My third time visiting Shanghai Disneyland – and it’s still as magical as ever! The main difference on this visit was the brand new Zootopia themed land, which I’ve already posted about, but of course I thoroughly enjoyed visiting the rest of the now-familiar park too^ I had 1.75 days to visit on this trip, stayed on site so had early entry, was travelling along so I could use single-rider (only ended up using it on one ride), and paid for priority access so that I could get a front position to watch Illuminate! Had perfect weather on my first day, then it rained a bit on the second, but that didn’t stop a fantastic visit^
The park was decorated for Spring with character-themed Easter eggs all throughout the park, as well as some cute topiaries, brining a bit of EPCOT’s Flower and Garden Festival over to Shanghai. These were cute and super popular for pictures, especially the Duffy and friends ones! Anyways, I spent a lot of time taking pictures around the park as always, especially the castle – having now seen 3 (more on that later!) I *think* this is my favourite one, but it’s a close call! Even in the rain, the park is still fun – I watched some shows, enjoyed visiting every shop in the park, and spent my time searching for the stamp locations for the Magic Passport. The lines weren’t really too bad for the rides, having been a few times before I was happy to stick to my favourites. I got a few rides in on Winnie the Pooh, Pirates and Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, and in the early entry hour managed to get on Peter Pan, the Carousel and use the single-rider line for Seven Dwarves Mine Train. The line for Buzz is always pretty short so I went on that many times because I love a good competition, even if it is just against my own previous score!
Overall, it was another great trip! Unless I am needing to go back to Shanghai for something, I now think it will be a while until I make it back to Shanghai Disneyland as I feel like I’ve seen almost everything the park has to offer.
Entertainment – shows
When I saw the forecast for rain on my second day, I decided to try out two of the shows on offer. The first one was Mickey’s Storybook Adventure, which requires a standby pass to be booked. I got one for the first show of the day at 10:35AM. This show is in the Walt Disney Grand Theatre which I think is technically in Disneytown, but you enter through the park between Mickey Avenue and the Disneytown entrance/exit to the park. The standby pass gave me an entry time of 9:50-10:10AM for the 10:35AM show, I joined the queue at 9:50AM – there was first an outdoor queue, then there was the pass check where the QR code was scanned, then you queued up in the theatre lobby itself. Then around 10:30AM or so, the doors opened and everyone was ushered in. It was pretty full in the theatre, being a solo visitor, it was easy to walk nearer the front of the theatre and find many single seats amongst the families, so even if you’re near the back of the queue, there’s still a chance to sit near the front. This show was super fun, the dancing was great, there was a really good mix of characters and I really loved the music. The parts I especially liked were the trio of Mulan, Moana and Rapunzel singing, and also the Tiana/Princess and the Frog section, both really stand out. The show was in Mandarin so you could guess a rough idea of the plot, but I definitely missed some parts completely (which I picked up when I watched Hong Kong’s version where there are English subtitles) – it didn’t really impact on my enjoyment of the show though, would still recommend!
Then I also went to the Frozen: A Sing Along Celebration which shows in Fantasyland next to the Tangled Tree Tavern. I turned up and joined the queue about 5minutes before a showing, and there was plenty of time to still get in and plenty of seats available. This theatre felt bigger than the other, but can’t confirm capacity. There were two sections to the seats, the front half was almost full, I opted to sit in the back half and there weren’t too many people around me (this was mostly so I could sing in English without disturbing other people haha). The show mixed songs from both movies and I really loved it, even though all the songs were in Mandarin, I still had a great time and was happy to sing along in English. Maybe it was just because I wasn’t sitting near many people, but it didn’t seem like many other people were singing along, with the exception of when it came to Let It Go, the dad a few rows behind me was giving it his all!
Illuminate – A Nighttime Celebration!
This is now the second time I’ve seen Illuminate! and it really was just as exciting as the first time I saw it. I decided to buy the Premier Access Pass so that I could get into the front viewing area. This cost 299RMB and honestly I think it was completely worth it. I saw people claiming their spots near the castle at least 3 hours before the show started, so the saving in time, particularly if you don’t have a long visit, is completely worth the cost. I turned up at 9PM, just minutes before the Zootopia Celebration Projection pre-show started (can watch that over on my Instagram), and got a fantastic spot. Everyone stayed sitting down too and had their own spot, so there was no jostling or fighting to hold your camera higher than the heads in front of you. It was such a relaxed experience! There are so many castle projections in the show, so being at the front means you can see everything clearly, when I watched it last time in September I definitely missed some details.
What to buy
I didn’t think the merch would have changed much between this visit and the last, but there were quite a lot of new items, especially Duffy and friends items. In the park the Whistle Stop Shop is exclusively Duffy and friends (and I love the decor in this shop, so cute with the train around the top of the wall), but World of Disney also has a very large section too. There were quite a few new t-shirts this time, I picked up a very nice pastel glitter one with Mickey on the front and the castle on the back, and was very tempted by these new Duffy and friends ones – I just couldn’t decide which one to pick! As it was the start of my trip I tried to shop very considerately of any potential future purchases. So I got the t-shirt, and picked up a few mystery pin boxes (Zootopia and Duffy and friends), plus my new obsession of things to buy at Shanghai Disneyland, plush toy keychains! Last time I got some mid-Autumn festival special ones, this time there was a new range out so I got Duffy and Gelatoni ready for bed in their dressing gowns.
What to eat
Next week I have a separate post coming on all the things I ate and my rankings of them, but in the meantime, I thought I would share some of the food signs throughout the park. Every stand and restaurant has a board outside advertising what snacks or meals you can get, or what popcorn bucket the stand has! These buckets were super cute, but I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen anyone buy these. If I was a big popcorn fan I would have definitely got the adorable Lina Bell one. The park also has many themed drinks sipper cups – I picked up a Winnie the Pooh one on my last trip so didn’t get one this time around.
