Day 35: Finally getting to Shanghai, and Disney!!!

Day 35 overlapped with Day 34, because, as I said, it was a late night at the airport.

I continued to work on stuff for a while, and decided to make the wait at the airport into a hashtag for the snapchat account (if I ever got it to work). I decided to make it #Beijingairportwatch2017, and see if that worked out ok. Around 1:30, I went back to where Jessica was (I was at the charging port the other time), and around 2, I went to sleep, stretched out on a very uncomfortable bench. To my surprise, I fell asleep quickly and deeply. Around 4:30, I woke up, not knowing why, and looked around bleary eyed. I was too tired to make any sense of anything, and Jessica was gone for some reason, so I just sat there, staring at the ground thinking about how strange this all was.

She came back, apologizing, since she went to use the restroom, but didn't want to wake me up doing it. We were both surprised I woke up on my own though. We sat there for another 10 minutes, while some of my senses returned (hard to do on only 2.5 hours of sleep), but then we made our way to the super long line of people waiting to check in. It turned out the check in desk was at a different airline, and we settled in to wait. I was almost out of data, so my phone was running really slow. When I tried to pull up the flight info, it was glitchy. We asked one of the workers if we were in the right line, and she confirmed. However, there were two different lines within the one line (clumps of people are more common than straight lines of people here), and when she merged them, she put another person in front of us, to our chagrin. At least I had a bit of food (2 pieces of pizza from last night) so I didn't completely starve without food....

Other than the long wait, check in was rather uneventual, which was a relief. We went through the "Females Only" line in security, and this time, I was the one who got patted down longer, not Jessica, much to her relief.  We headed down to board the plane, and got in line, but as it got closer and closer to the time of departure, the line remained, and we weren't able to get on the plane. We started wondering if we were in the right line or not, but we figured out that we were waiting on the shuttle to the plane from the terminal to come to the gate. Getting on the shuttle, several foreigners (like us!) got on, appearing to be athletes, and we amused ourselves by guessing which country they were from (I guessed Russia, although we never found out....) We got on and I was sitting next to one of the foreigners, who had come by himself.

On the 2 hour plane ride, I mostly slept, only getting up to eat the food they gave us for breakfast (a rice cake with white rice, purple rice and a meat vegetable mix in the middle) and get a couple drinks. Before we got off the plane, Jessica and I asked where the man was from, and he told us that he was from Brazil. He didn't speak much English (and we don't speak Portuguese) but we figured out that he was working for GE, going back and forth a few times between Shanghai and Beijing for 60 days.

Getting out of the plane, we booked it to a taxi (since neither of us had checked our luggage). Walking out the door, a man offered a taxi to us. I was a bit suspicious due to what Robert, Suri and Celia had told us at the train station about unofficial taxis outside of the taxi line overcharging people, but I went along with Jessica. He offered the price of 260...which was a bit high, but what really turned us off of his deal was when he started to go back into the airport, rather than just taking us to his car.

So we walked through the barriers to the official taxi approved by one of the guards, and got an offer of 90 quai, which was a lot better than before. We rode with him, listening to Chinese radio talk shows, and admiring the architecture of Shanghai, which we agreed had a lot more character than the architecture of Beijing. Our fare turned out to be 100 quai, but that was still better than the initial offer.

When we got to the hotel, we found out that it had a gorgeous lobby, but when we tried to go upstairs, we weren't allowed to go up without a keycard. So we waited on the guys to come down and get us. They let us get showers and clear our heads and we found out that the wifi at the hotel was pretty decent.

We headed out toward Disney, stopping at KFC first for some lunch. I got the same type of meal that I had gotten in Sunny Block in order to get the most food for my money.

Getting to Disney after transferring between a couple of subways, we tried to check in, but found out that our tickets were only good on the day we ordered them for some reason. We went to the guest services desk, and Dom managed to get everything straightened out (even though we had to pay a little bit of extra money).

Heading in, we took pictures by the iconic Mickey garden, and then walked through Main Street Disney, enjoying the atmosphere of the park. Most of the people were Chinese, which made sense thinking about how cold it was and that it was still Spring Festival for the Chinese New Year.

We stopped at an area that had lots of adventure types of rides, including a rope climbing adventure, but we decided not to after realizing that we had to put our phones in a locker to do it, forcing us to wait in yet another line. However, we did go behind the (man-made) waterfall inside the (man-made) rock, and that was very beautiful.

Afterwards, we kept walking, making plans to see the Tarzan show (which we never did get around to seeing), and wandered into the Pirates of the Caribbean themed area. We wandered in an adventure ride that looked interesting, and got in line....it turned out the line was a lot longer than we expected, winding through about 10 rooms. However, we passed the time with me taking Snapchats for UC International, and chatting about Disney stuff, among other things. Nick and Dom said that the lines weren't as long in America, because there were more rides to split the people among, which was an interesting note. As we winded through, there was various pirate paraphernalia to keep the customers (like us) occupied.

The Pirates ride was incredible! It was a boat type of ride, taking you through various chambers, where the animations were IMAX size, and the animatronic characters were extremely life like. Jessica and I were both very satisfied with our first Disney ride!

We tried to go get fast passes for rides, but it turned out that they were all sold out, and the waits were also pretty long. However, the Alice in Wonderland maze only had a wait of 5 minutes, so we decided to go in. We split up, and I wandered around taking pictures. There was so much detail exactly from the animated movie, I couldn't help but marvel at it. I got separated from the others' line of sight, so I was in a state of mild panic as I searched for them (since I had already run out of data), but found them once I exited.

After that, the boys wanted to go into the castle to look around. It turned out that it was Snow White's castle, which was even better. It was about an hour's wait, but we occupied ourselves talking, and the line wasn't nearly as long as the pirates ride. Going in, there were flags representing each princess with an iconic symbol of theirs, carvings of iconic scenes from the movies, and at the end, there were gorgeous mosaics of 4 different princesses. But in the middle, it told the story of Snow White...and although the characters were all speaking in Chinese, the magic of Disney made it so that you couldn't distinguish the real items from the animation....it's something you just have to see in person.

We headed over toward Tomorrowland to ride the Tron roller coaster, making a pit stop first at the Marvel Universe, where they had lots of gear for superhero aficionados.

I had just gotten a huge container of caramel popcorn in the shape of a Minnie Mouse head, and was looking forward to eating it, but before we could get in line for the roller coaster, I had to put it in a locker.....slightly unhappy about it, I did it anyway, also putting all my valuables in there. There was a 2 hour wait, so I was somewhat starving and bored, but....as Disney typically does, they hyped it up. When we made it past the entryway, they had a visual of what to expect, showing people riding "lightcycles" (all attached, of course), for a different angle of riding a roller coaster. When we finally got on, I had to put my glasses in a bin in the front of the coaster, so everything became blurry, but in a way that enhanced my experience. Sitting forward as if I was on a motorcycle on a roller coaster track, coupled with the lights coming straight at us, made for an amazing visual and sensory experience. It was perfect except for the fact that it didn't feel long enough for the time we had spent in line....but if you're ever in Shanghai, definitely go.

Walking out, we started to head over to the Peter Pan ride, because we thought that we still had an hour, but the fireworks and light show on the castle started going off. We ran over to the other side of the castle to see the lights, but I fell behind, and Jessica waited, so we got separated from the guys for a bit. We found them quickly, but realized that the park had probably closed.

Dom decided to ask if the restaurants would still be open, and we found that they would be until 10. Looking around, we found a Cheesecake Factory, and we all agreed to go in there. I ordered five cheese pasta (which was good, but not the best pasta I've had in my life), and after the meal, Jessica and I decided to split a cheesecake slice to go to have for breakfast the next morning (even though we both had leftovers as well.)

After dinner, we headed to the gift shop, where we all wandered around a while, finding out that the park had just opened a short enough time ago where they still had grand opening merchandise on sale. After a bit, I got a long sleeved T-shirt with a lot of the iconic Disney characters on it, also saying "Shanghai Disney" as well.

We waited in the taxi line for a bit, eventually getting one home, and I was falling asleep in the back from lack of sleep the previous night.

But all in all, Disney in Shanghai was great, the iconic Disney experience if I'm qualified to say so, but it did have its drawbacks. First, there were no characters roaming the park like in America. Secondly, the lines are horrendously long. And third, they didn't make any Mulan rides....they missed a golden opportunity there. But it was a great time, and it brought out my inner child.

-Zoe