The Peninsular & Hong Kong Disneyland

This weekend was one of extremes! After D had had her hair cut on Saturday morning we made our way over to Kowloon to The Peninsular Hotel for afternoon to as a celebration of D finally being given her full-time position at work. As the afternoon tea didn't open until 1400, we decided to head to Ocean Terminal beforehand to have a quick look around. This turned out to be easier said than done, as Ocean Terminal is the biggest shopping centre in Hong Kong and having a 'quick' look around this centre was beyond the realms of possibility. Instead we just set our sights on American Eagle to have a quick perusal and decided that we might come back to Ocean Terminal if we have time before we leave HK. This quick visit to the shopping centre turned out to be a mistake on our part, as when we arrived at The Peninsular there was already a sizeable queue building up around the lobby of the hotel and since the afternoon tea session still didn't open for 30 ,images, we realiesed we might be in for a bit of a wait. Well a 'bit of a wait' ended up being 1 hour 45 minutes and by the time we reached the front of the queue we were verging on ravenous. We were finally shown to our seats and pleased to see that they had put us a long way from the queueing people, so that we didn't sit there for the duration of our afternoon having hundreds of people willing us to hurry up! We decided on the champagne afternoon tea so we could celebrate D's achievement in getting her job and soon enough we we sipping the hotels own champagne (which was particulate good!). Then our afternoon tea tray arrived with a delicious looking array of sweet and savoury treats for us to dig into. The food selection was absolutely delicious and we were soon making our way through all the treats, including a couple of scones each, with clotted cream (oh how I miss clotted cream) and strawberry jam. The atmosphere and food were both absolutely brilliant and we were soon realising that we may have to leave the comfort and coolness of the hotel. It was an afternoon well spent and one of the best things we have done since we have been in Hong Kong. We have decided now that as a measure of all the places in the world we will visit in the future, we will try an afternoon tea in each location. Hong Kong will be hard to beat but I am sure that we will gve it our best as we continue our travels.

Well, Sunday was very a very different day, but equally good fun, but for a few different reasons. We made our way on Sunday morning to Hong Kong Disneyland, which is on Lantau Island, around 50minutes from Causeway Bay on the MTR. As usually Disney in never understated and it started earlier than we thought as we were picked up by the 'Disney Train' to take us the last stage of our journey to the entrance to the park. Once we had paid the exorbitant price for our entry tickets, we made our way to Tomorrowland to join the queue for Space Mountain as we guessed this would be one of the busier rides of the day. Having done my best to persuade D that Disneyland wouldn't be as bad as she thought, I was pleased that SM was more of a thrilling ride than I remembered and I was pleased to come out to find out that she enjoyed the ride on SM. Staying in Tomorrowland we made out way to a slightly less intense rid in Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, which is arcade/ride all in one. After this we headed to Autopia, which is a slow paced driving experience, which I expect when it was devised was what people thought driving would be like in the 21st century.

This was good fun, although the day was starting to warm up and after a 5 minute ride in the sun we wanted to find some shade to cool down. It was time for the first parade of the day so we found a spot in the shade to wait for the character parade to come past us. Having been to Florida, the parade that we saw in HK Disneyland was a lot shorter but it was still good to see most of the character from the Disney films, and made me feel young again seeing it all so long after I last saw them.

 After this we headed for some lunch and having done some prior research we made our way to the Grand Banquet which was one of the main food seas in the park. We were then pleased to see that there was a very un-American choice of food, with burger and fries being replaced with dim sum, noodles and our choice and curry (red than vegetable curry to be precise). This came with steamed rice, naan bread and vegetable soup and was a real nice surprise that it tasted so good. At only 65 HKD each (about £6) it was also quite reasonable priced (I suppose we finally deserved some value for money having had to pay £40 each to get in to the park). After lunch we decided that a slower paced ride would be best so we made our way to It's A Small World for a bit of vomit-inducing happiness. This was as colourful as ever, if a little bit dated in the 21st century and was just what we needed after our lunch.

On our way to the newly finished Toy Story Land we managed to get our photos taken with the Mr & Mrs Mouse as well as Goofy, as I wanted my photo taken with one of the characters that didn't make me feel like a giant.

We then headed to TSL and after having some more photos taken with Woody and Jessie went on the new RC Racer ride. This was a great idea and one of the more thrilling rides on offer at HKD. You are rocked back and forward on mechano track in a giant version of the RC character from the Toy Story movies.

We then headed to Grizzly Gulch which was an area of the park which had only opened on Saturday and so was therefore decidedly busy. We decided to ride on the new Runaway Mine Carts ride which turned out to be the best surprise of the day. What started as a rather tame, predictable ride, soon changed and we were being flung back the way we had come and exploded at quite a speed out of an exploding mine shaft. Having had enough sun and plenty of fun we decided to head back home to Causeway Bay and relax a bit before D has to g back to work this week and I have my BTEC schemes of work to write. Whoopdeeeedoooo!!!!!