Aren't we supposed to be backpackers on a budget?! Hong Kong Disneyland June 2023 - Day 3 & leaving!

[Maximus27]

Our second and final day at Disneyland! Today’s plan was to have another full day in the park, watch Momentous then go back to the hotel to grab our bags, back to the park to get the MRT back to Tsim Sha Tsui and locate our new hotel! It’s going to be a long one!

The great thing about Hong Kong Disneyland is that the park didn’t open until 10:30 so no 6am starts for rope drop are required! It was also Calum’s birthday today so a nice birthday lunch and whatever Calum wanted to do was pretty much the agenda for the day. He’d already chosen his birthday present a couple of days ago in Hong Kong so that was sorted and as our departure back to the UK was approaching we decided to celebrate back at home. This is annoyingly Calum’s second Disney birthday in 2 years as we were in DLP last year and in 24 years I’ve not had a single one! Not that I’m jealous at all… I was loving my new ears this morning...

We had another relatively leisurely morning and got packed up, we were so sad to leave the Explorer’s Lodge - it had been truly wonderful to stay there. We dropped our bags down at luggage storage and hopped on the bus over to the park. We thought as it was a Monday we would see even lower crowd levels than on Sunday - WRONG! The lines forming at the gates were already rather large and much longer than the previous day. Luckily I wasn’t too bothered about getting in quickly so we hung about in the shade for 15 minutes or so then joined a queue as everyone was let in. Today was a very hot one so we were keen to take it easy, buy all the merchandise we had been eyeing up and enjoy some of the shows.

First stop was the big shop on Main Street to get a shirt for my Dad (today was also his Birthday so I wanted to take some presents home for him!) and I’m glad I did as there was only 1 left! We headed over to the Ant Man ride to get in the first battle of the day where I won.

We then walked over to Grizzly Gulch but it was closed until 11am so we got some water and waited in the shade away from the huge crowd that was forming. Everyone was headed for Big Grizzly Mountain Railway - as were we - so when we were let in we let everyone else run ahead and we walked on over at our usual slower pace! We only waited about 35 minutes in the end and this ride was worth it! We then walked through to Mystic Point as the shop here is really good. I got a couple of gifts in here and then we walked through a heaving Toy Story Land and into Fantasyland for a ride on It’s a Small World as there was no queue for this. It was now time for lunch as we hadn’t had any breakfast so we went to the Starlight Diner, Calum’s choice as he loves a burger! We both had burgers with fries and some mozzarella sticks on the side, we enjoyed this and I remember the price being fairly good for two big meals!

I then wanted to catch the next showing of the Lion King show so we went over about 45 minutes early to get in the queue as I wanted a good seat! We managed to perch on a rock in the shade which was good and time went pretty fast! We got a great spot for the show and really enjoyed this. It’s set up in the same way as it is Animal Kingdom and it was a great show.

We headed out and walked through to Tomorrowland where it was super busy so we just got a drink and some popcorn and people watched for a while! We headed over to Fantasyland for the next showing of Mickey and the Wondrous book and only waited about 20 minutes for this. I love this show, it’s so fun and the cast members are so talented!

Jungle Cruise was then posting a 20 minute wait so this was our next stop and we sat at the back of the boat on the other side this time to see all the things we had missed the first time.
I then wanted to walk through the Fairy Tale Forest in Fantasyland which is super cute and has lots of scenes/fountains/castles from all the Disney Princess films, I’ll just put some photos below as it’s hard to describe but was worth spending 20 minutes walking around.

We went for another Ant Man battle where Calum won this time!

Back to Fantasyland where we did the Carousel and Winnie the Pooh.

We were going to get a spot for Momentous but we couldn’t resist one final Ant Man battle to decide the winner and of course it was me! We were even sad enough to add up all our scores over the past two days and I still came out on top!

At about 8pm we got a spot by Tomorrowland for Momentous, it was absolutely heaving tonight so we just stood by some railings with a relatively good view but lots of people were moving around us. Luckily we had a great view last night and I wasn’t too bothered about it tonight, I just wanted to get some pictures/videos and enjoy what I could.

We headed through the shops on the way out to pick up some final bits and slowly walked out the gates.

It was a weird feeling leaving the park on this day. When I leave DLP or WDW, I know I will be returning at some point in the future but I don’t know if we will ever be back in Hong Kong! We have so many plans for the future and as much as we loved Hong Kong and Disneyland there are so many other places to explore so it was weird walking out knowing we may never be back. You never know what way life will turn though so maybe one day we will return!

Our evening was far from over as we still had to get back into the city! We waited about 15 minutes for a bus back to the Explorers Lodge where we got all of our luggage, and then got back in the other bus queue to go back to the park. Luckily, Calum had thought ahead to buy our MRT tickets that morning and I’m glad we did as it was very busy at the station! We got there around 10:15 and only waited a few minutes for the Disney train to take us back to reality.

We all squeezed in and it took about 10 minutes to get back to Sunny Bay MRT station where obviously everyone had to get off so it was incredibly busy! We headed over to our platform for the MRT back to Lai King then changed again to get the MRT to Jordan. We were now very familiar with this area so it was nice to exit the underground station and know where we were straight away. The hotel was just a 5 minute walk away next to Kowloon Park and we were checking in by 11:15. Our big burger lunch was a distant memory and we were super hungry so popped out to grab a McDonalds which we took back to the hotel room and snacked on, then it was time for showers and we eventually headed to sleep around 1am!

And that was that! Disneyland number 3 ticked off my bucket list. I’m so grateful that we made this trip happen, it was so unexpected and wasn’t even mentioned in our original plans but it was the perfect way to end our 3 month trip. I am going to do one final post on our time in Hong Kong and our trip in general so if that interests you please give that a read when I eventually get round to posting it!

A few highs and lows of this trip..

Highs for me were definitely staying at the Explorers Lodge, such a beautiful hotel with friendly staff and huge rooms! The park itself is beautiful and even though it was small we were definitely glad we had two full days to enjoy everything. We met some lovely cast members in shops and restaurants which maybe I noticed more because they aren’t always the friendliest in DLP..? I don’t think anything was closed for refurb while we were there so we got to experience absolutely everything we wanted to so that was also great.

There aren’t many lows to list at all! I have to say I wasn’t expecting the huge crowd levels on our second day as our first day had been lovely and chilled. Whilst the buses etc. were super organised the other guests tended to be fairly pushy and at some points things felt like a bit of a free for all! We still made the most of our day though and really enjoyed our slower pace so this didn’t put any sort of dampener on the trip. I think this is the only thing I can really think of!

I’ll do a summary on Hong Kong in my next post but for now thank you so much for reading along, and if you’re planning on heading to HKDL soon then I hope you have a wonderful time!

[Zarahorse]

Fabulous xxx

[Lola]

We went to Hong Kong Disneyland a few years ago and loved it. Being ‘oldies’ as well meant we got in for a ridiculously low price.

[Maximus27]

Originally Posted by Lola

We went to Hong Kong Disneyland a few years ago and loved it. Being ‘oldies’ as well meant we got in for a ridiculously low price.

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It's a wonderful park isn't it

[burnoutbabe]

never say you won't be back - i am heading back as its a good stopover before i go to shanghai!

also staying in explorers so looking forward to that - i have a 2 day ticket which gets me money off at various food places around disney.

wait times look lowish right now (will go Thursday after landing for a bit and friday) and glad it opens 10.30 so can have a lie in (haha, not really with 8 hour time difference).

The haloween stuff on now looks good!

[Maximus27]

Originally Posted by burnoutbabe

never say you won't be back - i am heading back as its a good stopover before i go to shanghai!

also staying in explorers so looking forward to that - i have a 2 day ticket which gets me money off at various food places around disney.

wait times look lowish right now (will go Thursday after landing for a bit and friday) and glad it opens 10.30 so can have a lie in (haha, not really with 8 hour time difference).

The haloween stuff on now looks good!

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Wow hope you have a wonderful time! Also have a great time in Shanghai that's high on my bucket list! We loved the 10:30 park openings secretly