Hello and welcome back to the trip report series! We’ve now finished our first day at the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and this report will cover the second day of our three-day vacation to the smallest, but also my favorite, of all the magic kingdoms. Our previous day ended with us seeing our Explorer’s Lodge room for the very first time. And today begins with us waking up in that room, ready to start another day at HKDL. 

Before we get into it, if you haven’t read the previous installments of this trip report series,I suggest you do so before reading this. Click here to access part one of this trip report series. Also, don’t forget to like me on Facebook and follow me on Instagram and Tiktok!

And the rain rain rain came down down down

We woke up the next day fueled and ready for another day at HKDL. My parents ordered breakfast for us when they arrived at the hotel the day before and by 8am it was outside our door. I had the Mickey waffles with some bacon and eggs. Since the park was opening at 10:30am, we took our sweet time getting ready. We ended up leaving the hotel at around 9:45am. We walked outside and headed for the bus stop and within two minutes we were on our way to Hong Kong Disneyland.

We quickly got off the bus as soon as it arrived at Park Promenade and made our way to the park. After taking some group photos in front of the arch, we made our way towards the big whale fountain. I took some pictures in front of the whale, and noticed immediately after I was done taking pictures that it started to drizzle. 

The drizzle, however, turned into a downpour as we were going through security and making our way to the front gates. We noticed then that the entrance specified for hotel guests was very long, and decided to take our chance with one of the other turnstiles set aside for the non-hotel guests. This was a good choice as we ended up getting into the park before the people who were initially ahead of us in the hotel queue. At this point, however, it was still raining pretty hard. I suddenly got a nervous thought of “what if it rains like this the entire day”. However, as soon as we got to the lockers on Main Street, the rain had all but subsided. Thank the Disney Parks Gods!

After stashing some of our things in a locker, we made our way to our first ride of the day: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

A Blustery Day in the Hundred Acre Wood

We quickly lined up for Winnie the Pooh as soon as we got there. We were probably the 4th group to enter the attraction that day. As silly as it may sound because this is far from the best Fantasyland-style dark ride in the world, I have a deep personal connection to this ride. It’s the first dark ride I ever rode back when I visited HKDL for the first time on Halloween 2006. I know it suffers from some story problems, but the pure nostalgia I feel when I enter the Heffalumps and Woozles room or the flood room makes me so happy. And a pro-tip if you’re ever at Hong Kong Disneyland: this ride always gets a long line as it’s one of the first things people rope drop. So I would always recommend it being your first rope-drop attraction of the day, especially since at park opening, the three mini-lands of Toy Story Land, Mystic Point, and Grizzly Gulch aren’t open yet. 

The queue of Winnie the Pooh is very standard and, to be honest, unexciting. This is a common theme found in many of HKDL’s opening day rides. Simple pages of a book litter the queue, introducing the guests to the story of Winnie the Pooh. This is already one of the more detailed queues from the HKDL park-opening era of rides and it still doesn’t hold a candle to recent queues being constructed by Walt Disney Imagineering. But soon enough, we got into our honey pot and began our journey. 

I have to say, this ride still holds up years later. For those of you that are wondering, this ride is similar to the Magic Kingdom and Shanghai Disneyland versions of the ride. It starts with our core characters encountering a blustery day, culminating in a wrecked and almost destroyed Owl’s house, which has fallen over because of the wind. Afterwards, we see Tigger and are invited to bounce with him. He then tells Pooh that Heffalumps and Woozles steal honey. 

What follows is a really neat effect of Pooh lifting up from his body and entering his dream world which has been overrun with Heffalumps and Woozles. This is the most visually striking and sensory-overloading part of the ride. The colorful cardboard-like cutouts painted in different colors is a feast for the eyes. But soon, Pooh bear wakes up and finds that the Hundred Acre Wood has flooded. As the other characters try to save Piglet from going over a waterfall, Pooh finds himself stuck in a tree full of honey. Finally, the water subsides and a rainbow can be seen as the citizens of the Hundred Acre Wood all come together to celebrate! 

It’s a fairly simple, straightforward ride. While it’s not the best Pooh ride in the world, that distinction goes to Tokyo Disneyland and its marvelous Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, it’s a worthy companion to the Tokyo ride that is also miles ahead of the ride found in Disneyland. If you’ve ridden the version at Magic Kingdom or Shanghai Disneyland before, I wouldn’t recommend riding this one unless you’re gonna be at HKDL for two days or are a die-hard Pooh fan. If neither description applies to you, feel free to skip it. 

Shrunk Down and Free Fallin’

So after riding Winnie the Pooh we made our way to the Toy Story Land entrance tunnel. As of this writing, Toy Story Land, Mystic Point, and Grizzly Gulch open 30 minutes after the rest of the park opens. There’s really only one ride in Toy Story Land that my family likes to do and that’s the Toy Soldier Parachute Drop, mainly for the view that you get from the top of the ride. My sister and I specifically wanted to ride it to see the construction of World of Frozen happening north of Toy Story Land. 

If the Toy Story Land rides are high up on your list, I would suggest getting there for the second rope drop and hitting the Parachute Drop first, followed by Slinky Dog Spin and RC Racer. If they aren’t high on your list, however, I would recommend lining up at the Grizzly Gulch entrance in Adventureland and going straight to Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars. Big Grizzly and the Toy Story Land rides always get waits that last 45 minutes or longer so I would prioritize doing them first and then heading to Mystic Point to ride Mystic Manor afterwards. 

So once the rope dropped we followed the crowd into Toy Story Land. I have mixed feelings about this land in general. I half heartedly agree with the sect of Disney fans that say that the attractions in the Toy Story Lands in Paris, Hong Kong, and Shanghai contain cheap, off-the-shelf rides (the exception of course being Walt Disney World’s Toy Story Land which has the excellent Slinky Dog Dash and is the only Toy Story Land to have Toy Story Mania).

I also wish the rides they included were more immersive or unique, but I disagree with what some people say that the theming of Toy Story Land feels cheap. I actually like the theming of the land. It really does make you feel like you’ve shrunken down to the size of a toy. Even the tall “blades of grass” are a cool touch. Could the rides be better: Yes. Is it an immersive land: Yes. My only real gripe with it is that there’s barely any shade in the land, so as we were walking to Parachute Drop, you could feel the heat sear into your skin. 

We finally made it to the Parachute Drop and we were actually in the second group of riders for the day. Upon entering the queue, you’re immediately ushered into a green barrack-like structure. The queue has static green army men littered all around, as well as crates and a big video game screen that demonstrates the safety features of the ride. After walking through that, you’re then brought to the ride. The ride is similar to Jumpin Jellyfish in DCA, although it’s a lot bigger and higher than that ride. As soon as the gates opened for us, my sister and I raced to the seats that were facing World of Frozen. We strapped ourselves in and soon enough our parachute was in the sky. Now I wouldn’t recommend waiting for any Toy Story Land ride for more than 20 minutes, so if these aren’t a priority I would skip them or use Premiere Access to go on the Toy Soldier Parachute Drop and Slinky Dog Spin. 

For those of you who don’t know what Premiere Access is, it’s similar to Genie+ in that you have to pay to get what is essentially Fastpass access on select rides. The difference being that you can either pay for 3 attractions, 8 attractions, or 8 attractions plus the two major stage shows and Momentous. I will make a more in-depth post explaining what Premiere Access is and how you can utilize it while you’re in the park. 

So after riding Toy Soldier Parachute Drop, we noticed that Hyperspace Mountain only had a 10 minute wait. We knew that it was bound to get busier as the day wore on, so we decided that that would be our next ride. So we exited Toy Story Land the way we came, crossed Fantasyland, and made our way to Hyperspace Mountain. 

Cleared for Takeoff

When we got to Hyperspace Mountain, our bad luck finally subsided: it was indeed a short queue to get into the building. So we quickly entered the queue and were surprised to see that there was a huge X-wing just sitting there in the outside portion of the queue. That catapulted this queue forward in my ranking of the best queues in HKDL. This used to be the worst one among all of them. I think they intended to make it feel like those airport tunnels you go through to get to your plane, but whoever decided that that was a good idea should’ve been questioned by everyone else in Imagineering. The rest of the queue was still kind of bland with the exception of the posters they had of various destinations in the Star Wars universe and the addition of a screen near the end of the queue that sets up the story of the ride. 

The ride itself was fantastic. I had ridden versions of this ride in Disneyland before, so I was excited to see how this was different. And I was pleasantly surprised! There seemed to be more projections in this version than in the Anaheim version, and the projections were a lot clearer than the Anaheim version. The story is the same, with Star Destroyers attacking a base in Jakku and it’s up to you to fight the Empire and destroy them. Fairly simple story, but with amazing execution. It really felt like you were in the middle of an intergalactic space fight. It was amazing. I didn’t think something could come close to the original Space Mountain (mostly because I love the music) but I have to say hearing Star Wars music as you blast around space and have close encounters with other ships was pretty fun. That being said, I wish they still just made this a seasonal thing so we can have the original Space Mountain back sometimes, but I’m not mad that this version seems to be the permanent one at Hong Kong Disneyland.

An Encounter with the Fire and Water Gods

After riding Space Mountain, we noticed that Ant-Man also had a ten minute wait. Since my parents had not done it yet, we decided to go there so they could experience it for the first time. So we went to the Science and Technology Pavilion at Stark Expo to help And-Man and the Wasp fight Arnim Zola and his army of swarmbots. I got a pretty decent score this time around, but my sister beat me again. I don’t know how she was able to get such high scores but I guess she was just a natural at it. My parents did pretty decently on their first time through of the ride, and after riding it we decided to head to the Jungle River Cruise as it only had a 20 minute wait.

We walked to the entrance of Tomorrowland and made our way to the entrance of Adventureland. I think I mentioned this already but HKDL’s Adventureland probably rivals Paris’ Adventureland as the best one in the world. It really feels like you stepped into a jungle. I think the mountains in the background added to this feeling. It just felt so exciting and adventurous being in there. Now, the only problem I have with it is that it’s pretty bare. There’s only one ride in the whole land, so there isn’t much to do. The addition of the Moana show definitely helped, but I think there needs to be one more ride or attraction added to this part of the park to make it feel more complete.  

Once we entered Adventureland, we made our way over to the Jungle River Cruise. Yes, the ride’s name in Hong Kong has the word “river” in it. I guess that’s just to really drive home the point that the Rivers of Adventure as they call it here is a replacement of the Rivers of America. We quickly headed to the entrance but noticed that the usual “English” language queue section was roped off. Previously, there would be three ride entrances depending on the language you wanted to experience the attraction in. Those languages were Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. However, the attraction was having everyone line up in the Cantonese line and having a cast member walk down the line with a sign indicating what language was next and pulling people from the queue who were interested in that language. This seemed less efficient to me than having three lines, but I guess they wanted to give the illusion that the line was moving fast for everyone. 

We soon got on a boat since the next boat after we got in line was an English boat and there were barely any people ahead of us who wanted to experience it in English, which I guess was very lucky for us. We then boarded the boat and our skipper took us on an adventure through the rivers of the world. This is honestly my favorite version of the Jungle Cruise. Granted I’ve only experienced the California and Tokyo versions of the attraction, and the Tokyo one was before its big refurbishment that made it the new standout among Jungle Cruises everywhere. But the Hong Kong version will always be the nearest and dearest to my heart. The elephants, Indian temple, hippos, cobras, piranhas, and monkeys are classic Jungle Cruise mainstays, while the addition of the headhunters tribe and the big fire and water gods finale bring this crazy ride to even more over-the-top extremes. This is definitely one of the attractions in HKDL that you cannot miss.  

A Feast for an Adventurer

We were nearing the time for our reservation at the Explorer’s Club semi buffet so we decided to walk south and head to Mystic Point via Grizzly Gulch. When we got there, we decided to ride Mystic Manor before heading to lunch as my parents had not ridden it yet this trip. So we quickly entered the five minute long queue and made our way to the pre-show room. Henry Mystic introduced us to his collection and music box and afterwards we were led to our carriages where we saw Albert open the music box and were taken on another whirlwind tour of Lord Henry Mystic’s collection. 

After riding it, we decided to go on it once more as we had 20 minutes till our reservation and the line was still showing a five minute wait. So we quickly got on it again. Mystic Manor is one of those rides you can do again and again. And it helps that the ride path differs depending on which carriage you ride in. Upon exiting the ride, I decided to peruse the shops for Mystic Manor merchandise. I quickly picked up two shirts: one Mystic Manor themed shirt that featured the fab five riding the attraction and a Hong Kong Disneyland logo tee. I had seen the logo tee in a post on instagram the day before and made a point to go hunt for it so I was glad to have found it already. After that we made our way to the Explorer’s Club for lunch. 

This was probably the best meal we’ve ever had at Hong Kong Disneyland. We approached the hostess at the front of the restaurant. I pulled up the QR code for our reservation and she double checked on her iPad. After confirming it, she put purple wristbands on us and led us to our table. Upon sitting down, we were reminded that this was a semi-buffet, which basically meant that our appetizers, desserts, and drinks were going to be served buffet style while we would have to order our main course and it would be served to us. We quickly ordered our main courses then set out to try some of the appetizers. 

Their selection was pretty varied, with there being salad options, fried vegetables, corn, and chicken to name a few of the appetizers. Their desserts included some really good cookies, carrot cake with the Mystic Manor logo on it, and some chocolate cake, among other things. They were all really tasty and it was hard for me to pace myself because I wanted to eat everything. And everything I ate was delicious. If there was anything that was just ok, it was my main course. I ordered the braised beef with prawns. I gave the prawns to my dad since I’m slightly allergic to them and just had the beef. It was ok, a little dry for my taste, but all the desserts and appetizers were so good that it overshadowed the main course. 

Would I recommend this experience to everyone? Absolutely! For theme park food it’s very good and you get a lot of bang for your buck with the buffet. The atmosphere of the restaurant is also top notch, with each room themed to a different country and featuring artifacts that would be found in that country. Even the placemats were so chock full of SEA references that I ended up taking one of them home. We were there for almost two hours and thought it was enough time to really enjoy the experience and try every appetizer and dessert option they had. Plus the chance to just chill in an air-conditioned environment with a guaranteed table was not to be overlooked. You can make reservations for this experience at the Hong Kong Disneyland website or you can try your luck to get a walk-in table. You can also use the 3-in-1 park meal voucher at the restaurant. In addition, for an upcharge fee, you can add-on a special Momentous viewing area experience. This effectively doubles the price of the meal, but if you can afford it and want a premium viewing experience for Momentous, then this might be worth considering! 

After eating our lunch, we headed to Mystic Manor to ride it a third time. But as is the theme of some of these reports: the best laid plans sometimes have a way of going awry. 

Thanks for reading Part Four of my Hong Kong Disneyland trip report series! If you’d like to read the other parts of the series, they are linked down below:

Hong Kong Disneyland Trip Report 2023 Part One: Introduction

Hong Kong Disneyland Trip Report 2023 Part Two: Humidity, Monkeys, And Magical Dreams

Hong Kong Disneyland Trip Report 2023 Part Three: Lines, Birds, and a Momentous Celebration

Hong Kong Disneyland Trip Report 2023 Part Five: Music, Forests, and a Wondrous Book