China/Shanghai

Did you know to visit China you need a visa? Back in 2018 this Visa was around £300 each for our 14 day stay but now you can visit visa free for up to 240 hours. I am not certain this covers all areas of China but you can certainly visit the very wonderful Shanghai. And guess what is at Shanghai?.....Disney of course!

Disneyland Shanghai, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly...

Many weeks ago whilst still in Taiwan I had tried and failed to book a stay at the Disney Hotel in Shanghai. No matter what, I could not get a much needed code that allowed me to create an account and make a booking. I tried again when in Japan, and still failed. I was quite sad. Mr Bunny and I hadn`t mentioned to little B our dreams of visiting yet another of the great Disney parks hoping to make it a surprise. but when you need a tech savvy little hopper, little B is the only way to go, most especially when I told her what I was trying to do. Did she manage it? Does Dumbo fly?

Disney Toy Story Hotel. I chose to stay on site at one of only two Disney hotels. The other is the Disneyland hotel. With all the You Tubes and Reels about the phenomenal queues at Disney Sea, we were sure Shanghai would be the same and with one chance only to do this, staying on site was a go to. We did all the research about opening queue times, rope drop, but drew a blank. How odd. Turns out moving people is their speciality. We lined up, scanned and were in the park within 10 mins of leaving the bus. Is this the norm? I don`t actually know as we had one hour early priority entrance, even so we were through in no time and there were some hefty lines. Did I mention that we had flown in that evening, landed at 12.30am, to the hotel by 1.30am, bed at 2, up at 6 for breakfast and on the park bus at 6.45?

Disneyland Shanghai

The Good. Disneyland Shanghai is huge. Classed as one of the most complete parks on opening it truly is quite special. We found it very pretty, especially as we were there at Easter and springtime. Having spent numerous occasions at WDW in the Autumn, it was nice to see other colours for a change, not just the orange of Halloween pumpkins. I cannot say that it has a multitude of rides, but it most certainly does have a huge number of walking paths and given the overwhelming number of visitors, they know how to keep people moving. Ditto the rides, the queuing systems are crazy long, but they keep moving, no endless minutes of standing and waiting, you are always shuffling forward. We decided that the rides loaded quickly and efficiently due to the absence of disability riders. There are zero scooters in Disney Shanghai. Wait times of 70 minutes was not uncommon, yet the times passed quite quickly (apart from Peter Pan, a notoriously slow loader) Day one we chose to ride Tron first, a super awesome motorbike type ride. We were on and off within 15 mins, and for any Disney geek reading this, you know just how improbable this would normally be. Disney Shanghai is unique. They have a new land called Zootopia, based on the film, and every man, woman, child, angel and doll, makes a beeline for that area at park opening. (we saved that bit of fun for day 2) Whilst I could tell you about all the different rides, I wont, except one.

Pirates of the Caribbean. oh my goodness gracious me, what a ride! Mr Bunny had read and seen snippets of film that this particular Pirates ride was quite unlike any other at any other park and was quite adamant that we would be waiting in line for this ride no matter what the times. He was not wrong. How long would I wait to ride this again? 4 hours? yep, all day? probably? multiple times, too right! I thought I had seen spectacular when we rode Beauty and the Beast in Tokyo, but nope. Jaw dropping. Literally. From the moment you get into your boat, you start a voyage like no other. Mrs Bunny had chosen not to do any research into the ride and was expecting the same as every other with a few more bits of animation. Ha! Oh how I loved being overwhelmed by this ride. The very second Captain Jack Sparrow magically turned from skeleton to man in an eye blink, I was hooked. We dived to the bottom of the ocean to a watery city of life, watched the Kraken awaken and swim away, with our boat dragged by the current through the bowels of various shipwrecks, we could see the surface of the water far far above us. The sirens sounded, it was time to fight! We rose to the surface and burst out onto the ocean only just missing the large Man o` War as it passed us by. With all cannons firing we did well to dodge between the ships and escape the Armada. With many vessels sinking around us, we took to the safety of a cove, where alas a fight between two pirates ended with one firing a pistol into the barrel of gunpowder launching us on a tidal wave back to dry land. And there endeth our ride. Did we go back and do it all again? You bet we did. 7 times in total.

Zootopia. We saved the whole land of Zootopia until day 2. A whole land devoted to the film, and the absolute heroine of pure adoration? Judy. Jude the Dude. Cute Bunny. Bunny Cop. You actually have to queue just to get into Zootopia land, and then you queue again to get on the only ride there. Do they queue all day for this ride? Yes, yes they do. Was it special? Absolutely. the theming was just Disney come to life. The best part, or worst, I cannot decide, the people. They play dress up, and Judy is their hero. From the smallest child, to mums, dads, teenagers, boy or girl, they play dress up as Judy. Younger kids wear cute little Judy dresses, Mums go for the skin tight bare midriff, open shirt sexy bunny look. Guys wear the cop uniform, and bunny ears! Not fox ears for Nick Wilde, oh no, bunny ears. You have never seen anything like it. Unlike Florida, dress up is a big thing here. Any age.

Disney, The Bad. Photographs. Selfies, more photos, more selfies, absolutely everywhere you look the local girls are taking photos. Happy, look at us, we are here photos? Nope. This is me in front of a tree. a wall. in front of the toilets. in a shop. crouched down on a path, in front of a brick wall, and the expressions of blank baby doll is just bizarre. And the outfits? You find yourself staring and thinking what on earth are you wearing?! Cute, baby doll, bimbo, anime, they are everywhere. Silly looking blank faced girls, standing posing every which way possible in front of the most ordinary young guys, presumably a boyfriend, who never ever EVER utters a word of boredom or frustration. And they are everywhere! Worse for me was watching smaller girls, in dresses that in the UK a 3 year old would shy away from, being encouraged to pose in cute poses, if I say Shirley Temple and a lolly pop, you get the scene. We grew tired of seeing silly face, after silly face. I didn`t appreciate quite how interesting women of the world people are until we came across the baby dolls of China and Japan. Did I mention that they also wear face masks, and wear them on photos as well?

Disney Ugly. Unlike every other park, smoking is quite the norm in the park. There are smoking areas, but they are so big and so often, smokers may as well just walk around the parks, cigarette in hand. Not in the wait lines, but anywhere else. Prams. There are double buggies everywhere, for the adults. I am not kidding, they hire buggies for adults, and we didn`t just see the occasional adult perched in a pram, we saw many many many adults in prams. Grown men in buggies! These buggies are specially designed to carry adults! Seeing a silly moo in their mid 20s (we guess) being pushed around by a male partner was not uncommon. You have never seen anything quite so odd or cringy. I get Disney is incredibly tiring, but a pram??? Potty time. More than once we witnessed, usually a small child, being allowed to stand up against a railing and just pee. Yes the lines are long and narrow, but standing where you are and having a whizz? It certainly made us look twice at any puddle of liquid. Spilt orange juice? probably not. Rubbish in Disney? a distinct lack of cleaners leaves areas a little worse for wear. Lastly, as you exit the park you run the gauntlet of aggressive sellers shoving what appears to be genuine Disney products in your face, hard faced guys whispering ` wanna buy a park ticket` and an endless barrage of taxi touts. For a park that gets so much right, they have aspects that do leave a lot to be desired. Would we go again? Of course we would ! :-)

Shanghai

We came to Shanghai in 2018 and really wanted to see it again. Our trip to China is brief to say the least but we couldn`t leave without seeing Shanghai once more. The most beautiful, stunning, colourful, scented city, A far cry from the ugly bland and colourless Seoul of late. Little Bunny had of course lined up a whole raft of must see places, and we tried our best to accommodate. We started at (where else..) the Disney Flagship store, located almost directly beneath the Pearl. What a beautiful shop. Why oh Why cant Florida have such amazing and desirable items for sale in its shops :-( The pay queue though, oh heck, it wound round the whole shop and Mr B made his feelings plainly obvious when he said he wasn`t joining it to pay for anything. Turns out, this 4 hour (FOUR) hour queue, was to buy the new limited edition Mickey Baker products. Considering you cannot find Mickey Mouse anywhere in the park, bar a small statue, this was so odd.

From the Disney Store, we boarded a HoHo bus with its utterly pointless commentary to the old part of the city. We loved this area, coming here on our previous trip. It was nice to see how much it had changed, remaining the same, but better. Same, same but different.

We paid to visit the Lu Garden. Was very very pretty, but still a garden. A big garden, but a garden, with water. We two bigger bunnies don`t do gardens, we know what happens when you go into a garden. We are desperate to eat pie, not be the pie. From the gardens we headed off to Nanjing walking street. Us and half a million others. Absolutely stunning and impossibly busy. For a country that does not celebrate Easter holidays, there was definitely an air of holidays. Surely It cant be that busy everyday? We wandered that wide avenue of shops and lights heading, like everyone else, to the Bund.

Shanghai skyline is like no other. We had idly considered getting a boat tour, ha, seeing the size of the crowds made us giggle at our naivety of `just` getting on a boat. Little bossy bunny muscled her way to the barrier so that we could all watch the light of the Bund. We didn`t know about the laser show when we arrived, but a quick google translate `What are you waiting for` and showing it to everyone around us in the hope of someone giving us an answer, we quickly found out the reason for the bazzilion phones in hand poised and ready stance. The laser show was quite special, and clearly a watch once and leave. As fast as everybody arrived, they vanished the minute the show was over. However with a multitude of bodies all around us, we decided the best chance of getting a taxi was to cross the river again. Of course little B had the perfect answer to that problem. The scenic tourist tunnel. Such a simple innocuous sign, that led to something extraordinarily special. With thousands of people all around us, I was amazed at how quiet this tunnel was. Just us and a couple of others, quite odd really considering how many people were at street level. Down a very long escalator to a gondola/glass train carriage. This large glass carriage arrived, just 4 seats, one in each corner, and standing room for 13. It arrived. turned round on a train equivalent of a lazy susan, we boarded, and headed back off down the tunnel. I almost want to say think Alice in wonderland falling down the rabbit hole. A swirling vision of lights lit the way, quite breath taking. Deep under the river we found ourselves in a painted tube of marine life, so hard to explain. Further on the tube resembled a lava shaft. £5 each and we had the carriage to ourselves. So special. A wonderful way to end our brief time in Shanghai, China.

A very special country. We love you. We don`t love your loo`s lol, but we adore everything else. Thank you for your hospitality China.