We finally went to Hong Kong Disneyland and completed visiting every single Disney park in the world (for now)! For those Disney adults or anyone visiting this park, we’re sharing tips on how to get the most out of your day, wait in the least lines and what food to get and what to skip.

We went to Disnelyand on one of our four days in Hong Kong. You can follow the other parts of our trip in our Four Day Hong Kong Itinerary.

Get an eSim from Airalo before you go, stay at the The Salisbury YMCA Hotel and make sure to reserve your Hong Kong Disney passes well ahead of time!

Since you are in Hong Kong, make sure to listen to our 4 Days in Hong Kong episode too!

Check out the experiences we did in in Hong Kong in our curated Viator ShopFind a great flight deal to Hong Kong by signing up for Thrifty Traveler Premium and watching the daily flight deals (points & cash) that are emailed directly to you! Use our promo code TS10 to get $10 off your first year subscription.

Tips for Hong Kong Disneyland – Episode Transcript

0:35

Today you have just me, Jamal and Brittany as your Co hosts as we’re sharing our view of Hong Kong Disneyland.

0:57

This was the last Disney park in the world that Brittany and I needed to visit in order to say we’ve been to the mall.

So the two that are in France, all of the ones here in the United States in California and Florida, the two in Japan, the two in China finishing with Hong Kong here because we had already been to the one in Shanghai.

1:15

So this was the crown, so to speak, to put on the head, to finalize and say we have been to the mall.

And in this episode, we’re going to dive into the rides, the food, the entertainment, and if it’s worth visiting.

So to get to Hong Kong Disneyland, we actually use the metro system from Kowloon.

1:33

So you just take regular metro lines, but then you do have to get off at one point and you do then take a specific Disneyland tram.

Yeah, the Disney line is only one line from one of the main ones that just passes by through.

You get out at that stop and there is only one stop from that station to get you to the Disneyland Resort.

1:55

So utilizing the metro would be very easy.

Otherwise you can take a cab.

If you’re renting a car, take a rental car.

But I would wager to say Metro will be the easiest way for you to do that.

If you’re staying on Hong Kong Island or staying in Kowloon, it’s going to take you about an hour to get to Disney.

2:12

And once you transfer onto the Disney line, the metro is completely different.

So on a regular metro line in Hong Kong, they were clean, they were easy to ride, all of that.

But when you get on the Disney Metro line, you have Mickey shaped windows, so you have Mickey shaped handles, you have nice seating that’s like that dark blue with stars in it.

2:33

You have little Knick knacks and Disney figurines that are kind of in case for you to see.

So you start to feel the Disney magic on the Metro before you even get to Disneyland.

And we booked our Disney tickets through Kluke and if you are unfamiliar with Kluke, it is the Asian version of Viator or get Your guide and they have tours that you can book on there, but also a lot of local offerings such as of course, buying Disney tickets as we did.

3:00

And so we bought our one day pass.

We also bought additional tickets which included an hour early entry as well as they’re paid fast passes that gave you one time access to 8 of their most popular rides.

You didn’t get to use it 8 times on one or a couple times on one and then others.

3:19

It was one for each designated 8 that they did have.

And so we bought all three of those things off of Clue.

In hindsight, though, we did not need the fast passes.

The longest wait that we ever saw was 20 minutes.

Most of the time, the waits were anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes.

3:37

And we were able to ride all of the big rides that we wanted to three to four times, maybe even more, and we just really didn’t need those tickets.

We use them because we had them, but if we didn’t have them, we would have been fine.

We probably also didn’t need the early entry, but it was actually really nice because Hong Kong Disney has the world of Frozen as one of their lands and everyone kind of rushes to that area and it’s one of the only areas that’s open during the early morning access.

4:05

So being able to have that to yourself early is nice.

So if you want that, I would say it’s OK to have that, but I don’t think the fast passes at this time were necessary.

Yeah, and we went in March.

And so if you’re going during summer, it may be a little bit more crowded.

4:21

Do your research.

I know Hong Kong Disney is one of the least visited Disney parks.

We just had the mindset of thinking, hey, well, it’s a Disney park, it’s going to be crowded.

That’s why we got those.

They weren’t terribly expensive.

But I will say this about the early entry.

Brittany said it was still worth it.

4:37

I don’t disagree with that that, but it really only gives you access to World of Frozen as it stands right now and only a couple rides in Fantasyland before the rest of the park opens.

So they even have certain rides within Fantasyland that are not available for you to use during that time frame.

4:55

So it really, really limits you, but it’s a good way to get in a couple of the big attractions before most people get in and give you the opportunity to ride it more times in the day.

As a Disney park, this park is actually pretty small so we’re going to talk about park layout and attract.

It’s probably one of the smaller Magic Kingdom type parks.

5:14

They do have 8 theme land so they have Main Street USA.

They have Fantasyland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Mystic Point, Grizzly Gulch, World of Frozen which was new, and Toy Story Land.

So we’re going to talk a little bit about the lands.

5:29

Of course, Main Street USA is a staple.

Most Disney parks have them, but otherwise, Main Street USA is just filled with shops for souvenirs and food.

There are no rides, attractions, or walkthroughs that you will find on Main Street USA.

5:45

The exception to that is, of course, they have the main train station at the front of the park, which they always do.

So that’s there if you consider that a ride.

And then they do have the Main Street classic vehicles that will just take you from the entrance of the park all the way up to the castle.

6:03

So it’s riding in cars, but they don’t have any of the horse drawn carriages trolleys that you are accustomed to at other Disneyland style parks.

Fantasyland has Winnie the Pooh and Small World, Dumbo, a carousel, the teacups, and Mickey’s Philhar Magic, which was actually closed while we were there.

6:22

And it also has a fairy tale for us, which is like a walkthrough.

But the only storybook right really is the Winnie the Pooh ride from what I just mentioned.

So it is a small Fantasyland.

You don’t have your Peter Pan, your Snow White, things like that in Fantasyland.

Yeah, I was unimpressed with Fantasyland.

6:39

Of course if you are coming here with kids, you still are going to enjoy these type rides.

But even as an adult going to other Disney parks, I do appreciate the storybook rides.

And again, Winnie the Pooh is the only one that they have here.

Otherwise, nothing really special about Fantasyland.

6:55

Adventureland has the Jungle River Cruise and it’s the only ride in this land.

They do have the Tarvan Tree House which was actually closed while you were there, but it’s on like the middle of the island that the Jungle Cruise sailed around.

I did like their Jungle River cruise though, it was really fun.

7:12

Yeah, their Jungle Cruise was fun, has a little bit more theatrics and special effects than the ones in Disneyland here in the US, in both Florida and in California, and of course the other Disney parks around the world too.

7:27

So it did have that going for it.

But otherwise, Adventureland, it was well themed.

They have a lot of open space for you to walk restaurants in.

Adventureland is where they also had The Lion King show just as well.

So they have shows and everything, but in terms of actual attractions, just the Jungle Cruise.

7:46

And on the Jungle Cruise, there’s two lines, one for English and one for Cantonese.

Yeah.

So I did like how it gave you that option to be able to choose based off of language preference to.

That was really cool.

Of course we also went to Tomorrowland which their big rides are the Hyperspace Mountain which is equivalent to our Space Mountain except for its Star Wars themed and they also have the Ant Man and the Wasp Nano battle which is almost like the Buzz Lightyear’s style shooter ride.

8:14

Yeah, and another big attraction that they have in Tomorrowland is an Iron Man ride.

This is a 3D motion simulator ride that’s similar to the Star Tour style, right?

So they do you have three large attractions here in Tomorrowland for you to go ahead and enjoy.

8:31

They also have what’s unique Mystic Point.

Now Mystic Point’s main attraction is Mystic Manor, which is their version of the Haunted Mansion.

But it’s not a true Haunted Mansion because of course, you know, when you build Disney parks and other places, they try to make them culturally significant and appropriate to the location that it’s at.

8:50

And of course, in Chinese culture, the idea and concept of spirits is a little bit taboo.

So they don’t want anything with ghosts.

So Mystic Manor, you still have the mansion style house on the outside.

But the theming to this is that there is an early 1900s British explorer who goes around the world and collects treasures from ancient civilizations and unique artifacts.

9:15

And he always travels with his monkey companion.

He invites people into his manner and mansion and the monkey opens a recent artifact that they found, which was a a music box that actually brings the other artifacts to life.

So as you’re going through the mansion, all of these artifacts from statues, paintings, other things come to life.

9:36

So it’s a really fun ride.

And if you are a Disney fanatic and are familiar with the trackless system, Mystic Manor is on a trackless system and it is the actual first Disney trackless ride that was ever created.

So this has a little bit of history here in terms of the innovation on other Disney rides that are now trackless.

9:56

I loved Mystic Manor, such a fun ride.

We probably wrote it 5 or 6 times while we were there.

I mean, we’re not going to ride it anywhere else in the world, so we might as well ride it as many times as we can.

Yeah, this was definitely our favorite ride that they had in the entire park.

Mystic Point, which is the land, only houses Mystic Manor.

10:14

They didn’t really have a lot of good theming outside of it otherwise, too.

So it’s a very, very small land with one attraction here and then a restaurant.

I don’t think it really had anything else of significance.

Next.

One we’re going to talk about is Grizzly Gulch.

10:29

This is an exclusive Wild West themed land with their big attraction being the Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Carts and this is their version of Frontier Land which is pretty much equivalent to their ride Big Thunder Mountain.

And again, this is the only ride that they have in this land.

10:46

Here in Grizzly Gulch is the big Grizzly Mountain runaway mine car.

So you come into here, the land is a little bit larger because it’s themed all around the Runaway Mine car that we have going on here.

But otherwise in terms of interactive activities, walkthroughs and other things that you find in Disney themed lands, this land really didn’t have much to it except for what I really did like is they had a lot of fake geysers and thermal pools that you would be accustomed to seeing maybe in Yellowstone, Western frontier areas of the United States.

11:20

So it had a lot better theming in that sense, adding those things.

But other than that, this was just a normal land with one attraction.

So that’s something that I really felt and was disappointed by this Disney park with is they brought some of their big ticket attractions from Disney parks around the world, made a land around it, but only put one thing in there and not a lot of other things.

11:42

But nevertheless still really fun rides, but just theming of the lands, not necessarily the best.

I think Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars was a ride that was 20 minutes long and Jamal and I are like, we’re not waiting 20 minutes, We’ve been waiting 5 up to 15 minutes all day.

So we used our fast pass for this ride.

11:59

I know, Can you imagine 20 minutes being excessive at a Disney park?

But when we saw that we’re like, no way, let’s put our fast pass to use that we bought.

So we rode this ride multiple times, but when it was at 20 minutes, that’s when we finally utilized it.

World of Frozen, we mentioned this earlier, this is their newest land that opened up in November of 2023 and what we of course had the early access to Frozen, so popular Disney IP right now they do have the Frozen Ever After, which is the Elsa ride, very similar to the one, if not identical to the one at Epcot in Florida.

12:35

So if you’ve ridden that, this is exactly the same thing, but still a fun, good ride nevertheless.

And World of Frozen was really well themed from the mountains and the castle and the other ride that they had here.

They’re still not very large, but well themed and beautiful.

Their best themed land I would say.

12:52

They also had Wandering Oaken sliding sleighs, which was a mini little roller coaster.

It was fun, I liked it.

It’s part of the Frozen theme, but it was really, really short.

It’s like 60 seconds long, so not very long at all, but nevertheless a fun roller coaster themed really well.

13:10

I wouldn’t disagree with Brittany.

Probably the best themed land that they had.

The last themed land that they had is the Toy Story land and we did walk into this land but it is all Kitty ride so there was nothing worth noting for us.

The theming was pretty good I would say, especially if you were a kid, but they have like the Green army man, Parachute drop, the Slinky dog spin ride, and the RC racer.

13:35

Yeah, and they have Slinky Dog roller coasters at other Disney parks in their Toy Story lands, but those are actually roller coasters.

This one was not like that.

You know, if you go to a normal carnival or fair, you have that one fair ride that all it does is really spin you in a circle and it maybe has a few ups and downs.

13:53

That’s all.

This ride was just seemed too slinky dog and then the RC racer is just AU shaped track with a car that goes back and forth back and forth.

So not anything great.

Of course, this is a good land for kids good to walk through.

We got one of our favorite things to eat in this land, which was a Dole whip with a strawberry slushy on top.

14:13

So for that aspect I I liked it.

But in terms of if you don’t have any kids and are an adult, walk through this land.

But it’s not anything great.

We did watch a few shows, so we’re going to talk about that a little bit.

We did watch Festival of The Lion King, which was in English.

14:31

Would you say it was worth watching Jamal?

I did not like this Festival of The Lion King show in comparison to other Disney show productions that I’ve seen in other Disney parks.

Did I hate it?

No.

Did I feel like it was exceptionally more cheesy than other ones?

14:49

Yes.

So I mean, because we are able to go ahead and do a lot of the rides because it’s not crowded.

I’m not saying don’t do the shows, but if you happen to be there on an outlier day and it’s crowded and you’re more concerned about the rides, I could say that this is a skip.

15:05

But of course, if you’re going as a family, kids watch it.

Of course, Brittany and I, we watched it ourselves.

But I would say if you missed it, you wouldn’t be missing much.

But if you have the time, watch it.

They also do have a Duffy Bear show.

We didn’t watch any of the Duffy Bear shows, so we missed that, but we did watch the nighttime spectacular, which is their 20 minute show with projections onto the castle and fireworks.

15:30

It was really well put together.

It was really nicely well done and I would highly recommend staying for that.

Yeah, I really loved their nighttime spectacular that they had at the conclusion of the night.

Really worth staying and seeing a lot of the final Disney shows that they have at the end of the night.

15:46

Doesn’t matter what park you’re in are normally pretty good.

This one was exceptional.

I thought I really did enjoy it.

We didn’t mention this.

They also had a little Moana interactive show too that was in Adventureland.

We saw it a couple times when they were doing the show as we were walking by, but we never sat down to watch it because it is more in an open amphitheater style where even if you’re not in the theater you can see it going on as you pass by.

16:13

So they do have lots of character meets, shows of this nature to occupy a lot of time, but otherwise a handful, a few big ticket rides that you could get done with really fast.

Yeah, I did see that.

They did have quite a few character meet and greets and the lines weren’t long at all, but we didn’t see any Mickey or Minnie’s.

16:32

Yeah, I thought that was really weird that not once in the park did we see Mickey or Minnie.

But nevertheless, character meet and greet opportunities for sure.

So we talked a little bit about the food and dining experience.

We mostly did snacks and then we did two small meals that small and I split.

16:49

So snack wise we got my favorite, which was the squid jerky, which they made right in front of you and I loved it.

Jamal wasn’t a huge fan of it, but I really liked it.

Well, I was the one who suggested to get it.

They were barbecuing squid and I could tell what it was and I like squid and calamari.

17:05

It smelt so phenomenal being cooked on the grill right in front of everybody, but I didn’t realize they I cook it down to be really dry, like a jerky.

It smells better than it tastes.

It wasn’t bad.

I wouldn’t buy it again.

Brittany wanted to get a second one but by the time we made our way later in the day to get a second one they were closed.

17:24

So Brittany really loved it.

I thought it was just OK, but it smells better than it tastes in my opinion.

But we can both agree that we’d love the Dole Whip that was in the strawberry slush.

That was phenomenal.

And we got that from Toy Story Land.

Also on Main Street we got the Mickey Donut which was also pretty good, but nothing to write home about.

17:44

Meal wise we got a butter chicken plate.

It was good but not great.

It was a little bit too tomatoey.

Yeah.

So All in all, you know, Disney is known to have really good food and dining experiences within the parks and certain things that you need to eat otherwise.

17:59

Here, minus the Dole Whip float and strawberry slash, nothing really stood out to us.

The food was just OK in comparison to other Disney parks.

We did get at the end of the night burgers from Tomorrowland.

I thought they had a pretty cool theme.

I’m not really too big into the whole Marvel Universe and theming, but they had burgers that were themed to The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, other things of that nature.

18:25

So that was actually pretty cool in terms of theming wise, but they just tasted average.

So I don’t think you’re going to be blown away by the Disney dining experience in this park.

We did pick up a few souvenirs while we were in this park, so I got a new pair of mini ears and Jamal got a Hong Kong pin to add to our collection for the Disney resorts around the world.

18:49

Yeah, those are.

The only Disney pins I buy are the resort pins, pins, and park pins and this capped it off.

Now I have a pin from every Disney park.

I’m eventually going to frame my Disney lanyard with the pins.

I’m really excited to put it up.

So that was pretty cool on that end in terms of the souvenirs.

19:07

But overall experience and final thoughts.

We enjoyed this Disney park a lot.

We were really worried because we knew it was a small Disney park and not necessarily the best one in terms of, again, Disneyland or Magic Kingdom style Disney parks.

19:22

If we were ending on a bad one in comparison to others.

We enjoyed it a lot.

I’m going to say you kind of feel the theme here.

Not a lot of rides in comparison to the other Disney parks, but it made the experience a lot more fun because of how few people and low crowds that there were.

19:43

And we got to ride things multiple times.

So it made it good in that area where it was themed.

Well, it was themed really well, just some of the themed areas areas were small and there wasn’t much else to do in the land, so that kind of took back from it.

So overall I liked it and if I was in Hong Kong and had time, I would go again.

20:01

But this is not a Disney park where I would say I’m going again.

The only reason why I would do that is to ride Mystic Manor because that is the star attraction of this park.

Yeah, I agree.

It’s one of the smaller parks.

It’s easy to get around.

I really enjoyed it because it’s actually really easy to get there.

20:16

It’s easy to get around inside the park and there wasn’t a lot of crowds, which made it so much more enjoyable because we on this trip also went to Disney Sea in Japan and that was just a mess.

So in comparison to that, this was fantastic.

Definitely worth a visit.

20:32

So I want to say do go, but just note that about the park, it is relatively small and you could get done very quickly.

I’m kind of mentioned this like the only really why I would go back is if I had time and to ride Mystic Manor.

But if they opened any new lands or unique or signature attractions, even if they aren’t unique attractions to that park like Mystic Manor but something that is a signature attraction that we find in other parks.

20:58

I would go back.

But I’m not itching to go back.

Same I would completely agree with Jamal.

So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode on Hong Kong Disney.

Make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and follow us on all the socials at Travel Squad Podcast.

And have fun travelling this weekend.

21:15

Bye squaddies, bye.