My room overlooks the park, but they turn off almost all the lights after closing so all I can see right now (it's 1030pm Saturday night) is the Toy Story Parachute Drop which they presumably keep lit for airplanes. Anyway, more on the hotel later. I bought a two-day ticket so here's the play-by-play so far...
Day 1: Saturday, March 15, 2014
My conference was near the airport, about a 25 minute drive to HKDL. The Marriott has a daily shuttle to the park at 10am so I checked out this morning and boarded the bus bound for my next international Disney adventure. The buses and trains here are very punctual. When they say a bus is leaving at 1000 it leaves at 1000, not 0959 or 1001. Pretty nice.
There were two other families on my bus. When I arrived, the bus dropped us off in a big coach parking lot. As you can see, not much happening at 1030am.
I walked over to the resort bus depot and boarded a very nice motor coach. These resort buses put WDW's to shame.
I had reserved a park view room but there weren't any rooms ready when I checked in. So I left my baggage at the hotel and took the bus back to the park. The layout of the entrance plaza is shaped like a T with parking and buses on one tip of the horizontal part of the T, the Disneyland Hotel and ferry boat dock on the other, and Disneyland on the bottom of the T. There is quite a distance between the transit end and the resort end of the T, and I suspect it won't be long until they put in a Downtown Disney concept here. Right now, there's nothing but planters and benches as you walk to the park.
This little girl was adorable:
Here's the requisite Main Street shot. As you can see, the right side is all under wraps as they refurbish. The weather today was overcast and in the upper 60's. Somewhat humid though, which made it not feel chilly.
First stop, Space Mountain. I was very happy to ride this as it is a duplicate of the California ride. All 22 turns were there just as I remembered them, 17 to the right, 5 to the left. Ahh. And no wait in the single rider line, only a 5 minute standby wait.
After SM, I took a counter-clockwise tour of the park. Through Fantasyland, up into the new left perimeter through Toy Story Land, Mystic Point and Grizzly Gulch. There are pics coming up, but my next ride was Mystic Manor. The ride is fun. They use the trackless cars and the ride is pretty smooth. If you've seen the videos on YouTube you get the story. The best special effects are at the end. I won't spoil it for you but suffice to say they did some great work with the projections, lighting and the movement of the vehicles.
After Mystic Manor I checked out their version of Big Thunder, called Grizzly Mountain. They even have a bear-shapped rock peak just like DCA. Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars is the full name and the ride uses the same Vekoma trains as Expedition Everest. But while EE is tall with steep drops, BGMRMC hugs the ground. There is a backwards element, and the ride really makes use of the terrain. The theme is a couple of troublesome bears which cause some havoc in a local mine. The theme is cute and the animatronic bears are adorable. There is a powered launch after the reverse section that starts with a "blast" of TNT set off by the bears that is very clever.
By now I was getting hungry and I noticed in the guide map that the Starliner Diner offered fried chicken so I had to check that out.
The chicken was good but the fries were the basic frozen type. The Coke was super-sugary which gave me a burst of energy to go next door and ride Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.
The construction on the left side of Buzz is for the upcoming Iron Man Experience. The entrance will be inside the berm and the show building is on the other side of the railroad tracks next to Autopia.
Here is an example of how HKDL handles language. Stitch Encounter rotates between English and the two primary Chinese dialects. See on the blue sign how it says "Show Language"?
Most ride signs are in English only and the informational signs are dual. This one at the entrance to Pooh cracked me up. Look at what it says right in the middle:
Sober? Really? I didn't know they had a problem with people getting drunk and coming to Disneyland to ride Pooh.
I am getting ahead of myself. After Buzz, I rode its a small world. The ride was pretty much the same except there is an American section with some typical icons (Statue of Liberty). I grabbed a scoop of ice cream ($15 HKD, roughly $2 USD, not a bad price). I then picked up a Fast Pass for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which is where I saw the sign above. Now we are caught up. By the way, there are only THREE attractions that offer FastPass: Space Mountain (unnecessary) Pooh (necessary) and Festival of the Lion King (closed).
There is a show here called The Golden Mickeys which is a musical stage show. It is VERY popular and the capacity is reached about 15mins before each show, even before they open the doors. I found this out the hard way as I kept arriving too late to see the 12 and 130p shows. I decided to come back later.
My FastPass for Pooh wasn't until 240p so I had some time to kill. I went over and rode the Jungle River Cruise. No pics, maybe I will take some tomorrow. The ride has three separate queues for each language. I chose English first but will go back and ride with another language just to see how it sounds. The hostess was really bad. She had her mouth pressed against the mic and her voice was so distorted you could barely understand her. Plus she made very little effort to put on any performance. She never "steered" the boat and just basically phoned it in. Bad show. The ride itself is unique in that the river surrounds "Tarzan Island" so you're basically on the route that the steam ship would take at any other park. The river is narrow in parts and they have most of the same sight gags. There is a special effects bonanza for a finale that was nice but otherwise this was so so.
On the way back toward Pooh I still had time so I stopped to visit the Snow White Grotto. Just like the one in California, except there is no "echo" in the wishing well. Boo.
Here's a shot of the queue and interior of the Stitch Encounter. This is the same show as Turtle Talk with Crush, a live animated audience interaction. But look at the queue holding area. Did they slap this attraction together in a hurry or what? I am calling this the Stitch Afterthought.
Mickey's Philharmagic was next. Obviously, exactly the same show inside. But a budget outdoor queue here instead of the Opera House theme in Florida.
Back over in Toy Story (it still wasn't 240p) I rode RC Racer. This is the identical ride that's at the Disney Studios Paris park. It's basically a roller coaster "half pipe" that goes forward and back about four times. Big whoop. It did, however, have this clever "slot car" design to the queue path:
Finally, it was time to ride Pooh. Almost exactly the same as the Florida one. I was glad of that as I like that ride. Now it was around 330p and I decided to head back to the hotel and check in.
Time for a quick break.
Although I must say I love the plate it came on! Please take photos of your meals on Sunday too 
of the trip though)...
