Disneyland

All of us at the entrance

March 22^nd is Michaela’s birthday. This year we wanted to go to Disneyland. So it worked out that the best time to go was the weekend before her birthday. LJ was only three weeks old. All the Chinese people thought we were crazy bringing a baby of that age out of the house. It seemed pretty easy to me. He pretty much just sleeps and eats, so traveling was quite stress free.

So we stayed the night at the Hollywood Hotel which is the four star hotel on the grounds. There is a five star one also, but I didn’t see the big advantage to staying at that one since we would be spending most of the time at the park. We got two day passes and the first day it was just Michaela, my mom and myself. David was on a business trip and joined us the following day.

Hollywood Hotel

Hong Kong Disneyland is really small and can be seen in its entirety in a day or two. There are really only four parts and most of the rides are small rides. It really seems more geared toward younger children. It also didn’t seem that busy and we were there on a weekend. The average wait time for a ride was one to five minutes.

Michaela in front of the castle

Michaela’s favorite parts were: Fantasyland: Teacup ride and Dumbo ride, Meeting the characters (especially the princesses) and going anywhere near the castle. My feelings: It was fun. I never felt so happy to spend so much money in my life. I could go into some rant about the damage that Disney has done to our culture and the negative aspects of the commercialism it developed (you could very well put “Disney” down for a definition of commercialism among other things of course). However, whose fault is it: those who buy into it or those who see the opportunity? If too much is not made out of Disney, the park, the movies the products, it really is a fun activity to enjoy with the family and since most of us can only afford to go to the park once maybe twice, it isn’t worth too much analysis regarding its impact on society.

Meeting Winnie the Pooh

Dumbo ride

Teacup ride

Disappointing: the food! This was definitely an Asian park and the food demonstrated it. The cute main street that looked like America had almost nothing that smelled or tasted Western. I remember when the park opened they had a lot more Western food and the people complained that there was not enough Chinese food. Chinese, Asians in general love almost all Western imports except Western food. Most Chinese won't even so much as sample "Western" food.

Yucky snacks!

Just plain weird: the crowd which was mostly adults. The only thing weirder than realizing you want to go on the tea cup ride again because you had more fun than your kid is realizing that almost everyone else on the ride is an adult without any accompanying children. Even weirder: waiting in line to see Winnie the Pooh and realizing that your child is the only one under the age of 10 waiting in line made up of 40 people. My conclusion: these people did not get to grow up with Disney and are making up for their cheated childhood as adults.

Meeting Cinderella

Group picture with Snow White and Cinderella

The train to Disneyland -- very cool