Saturday, December 10, 2016

Shanghai Day One: A Little Surprise

Friday morning our kiddos woke up early and we decided to pull out the credit card for a little surprise visit to Shanghai Disneyland.  It is so much cheaper here and we knew how much they were wanting to go!!!  We didn't tell them where we were going and even as they posed with the character pictures on the Disney-themed subway car they still didn't figure it out. ;)


We arrived right around opening time and headed in to spend a fun day and one of our last days as a family of five. :)  They were crazy excited that we were taking them to it.  Kate kept telling me, "But Mom, you said we couldn't go there."  So sweet!!


They loved finding Uncle Scrooge's vault!! 


And the castle is AMAZING!!  Our family is a Disney family.  In fact, this was the last park I needed to visit to have been to them all... Usually Disneyland parks have a small castle.  This one is huge and gorgeous.  Probably bigger than the one at Magic Kingdom.


And that was just the beginning of the differences...


Oh.my.goodness!!!  Pirates of the Carribean blew us away!!! It was AMAZING.  THE BEST RIDE WE'VE EVER GONE ON.  It really set the bar very high for rides.  So many cool things that were unexpected and amazing.  It was Disney Magic.



Every Pirate Princess needs to have an "I mean business" face, right?


This boy... we were honestly both excited and terrified at the thought of taking him back to China.  He has a lot of hurts.  A lot of emotional baggage.  We kept questioning.. Is it the right time?  Will he be able to handle it?  He did great this first day.  We don't know if it is because Disney is familiar to him or because he's going to do well here, but we'll take it either way!!!





They have this cool "iron man experience" where you can fight there in position as Iron Man.  He was all about it!!!


Laila couldn't ride most of what was there other than Fantasyland, which was a madhouse, but she still had fun!!!  Ticket prices go by height, so it was free for her to get in to Disney anyway.  Wish they'd use that system in the US for tickets!!!


We only got to do a fraction of all they have at Shanghai Disneyland.  It's much larger than Hong Kong Disneyland was.  We all left hoping that one day we can bring the whole, complete family of seven back to China to do this park together.

But as Laila said, starting around 6pm... we were tired and got out of there before closing time.


We tried out a noodle restaurant in the mall across the street from our hotel.  The food was great but everyone was SO TIRED>  Jet lag is a beast!!


Chengbin fell asleep right there in that position at least 3 times while waiting on the food to arrive.


And when it was time to go Laila begged to be carried and put to bed.  She was a trooper all day so we just went with it. :)

What a great day!!  We are so amazed how well the kids are doing!! And only a few days to go until Lily Day!!  I can't wait to see her again!!!

1 comment:

  1. Looks like you had a wonderful time in Disney!! Are you home yet!?!?! We've been thinking about you all a ton!!!
    Love,
    Gigi and John

    ReplyDelete