Christmas in Shanghai Disney

I am writing this one out of Chronological order, so that I can post about Christmas relatively close to Christmas, I will get back to our summer adventures after this post.

This semester we have had some great visiting professors that we have become good friends with- one of the families will be here the whole year and you will see more of them in upcoming posts. The other family will sadly be leaving in a few days– but we have had such a great time getting to know them and having mini adventures with them. So this is a shout out to the Hsiao-Weckslers!

Liz is a visiting Mechanical Engineering professor, and her two boys, Jack and Doren (Doren has been going to school with Alex). We have been talking about Shanghai Disney pretty much since she got here, but have always had something come up and wreck our plans. One hiccup has always been that I was a little afraid to go, I was worried that it would all be in Chinese and too hard to navigate. But I am delighted to report that that is not the case and we really enjoyed our visit!

This trip involved a slow train to Shanghai, and then a metro ride to the end of the line and then a shuttle bus to the hotel.

We went to check into our hotel first to drop off our bags and rest a bit before hitting the park. We stayed in the Toy Story Hotel, and it was as cute as you would expect

A quick 10 minute stop into the rooms, and then we headed off to the park. Picking up our tickets was a breeze, we walked up to the turnstiles, handed over our passports and were handed our tickets. They even had discount tickets (I think because of Christmas) that let you into the park after 4pm.

I was expecting it to be mobbed, I’ve been to Disneyland in California before at Christmas time and it was so packed you couldn’t move- but it was actually relatively empty. The big rides had “long” waits, but I think Soaring was an hour and Tron was even less.

Tron was really hard to try to get a good picture of- Abby and I waited below for everyone else.

A good time was had by all the riders. Alex will quickly tell you anytime he is asked that Tron is his favorite part of this trip. After this we grabbed some dinner and waited for the tree lighting ceremony.

After tree lighting it was back to running around for rides. As soon as we got over there, Pirates of the Caribbean closed temporarily- so we moved on to Fantasy land where we rode the Storybook ride (think Jungle cruise but with princesses) and Peter Pan’s Flight- which is the same at all the parks I think- and wander through gift shops (because we all had a roughly$12 coupon on purchases over $22).

After shopping for a bit, Pirates was back open and we were able to get on it with no wait at all. Pirates was pretty cool, lots of CGI and different special effects than the ones in US Disneys… and a bit darker too. Not to spoil too much, but in the famous scene with the guys in jail trying to whistle the dog with the keys over… In Shanghai it’s all skeletons, the guys and the dog. The whole ride is in Chinese, and while I didn’t understand it, you don’t really need to to enjoy the ride.

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After that we decided to head out of the park as it was about to close for winter hours, and while Abby and Nora went to find a good spot to watch the closing finale, the rest of us went on Seven Dwarf’s Mine train since there was no wait.

We decided to head in and get shopping while everyone else was watching the finale. When we got done, we headed to Disney Town (which is the equivalent of Downtown Disney or Disney Springs) to have a late night dinner at Cheesecake Factory.

And all of this was just the half Day at Disney! Abby and Nora only joined us for this half day because Nora was a responsible student who had to study for a test… unlike me, who had a final in two days but hung out at Disney anyway!