Day 4 [part 1]: Goooooood Morning Shanghai! (Second Park Day!)
Before we fell asleep, we all came to the consensus to turn down the temperature in the room. Nobody said it that morning, but before falling asleep we all mentioned that the night before seemed to have gotten SO hot during the night time. SO before sleeping, we turned the temperature to about 17 degrees celsius. Which to me, sounds like too cold since at home we keep a continual condo temperature of around 20 degrees celsius. Either they turn off the AC or they just regulate ALL the rooms at the same temperatures regardless of what you try to set the room as, or there’s just literally NO circulation… because every single one of us sort of woke up in the middle of the night sweating and kicking all the blankets off. Not sure if that’s the jet lag waking us up at 4 in the morning or the ridiculous humid heat… either way we all sort of didn’t have the smoothest of sleeps. But that’s okay. Come 7am it was time to get up and head down to Sunnyside Cafe to eat so we could head back over to the park!!!
This morning I had a very traditional breakfast… CHICKEN CONGEE
Congee is basically rice. But made with a whole ton of water. So it’s like a soup rice. Chinese porridge basically, with rice haha. This one was with chicken, and they also came with some packets of peanuts, some marinated bamboo shoots, and a Chinese donut. Again, your meal came with a beverage as well! (The coffee is basically just a package of instant coffee ahaha. Also, you have to be very very careful when you fill your cups with the hot water. It’s HOT. We grabbed some ice cubes to go, so that we could add them to our hot beverages so we could actually drink them. Again, the water is HOT.)
I’m ambitious so I threw everything of all my packets in.
Glendon decided to have the dim sum breakfast, with siu mai and buns. Brian had an American breakfast again, and Jenna have the same buns she got yesterday.
Right outside the doors of Sunnyside Cafe in the courtyard, there is a giant Buzz Lightyear statue.
Yes, I approve! I love how much Toy Story stuff there is
The front of the hotel is so cute. The entrance looks like a giant toy box.
(We definitely did a photo op in the toy display window later on)
And here is the bus stop sign! I think it’s cute
We were actually a little bit worried. This was a Saturday now, and already just waiting for the bus we could already feel that it was a lot busier than our previous day. Yikes. Did we wake up early enough?? How many people are already waiting at security?? Our bus was PACKED! Ahhh… but that’s okay right? Whatever happens will happen. When we got off the bus we went immediately to the security area.
I couldn’t help myself. I had to snap this photo because IT’S SO CUTE
Our plan for the morning was to run over to Soaring to either grab a fast pass or wait in line. But uh oh… They were already letting people into the park, we didn’t have to wait long at security. And as soon as people got through the ticketing gates, people were RUNNING. WHAT DO THEY KNOW THAT WE DON’T IT MUST BE SOARING. YES THEY ARE ALL RUNNING TOWARDS SOARING!!! Sadly, we found out they still weren’t doing fast passes for Soaring. SO the boys decided to high tail it to Tron to grab fast passes for all of us, and Jenna and I were to hopefully get in line for Soaring. A little risqué, as all the signs say you have to keep your party together when waiting in line ahaha.
I had planned on vlogging, so I have this ridiculous reaction video aha
Basically right after I took that video, the line up kept on increasing. Literally it felt like every single person who was entering the park booked it straight to Soaring. The park hasn’t even opened yet, and the line up was at 180 minutes and still growing. We were not wasting our morning waiting in line with everyone else. SO when Glendon and Brian managed to get back to us with our Tron fast passes, we decided we were doing the ropes courses at Camp Discovery! (This was on our “must do” so we were really excited!)
Camp Discovery Challenge Trails
View of the first few trails, and mountain
Rules of the Challenge Trails
Secure all loose items in lockers or leave with non-participant.
The harness must be worn at all times while on the experience.
Harness cannot be altered or adjusted after being inspected by the Challenge Trail Guide.
Do not touch the overhead tracking system.
Lanyard line should stay in front of you and between your shoulders at all times.
No running, jumping, hanging in harness, falling on purpose or horseplay.
Follow all instructions given by Challenge Trail Guides.
No food, candy or gum in your mouth while on the course. No spitting please.
Only one participant on a challenge at a time, unless a child is being assisted by a supervising companion.
- Put harness on.
- Attach harness and adjust harness.
- Attach lanyard.
- Adjust lanyard.
- Remove harness and lanyard.
Pretty simple. If you’ve ever done any sort of these aerial courses before it’s the same thing, really. Except we had heard that this course had some paths that were downright SCARY. So of course, we were excited to see what they were all about! Don’t worry though, at each pass, there was always three options for you to get to the next landing: an easy one, one that’s difficult, and one right in between. You can visually see which one is harder than the others haha. Unfortunately, they didn’t allow ANYTHING on you at all, including all cell phones, wallets, cameras, anything… So those all got locked up in the lockers before getting harnessed up! (That’s what the big line up is for… to get yourself a locker. There’s only a smaller line after the lockers when you get fitted for a harness.)
SO here is my last photo before we put all our stuff away
I didn’t try to be bold and sneak something on. I know they have security cameras throughout the course. This is so they can get to you if for some reason you were having difficulties. And also to scold you if you had anything like a camera with you. Yes, I have indeed been scolded at our local ropes course once. Hence why I didn’t want to risk it again, especially in a foreign country where they could also kick me out of the park that I’ve worked so hard to get to haha.
Overall we had a good time! Some of the harder paths were literally impossible for me to get through. I’m simply just not tall enough, and my legs aren’t long enough for me to reach the next rope haha. So I took a lot of intermediate paths. But the REALLY SCARY one that we heard so much about. It’s basically a giant cave inside that lovely mountain. And you’d have to shimmy along a teeny tiny little edge to get to the other side while there’s a big waterfall in the middle of the cave hole! Brian and I had definitely thought we would TRY it. But luck was not on our side (or maybe it just meant we were not meant to do it at all…) they closed this path off! It did look ridiculously slippery. Still… it looked interesting haha. And if somehow we got a camera in, we definitely would have wanted photos if we got to do it! By the time we got near the end the course, though, you could tell tons of people also gave up on waiting for Soaring. The course was getting PACKED with people. And the whole only one person on a challenge at a time rule went out the door. It wasn’t so fun anymore when you’re trying to get through a difficult challenge and someone else has started right behind you and all the ropes are shaking and then you start worrying about weight limits ahahaha.
After our ropes course, we decided to go and ride Pirates! But sadly, luck was NOT on our side this morning. You could definitely feel the difference in crowd levels now that it was a saturday. Pirates was at 120 minutes!!! Since we got to ride it a few times the day before, and since we were pretty confident the wait time will go down later in the day, we decided to skip Pirates. We figured that all the people who either already finished riding Soaring or had given up, went to the closest next land: Pirates. So after all the morning rush died down, the wait time must go down, right? SO change of plans! On to the next land.
But first… miraculously no one was lining up for a photo op.
(Which then after we got our photos people were queuing up right behind us.)
We decided to get ourselves some fast passes for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. We didn’t really have any sort of plans to ride it since it looks the same as the one in Disney World. But since we didn’t have anything else planned, why not get a fast pass, right? The fast passes for the rides in Fantasyland are in a central area inside of Fantasyland. And again, there was a line up. But that’s okay, gave us JUST enough time to wait out the wait time until we could get a new fast pass since we got Tron passes first thing in the morning.
See you later, Seven Dwarfs!
Even though by this time it was still only 10am (park opened at 9am), breakfast felt like too many hours ago. But it was only 10, so we decided we would grab some snacks! Right by the fast pass station there were two really exciting stands.
Brian got a churro!
And… Jenna and I got our Mickey savoury buns!
THEY ARE SO CUTE!
And the wrapper too haha
We decided that we would do the castle walk through until it was time for our Tron fast pass. So, more park wandering!
Hundred Acre Wood sign
The Snuggly Duckling that’s called Tangled Tavern
It looks so good from back here!
A small shop
But that Olaf sweater. We found it
A BEAST STUFFY
And I made my very first pressed coin of the trip!!!
I looooooove collecting pressed coins. But they aren’t as big of a thing in Shanghai, it seemed. I think this was the first machine we saw. I just chose a plain Shanghai Disneyland begin with the castle! After dollar conversion, it came to about $3CAD, which felt kind of expensive for a pressed coin, so I only got the one for Shanghai. Plus they don’t have pennies there so it was called a medallion.
UP NEXT…. Castle Walkthrough, more Meet and Greets