This is going to be a quick trip report/lessons learned/thoughts type post. If for nothing else, to help add to the relatively limited online body of knowledge in English about the park.
TL;DR - Glad I went. A few great attractions, definitely worth going for the day. Spending more than 2 days would be tough, unless it was slammed, and then I don't know if I would want to be there.
I was in China for business, and ended up having a spare day in Shanghai. Kept waffling back and forth about seeing the sights, or doing Disney, and doing Disney won out in the end. I was on the fence for a few reasons. First, the crowds. Being there first Saturday in September hovered right on the "don't travel, it will be a madhouse" posts I saw elsewhere on line. Watching the app the few weeks leading up, I was seeing things like a 90 min wait for the carousel. Also, the week before the stopped selling tickets for Sat & Sun. Second, the culture. Only planned to have one day, and wanted to at least see some of the city. Got to Shanghai several hours earlier than anticipated, so I was able to wander around downtown the night before and decided to go to the park. So around Midnight Friday I decided to go, logged into the Shanghai Disneyland app, and bought my ticket.
Since I was staying for business, I was at a hotel downtown. That meant I was going to take the Metro to get to the park so had to get up early. The Metro was clean, cheap, reliable, and pretty easy to navigate. There are several apps for your phone you can use to figure out travel time, route and cost. Ended up getting on the Metro about 7 for an 8AM park open, which was 15-20 minutes later than I wanted. I had a 43 minute trip, and all reports said to allow 30-60 minutes for the park opening crowds. Metro Line 11, Disneyland is the last stop on the line. Exit 1 seemed to be the quickest exit from the station, then had a 10 minute walk to the gate. Followed the crowds to security, waited in a small line. Judging from the amount of barricades, the lines could be very lengthy. Showed my passport to the CM at the turnstiles post security, and they gave me my ticket. Ended up getting into the park about 8:10. Immediately after entering I scanned my ticket into the app, and then bought the Disney Premier Access Set. This cost ¥275 on the day I was there. I should have taken the lower cost that day to mean it was going to be slow and not necessarily worth it, but I bought it anyway. I wanted to make sure I got as many rides done as I could, and that was the best way to do it. In hind sight, and if I wasn't traveling for business, the extra cost might have been better spent by getting the extra 30 mins in park and additional FP by staying on property.
By 11AM or so I had used 3 FP met Mickey and then rode Buzz, Rex, Slinky, TRON, Pan, Crystal Grotto, Adventures of Pooh, and Honey Pots Spin. Rest of the day I got Pan, met Belle, did Once Upon a Time, the various play places in Treasure Cove, Pirates, saw some of the parade, met Duffy & Gelatoni, Carousel, Buzz, Buzz, Woody, Rapids, Vista Trail, met King Louie, Soaring, Pirates, Pan, Buzz, was next to board TRON when it went offline, and then rode Mine Train. I left the park around 7. I saw quick glances of a few shows, found Donald Chip & Dale doing Tai Chi (I think) to be amusing to watch. Skipped Dumbo, Explorer Canoes and the Challenge Trail. Challenge Trail had too long of a line, Dumbo was longer than I was willing to wait for Dumbo, and it was too darn hot to do manual labor by paddling a canoe.
Pirates was incredible. Other than a quick vignette of skeletons in the jail cell trying to get the key, nothing in common with the traditional PotC we all know and love. TRON was fun; Buzz was great, it's good to see how good that ride can be when modernized; Peter Pan was nice to see modernized as well. Toy Story land was cute, but definitely seemed like cheaply themed off the shelf rides. Crystal Grotto was a waste, definitely not worth waiting for. It did seem to be missing the classic Disney rides. No Mansion, no Jungle Cruise, etc.
The park was rather large, many of the walkways seemed to be double the size of those in Epcot. If those fill up on busy days I'd hate to be within miles of the park. Food struck me as being less prevalent than in the US parks. Each land seemed to have one CS location, and maybe 1 food cart. Every merch cart, kiosk, store, etc sold bottled water for ¥10, they did have water fountains by the restrooms as well. I saw several of what seemed to be picnic venues, guessing either for high demand days or private parties since they have signs saying no outside food. Pro tip: Use the app for menus. The restaurant description in the app had more detail than on the posted menus. For instance, a few locations had vegetarian options in the app, but not on the menus at the restaurant. Wish I had discovered that earlier in the day.
I was disappointed by the merchandise. Avenue M Arcade, their version of the Emporium, seemed to be maybe 1/3 as big. And maybe I just missed it, but I found hardly any Shanghai specific merchandise. Only a few 2nd Anniversary pins that said Shanghai Disneyland on them, a pair of 20in Mickey/Minnie plush in appropriate attire, and a few Mickey shirts that had the resort name on the sleeve. They followed in the grand tradition of having the big rides exit into gift shops, but even those, much seemed to be generic (albeit themed to the ride) merchandise. So Toy Story Land had alot of Toy Story shirts, plushes, toys, etc, but only a few pins that reflected the land itself.
Overall the people/culture were fairly respectful. I didn't experience any of the pushing shoving that I have read about, no one cut me in line. In fact, several times the CMs had to tell people to move up to fill in empty spaces. No one relieved themselves in public, and despite seeing several people selling fake merchandise on the subway, I only saw one in park. The fact I could only say Hello and Thanks in Chinese didn't cause any problems. Picture menus were at all the CS locations, and usually the CMs spoke enough English to cover the basic interactions we had, switching languages immediately when they saw I wasn't a local. And when TRON went offline, I did have two CMs in button down shirts (I assume managers/leads) stop to tell me in English what was happening in between yelling it out to all the other guests.
I only saw Photopass twice. Once just inside the park, and once by the castle. I did see lots of people carrying pictures, so apparently the on ride photos were popular. Most of the characters I saw did have Photographers as well. Glad I didn't spring for the one day Photopass though as it wouldn't have been worth it. The characters didn't seem to be too popular, and I didn't see any signing autographs. Duffy/Gelatoni seemed to have carried some of their popularity from Tokyo, several people waiting in line had a bunch of their plush, or were dressed up. That was the slowest moving line I've seen for characters in a while as those guests wanted to do a ton of different pictures/poses that took a while.
On a whole, it was a fun park. Definitely enjoyed seeing things that were different, IE the castle walk through & Pirates, and it did feel enough like Disney to be familiar. However, it still didn't completely "click" to me. The things we seem to all think differentiate Disney from the rest just weren't there. As I mentioned, it was pretty spread out with huge walkways, and they didn't really have little nooks and crannies that had fun things to find. And I didn't observe any real streetmosphere other than the Chip/Dale/Donald show I stumbled across to add kinetic energy to the park. There were a few other small shows, found a Beauty & The Beast retelling with puppets, and there was some Pirate show, but these seemed to be in set aside areas, not just out and about.
TL;DR - Glad I went. A few great attractions, definitely worth going for the day. Spending more than 2 days would be tough, unless it was slammed, and then I don't know if I would want to be there.
I was in China for business, and ended up having a spare day in Shanghai. Kept waffling back and forth about seeing the sights, or doing Disney, and doing Disney won out in the end. I was on the fence for a few reasons. First, the crowds. Being there first Saturday in September hovered right on the "don't travel, it will be a madhouse" posts I saw elsewhere on line. Watching the app the few weeks leading up, I was seeing things like a 90 min wait for the carousel. Also, the week before the stopped selling tickets for Sat & Sun. Second, the culture. Only planned to have one day, and wanted to at least see some of the city. Got to Shanghai several hours earlier than anticipated, so I was able to wander around downtown the night before and decided to go to the park. So around Midnight Friday I decided to go, logged into the Shanghai Disneyland app, and bought my ticket.
Since I was staying for business, I was at a hotel downtown. That meant I was going to take the Metro to get to the park so had to get up early. The Metro was clean, cheap, reliable, and pretty easy to navigate. There are several apps for your phone you can use to figure out travel time, route and cost. Ended up getting on the Metro about 7 for an 8AM park open, which was 15-20 minutes later than I wanted. I had a 43 minute trip, and all reports said to allow 30-60 minutes for the park opening crowds. Metro Line 11, Disneyland is the last stop on the line. Exit 1 seemed to be the quickest exit from the station, then had a 10 minute walk to the gate. Followed the crowds to security, waited in a small line. Judging from the amount of barricades, the lines could be very lengthy. Showed my passport to the CM at the turnstiles post security, and they gave me my ticket. Ended up getting into the park about 8:10. Immediately after entering I scanned my ticket into the app, and then bought the Disney Premier Access Set. This cost ¥275 on the day I was there. I should have taken the lower cost that day to mean it was going to be slow and not necessarily worth it, but I bought it anyway. I wanted to make sure I got as many rides done as I could, and that was the best way to do it. In hind sight, and if I wasn't traveling for business, the extra cost might have been better spent by getting the extra 30 mins in park and additional FP by staying on property.
By 11AM or so I had used 3 FP met Mickey and then rode Buzz, Rex, Slinky, TRON, Pan, Crystal Grotto, Adventures of Pooh, and Honey Pots Spin. Rest of the day I got Pan, met Belle, did Once Upon a Time, the various play places in Treasure Cove, Pirates, saw some of the parade, met Duffy & Gelatoni, Carousel, Buzz, Buzz, Woody, Rapids, Vista Trail, met King Louie, Soaring, Pirates, Pan, Buzz, was next to board TRON when it went offline, and then rode Mine Train. I left the park around 7. I saw quick glances of a few shows, found Donald Chip & Dale doing Tai Chi (I think) to be amusing to watch. Skipped Dumbo, Explorer Canoes and the Challenge Trail. Challenge Trail had too long of a line, Dumbo was longer than I was willing to wait for Dumbo, and it was too darn hot to do manual labor by paddling a canoe.
Pirates was incredible. Other than a quick vignette of skeletons in the jail cell trying to get the key, nothing in common with the traditional PotC we all know and love. TRON was fun; Buzz was great, it's good to see how good that ride can be when modernized; Peter Pan was nice to see modernized as well. Toy Story land was cute, but definitely seemed like cheaply themed off the shelf rides. Crystal Grotto was a waste, definitely not worth waiting for. It did seem to be missing the classic Disney rides. No Mansion, no Jungle Cruise, etc.
The park was rather large, many of the walkways seemed to be double the size of those in Epcot. If those fill up on busy days I'd hate to be within miles of the park. Food struck me as being less prevalent than in the US parks. Each land seemed to have one CS location, and maybe 1 food cart. Every merch cart, kiosk, store, etc sold bottled water for ¥10, they did have water fountains by the restrooms as well. I saw several of what seemed to be picnic venues, guessing either for high demand days or private parties since they have signs saying no outside food. Pro tip: Use the app for menus. The restaurant description in the app had more detail than on the posted menus. For instance, a few locations had vegetarian options in the app, but not on the menus at the restaurant. Wish I had discovered that earlier in the day.
I was disappointed by the merchandise. Avenue M Arcade, their version of the Emporium, seemed to be maybe 1/3 as big. And maybe I just missed it, but I found hardly any Shanghai specific merchandise. Only a few 2nd Anniversary pins that said Shanghai Disneyland on them, a pair of 20in Mickey/Minnie plush in appropriate attire, and a few Mickey shirts that had the resort name on the sleeve. They followed in the grand tradition of having the big rides exit into gift shops, but even those, much seemed to be generic (albeit themed to the ride) merchandise. So Toy Story Land had alot of Toy Story shirts, plushes, toys, etc, but only a few pins that reflected the land itself.
Overall the people/culture were fairly respectful. I didn't experience any of the pushing shoving that I have read about, no one cut me in line. In fact, several times the CMs had to tell people to move up to fill in empty spaces. No one relieved themselves in public, and despite seeing several people selling fake merchandise on the subway, I only saw one in park. The fact I could only say Hello and Thanks in Chinese didn't cause any problems. Picture menus were at all the CS locations, and usually the CMs spoke enough English to cover the basic interactions we had, switching languages immediately when they saw I wasn't a local. And when TRON went offline, I did have two CMs in button down shirts (I assume managers/leads) stop to tell me in English what was happening in between yelling it out to all the other guests.
I only saw Photopass twice. Once just inside the park, and once by the castle. I did see lots of people carrying pictures, so apparently the on ride photos were popular. Most of the characters I saw did have Photographers as well. Glad I didn't spring for the one day Photopass though as it wouldn't have been worth it. The characters didn't seem to be too popular, and I didn't see any signing autographs. Duffy/Gelatoni seemed to have carried some of their popularity from Tokyo, several people waiting in line had a bunch of their plush, or were dressed up. That was the slowest moving line I've seen for characters in a while as those guests wanted to do a ton of different pictures/poses that took a while.
On a whole, it was a fun park. Definitely enjoyed seeing things that were different, IE the castle walk through & Pirates, and it did feel enough like Disney to be familiar. However, it still didn't completely "click" to me. The things we seem to all think differentiate Disney from the rest just weren't there. As I mentioned, it was pretty spread out with huge walkways, and they didn't really have little nooks and crannies that had fun things to find. And I didn't observe any real streetmosphere other than the Chip/Dale/Donald show I stumbled across to add kinetic energy to the park. There were a few other small shows, found a Beauty & The Beast retelling with puppets, and there was some Pirate show, but these seemed to be in set aside areas, not just out and about.