In the land of magic

You know you are a parent when you’ve been living in a new country for a month and the first big place/site you visit is Disneyland. This past weekend, we braved the extreme heat and took the kids to the land of magic to celebrate L’s 8th birthday. On a side note - how on earth did I become a mother to an 8 year old - I still feel like a kid - definitely more so after visiting Disney!

We are quite fortunate (or I may eat these words in a few months since we got annual passes) that we live quite close to Disney. As we boarded the train from a Sunny Bay station, which takes you straight to the park, the Mickey shaped windows already had the girls excited. They even have Mickey shaped bars to hold. In fact, they’ve dedicated an entire MTR line - Disneyland Resort line to get you there. I was almost expecting Disney music to start blasting on the train.

As we got off the train and to the entrance, there are temperature check machines reminding you that Covid exists even in the land of magic. It’s nearly impossible to socially distance in the park, but nevertheless the strict masking and low prevalence of Covid made us feel quite safe. Ironically, the only social distancing is from the characters who stand a few feet away even for photos.

While the park was by no means empty, there wasn’t the frenzy of crowds I remember from our visit to the mother of Disney land in Florida a few years ago. Thankfully, most rides hardly had a line and even the handful that did, were only 10-15 minute waits (which felt like a lifetime with a toddler with no concept of a line yanking on my hand yelling “walk” at the top of his lungs.)

Sadly, even the magical world of Disney couldn’t dissipate the ridiculous HK heat. I’ve officially become THAT lady that walks around with a big hat and an umbrella in the sun. I’ve realised two things about HK - it either randomly starts down pouring or it’s breathlessly hot - either way you need an umbrella.

While it felt like it could have been Disney in Florida or California, a few things definitely gave it an Asian twist.

Anyone who has been to Disney knows that the shows are a large part of the experience. Since the girls love Moana and V is the third child who for now doesn’t get a vote, Moana it was. Unlike the Disney experience in the US there actually wasn’t much music from the movie apart from the introduction in the video below - It was more a summary of the movie. They also try to balance the characters speaking English and Cantonese (or maybe it was Mandarin). For us it was definitely a “we are in Asia” moment to hear Maui speaking Chinese!

Second, a quintessential part of the US Disney experience as a vegetarian is only being able to find pizza - we hunted here and couldn’t find a single restaurant serving pizza much to the children’s disappointment. Thankfully, we managed to find a diner with fries/chips so the eating unhealthy crap box was checked.

Third, because we live in an expat bubble it’s easy to forget we live in Asia, but visiting a local attraction where we heard more of the local language than English (which has been our experience in our bubble) definitely felt like we are living abroad!

All in all the Disney experience was great and we can’t wait to go back….in the winter.