this past week mario and i set out on quite an adventure… our first journey to shanghai china for a business trip. we started out early morning in phoenix on a 5am flight to dallas where we connected on the 15 hour direct flight to shanghai arriving at 4pm the following day. we met up with our colleagues kevin and tracey and made way to our hotel in downtown shanghai….
the next morning we boarded a high speed train to our next destination spending two days shopping a market, it was absolutely packed with anything and everything imaginable. china is a crazy busy place with people going in every direction on foot, by moped, car, bus, and my favorite were these bikes (i wanted one)…
we took the train back to shanghai to spend our last day at one of the places i never imagined having the opportunity to visit in my life – shanghai disneyland! as a disney fan i’ve followed the years of construction and grand opening celebrations in june of this year. it was a “pinch myself moment” that we were actually in disneyland… in shanghai…
the park was beautiful, the buildings on main street were decked out in holiday style, the shops filled with all of the fun merchandise you’d expect at disneyland, and even the candy shop was loaded with their signature character apples – it was awesome…
the main feature at shanghai disneyland is without a doubt the castle! this magnificent fairytale structure towers high up into the sky and is loaded with architectural details from every angle. it can be seen from anywhere throughout the park and even has a themed restaurant inside, it was beautiful. we explored the park to check it all out. the attention to detail was exactly as disney promised “authentically disney, distinctly chinese”…
it has similar attractions to other disney parks, like peter pan which we rode, but it also has a couple of attractions exclusive to this park: tron (a cycle-type roller coaster), and pirates of the caribbean (a unique version of a disney classic). the wait for tron was 180 minutes and considering none of us wanted to spend 3 hours waiting in line, we headed over to pirates and let me tell you it was the best disney attraction i’ve ever experienced…ever! we even went back in line to ride it a second time immediately after we got off, it was that good. i just can’t even put into words how cool this ride was – pure amazement…
after we left the park, we enjoyed dinner at the cheesecake factory and did a little shopping in “disneytown” their version of downtown disney. to finish off the trip there was even a starbucks so we were definitely happy guys! thanks again for sharing the journey…t!m
