Welcome to my China travels of May 2024! I’d been thinking about this trip since November 2023, to cut a long story short, myself and some colleagues thought there may have been a conference going to happen in May, so I planned a bit of a crazy trip to see pandas. By the start of April we determined the conference wasn’t going ahead and I’d really worked out the plan in my head, so decided to go ahead and book the trip anyway. This was my first time in China for only a holiday – the other 5 trips have all been for conferences and I’ve added on extra days for seeing other things, so this did feel like quite a different experience. So despite only booking 5-weeks out, and probably not getting the best price for the flights, I pretty much knew my complete plan, where I wanted to stay and what to do already. Nevertheless, I made a fully packed itinerary and it was exhausting but so exciting and completely worth it!
So lets get into Diary 1, my travel day(s) and sharing about the Toy Story Hotel and Disneytown at the Shanghai Disney Resort:
I’m on my way! My trip to China in May 2024 started on Thursday the 9th of May and it really felt like one realllllly long day but I arrived in China on Friday the 10th. Starting off, I had a 6AM flight from Edinburgh to Amsterdam, which ended up being delayed by both a hole in the runway at Edinburgh and fog in Amsterdam. But I wasn’t particularly concerned as I had a 6 hour layover in Amsterdam until my next flight – to Shanghai. We ended up only being around 30mins later than scheduled arriving in Amsterdam which was pretty good. Amsterdam is an airport I’ve flown through often, but this time they seemed to be doing some construction so a few places were closed and different food outlets were now there. I grabbed a sandwich then found a sunny spot for some photo editing. Then I met with a friend who was also travelling the same day but to a different location – was good to have a catch up and a good way to pass the time, before I knew it it was time to board! It was a full flight, so sadly no free middle seat. It’s just under 12 hours and is a flight I’ve done before. KLM still doesn’t offer direct Amsterdam to Chengdu flights like they used to pre-Covid, so my only options were via Beijing or Shanghai, so I decided to use the opportunity to visit Shanghai Disneyland again and experience the brand new Zootopia area. The flight was fine, I didn’t really get much sleep, but somehow managed to doze off in the last couple of hours and I think that powered me through the day ahead!
The flight landed just ahead of schedule before 9:25AM, then it took over an hour to get from the gate, through passport control/immigration, collecting my luggage and into a taxi. This was definitely longer than I’ve experienced before, and the queue for foreign passports was the longest I’ve seen on any trip arriving into China. But this queue did give me time to confirm that my eSIM was working – this was the first time I had used one, I picked Nomad SIM from recommendations on TripAdvisor and found it worked perfectly for me without issue, until I ran out of data and wasn’t sent an email/notification, but luckily it was easy to remedy that, so I would also recommend this as an option. I took a taxi from the taxi rank, and as with my last experience at Pudong airport in Shanghai, there was no queue at all for this, I walked up and was in a taxi immediately. I had the address of the hotel saved on my phone in mandarin and showed this to the taxi driver, then again to the security at the exit from the taxi pick up area (so keep it open/handy on your phone until after this). I’ve found the best way to get the address is using the TripAdvisor website on my phone (through the web browser, not the app), and scrolling to the location/map and it gives the option to view the address in the local language. I take a screenshot of this and then add a note of the hotel name in English to keep track. The roads were very quiet and the journey took around 20-25 minutes when leaving the airport around 10:45AM. The price was 75RMB and I paid via WeChat (which handily keeps a record of all your payments so I can look back now and know how much I paid for what).
Toy Story Hotel
I stayed at the Toy Story Hotel on this trip – one day I’ll stay at the Disneyland Hotel but it’s a pretty pricey option. I stayed 2 nights, a Friday and Saturday, so this was likely the more expensive days of the week. I booked around a month out from my trip and there was an offer on for 20% off the room rate for stays of 2+ nights – I remember there being different offers on and one that included the breakfast buffet, but I wasn’t bothered about doing that, I wanted that extra time in the park! In total I paid 4041RMB (around £470) for the ‘garden view’ room for 1 adult for the 2 nights – compared with my first time staying at this hotel, this is quite a bit more expensive. In November 2019 I paid 4700RMB for 4 nights (also over a weekend). It might just be the time of year, but I suspect it’s just that the prices have gone up in general. I actually think I got the exact same room on both trips which is pretty funny – it was on the corner overlooking the front entrance of the hotel, and was exactly as I had remembered it. I quite like this as it was the last room in the corridor so no-one was passing by late at night and I didn’t really hear many doors slamming nor had neighbours on both sides. Nothing about the hotel itself has changed, the decor is still super cute and the staff are great. I still love the illustrated shower curtain. The bed was very comfortable, there were plenty of pillows and the temperature of the room was good with AC working nicely – I had no issues sleeping at all, in fact this trip I didn’t have any jet lag at all on the way over which was great.
Upon arrival, there is a bag drop desk outside the front door – here they can take your bags and give you a receipt to exchange either at check-in for the bell services to bring the bag to your room or you can get your bags from bell services yourself. I arrived just after 11AM by taxi, I made things a bit complicated by wanting to change my clothes when I got there, so I left one suitcase with the bag drop, kept one, then did the first part of check-in because you can’t complete check-in and get your room key until 3PM. Then I got changed in the toilets on the main floor (these are pretty small, I won’t do that again!) and then dropped off that suitcase with the bag drop and headed for the bus line, which at around 11:45AM there were only a couple of people waiting and a bus appeared almost immediately. The buses are frequent and I never found them to be super busy, even at peak times which was great, and the journey wasn’t long at all, 10 minutes at most to Disneytown. I opted to return to the hotel in the early evening, around 6PM, to complete check-in and get into my room because I was expecting it to be pretty chaotic doing that later after watching the fireworks when I’m sure many others would be doing the same. There was no line to get my key and it was super fast to get everything sorted. They could have brought my bags to my room, but I decided to collect myself as I wanted quite a fast turnaround – I needed to grab my sweatshirt as it was feeling quite a bit cooler in the evening than I expected!
The restaurant, Sunnyside Cafe, does both a breakfast and dinner buffet – I still haven’t tried this as I want to maximise time in the parks, but I think both meal options look good (because I’m a sucker for anything character shaped!) and maybe if I have a trip longer than 1.5 days then I’ll make the time for this in the future. There is also a quick service, the Sunnyside Market, I didn’t go here on this trip but went before and you can get quick bites to eat here along with drinks and snacks.
There is of course also a shop, the Lotso Shop. At the time of my trip there was a little renovation ongoing, so no direct entrance from the lobby, you needed to enter from the outside. There is a bit of everything in this shop, while it does have Toy Story themed items, I’d say this is less than half of the offerings in the store. There was plenty of Shanghai-specific merch, keychains, pins, soft toys and of course, Duffy and friends! Good for those last minute purchases, but not so much if you’re looking for something super specific that you’ve spotted in the park or World of Disney.
Disneytown
Disneytown is the main hub of shops and restaurants outside of Disneyland itself. This is where the bus stops are for the resort buses, so you have to walk through here to leave in the evening (very smart Disney, you HAVE to walk past several entrances to World of Disney before being able to get to the bus or the car park – so of course, I go in every time XD). I do feel like this area has changed quite a bit across my visits. The first time I went I explored quite a lot, whereas I didn’t feel like there was as much for me here this time and my focus was on World of Disney. The current theming for the main characters made its way to the Disneytown gates, this imagery is super fun – it really gives me Disneyland Paris vibes for some reason with the more street-style look. The spring-time/Easter decorations also made it to Disneytown so it was fun to spot these around too. Of course when in Disneytown you can’t miss the iconic giant Donald Duck on the water! He really is huge and is a popular photo spot. He’s also near some cute Mickey and Minnie ear arches which are also iconic to Shanghai.
Aside from World of Disney there are plenty of other shops in Disneytown – the Lego store is of course a must, so many fun huge lego sculptures of characters and I love the light-up rocket on top of the roof! There are a few clothing and shoe stores and a Pandora store. There did used to be a Sephora but I didn’t see that this time, so it might not be there anymore. The number of restaurants in Disneytown has really increased though, and I think there are more eateries than shops. When I see people giving recommendations for food, many say to eat at Disneytown as the food is better. I didn’t really have time to eat here on this trip, but again, if I was staying for longer it’s probably something I would try out because the Donald’s Dine ‘N Delights restaurant looks like the most adorable place ever! The menu looks pretty good, it’s on the more expensive side, but the themed items, ice creams, desserts and milkshakes look fab – I think I’d need to go here with friends to be able to try multiple items.
The park entrance/exit in Disneytown (located at the back near Donald’s Dine ‘N Delights and The Cheesecake Factory) is fab – if you’re a hotel guest entering during the early entry period, the bus will drop you off close for you to use this gate, and then all guests can re-enter the park after a certain time (I used it in the evenings as I found it quicker for security and ticket check vs. walking all the way to the front and around the queuing system). Plus you can exit here, I did that on my second afternoon when leaving as I was closer to there than I was to the front of the park – at this gate you enter the park right before Tomorrowland, so it’s perfect entry for getting to Tron, Toy Story Land or round the back of the Castle into Fantasyland.
