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Heather is up early this morning, it's Disney Day! We quickly finish packing our bags and head down to the lobby. While I check out, the girls sit down to the piano in the lobby to serenade the rest of the early risers (Maclaren is surprisingly pretty good!) and Heather grabs a couple coffees from the café. Shortly thereafter we spot our first sign of Mickey Mouse, as our taxi leaves the tunnel and crosses the Bay bridge to Lantau Island! There's no need for words on the signage, a simple picture of Mickey and an arrow points the way!
It's 8am when we arrive at our hotel, The Explorer's Lodge, which looks straight out of a safari lodge in South Africa (albeit on a bigger scale). The grounds are gorgeously landscaped, and the inside is even better! This is by far the best Disney accommodations we've seen yet (it certainly helps that its only 8 months old too!). There isn't a person in the lobby when we arrive, just us and 1 desk attendant…totally unlike World or Paris; the park doesn't open until 10am, so there's no reason to get an early start around here apparently! After checking in our luggage, we head downstairs to the Dragon Wind Restaurant for breakfast, where we're greeted by Mickey & Minnie in their explorer's outfits…surprise, the girls are in matching outfits too; maybe momma did some research?? Breakfast is awesome! There's a huge selection of both Western and Asian options, all of high quality. And the meet and greet with Mickey & Minnie was equally as impressive, they spent a ton of time with the girls.
Onto the park! The bus ride is crazy short, this is after all, the smallest Disney park in the World. The walk from the buses to the front gate; however, is anything but short! This design makes little sense…why make people walk a ½ mile to the front gate?
One of the things we've noticed about the people here; while they drive on the left side of the road, they all seem to walk on the right. Another thing we quickly notice about the crowd, we're virtually the only white people here, and most guests appear to be from mainland China, as we didn't even make it through the ticket line without the girls getting a photo snapped of them…blond haired, white kids are just as fascinating to them as Mickey Mouse!
It seems we timed this trip exactly on the 4 days nothing is happening in this city, and in between every cool event…Chinese New Years was 2 weeks ago, the Hong Kong Flower Festival is in 3 days, the annual HK Disney Pin Trading UN starts the day after we leave...talk about terrible timing!
Not that we're into the whole pin trading thing; after all we didn't do it at Paris or World...missed opportunity?...but we decide to jump in, mommy and daddy need some souveniers too! So we buy a starter pack and neck band and start our day down Main Street America.
Main Street is exactly the same as Paris and World, homemade cookie smell and all! The lines for character meet-and-greets are outrageous, Mickey/Minnie is easily 2 hours...we'll pass! Unfortunately, the castle in under renovation (maybe fortunately, because it's shockingly small even behind the fence)...disappointed eitherway!. Adventureland on the otherhand is the largest of all the parks and is execellently done...magic touches everywhere. Maybe its out appreciation for travel and other cultures, but for some reason Adventure Land appeals to us more than any other (except Epcot and Animal Kingdom).
Time to ride some rides! Lines here are incredibly short, no real need to fast pass anything (only 3 past pass rides anyways). It's less than 5 minutes at every ride all day long...Winnie the Pooh, the Carosel, Teacup, It's a Small World (it takes 5 minutes to walk the gate line...why so long??), grizzly gulch mountain (Maclaren and Daddy rode...Maclaren was very scared!), Mistic Manor (Milan loved it! the monkey), and so on...we rode 85% of the rides in the park that day; basically only skipping Iron Man and Space Mountain (tomorrow).
Before we knew it, it was time to line up in eager anticipation for the night parade! But unlike World, there's no wasted hour of staking out a claim to curbside seats...almost no where on the parade route was it deeper than 2 rows of people! What a great parade, awesome floats, tons of characters, lights galore, awesome experience!
As we grabbed a spot near the start of the parade, we end up being some of the very last people out of the Park (we're not mad!). Both girls are asleep in the strollers, so we take out time and enjoy being last out, grabbing a few selfies on main street with almost no one in the background,
Back to the hotel on the shuttle, we walk right up and jump on the bus. 8 minutes later we're in our room, night night!
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