Shanghai Disneyland September 2019 Trip Report & Photos

Clyde Birdbrain · Oct 10, 2019

Magic Passport

They sell a Passport that you can use to get stamps at 15 machines around the park. The passport is available in Chinese and English. It is a fun idea, but unfortunately 10 of the 15 machines did not work. This was never obvious as on each broken machine the screen was on and no signage about it being down. So each time I would cram my passport in the slot to try it and just stood there for a while as nothing happened. Then I would (sometimes difficultly) get the passport out of the slot and go to the nearest shop where a CM would stamp it manually. Sometimes the shop would not have the stamp and they sent me somewhere else. This was not so great, and they should really put an “out of order” notice on these machines.

After you collect all 15 stamps you get a big stamp at Carefree Corner on Mickey Avenue. It also said that for a limited time you get a “special gift” for completing the passport. The special gift was a weird metal earring clip with nothing on it whatsoever. You can see it in the picture below. I was expecting a small Disney pin or something, but this was very lame.

Passport with the 'special gift':

Clyde Birdbrain · Oct 10, 2019

Drinking Fountains with Bottle Fillers

There were drinking fountains throughout the park, which was actually pretty special as tap water is not drinkable in China, so Disney filters it to make it potable. But what was great about the drinking fountains at SDL is that almost all of them had bottle fillers. We have seen a couple of these pop up at WDW, where they are usually large separate machines. But these were seamlessly integrated into the drinking fountains. It was perfect. Many people used them. I wish WDW would add these everywhere; it would be a great environmental effort that would save a lot of plastic.

Clyde Birdbrain · Oct 10, 2019

Zootopia Construction Wall & Merchandise

Between the Winnie the Pooh ride and the rocks of Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was a construction wall for the upcoming Zootopia land. It was nicely themed with 3 different sized doors:

Where SDL lacked in ride and park-specific merchandise, it made up for in Zootopia stuff. They have much more merchandise with Nick and Judy at SDL than I have ever seen at WDW. Check out all these things at a single store:

Clyde Birdbrain · Oct 10, 2019

Conclusion

We had a great time at SDL and loved everything about the park. The theming is beautiful and there are a lot of great attractions and shows, with Pirates topping the list. Our biggest disappointment was the lack of vegetarian food. There are a LOT of food options in the park. Mickey & Pal’s Marketplace, for instance, had 18 (!) different combo dishes, but they were all meat. We found a total of only 4 dishes at QS restaurants that didn’t have meat, and for dinner two of those locations were closed. The other two were the same dry veggie burger. This was especially disappointing as we had just spent 3 weeks in China having amazing food every day. We went to incredible vegetarian restaurants in Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai and also at regular Chinese restaurants it was never a problem to get lots of dishes without meat. This was not the case at SDL.

Despite this it was a lot of fun and SDL is beautiful. We have now been to Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disneyland Paris and Shanghai Disneyland. Just two more resorts to go!

Animaniac93-98 · Oct 10, 2019

Shanghai is the only Disney resort I haven't been to. I'll be using your trip report for reference when I do eventually go.

PiratesMansion · Oct 12, 2019

Great report!

I'm somewhat stunned that they ended the Tarzan show! It was easily the entertainment highlight of the park, with a much better payoff than the Pirates show. Then again, perhaps they closed it from a liability perspective-it was a show that I don't know that they would ever do at one of the US parks. Not that China has as much of a sue-happy culture as we do, but otherwise I'm not sure why it'd close other than cost or unless they have something else coming.

I stayed at Toy Story to avoid the entrance situation you described, but I didn't know that they sold early entry passes separately. Knowing that, I could have saved a bundle and stayed at the Marriott.

Pirates there is such a fantastic attraction! I can only dream that someday in the states we are able to get such an excellent modern attraction put in!

Phroobar · Oct 17, 2019

I think it's interesting that the drinking fountains need a push button to drink water sign.

John park hopper · Oct 17, 2019

The place looks amazing, no crowds it reminds me of MK in 70's and early 80's god I wish it wasn't so far away you must have had a fantastic time. Did the CM speak English?

Stevie Amsterdam · Oct 18, 2019

John park hopper said:
The place looks amazing, no crowds it reminds me of MK in 70's and early 80's god I wish it wasn't so far away you must have had a fantastic time. Did the CM speak English?

Clyde Birdbrain said:
Most CMs did not speak English, or only very little.

Stevie Amsterdam · Oct 18, 2019

Phrubruh said:
I think it's interesting that the drinking fountains need a push button to drink water sign.

Really? Not all guests are as clever as you

https://www.wdwmagic.com/dining/doc...ed-and-devoid-of-star-wars-inspired-names.htm

Phroobar · Oct 18, 2019

Stevie Amsterdam said:
Really? Not all guests are as clever as you

https://www.wdwmagic.com/dining/doc...ed-and-devoid-of-star-wars-inspired-names.htm

How clever do you need to be to push the button for water? Even little kids know that. I guess if this is the first time in the big city and you've been getting water from the local river then fine but I kind of give the Chinese a little more credit than that.

Clyde Birdbrain · Oct 18, 2019

Phrubruh said:
I think it's interesting that the drinking fountains need a push button to drink water sign.

Drinking fountains are not as common everywhere as they are in the US. I didn't see them anywhere else in China outside Shanghai Disneyland.

Phrubruh said:
How clever do you need to be to push the button for water? Even little kids know that.

It's funny you say this. I live in Florida and a few years ago we had family from Europe visiting, including two kids aged 8 and 10. Drinking fountains are uncommon in Europe, or at least where they live, and when they saw a drinking fountain here for the first time they didn't know what to do at first. Okay, they figured it out very quickly, but you would be surprised. In China it may be even less common, as you generally cannot drink tap water anywhere. Also, all these drinking fountains at Shanghai Disneyland that had signs also had water bottle fillers, so I thought it was appropriate that they explained the 2 different options.

Clyde Birdbrain · Oct 18, 2019

John park hopper said:
Did the CM speak English?

No, almost nobody spoke English, or extremely little. This was notable everywhere we went in China. Probably a little bit more English at SDL, but still very little. At one time we were at a Haagen Dazs in a large mall in Xi'an and there were two young women behind the counter. One of them asked me in Chinese what I wanted. Behind her was a sign with all the options in Chinese and English. It said "cone" and "cup" in various places. When I said "cone" neither of them had any idea what I was saying. So these are young people working at an American owned ice cream shop standing in front of a sign all day that says "cone", but they still don't know the word. People generally didn't even understand the word "toilet", which I thought would be pretty universally known.

At first it seems strange that so many people don't speak any English, even in extremely touristy places like the Great Wall or Shanghai Disneyland, but I think that 99.99% of the tourists they deal with are Chinese. We saw very few foreign tourists, and most of the ones we saw were in tour groups with a guide. The 2 days we were in Shanghai Disneyland we probably saw fewer than a dozen other white people. If you think of it, there are way more Brazilian tourists at WDW, but how many CMs know Portuguese?

We did get by with the Google Translate app, and I had learned some basic Chinese before the trip. Google Translate was great. You can favorite sentences, and when you hold the phone sideways the Chinese text is displayed full screen. So I had lots of simple sentences prepared, like "Where is the nearest toilet?" and would just hold that out with a questioning smile. In hotels people at the front desk often had their own translation app where they would speak and the app spoke back in English. This usually required several tries as the translation often didn't make much sense, which was funny. All Chinese people we encountered were extremely friendly and patient and always did their best to communicate with us, or they would try to find someone who could help us. It was challenging, but fun.