Hello everyone,
In the first part of this report, I shared our adventures at the Hong Kong Disneyland (HKDL) hotels, resort esplanade area and train, Main Street USA, Flights of Fantasy Parade, Disney Paint the Night Parade, the Disney in the Stars Fireworks, and the Frozen Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony.
So, from Main Street USA, we head left into Adventureland.
At numerous times throughout our trip we came across the resident Adventureland drumming group, which I don't know the name of sadly.
Also wandering through Adventureland were a band of pirates! They were really very funny, and were happy to pose for hilarious photos for people. Again, I don't know what their name is, sadly, as none of these smaller entertainment offerings are ever on the park schedule.
We didn't see the Lion King show while we were at HKDL, which is situated in Adventureland, nor did we ride the Jungle Cruise or go to Tarzan's Treehouse on the island. Adventureland in HKDL is pretty, but there isn't a lot to it, and what they do have wasn't worth the time investment on such a short trip, especially since we had done them all before anyway.
We did eat at Tahitian Terrace though, and somehow got free ice cream with our Magic Access passes, which was a nice bonus!
Heading west, into the Wild West, we hit the town of Grizzly Gulch!
We rode the Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, and like with most things in HKDL, there was absolutely nobody in line. It's a fun attraction, and certainly very different from the Big Thunder Mountains of the world. It is a little slow going though, until the backwards part, and then it picks up. I wouldn't say it is really thrilling, but it is fun, and definitely worth riding with no wait time.
There was a band out playing one day, but again, no name for them!
We also saw the Grizzly Gulch Welcome Wagon Show, which is real brief, but they do come down for pictures for a while after their short performance.
We met Chip 'n' Dale in their cute prospector outfits one day while in Grizzly Gulch, but Mickey and Minnie were not out. From what I gather, Koda and Kenai no longer appear in Grizzly Gulch.
Moving on from Grizzly Gulch, we come to Mystic Point. I want to take a moment here to talk about how odd the placement of Mystic Point is. Mystic Point sits in between Grizzly Gulch and Toy Story Land, on the western edge of the park, outside the train boundary. The problem is the connection between Mystic Point and Grizzly Gulch really doesn't sit very well. At the entrance to Toy Story Land you have a giant Woody, who is a Western sheriff, and there are multiple areas of the land that has the Woody/Jessie/Bullseye cowboy theme, yet the land sits separated from the Wild West of Grizzly Gulch by Mystic point - an area that looks like it stepped right out of Adventureland. So why did they not flip Grizzly Gulch and Mystic Point so that the two adventure themed areas were connected and the the two Western themed areas were connected? It doesn't make a lot of sense, to me, at least.
With that said, I do like Mystic Point, despite its compact size. The best thing about it by far - and one of my top all-time favourite Disney Parks attractions - is Mystic Manor. I didn't take any photos inside the attraction on this trip, as I really wanted to enjoy it, seeing as we only go to HKDL every 18 months or so. We actually managed to ride Mystic Manor three times, again because of the non-wait.
We walked around the Garden of Wonders and the Freight Depot. There isn't a lot there, but are nice areas to just explore. There are no shows or characters in Mystic Point (there used to be a show at the Freight Depot when Mystic Point first opened, but not any more).
So, as you can probably expect from my section about the layout of the three mini-lands, Toy Story Land is the next destination!
I really like Toy Story Land in HKDL a lot more than Toy Story Play Land at the Walt Disney Studios in Disneyland Paris (DLP). It's not that the DLP version is bad, but when they built HKDL's version, they really added to it. As you can see from the few shots below, there was absolutely no one there.
Jessie's Snack Roundup, which is a small snack stand in the land, had a festive hot chocolate drink for the Christmas season, which I tried.
Toy Story Land is home to Toy Story characters, as you would expect. Woody, Jessie, and Lotso all currently meet in the land, at the Barrel of Fun.
As well as the greetings, the Green Army Men have a mini interactive show throughout the day, where they get kids involved in "boot camp" training.
Fantasyland is just along the path from Toy Story Land, and here we met Belle, Cinderella, Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Princess Aurora, Snow White, Tinker Bell, Merlin, Anna, Elsa, Olaf and Alice. As with most things at HKDL, most of the characters had no lines at all, including the Frozen characters, which really surprised us given how ridiculously popular they are at the other parks around the world. Merlin actually does a small Sword in the Stone Ceremony (at the Sword in Fantasyland of course), but we kept missing it for some reason. However, we did manage to get a photo of him as he was passing through Fantasyland one day. Mickey and Pooh were at the Fantasy Gardens area of the land, where there are the meet 'n' greet gazebos. For some strange reason, for the first time we've ever known, they were the only two there for our whole trip - and only for about 2 hours per day.
Here's the non-line to meet Anna and Elsa! (It was the same when Olaf came out, too.)
And Olaf, Anna and Elsa, of course.
For the first time on this trip, we saw a jester out in Fantasyland, performing tricks and entertaining guests.
Set up in Castle Courtyard there was a large display for the 10th Anniversary, which was really just a photo opportunity rather than serving any purpose.
One day we ate in the Royal Banquet Hall in the courtyard area, and we got a special Christmas reindeer dessert there.
Before I talk about the final thing for Fantasyland, I wanted to just share this shot of looking towards the Castle that I took one day when the sky was nice and blue.
Mickey and the Wondrous Book is a brand new stage show that started days before we visited. It is housed at the Storybook Theatre and replaces the former, long running, Golden Mickeys. The new show revolves around Mickey and Goofy trying to get Olaf back home after he got lost from his story. There are some really good scenes in the show, and overall I like it a lot.
Sadly we only got the opportunity to see the show once while we were there as it kept having technical difficulties. This was the sign that plagued us on other attempts to see it:
In Tomorrowland we met Buzz Lightyear and Push the Talking Trash Can. Push was hilarious, as always.
The JAMMitors were out a during our trip, too.
We took a trip across the galaxy on Space Mountain during our Tomorrowland adventures. We love Space Mountain in HKDL, even if the seats are a little on the small side!
Finally, we also checked out the progress for the new Iron Man attraction which is coming later this year. You can't really see much from any vantage point; we even rode the train around the park, but only saw the top of the construction area.
That's everything for our trip! We had a truly awesome time. We absolutely love HKDL. Everything about it is so easy. There are few lines for anything. You can walk right up to watch shows and parades, and meet characters. The cast members there are exceptionally helpful, and will bend over backwards to help you in any way they can. The park is clean and efficiently run. There are a good number of attractions nowadays with all the expansions in recent years, and the entertainment is high in quality with something happening wherever you turn, from mini shows, to bands.
If you have any questions or comments about my report, you can hit the blue "Discuss this..." button at the bottom of the article.
You can check out my HKDL part one report and my Hong Kong City report (from the same trip as this one to HKDL) with the links below:
Have a great week everyone,
Dan.
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