Disneyland Tour

Hello again, blog readers! This time around, we tried something new and visited the "Disneyland" that has been established in Hong Kong. If any of you have ever been to "Disneyland" back in America, you would recognize the layout here, as most of it is identical to the one back home- "fantasy land" and "tommorowland" are still intact. There are some new sectors, though, and it was in one of these- "Mystic Point"- where we found the most interesting experience.

"Mickey Mouse" surfing on a whale. Why have I never seen a whale fountain before? It makes perfect sense.

First up at "Mystic Point", we went and had fun over at the optical illusions area. I'll let the pictures explain.

 Not sure what this is? Hint: We are standing on pillars in a room. Or so it seems.

My head is served to my dad on a platter.

Next up was the star of the show, "Mystic Manor". "Mystic Manor" is a ride with a plot, in which the ride takes you through a story. You have probably experienced one of those in your youth. In this case, a magic music box is set off that holds the power to bring inanimate objects to life. Worse, it is set off in the mansion of a collector of artifacts from around the world. Here are some of the things that happened to us:

-A cannon reared up and went off in our faces.

-A painting of a serene, beautiful girl stayed still for a while, making us think that it would be unaffected by the music box. Then the girl sprouted medusa-style snakes on her head and gained glowing red eyes, jumping out at us.

-A crossbow reared up and nearly went off in our faces.

-Insects started crawling out of an ancient mummy. Then the lights went out and we got fat water drops splattered in our faces, making it seem like the insects were flying around us and hitting us.

-A statue of a monkey king came to life and started zapping us with its wand. We think it was trying to churn the ocean of milk.

All that and more happened to us, but one of the most interesting things was how we got around the mansion: our "car" had no wheels or tracks. It was entirely magnet-powered.

Now for the miscellaneous parts of "Disneyland":

This is a jungle river cruise attraction. We got pummeled here nearly as much as in Mystic Manor. For instance, the neighboring tribe turned out to be unfriendly to say the least, and shot us full of blow darts. Then, at the very end, the gods became angry with us and summoned a huge geyser from the water, forcing us to turn into a narrow channel off to the side. Then the gods trapped us with geysers on either side, and made flames erupt from the rocks. Actual flame. Why do Disney's rides often have you barely make it out alive?

The ride was a bit cheesy, but the animatronics were impressive.

Because this ride involved speaking, there were two queues for what I assume to be Mandarin and Cantonese (both Chinese variations are common here) and one for English. We were the only ones in the English queue for quite a while.

Killing time during a rainstorm.

I'm going to be here a while.

Who can resist a round of "It's a Small World" at "Disneyland"?

Here is Hong Kong, complete with Victoria Harbor and the Star Ferry paddling across. We took that ferry once to get to Kowloon, the part of Hong Kong that isn't an island.

This is the sort of ride that you can ride five times and still be tugging the sleeve of the person next to you, pointing out a subtle homage or a unique feature.

Thanks for reading!

Bonus!

My dad recently went to China. It turns out that my blog is blocked over there by "the Great Firewall of China". The Firewall blocks offensive sites, so… Yay, I'm offensive!