Doing Disney and Shanghai

Our trip to Shanghai consisted of two parts... sort of. The first part of the trip was a brief morning and afternoon in Shanghai proper. Our flight landed at 5am and our hotel at Disneyland wasn't going to let us check in until 3pm. We could have headed straight to the Disneyland park if we wanted to, but we had two more full days planned for them, and we knew that we would be getting off of our flight exhausted. We decided instead to focus the first part of our trip on exploring the city of Shanghai a little. We started in the Bund, because it was the only thing open that early in the morning.

On our way to the Bund from the train station we stopped at McDonald's, Allison got a coffee, and I sampled one of the pies (as I usually do on trips abroad). The specialty pie in China appears to be a taro pie. Taro is basically purple sweet potato. This was a great pie to start your day because the taro filling isn't overly sweet. It was also nice that it was deep fried, since most McDonald's in other parts of the world bake their pies now. This was the perfect start up for our day of wandering around Shanghai.

For the most part our adventure that day was just wandering around various neighbourhoods. If you're in Shanghai and you're looking for a place to pick up traditional treats and snacks, one neighbourhood we discovered is Yuyuan Market. It's a traditional looking market with many traditional and modern Chinese desserts and snacks. It's not only a great place to find snacks, but it's also a great place to just wander around since the building are all traditional and exactly what you would expect from a classic Chinese market.

One interesting find was at a local Chinese grocery store. As you know I love to check out local grocery stores in every place I visit, and I was not disappointed in Shanghai. There were a few Chinese treats to choose from, but most interesting was how they kept their western candy. The chocolate bars were each found in protective security boxes. I imagine that there was a theft problem in the past, and it must have been such a problem that drastic measures had to be taken. While the bars were pricey, they weren't much more expensive than what I find in most Asian countries, and I've never seen this kind of security for chocolate bars before.

After a bleary eyed day of walking around, we stopped at Tim Horton's (you can read the full review of that exspirience here) and headed to Shanghai Disneyland for two days and three nights of fun.

The park itself is very nice. I'd heard rumors on the internet about how poorly this Disney park was maintained and abused, and saw none of that at all. It may not have been as clean as some of the other Disney parks, but it was pretty close. It also has two of the greatest rides in all Disney parks (we've been to all except the two in California) Tron Lightcycles and their version of Pirates of the Caribbean. I won't say much more about the parks in general, but if you're a Disney parks fan it's well worth a day or two.

Meal wise, Shanghai Disneyland is not really as full as the other Disney parks. Florida and Tokyo have become food destinations, but this Disney parks doesn't really go for that at all. There is only one sit down restaurant in the whole park, it's expensive but the food was okay. The best place to get a meal in this park is actually outside the gates in Disneytown. There you'll find a nice range of restaurants that including a Cheesecake Factory and a Wolfgang Puck's restaurant. The park had a few less formal places to eat, and they were okay, but nothing that spectacular.

Snack wise this park has a few interesting treats. We found ourselves eating at the bakery a few times and generally found the baked goods to be pretty good. The white chocolate doughnut and cheesecake were surprisingly good. I would think that just about every baked good would probably taste fine, at least we didn't find one that we hated.

It seemed that waffles and flower flavoured ice cream were also fairly popular. We had a few waffles and they were fine, although most of the time they were served cold. We also saw a lot of Mickey ice cream bars around the park. They come with both vanilla and chocolate ice cream inside. They also have Minnie ice cream bars with white chocolate on the outside. While I was tempted to pick up an ice cream bar, I couldn't find myself paying the 8 dollars it cost.

Shanghai Disneyland is a fun place to visit, but it really isn't a foodie destination. You will find plenty of Chinese food options, and plenty of western options, but I don't think you'll  find anything exceptional. What they lack in food however they do make up for in fun. We had a great time, and I'm glad we got to check out this Disney park.

CC