Is it ok to ask Ocean Park?

[littlejen22]

I do not know anyone else that would be helpful with Ocean Park questions including my husband who has been but did not see or do much. As I have said in another post my kids are 6 and 3 and we are going in under 3 months. We plan on doing two days at Disneyland and one day at Ocean Park. My oldest is tall enough for some of the bigger rides but does not want to do any thrill rides. We plan on arriving at opening. My must do list are the pandas, cable car, ocean express and kiddie rides. We probably do not want to so more than one show. What else should I add to out to-do list that the kids will enjoy? And any suggestions for what order we shoul do things or avoid the crowds best? Oh, and we are likely going on a Monday. Thanks.

 

[PrincessInOz]

Littlejen - Ocean Park is pretty huge; so if you're going on a Monday, you might find that the park doesn't feel as crowded. If you're catching the Ocean Park bus to get there from Admiralty or Central, there might be a queue of people for the buses. Everyone catches the bus; so don't judge the size of the crowd if you should see a huge queue of people there.

There is an aquarium as well as the area after the pandas where the goldfish are. There is also a "rainforest" enclosure at the top of the mountain as well as an expeditian trail. There are parrots and birds in here; and some reptiles. Your kids might also enjoy that. If your oldest decides to do the Rapids, it really isn't a scary ride at all.

We had a day there; and it poured rain on us by the time it got to 2.30 pm. So we didn't see as much as we wanted. But what we saw, we liked. We did the Pandas first because that was the main reason for us to go to the park. There weren't as many people there as we expected and we managed to take our time and enjoy looking at them. I suspect that most people head straight up to the top of the mountain to the big rides first.
The biggest queue for us were the cable cars. I would recommend that if you want to ride them, go take a ride after the Pandas and explore the top for a bit.

If we ever head back to HK, we will definitely head back to Ocean Park again.

Have a great time.

 

[littlejen22]

Thanks for the advice. Did you do both panda areas before heading to the cable car? The most important things for me are definitely the pandas an the cable car. I am trying to figure out if the Ocean Tower should be added to that too. And then I will have the kids do some of the little kid rides and see some of the other animals depending on their moods.

 

[PrincessInOz]

Littlejen - Yes. We did both panda areas (and looked at the goldfish) before hitting the cable car. We got to the cable car just in time. There was a short'ish queue when we got there.....took us 10 - 15 minutes to board. But I took a look behind me whilst we were waiting. We literally beat the crowd by about 5 minutes as the queue looked like it was out to 45 minutes. From memory, Ocean Park opened at 10 am and I'm pretty sure that we got to the cable cars before 11 am.

 

[littlejen22]

Wow, I heard the lines can be bad but that is crazy, did you take the train down?

At he top we might do the Sea Jelly Spectacular, the Ferris wheel and my son might do he swings, the Artic Fox, Norh Pole and South Pole, then train back down. Do the kiddy rides at Whiskers Harbour, Gator Marsh, Emperors of the Sky, Emerald Trail, SeaLife Carosuel, and Grand Aquarium.

My biggest concern is how crowded the kiddy rides will be, I cannot find any info on that. I will probably skip things as needed.

 

[PrincessInOz]

Wow, I heard the lines can be bad but that is crazy, did you take the train down?

At he top we might do the Sea Jelly Spectacular, the Ferris wheel and my son might do he swings, the Artic Fox, Norh Pole and South Pole, then train back down. Do the kiddy rides at Whiskers Harbour, Gator Marsh, Emperors of the Sky, Emerald Trail, SeaLife Carosuel, and Grand Aquarium.

My biggest concern is how crowded the kiddy rides will be, I cannot find any info on that. I will probably skip things as needed.

I was there the first week of April. There are a number of public holidays for Hong Kong that week; and mainland China was on school holidays. So, there were quite a number of tourists around. I don't know if the crowds we experienced were normal or not but it's highly likely that there were more people because of the holiday period.

We did catch the train down. Unfortunately, we didn't see a lot of it. It was pouring down rain, the cable cars were shut down due to high winds so everyone was trying to get back down the mountain using the train.

I think I saw rides at Whiskers Harbour. I don't know about the others. We didn't get round to seeing them as we were rained out.

 

[BillyBuff]

Ocean Park was pretty fun except for the crowds (mostly from the tour buses)

The cable car line can get really long. The person working there said it was an hour wait that their point but we managed to get to on within 30 mins.

My in-laws live just on the other side of the hill from Ocean Park so we just walked over instead (10 mins). It might be a lot easier in 2015 when they finish the MTR construction so this will ease up the bus queues!

We went on a Friday (12/21/2012) and boy was it crowded! We saw a lot of tour buses too! But it was odd that Saturday it was a lighter attendance. We figured we go on Friday to avoid the crowds but Saturday was much lighter!

 

[abbadackerygirl]

LH and I are going to head up to both HKD and Ocean Park. (and then onto TOKYO DL &DS!!) I haven't done any research on Ocean Park yet, so this is very helpful. We will be bringing an unfearful toddler who I'm sure will go nutters in all the parks. She LOVES Disneyland California, so I am on fire for this trip!

 

[CaliBear]

hi. Just chiming in a little about times. We loved Ocean Park!! We did the cable car later in the day- after 2 p.m. and the wait was not so bad. We basically took the bus there, had lunch (this took over two hours, seriously, but it was delicious), saw Whiskers, Pandas, gold fish, then up to the top for jelly fish and dolphins.

When we first arrived at the park the longest line was for the large aquarium that has sharks and deep water fish. We skipped that and queued for lunch instead. This was a good decision since we went back to the aquarium in the evening after the dolphins and there was no line.