second load of laundry because I am out of tokens and the general store is now closed. In the US, and pretty much any laundromat I have been to you are buying time for the dryer. You can open and close and restart the dryer as long as there time is remaining. Because I have been trained to think that way, I open the other load and stick the second load in and try to restart the dryer.

Welp, you know where this is going. Opening the dryer effectively killed my token on that dryer as well. So now it’s a little before midnight and I had no way to dry our clothes. I search the laundromat extensively for a token hoping someone dropped one and it rolled underneath the washer or dryer. I check underneath the vending machines, washer, dryer, and pretty much every crack or crevice. Alas, no tokens. I did find about 1.60 Euro in change though so that was a plus. The whole time I am crawling on the floor I am screaming at myself in my head about who designs such an absurd convoluted payment system for a laundromat? We can send a man to the moon, but this is what we come up with for a laundry system????

At this point I accepted that I was just defeated by a laundromat and put our wet laundry into the suitcase. Since it is past 12:00AM at this point I decide to call an Uber instead of making the long cold walk home. Disney Resorts are incredibly safe, but knowing my luck on vacations I’d get mauled by a raccoon and get rabies or something.

I walk through the lobby and it’s pretty empty and stop for a pic as it’s just so pretty.

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I get back to the room, and decide to try and hang dry the laundry. There is a towel warmer in the bathroom that gets very hot so I decide to load up as much clothes on that as possible, and then just hang the rest of the clothes around our bathroom hoping it would dry by the morning so we don’t have to burn time to go back to the laundromat to dry our clothes on our final Paris day.

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I cannot begin to express my frustration at this point. I literally am just running endless questions about the laundromat in my head. Who devises such a convoluted laundry payment system? Who designed it so you lose your cycle if you open the dryer? What type of madness is this?

I then hit the sack as it’s well past 1:00AM and fall asleep while pondering the many mysteries of laundromat design.

Day 8, December 26th, 2024 Step Count – 20,403 Steps

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Total Step Count – 131,115
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 9 - We'll Always Have Paris

“Having an empty laundry basket is the best 5 seconds of the week.”

Today we woke up around 9:00AM to start getting ready to check out of our room at 11:00AM. Our flight to Hong Kong was not till 11:25PM so we had the whole day to relax and putter about on property. We debated doing some sightseeing in Paris, but given we were going to have to drag our luggage around decided to just stay on property Disney. We have been around Paris before so didn’t feel strongly about doing sightseeing this trip. Our room came with another park day so we figured we’d hit the parks one last day to just burn some time.

First things first though. My number one concern was did the laundry dry, as that would definitely impact our schedule for the day. I check the laundry, and, well, that was a no. Unfortunately, it was about 80 percent dry which meant we were going to have to take a trip to the laundromat to finish drying it. We pack up the room, and leave right at 11:00AM to go eat some brunch. We keep one luggage with the dirty laundry and we drop off the rest along with our backpacks at bell services to store for the day.

We then start walking to Hotel Cheyenne. In order to get there we need to walk through Disney Village, which is Disneyland Paris’ version of Downtown Disney. There are ample food options here and on the way we see Annette’s which is an American Diner themed restaurant, and decide to eat there.

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The line isn’t long at all, but it still takes 25 minutes for us to get a seat and we get seated around 11:35 AM.

I love the lack of a tipping culture in Europe. I like knowing that the price on the menu is the price I pay. That being said, from my experience, because of that service does tend to be slower and not as attentive in Europe than the US. I totally understand that a meal in Europe is much more social, and you linger more, and take your time. It’s not the rushed experience we have in the US. However, there is a point, where the slowness and lack of attentiveness is just excessive, even by European standards.

As a reminder, we sat down at 11:35AM. Well, we didn’t leave till 2:00 PM! This is standard American Diner food that we ordered. It was a sampler platter with some wings, quesadilla, mozzarella sticks and nachos and a milk shake and Lucy ordered a hot dog kids meal that came with ice cream.

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This was not a 5 course meal at a 3 star Michelin Restaurant. It was a sampler platter and a hot dog. It was the sloooowest meal I think I have ever experienced. It took about an hour and a half to get our food, and once we got our food we immediately asked for our check. We waited an hour AFTER asking for a check and at one point we even sent Lucy to ask for the check again 30 minutes after initially asking for the check. She was told it would be a bit before they could get us our check. We pestered them for our check every chance we had and they would not give it to us. I believe it is likely is due to the fact that there is no incentive to turn over a table. The faster you turn over tables the more work you do and as a server you don’t make any more money. We had no cash on hand so we couldn’t just drop some Euros and leave. I was about to get up and go find an ATM, and ironically that’s when the check finally came. This was particularly frustrating as it ate up so much of our time on our final day in Paris, especially when we still had to go dry our laundry and wanted to stop by the parks one last time.

We then continued our walk from Disney Village to the Hotel Cheyenne. On the way we pass by Disney’s Hotel New York – The Art of Marvel. This just used to be a New York themed hotel and over the last several years it was converted into a Marvel themed hotel.

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It looked to be a very nice hotel, but we really wanted to stay at the Disneyland Hotel due to it’s location and desire to stay at all the Disneyland Hotels in the world so we ended up there. It was nice to see the hotel during the day, and how well they did to theme it to an old western town.

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Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I went to the general store, and they gave me some free dryer tokens after I explained what happened yesterday. Ironically enough, Kendall finds a free dryer token just sitting on top of the dryer in the laundromat taunting me after the debacle with the tokens last night. We dry our clothes without any further issues, and hopefully this is the last major laundry debacle this vacation.

We take the shuttle back to the Disney Village area as a change of pace. Unlike the Disney World buses these were the extra long buses that flex in the middle like a big city bus.

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We then went back to hotel to drop off our luggage of DRY clothes with bell services and head down to the the princess meet and greet we scheduled yesterday for 4:00PM today. Today it was Aurora. She seemed very well rested from her naps.

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We enjoyed chatting with her about the Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.

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Afterwards we headed over to Walt Disney Studios as we still wanted to do the Cars ride and eat some dinner.

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Lucy wanted some pasta at the Avengers Campus at Stark Factory, a quick service restaurant.

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Inside they had a life size Hulkbuster inside which was pretty cool.

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For the first time the vacation we also saw a drink machine that required a QR code to allow you to dispense a drink. It was a one time use code and afterwards you could no longer activate the machine with that code.

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We enjoyed the pasta and we finished it all.

We were planning on doing the Cars ride, but it was golden hour, which is the best time for pictures for a photographer so we chose to get some pics instead while the light was good. The light was very reminiscent of all scenes in Top Gun which just always conveniently happen to take place at dawn or dusk.

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Tower of Terror looked gorgeous with the light.

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We stopped for a quick family pic as we had not yet taken a family picture at this park.

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We hadn’t done any shopping yet while in Paris, so we went to the World of Disney in Disney Village.

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We don’t have much space for any souvenirs, but did plan our packing such that we did need to buy a sweatshirt at minimum to have enough clothes to get through the vacation. Lucy got a Stitch sweatshirt and water bottle and we bought a Disney Dobble. Dobble is the US equivalent of the game Spot It! in the US.
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
It was time to start looking toward moving toward the airport as it was after about 7:00PM. We went back to hotel and I dropped Lucy and Kendall off while I returned the wheelchair. The beauty of being at the Disneyland hotel is truly its location as it is not even 75 meters from the door of the hotel to the wheelchair rental in the park. I was so proud of Kendall and how well she walked here. She managed to walk the whole first day here, and we often parked the wheelchair in an area and just walked around the majority of times and just used it for long distances. This was definitely a landmark moment since the accident.

We picked up the luggage and went to train station.

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There are trains running to the airport every 30 minutes, but the next available train was 8:51PM for 9:00PM arrival at CDG which only gave us 2.5 hours before our flight. There were earlier trains, but they must have been sold out as I could not buy a ticket for them. Two and a half hours was ample time because we weren’t checking bags, but we always try to get there earlier if possible as you never know what will happen, you know like potentially getting denied boarding despite having a perfectly acceptable itinerary. We end up taking an uber to the airport, and we arrive at 7:40PM. The airport is pretty dead with no lines or crowd anywhere.

We already have our boarding pass this time so don’t need to stop at check in counter. These days I do anything I can to avoid that counter as only bad ever seems to come from those stops. Despite having a boarding pass I still feel uneasy at passport control as it takes much longer than expected. At one point the customs officer calls to another person in French and nearly gives me a heart attack. All I could think about is “What is it this time?” Thankfully, via my rudimentary high school French I understand enough to know that she is going to eat after us, and sure enough she got up and closed her booth after she was done with us.

After passport control, we get to security and the lines were none existent. This is by far the slowest I have ever seen CDG, but it’s also the first time I’ve ever had an 11:25PM flight out of CDG as well.

We head over to the lounge as we get access because we are flying business class on Air France.

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The lounge is massive, and very slow as well. It’s obvious they are getting toward the end of the day as most of the food and drink are gone and the were very slow to restock.

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We all took showers as this would be our last chance for a while. The showers were very modern and spacious.

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Our laundry was still unfolded and disorganized from the laundromat so we took this time to reorganize our clothes.

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The lounge was beautiful, and super modern and trendy.

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There was even one class structure that looked like a warp core from a starship from Star Trek.

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To Kendall’s dismay the complimentary spa was sadly closed.

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They had a number of drink stations like most lounges, but interestingly no bar.

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The food selection wasn’t great, and Lucy just had some bread. Kendall had some cheese and I had some bread and some of some beef item. We were going to get another meal on the plane so I knew we didn’t have a to eat a bunch here.
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Today we were flying on a year old A350-900, with the newest business class seats Air France provides. We booked the bulkhead row as they have just a little bit bigger footwell for me and Kendall, but for Lucy the space she get’s is massive. We board on time and Lucy see’s her suite. It is massive, and has more space than even some first class seats.

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Her footwell was so big she could sleep in it.

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Heck, it was so big I could fit in it.

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She was super excited, but it still wasn’t big enough to dance in. They also gave a very impressive children’s kit. Normally these kits are just crayons and an activity book. Sometimes they come with a cheap toy as well. Air France’s was definitely above average in that they actually came with wooden toys.

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Our seats were more than ample but nothing like Lucy’s.

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We take our traditional pretake-off picture.

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The plane took off on time and we settled in for our 12 hour flight to Hong Kong. Despite all of Lucy’s space she decided to visit us several times from her pod. We played a couple games of Spot It! before they started serving dinner.

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They started the dinner service quickly after take off.

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I chose the Beef Chuck with peanut sauce.

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I initially thought this was the whole meal along with some bread, so I at least tried to eat a little of everything minus the salad as I thought this was it and thought the thing on the right was the beef option. Little did I know the main course was still coming up. The stuff in the picture was not exactly to my taste. Thankfully, they eventually brought out the main course and it was pretty tasty and tasted like braised short rib.

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Dinner was done by 1:20 AM Paris time. Shortly after Lucy passes out as does Kendall.

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They set up a small little self service bar area in the galley, and dim the cabin lights. I then get ready for bed and put down my seat and fall fast asleep.

Day 9, December 27th, 2024 Step Count – 15,360 Steps

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Total Step Count – 146,475
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 10 - Hong Kong
“I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can tell.”

We woke up around 3:30 PM Hong Kong time and had about 3 hours left on our flight. We leapt forward 7 hours in time which made for a combined total time difference from home of 13 hours which will be a considerable amount of jet lag once we arrive in Hong Kong. At this point we’ve gone so far around the globe, we are starting to come back. I slept about 6 hours on the plane which is more than I normally sleep at home so I felt pretty good when I wake up. Kendall wakes up shortly after me, who in turn then wakes up Lucy in time for the breakfast service.

The breakfast consisted of a croissant, eggs, yogurt and fruit. I wasn’t super hungry just yet and just ate a little of the eggs and some fruit.

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We land and I had hired meet and greets at the airport for the Asian part of our itinerary. I typically just go to the taxi stand or try and get an uber or the local equivalent, but I have found that meet and greets, especially in foreign countries just smooth the initial arrival. Having to deal with language barriers, uber waits, long taxi cab lines, along with fake taxi operators that scam you can be highly stressful and can be an absolute nightmare. I’ve found while it adds some cost to the vacation, having prearranged transport that already knows exactly where you want to go to be worth the added expense as it just reduces stress in a moment when stress and fatigue tend to be among the highest.

We had previously used whats app to text the guy prior to leaving France and he said to meet at Pret a Manger in the airport. We get there and he is not there. Well, this kind of defeats the purpose of the meet and greet. I text him and he eventually gets there about 10 minutes later. He speaks no English, but with Google Translate we are able to have a basic conversation. Despite the 10 minute delay, we go from landing, through customs and immigration and into our car to the hotel in exactly one hour. I felt it doesn’t really get much more efficient than that for an international flight.

On our way to Hong Kong Disneyland along the road they had some “not so hidden” Mickeys on the road signs and I thought that was cute touch.

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We arrive at the Disneyland Hotel, our second Disneyland Hotel this vacation, and go to check in at main desk.

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We are then directed to the club level check in on floor 7 in the Kingdom Club lounge where the club level rooms are. Another bucket list item on this trip was to do a club level room at a Disney and this was the most economical of all the hotels we stayed at to do so. On check in Lucy heard “club” and asked Kendall if it’s the “kind of club where mommy dances on a pole.” Me and Kendall just laughed as we just did not have a response for that.

At the time, there was a meet and greet with Minnie going on in the atrium area of the 7th floor exclusively for club guests. They were also finishing the free heavy
hors d’oeuvres in the lounge so it was pretty hectic as the guy checking us in was trying to also let us get a bite to eat before they shut down the warm food service and see Minnie before she left. Lucy is not a huge Minnie fan so we ended up skipping the Minnie meet and Greet. They had hors d’oeuvres that you could just pick off a small buffet along with two items you could order that they would bring out to you. I honestly don’t remember what it was that they brought out but I didn’t mind it.

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They even had little biggie shaped dimsum which was cute.

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We managed to get some food prior to the lounge switching over to their late night snack options. This consisted of some caramel popcorn, Disney shaped cookies, and various gummy products.

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The cookies taste similar to the Royal Dansk cookies in the blue tin I used to eat growing up. We are among the last to leave the lounge as it empties out and we finish our food,

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Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We finished checking in, and then made our way to our room. It was a club level room on the 7th floor, where all the club level rooms are found. I had debated long and hard between staying here versus the Explorer Lodge, which is the newest hotel at Hong Kong Disneyland. A lot of people say the rooms at Hong Kong Disneyland hotel in general feel dated. The style of the rooms is definitely not as trendy as our last two Disney rooms we stayed at.

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That being said, it was about what I expected from the pictures we had seen online, and was very clean and well maintained. I feel it could have used a refresh, as it definitely had more of a mid 2000s vibe with all the dark furniture and heavy drapes. It did come with the standard amenities you would expect from a flagship Disney hotel such as tea and coffee, complimentary minibar, robes, slippers, amenity kits, and something we discovered is very popular in Asia, free plastic souvenir cups or mugs.

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We have a pretty view from the balcony of our room. The weather felt good in the 50s Fahrenheit and would have been a perfect night to sit out on the balcony.

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I then go walk around taking some pics while Kendall and Lucy get to bed. The hotel is beautiful, and decked out for Christmas, which is kinda shocking given Christianity is not exactly a top religion in Hong Kong.

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They have a reasonably good sized gift shop with a decent selection of items.

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I head outside, and I must say the hotel does look gorgeous at night.

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I head back to the room, and get ready for bed. We all take some melatonin to try and start resetting our biological clocks as it was just 2:00PM Paris time. It eventually knocks us out and we eventually fall asleep.

Day 10, December 28th, 2024 Step Count – 4,213 Steps

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Total Step Count – 150,688
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 11 - Hong Kong Disneyland
“A whole new world.”

So despite the melatonin, we were all up at 2:00AM. Yep, we were pretty jet lagged to say the least. We were all WIDE awake, and despite our best efforts to fall asleep, we just couldn’t get back to bed. We knew this would totally come back to bite us in the middle of our park day, as our bodies will assuredly want to nap at some point. This is where the changes in our itinerary due to Air France’s complete stupidity are going to start becoming a problem.

Initially, our original itinerary had us spend 4 nights in Shanghai, in which the first day was scheduled to be a complete and total rest day. We had absolutely nothing planned other than to try and reset our clocks a little bit and rest from all the travel. Unfortunately, since we lost 4 nights of our itinerary due to Air France, we now only had 7 nights in Asia, split between 3 nights in Hong Kong and 4 nights in Tokyo, instead of the original 11 nights. This will cause us to use a a good chunk of our time in the Asia parks trying to adjust to jet lag.

Eventually 7:00AM finally comes around and Lucy has Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique appointment at 9:00AM so we needed to start moving. It’s a beautiful day. Definitely the best weather we’ve had this whole vacation.

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We shower, get dressed and then head to the Kingdom Club Lounge. They have Western and Asian options for breakfast which was nice.

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Despite having grown up primarily on American food, being Asian I still have an Asian taste. I really enjoyed the Asian options for breakfast, especially the dim sum and teriyaki chicken. Lucy enjoyed it as well.

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Kendall went with a traditional Western breakfast and a Mickey Waffle.

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There was some other pastry type thing in a Mickey shape that I was not entirely sure what it was.

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We still have some time to burn till her appointment today so we go and take a pic in front of the hotel.

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One of the things we wanted to do was a Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique somewhere along our trip. Lucy had not done a Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique since 2019, and she is fast approaching an age where she likely wouldn’t want to do it anymore or due to age would not be allowed.

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Lucy in 2019.
Hong Kong was our slowest paced stop because Hong Kong Disneyland is not that big and by all accounts it really only takes a day to do all the rides and attractions. It also had the most favorable weather, as Lucy was not enthused about potentially walking around in a dress in the 40 degree weather that was present in Shanghai, Paris or Tokyo. For that reason we chose Hong Kong to do Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.

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We head to Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique which is located on the 1st floor of the hotel. It was very quiet and Lucy was the only one there.

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They had a beautiful selection of dresses.

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Lucy spent debated which one to pick for quite a while.

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She eventually picked one and she was allowed to try it prior to them taking the tag off. The dresses were super high quality and is probably the best Disney princess dress we’ve ever bought almost assuredly. Thankfully, her fairy godmother knew enough English to get by so we didn’t have to break out any Google translate. She picked her hairstyle and makeup, and they proceeded with her transformation.

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The appointment lasted an hour of which they spent 25 minutes doing a photoshoot.

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We didn’t realize this was gonna be a full blown photoshoot in which they posed her in multiple locations and backdrops. Our package only included one complimentary photo and they tried to upsell us more photos, but I like to do my own photography and didn’t really want to spend the extra money on the photos as I was not impressed to be honest.

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The experience was also missing the magic mirror with the Fairy Godmother that the ones in the states have. In general, it wasn’t quite as nice as the US version. We were done right at 10:00AM, and we stopped by the room real quick and then headed to the park. We had a 2:00PM Disney Friends Dim Sum reservation so we had a good 4 hours of time that we could use to knock out a couple rides before returning to the hotel for our reservation.

We decide to take the shuttle rather than walk for to the park. The shuttle picked us up 10:21AM and we arrived at park a short 7 minutes later. It’s a short walk from the shuttle stop to the entrance of the park.

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Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We enter the park with no issues. Of note, at the entrance of the park they have these MASSIVE power pack stations.

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I’d never seen so many charging packs in one space. We then stop for the traditional castle pic. We’d normally head to the wheelchair rental, but Kendall said she wanted to give the park a go as it is smaller than most of the other parks so we’ll see if Kendall can keep knocking down those walls.

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Lucy started feeling really jet lagged, but she was a trooper and we headed to Grizzly Gulch to go on the Hong Kong version of Big Thunder Mountain.

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Grizzly Gulch is the equivalent of Frontierland in the other parks.

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We go on Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars AKA Big Thunder Mountain.

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This ride didn’t even have a 5 minute wait. It was a great ride and we all really enjoyed it. It was not as fast as either the US or European versions, but it definitely had some unexpected moments with some great misdirection. I don’t want to spoil it, but it definitely does somethings no other Big Thunder Mountain does. It was a ton of fun and very smooth. Since it was basically a walk-on we just got back in line to ride it again. We started the very short walk to Mystic Manor as it is very close to Big Grizzly Mountain. On the way we see a sign that says “Lucky Nugget”. Lucy’s nickname in our family is “Nugget” so we have to get a pic.

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After we went to Mystic Manor which is the Hong Kong Haunted Mansion which was right next to it.

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Unlike the Haunted Mansion, Mystic Manor has an adventurers club theme rather than that of a creepy mansion. The line wasn’t even ten minutes long. Instead of Dune Buggies on a track, you board these carriages. This is a trackless ride akin to Rise of the Resistance and Remy. There was a nice preshow with some effects and then you board the carriage.

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The ride was a great length and had some impressive effects. The plot was such that there was a music box that contained some mystical properties, and Albert the monkey releases the magic, causing havoc throughout the manor.

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It was much more kid friendly and cartoony than a traditional haunted mansion.

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It was a very impressive ride, and I was impressed that Disney made something this original and of this magnitude for Hong Kong Disneyland. We then started to walk toward the Jungle Cruise. To get there we pass through Toy Story Land.

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We haven’t done any of the Toy Story Land rides in Paris or Hong Kong. They are typically just reskinned versions of things you’d see at any amusement park, and they strangely typically have pretty long lines, so we choose to save our time for the more unique attractions. It is a nicely themed land though.

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Can you find the hidden Lucy?
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Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We get to the Jungle Cruise. The wait for this was about 10 minutes and one of the longer lines we were in today. It was notably different from the US version. It was primarily either Cantonese or Mandarin, with some English sprinkled in on occasion. Since we didn’t understand the vast majority of the ride, it was kind of hard to know just how good the dad jokes were, if there even were any. This Jungle Cruise definitely had some surprises up its sleeve. At times there was even live fire.

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Also in a brand new touch, there was some raging water.

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Afterwards we started to walk over to the Iron Man Experience over in Tomorrowland. Also of note, Lucy’s hair from the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique was just not holding up very well throughout the course of the day and it had only been a couple hours. When we did it in Magic Kingdom, her hair pretty much stayed put the WHOLE day. Here after just 4 hours it was starting to fall apart. For that reason, we take a couple pics of Lucy in front of the castle before we lose the hair.

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The park is super small so it doesn’t really take any time to get to Tomorrowland.

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I hadn’t really heard much about it so this was a bit of a mystery to me.

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The queue was nicely themed and had a small miniature city mockup of Hong Kong with a new Stark Tower built in it.

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They also had some miniature mockups of what I assumed to be the ride vehicle.

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As we see the safety briefing I realize the attraction is basically Star Tours except with an Iron-Man theme. The general plot is that there is an expo going on and Iron-Man is doing a meet and greet in the building next door and then things go awry. What’s cool is that Iron-Man IS actually doing a meet and greet in the building next door, so the ride does a really good job of integrating what is going on in the land to enhance the illusion.

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It was pretty enjoyable for a simulator type ride and had some updated effects. Next up was The Antman and the Wasp Nano Battle. We had heard very little about this ride in our lead up to our trip. After going on it, it was obvious why.

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The queue has some video and references to various Marvel characters, but there was no line, so we had zero chance to look at all the details littered throughout.

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The ride is basically an updated Buzz Space Ranger Spin. It’s a complete walk on with lots of cars passing by without anyone in them. Maybe 1 out of every 5 cars actually has someone in it.

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It’s nothing special. The gun unlike Space Ranger in Disney World and Midway Mania is not attached which allows for improved mobility. The tech is impressive though and very accurate. There are tons of targets to shoot at with lots of interactivity when you hit the targets. It’s extremely well themed and it obviously took a decent amount of money to make this ride. It’s odd as it’s not as fun as Space Ranger’s spin despite all the advances in technology. This is one of those cases where the ride is definitely worse than the sum of its parts, as it’s a significant step up from Toy Story Midway Mania and Space Ranger spin, yet significantly less fun.

It’s getting pretty close to our reservation time, but given how short the lines are we figure we can squeeze in Hyperspace Mountain, AKA Space Mountain. Much like most parks outside the US, Hyperspace Mountain here is Star Wars themed.

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Much like the Paris version, this one had screens as well that enhances the experience. It was very smooth unlike Disney World’s version that can feel pretty rough at times. It was now time for us to head back to the resort for our Disney Dim Sum Lunch.

We decide to walk instead of take the shuttle as based on the map it’s really not any faster to take the shuttle. It’s a beautiful day and the walk from the park has lots of greenery and some shade.

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Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
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.

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We head down to the Crystal Lotus for the Dim Sum

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

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We mainly did the Disney Dim Sum as it’s one of the top reasons we ever initially looked into going 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.

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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” 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.

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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.

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

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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. Tried several times and never early enough, so went 44 min. early just to be safe.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
The lack of singing just killed it for me. Or really 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.

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

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

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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.

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We then headed over to the other show we wanted to see which was Mickey and the Wondrous Book. As we exit the attraction, 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.

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We then head over to the indoor theater right next to It’s a Small World to see our second show of the night, Mickey & the Wondrous Book.

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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. This was an excellent show, and one of our favorites this vacation so far.

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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 using 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.

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

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They even had some of The Princess and the Frog.

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They 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 thus far. It was 100 times better than the Moana show we saw earlier today.
 

Rimmit

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We then head over to the World of Frozen to try and go on the Frozen ride.

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We walk to over to the corner of the land where Frozen is.

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Arendelle is absolutely gorgeous at night.

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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.

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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 open 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 more wester food being pretty much a walk on.

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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 got to the bathroom and right after we get out of the bathroom, I notice that Frozen had reopened 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.

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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.

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

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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 Disney 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.

We then 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.

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It was getting close to fireworks time, so we went and found a spot for Momentous, their nighttime spectacular. We stake out a spot and Kendall and Lucy went to Main Street to try and find a 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.

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The castle like any Disney castle looks gorgeous at night.

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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.

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

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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 impressive.

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

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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 not the biggest park, Kendall walked a true 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 it would never happen again. On this trip she continues to break through walls we believed were unbreakable.

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

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Total Step Count – 177,050

Read about the first half of the day here.

Start from Day 1 of the trip here.
 

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