Hong Kong Disney

We left our hostel behind in the questionable part of town and upped our standard of living by moving to the Disneyland Hollywood Hotel on our third day. This was partly because one night there got you a "two days for one" deal at Disney. We were told you could do Disney in a day, which is true, but we planned to spend both mornings either traveling or doing other things, so this was perfect.

Hey, so how many of you have seen Lilo and Stitch? If you haven't, you'd better watch it before you go to Hong Kong Disney. I didn't really realize it was a Disney movie but apparently Stitch is filling in for Mickey at HK Disneyland. When you walk down Main Street into that center circle and look up at the Sleeping Beauty Castle (or in the case of Hong Kong Disney, just forward and slightly up. It's not a very big castle), right in front of you is a big sand like statue of Lilo and Stitch. And then there's Stitch in Tomorrowland, which makes sense cause he's an alien and that's where they put those. But then there he is in Adventureland, and Fantasyland, and on the t-shirts in the gift shop, and there are big pictures of his head all over the Disney map. All day I wondered about this. I just can't say that Stitch falls on my list of beloved Disney characters. To be honest, I think he's kind of obnoxious.

But we still had fun, despite the prevalence of Stitch. Hong Kong Disney is a scaled down version of Disney World. It has the same layout but fewer rides. In fact, the only one that really has a thrill factor was Space Mountain. Megan LOVED this last year in Orlando so we headed there first. We walked straight on. Erik and I loved it and were all prepared to go again, but the kids said it was "loud" and "creepy." Whatever.

Since it was a bit rainy, we stayed inside to watch the Lion King show and the "Golden Mickeys" which was a bunch of the songs from Disney movies with live dancing and singing. It's a little weird seeing most of these characters played by Asians, and particularly to hear them speaking Cantonese (especially Ariel, who was actually white but speaking Cantonese). But for the most part they have replicated Disney quite well. Megan and I got front row seats (on the ground) for the High School Musical show in front of the castle. She got pulled up at the end to learn a few steps to one of the songs. Normally that kind of thing would freak her out, but she was a great sport and did pretty well. We'll get that inner performer out of her yet!

We had the added bonus of getting a park view room in our hotel from which we could watch the 8 pm fireworks display. There's even a channel on the TV devoted only to playing the music that goes with it, so it was a great way to end the day.