I haven’t thrown in any reports from this place for a while, but I’ve been a few times over the last few years (when it wasn’t closed), and called in recently to pick up my new annual pass, which I actually forgot to pick up. I’ll just throw a bunch of stuff in, with a bit of focus on the newer stuff over the last couple of years. Not that it matters, but not all of the pictures are from the last visit. I took a bunch when the castle opened, for example, but then couldn’t be arsed to do anything with them at the time.
The park has been very up-and-down during covid, with a bunch of closures and reopenings. Honestly, I didn’t mind it so much since the annual passes were extended for every closure with some bonus weeks added. Anyway, they’ve been back to full-time opening for a while now, and thanks to covid severely restricting travel, have sold absolutely s**tloads of annual passes, so the park has been pretty busy considering.
They’re still not back to 7-day operations, currently being closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but since all travel restrictions have now been lifted and, more importantly for tourism in Hong Kong, the border with China has just fully opened (for Chinese people – still no tourist visas), that will likely change soon.
The most noticeable new thing is obviously the castle. It’s huge and is so much more impressive than the old one.
I’m sure everyone knows by now, but the 13 spires/towers represent 13 princesses – well, 14 since it’s both Anna and Elsa from Frozen. Each one is decorated to match the princess and topped with a filial (new word for me; see Disney is educational)
What people might not know is that at the back of the castle, there are also 13 support columns, which are decorated with the friends (or supporters - get it?) of the princesses.
Inside the castle there’s a princess meet ‘n’ greet. I didn’t know what it was the first time, so I queued up to get in and felt the fool at the end of it, but anyway. Again, it’s all the princesses represented by the castle. They get switched out roughly hourly I think.
There’s also a jewelry shop.
I’m not sure if they’ve sold the gold castle yet. Apparently, it’s a 1:60 replica, took two years to make and contains about 9kg of gold. I don’t remember seeing a price on it, but it’s been valued at around £1.6 million. You also get free lifetime admission to the park, so that’s a right bargain then.
When I’m not taking pictures of overpriced tat, I do actually go on rides occasionally as well, so here are some pictures of stuff you’ve seen before. Yes, we do still have to wear masks. Yes, even outside. Yes, it's f**king stupid.
Back to the castle then. In the nearby pavilion there’s a pretty interesting exhibition about the design and construction of it. I thought this was pretty cool given that Disney often doesn’t want to show any behind the scenes kind of stuff.
For some reason, I’ve uploaded pictures from the Fairytale Forest walkthrough. Maybe because it’s the first time I’d been through it at night; it used to only ever be open during the day.
There are also two new castle shows. The first one, Follow Your Dreams (how trite), is a daytime show, but the last one actually happens after it gets dark. It’s decent and lasts around 20 minutes. There are four live singers plus dancers and costumed characters. The songs included are Follow Your Dreams (original song for the show, Let’s Go Fly a Kite (Mary Poppilns), You Can Fly (Peter Pan), El Mundo Es Mi Familia and Remember Me (Coco), Just Around the Riverbend (Pocahontas), How Far I’ll Go (Moana), Into the Unknown (Frozen 2) and Try Everything (Zootopia).
Not my video, and there are probably better ones out there, but I’m not about to go down that hole:
I just noticed an older Imgur album with some Frozen construction photos. I must’ve intended to share them ages ago. Maybe I did in some news/construction topic? Anyway, these must be about a year old by now, so it’s all much further along, but the “new for 2020” land is now set for the back half of this year.
When the park reopened the first time after the initial closure, both parades were gone due to social distancing crap. They’re still not back and I don’t know why. The daytime parade has been replaced with a really s**t train thing with a few characters shoved on it. I haven’t got any pictures of it, but it’s s**te. The nighttime parade, Paint the Night, hasn’t returned in any form, which is a shame because it was really impressive. The old nighttime entertainment used to start with Paint the Night and then the castle/fireworks show would start soon after.
The new nighttime castle show, Momentous, has finally opened, though. The castle itself has been open for a couple of years, but they only opened the show a few months ago. It’s more focused on projection mapping and other lighting effects than fireworks, but that was also the case with the older show. In the lead up to the show, there are kind of mini projection shows every few minutes, with the castle changing to represent one of the 13 princesses. I’m not sure, but these seem to be randomised.
I’m just going to finish this by throwing in some night pictures of the castle, including the show preset, which is weird since it makes the castle look like a cartoon or something, and some of those pre-show projection changes I just mentioned. I’ve only seen the show twice, so decided to just watch it both times rather than try to get pictures.
Again, not my video, but I’ll chuck it in if anyone’s interested and doesn’t know about YouTube.
That’s it. It turned in to much less of a trip report than a general park update I guess, but since getting into Hong Kong was pretty much impossible until a few months ago, there probably haven’t been many reports from this place for a while.
The park has been very up-and-down during covid, with a bunch of closures and reopenings. Honestly, I didn’t mind it so much since the annual passes were extended for every closure with some bonus weeks added. Anyway, they’ve been back to full-time opening for a while now, and thanks to covid severely restricting travel, have sold absolutely s**tloads of annual passes, so the park has been pretty busy considering.
They’re still not back to 7-day operations, currently being closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but since all travel restrictions have now been lifted and, more importantly for tourism in Hong Kong, the border with China has just fully opened (for Chinese people – still no tourist visas), that will likely change soon.
The most noticeable new thing is obviously the castle. It’s huge and is so much more impressive than the old one.
I’m sure everyone knows by now, but the 13 spires/towers represent 13 princesses – well, 14 since it’s both Anna and Elsa from Frozen. Each one is decorated to match the princess and topped with a filial (new word for me; see Disney is educational)
What people might not know is that at the back of the castle, there are also 13 support columns, which are decorated with the friends (or supporters - get it?) of the princesses.
Inside the castle there’s a princess meet ‘n’ greet. I didn’t know what it was the first time, so I queued up to get in and felt the fool at the end of it, but anyway. Again, it’s all the princesses represented by the castle. They get switched out roughly hourly I think.
There’s also a jewelry shop.
I’m not sure if they’ve sold the gold castle yet. Apparently, it’s a 1:60 replica, took two years to make and contains about 9kg of gold. I don’t remember seeing a price on it, but it’s been valued at around £1.6 million. You also get free lifetime admission to the park, so that’s a right bargain then.
When I’m not taking pictures of overpriced tat, I do actually go on rides occasionally as well, so here are some pictures of stuff you’ve seen before. Yes, we do still have to wear masks. Yes, even outside. Yes, it's f**king stupid.
Back to the castle then. In the nearby pavilion there’s a pretty interesting exhibition about the design and construction of it. I thought this was pretty cool given that Disney often doesn’t want to show any behind the scenes kind of stuff.
For some reason, I’ve uploaded pictures from the Fairytale Forest walkthrough. Maybe because it’s the first time I’d been through it at night; it used to only ever be open during the day.
There are also two new castle shows. The first one, Follow Your Dreams (how trite), is a daytime show, but the last one actually happens after it gets dark. It’s decent and lasts around 20 minutes. There are four live singers plus dancers and costumed characters. The songs included are Follow Your Dreams (original song for the show, Let’s Go Fly a Kite (Mary Poppilns), You Can Fly (Peter Pan), El Mundo Es Mi Familia and Remember Me (Coco), Just Around the Riverbend (Pocahontas), How Far I’ll Go (Moana), Into the Unknown (Frozen 2) and Try Everything (Zootopia).
Not my video, and there are probably better ones out there, but I’m not about to go down that hole:
I just noticed an older Imgur album with some Frozen construction photos. I must’ve intended to share them ages ago. Maybe I did in some news/construction topic? Anyway, these must be about a year old by now, so it’s all much further along, but the “new for 2020” land is now set for the back half of this year.
When the park reopened the first time after the initial closure, both parades were gone due to social distancing crap. They’re still not back and I don’t know why. The daytime parade has been replaced with a really s**t train thing with a few characters shoved on it. I haven’t got any pictures of it, but it’s s**te. The nighttime parade, Paint the Night, hasn’t returned in any form, which is a shame because it was really impressive. The old nighttime entertainment used to start with Paint the Night and then the castle/fireworks show would start soon after.
The new nighttime castle show, Momentous, has finally opened, though. The castle itself has been open for a couple of years, but they only opened the show a few months ago. It’s more focused on projection mapping and other lighting effects than fireworks, but that was also the case with the older show. In the lead up to the show, there are kind of mini projection shows every few minutes, with the castle changing to represent one of the 13 princesses. I’m not sure, but these seem to be randomised.
I’m just going to finish this by throwing in some night pictures of the castle, including the show preset, which is weird since it makes the castle look like a cartoon or something, and some of those pre-show projection changes I just mentioned. I’ve only seen the show twice, so decided to just watch it both times rather than try to get pictures.
Again, not my video, but I’ll chuck it in if anyone’s interested and doesn’t know about YouTube.
That’s it. It turned in to much less of a trip report than a general park update I guess, but since getting into Hong Kong was pretty much impossible until a few months ago, there probably haven’t been many reports from this place for a while.
Also wow, finally some Coco representation somewhere in a Disney park. I hate that it's pretty much nowhere to be found and it's my favourite Pixar.
Also wow, finally some Coco representation somewhere in a Disney park. I hate that it's pretty much nowhere to be found and it's my favourite Pixar.
