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Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong Theme Parks Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong Holiday Planning Questions, Suggestions and Tips.

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Old 7 Jun 17, 01:25 PM  
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BrightlyBob
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July 2018 Shanghai Disneyland and city, Xian and Beijing

With a real lack of information on Shanghai Disneyland, and with Chinese travel on the increase I've decided to start this thread about my families Disneyland and Chinese trip.

This first post will be a repository of useful stuff I've learned whilst planning and whilst there. Later posts will be more general planning, and a kind of mini-trip report of interesting stuff whilst at Shanghai Disney and as we go through China.

First hint:
Read the trip reports-
So for those planning a first ever China or Shanghai Disney trip my first tip is to read thedibb trailblazer, Hannikins who went there in Nov 2016 and compiled a brilliant trippie with loads of useful info. You'll find her report here:
https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho...d.php?t=990693

Second hint:
Shanghai Disneyland is too small to justify a trip to China to see it alone-
Shanghai Disneyland is a single park, if you're flying from the UK to China you'll not find enough to occupy you for a week or two at Disney, so you'll have to venture out. Most popular non-Disney destinations are:
1. Shanghai - it's just a taxi ride away. The worlds most highly populated metropolis has plenty to see and do. 2-days in Shanghai Disney and 5 in Shanghai itself should prove a very memorable week.
2. Beijing - the Chinese capital has plenty of tourist sites and is quite close to the Great Wall too. With the Forbidden Palace, Hutongs, Tiananmen Sq, Confucian sites and multiple museums there's enough to keep you going for a week.
3. Xi'an - a couple of hours flight from both Beijing and Shanghai, featuring the Terracotta Army and the attractions of China's oldest city, and one of the oldest in the world, there was so much history there that even Maos destructive cultural revolution couldn't find time to wreck it all. Walls, Drum tower, Big Goose Pagoda, there's plenty here for a couple of days at least.
4. Chengdu - A couple of hours flight from Xian, 3 or 4 from Shanghai and Beijing, home of China's Panda breeding program - need I say more? Ok, add to that Wenshu temple and Jinshu museum and you have another very interesting couple of days.

Third hint:
Check out the trains-
We are using an overnight Sleeper to get us from Shanghai to Xi'an and a bullet train to take us from Xi'an to Beijing. See the vast countryside and travel with the locals on some of the worlds fastest railways. These are proper tourist experiences in themselves.

Fourth hint:
Visas - here you have a choice-
1. 144-hour transit visa. If you're calling in on Shanghai as a stop en-route to another country then you can enter Shanghai for up to 144-hours without a pre-arranged visa. So let's say you've decided on a 2-Centre holiday visiting Shanghai and it's Disneyland for 5 days and say Hong Kong for a week (or anywhere else in the World, like Vietnam, India, South Korea, Australia, even the USA!) then you can take advantage of this paperwork saving option. On arrival you need to show your flight itinerary which will include a list of all your flights. Fee: free, granted on arrival.
2. 2-year tourist Visa. These are no longer available directly from the embassy, instead a few visa companies have the contract with the embassy to act as middlemen and help you to fill out the visa application. Once granted you can then enter and leave China as often as you like over the next 2 years. Fee: £175pp or more depending upon urgency.
3. A Group visitors visa for parties of 2 or more travelling together. The only company I know that handles this is 5-Star China, a Chinese tour company. Good for up to only 1 visit lasting no more than 17 days, it's big plus is its price at less than half the standard visitors visa, so if this is the only trip to China you're planning in the next couple of years then this visa is a money saving option. You need to have your flights and hotels booked so you can send the proof when requesting the visa. Fee: £80pp

Fifth hint:
Think flexibly about your flights-
Especially if touring China do you really want to arrive and leave at the same airport? Arriving at one and leaving at another airport (called open jaw) can be both convenient and cheap. When we were looking in November last year for July this year we were getting ordinary return prices at £600 or more. Searching flying into Shanghai and out of Beijing brought up a £400 fare with Cathay Pacific, and meant we didn't have to waste a day going back to Shanghai to catch return flights. Google Flights is a particularly good site for this, choose the multi-city tab.
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Old 7 Jun 17, 01:46 PM  
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So here's our plan:

Day 1 Departure Day
Depart Manchester to Hong Kong (11hr45m flight)
Overnight Flight
HOTEL: None - night flight

Day 2 No tour - arrival day
Arrive Hong Kong 07:05 (90m layover)
Depart Hong Kong 08:35 to Shanghai Pudong (2hr35m flight)
Arrive Shanghai Pudong at 11:10
Meet and greet at airport for transfer to Disneyland
Afternoon: Wishing Star Park and Disneytown
Evening: Dinner in Disneytown
HOTEL: Disneys Toy Story

Day 3 No tour - Disney day
Disneyland Day
Evening: Dinner in Disneytown
HOTEL: Disneys Toy Story

Day 4 No tour - Disney day
Checkout Toy Story Hotel, store luggage
Disneyland Day
Evening: Taxi to Shanghai Marriott Hotel City Centre
HOTEL: Marriott Shanghai City Centre

Day 5 No tour
R&R day
HOTEL: Marriott Shanghai City Centre

Day 6 Shanghai City Tour
09:00 Meet guide in the hotel lobby.
- Jade Buddha Temple or Longhua Temple
- Yuyuan Garden and the market
- Lunch
- Nanjing Pedestrian Street
- French Concession
- The Bund (Colonial Shanghai buildings, 1920s-1930s)
- Pudong Oriental Pearl Tower (exterior view only)
Evening: Huangpu River Night Cruise
Tour guide fix the tickets & after cruise we walk back to Marriott
HOTEL: Marriott Shanghai City Centre

Day 7 WaterTown Tour: Suzhou & Zhouzhuang with car
09:00 Meet guide in the hotel lobby.
- Net Master Garden
- View the ancient City Wall and Grand Canal
- No. 1 Silk Factory
- Lunch
- Zhouzhuang Water Town
- Chinese-style gondola
HOTEL: Marriott Shanghai City Centre

Day 8 Half-day Communism Tour
09:00 Meet in the hotel lobby.
Half day tour for Communist era historical sites for 2
- Site of the first National Congress in Xintiandi (Communist)
- The former residence for Sun Yat-sen (Nationalist)
- The former residence of Mao Tse Tung
Afternoon: Maglev every 15m (between 13:00-16:00 reaches 430kph/270mph)
HOTEL: Marriott Shanghai City Centre

Day 9 No tour, night train
Rest day
Late Check-out Marriott at 16:00, tube to Shanghai station
Evening: Take sleeper train from Shanghai to Xi’an on Z92, 18:44-09:29+1
Ticket: soft sleeper (4 persons in one cabin)
HOTEL: None - Sleeper cabin

Day 10 Xi'an City Tour with car
09:29 Arrive in Xi’an. Pickup from the train station and take one day city tour.
- City Wall (
- Big Wild Goose Pagoda
- Lunch
- Bell/Drum Tower Square
- Great Mosque
- Muslim Street
HOTEL: Hilton Xi'an

Day 11 Terracotta Warriors Tour with car
09:00 Meet at the hotel lobby.
- Terracotta Warriors
- Lunch
- Banpo Neolithic Village
HOTEL: Hilton Xi'an

Day 12 No tour, bullet train to Beijing
Checkout Hilton at 11:00
13:20 Take bullet train from Xi’an North to Beijing on G88, 13:20 - 17:55
HOTEL: Renaissance Beijing Wangfujing

Day 13 Great Wall Tour with car
08:00 Meet in the hotel lobby.
- Mutianyu Great Wall
- Lunch
- Summer Palace
HOTEL: Renaissance Beijing Wangfujing

Day 14 Beijing City Tour
09:00 Meet in the hotel lobby.
- Tiananmen Square
- Forbidden City
- Lunch
- Temple of Heaven
- Hutong Tour by rickshaw Traditional house Siheyuan
HOTEL: Renaissance Beijing Wangfujing

Day 15 Beijing Pandas and Confucian Tour
08:00 Meet in the hotel lobby.
- Beijing Pandas
- Lama Temple
- Lunch
- Confucian Temple and Imperial College
HOTEL: Renaissance Beijing Wangfujing

Day 16 No tour
R&R day
HOTEL: Renaissance Beijing Wangfujing

Day 17 No tour, last day
R&R day
Late Check-out Renaissance at 16:00 then tube to Beijing Airport
Depart Beijing 19:30 Cathay Dragon to Hong Kong (3hr35m)
Arrive Hong Kong 23:05 (2hr layover)
HOTEL: None - night flight

Day 18 Night flight
Depart Hong Kong 01:00 to Manchester (12hr50m flight). Arrive Manchester 06:50
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Old 7 Jun 17, 02:12 PM  
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Now, anyone that's got this far is probably thinking, "big trip - will the kids enjoy it?"

And the background to that question is of course correct, we've now reached the time in life when our kids are no longer children and want different experiences. This trip was planned with them, aged 16 and 20 with hotel locations chosen for proximity to shopping for the 16yo daughter and history for the 20yo History-student son. I dont think I'd recommend it for primary school kids, much as they might enjoy the Disney bit!

As for our tours - well in truly unfamiliar countries I arrange tours. My wife and I benefitted from this advice when we spent a week in Moscow. We booked a private guide for 3 days and she showed us so many sites travelling around on the metro and gave us a real taste of Muscovite life. So we decided to book a series of private tours in China.

HINT - Book tours, and if there's more than a couple of you a private guide may prove cheaper.

We initially decided on a guide for our Xi'an tour. It was a low-hanging fruit city, we wanted to see the Terracotta Army, Neolithic village, Big Goose Pagoda, Drum towers and walk the city walls. A guide was obviously needed to help us do all that. We chose our private guide from Viator and went through our itinerary by email with her and having done that then decided we'd like a guide for a couple of days in both Shanghai and Beijing. We asked our Xian guide if she could help and she volunteered to co-ordinate our entire trip, arranging not just tours with other guides in Shanghai and Beijing but also our meet and greet at Shanghai Airport, our Sleeper tickets from Shanghai and our bullet train tickets from Xi'an. The advantages of this are simple, all our tours are fixed by her, we discuss with her where we'd like to go and she then liaises with the other guides and coordinates all our train tickets and airport meetup. This makes the tours personalised to exactly what we would like to do and for the 4 of us, costs well less than half the price of buying tours via commercial companies.
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Old 7 Jun 17, 05:30 PM  
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I just came back from Shanghai and was staying at the Disneyland Hotel and the Marriott City Centre!

Disneyland was great, but I felt rather disappointed when I moved over to the city area as I thought there was a big contrast between the two. The Marriott City Centre was a perfectly nice hotel (very clean, modern, great location), but the customer service at check in definitely paled in comparison to Disney! But still, it's a really great location and the rooms are nice so that helps. Sign up for Marriott Rewards for the free wifi...

We had some really good food in Shanghai city including:
- Nanxiang xiaolongbao - there are a few Nanxiang stores, the closest to the Marriott is probably the one in the No 1 Food Store (3rd floor). The one in Yuyuan Gardens is probably the most picturesque but also incredibly crowded!
- Xiaoyang shengjianbao - fried dumplings that were absolutely delicious. Closest would again be the one in the No 1 Food Store (3rd floor).
- Guantang bao - this is a dumpling with lots of soup that you suck up through a straw! They do a variant of this at Nanxiang, but there was a better variant somewhere in Yuyuan Gardens

Will add also that we went to Yuyuan Gardens twice. Once during the day and once at night around 8+pm. During the day the crowds were crazy, so much that we just walked one round around the bazaar and decided to leave. During the night the tour groups emptied out, there were much fewer people, and it was overall a much nicer experience!

Lastly the great firewall of China is really annoying - no Facebook/messenger or anything Google! But I found you can get around it by either using international roaming, or getting a Hong Kong SIM card.

Anyway, have lots of fun!
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Old 7 Jun 17, 07:32 PM  
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It sounds amazing! You are certainly well organised! And what a lot of great advice!
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2016 Quebec - Kuala Lumpar - New York City 2017 Dubai - Eurocamps France - Ontario and Quebec - So-Cal 2018 Montreal - Bangkok - New England 2019 Argentina - Quebec City - Hong Kong - 2020 Switzerland 2022 Arizona - Costa Med Cruise - Oslo 2023 Hong Kong - Gothenburg
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Old 8 Jun 17, 12:51 PM  
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Hi Sky13
I did notice your thread about being in Shanghai, lots of useful info there for Springtime travellers.
I'm expecting our experience to be different. Although we are going in peak time, the seasonal passes aren't valid during our stay so this will really test the numbers the park can attract at peak prices. Make no mistake, Im expecting it to be busy, but with more people not necessarily knowing what they're doing. The wide boulevards should cope with that though the queues may be more disrupted.

Thanks very much for the tip to visit Yu Garden in the evening as well as the day. We'll certainly do that. I'm staying at the Marriott as I use them a lot for work so I'm redeeming some points, I thought the Marriotts wifi wasn't beholden to the Chinese great firewall. And yes, I'd agree, service levels at ordinary hotels just don't match up to Disney, wherever I stay!
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Old 9 Jun 17, 11:01 PM  
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Wow! This looks like an incredible trip. I've learnt a lot reading this, so thank you. I hope you have an amazing time.
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Old 27 Jun 17, 07:13 PM  
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Getting a little apprehensive now. The £80 half price Visa sounds good when you're doing the sums, but here I sit only 17 days from departure without a Visa.

Now I knew this would happen, the tour visa requires us to leave China within a month of it being granted and since we fly home from Beijing on 1st August it can't be granted till 2nd July at the very earliest. All the same it is a little nervy having a fully planned holiday and no visa just 17 days before it starts!

Visa is due to be granted in exactly a weeks time but it all feels too close now not to have that Visa safely in my hands...
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Old 11 Jul 17, 12:04 PM  
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OK, so I can confirm the cheapo £80pp single-entry group visa (for any group of 2 or more) via 5-star china does result in a visa being issued!

They kept me fully up to date emailing me last week when they received a collection time for the visa and again after they'd collected it. They then emailed me to confirm they'd sent it through by first class guaranteed and it arrived yesterday. That's 6 days before take-off.

The conditions of the visa are that we must arrive in China before 19th July and leave by 5th August, oh and we must stay in the hotels we notified on our itinerary.

Although quite the process to gather together all out hotel bookings (2 separate rooms at each of the 4 hotels we're staying at) I'd say this is the way to go for saving money on the Visa cost!
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Old 11 Jul 17, 10:44 PM  
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Sounds like a Fantastic trip you have planned. Wish I had heard about the group visa before we went six of us paid £175, but then again I might have been a nervous wreck having it that close to the flight date!

Just in case you, or anyone else reading this and using the train in China don't know there is a luggage allowance on trains and its smaller on the bullet trains. Its reasonably generous but our hard Samsonite cases were just too big

Anyway I look forward to reading your updates
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