Hong Kong – Day two – It’s all about the Sasha.

Sasha says:

We went to Chef Mickey, in our hotel, and we had waffles shaped like Mickey Mouse for breakfast. After that we set off to Disneyland on the bus. The shuttle bus that took us from the Hollywood Hotel to the actual Disneyland. We walked through the massive gate and saw a fountain of a whale with Mickey surfing its blowhole. He moved up and down! After we’d gone through the gates we walked down Main Street, which had all the shops on it, and went to Adventure land. We went on a boat cruise and saw crocodiles, elephants, giraffe, piranhas and hippos. They weren’t real of course but they sprayed water at us and we got really wet. The ride ended up by a volcano erupting and there was fire on the water which looked pretty cool (but of course it wasn’t a real volcano). W got wet by splashes from natives with poison darts! (They weren’t real either).

After that we caught a raft over to Tarzan’s tree house. Indigo impressed dad by playing “In the Jungle” on a collection of pots and pans they had set up as a xylophone. There was a pretend baby hanging in a tree that started crying when you walked past – but the crying sounded like Tarzan’s famous call! At the Leaky TIkis, they leaked water everywhere and played a nice little humming tune.

Then we went to Fantasy Land and we tried to pull the sword out of the stone. Apparently if you are pure enough you can pull the sword out of the stone – but neither I nor Indi could do it. We went on other rides including It’s a Small World After All , Mickey’s 3d adventure show, The Golden Mickeys and the carousel. Then we went to Tomorrow land. This was by far my favourite, and everybody else’s too. There was a car game where we got to actually drive. I discovered I’m not very good at steering and at the end Indi bumped into the back of dad’s and my car. We got to meet Stitch and go in flying saucers and we went on the Buzz Lightyear game – twice. Me and Indi loved it. Then we went on Space Mountain!! It was so scary! I’ll trust my mum again, at least in ride terms. She said it wouldn’t be scary but it totally freaked me out. We went to a cool café and at the front there was a cool rocket ship with mist coming out of the bottom, and later we had a Mickey Mouse shaped ice-cream.

We stayed around to watch the fireworks – it was so much fun. I think it was the best day of my life!! Then we had to get on the plane, yadda yadda yadda.
So that’s Sasha’s spin! It was good though, ot argument there. When you put the Disney ethos with the efficiency of the Chinese it makes for a pretty damn impressive theme park. Yeah, at one stage we even found ourselves closely watching a park employee (cast member) clean up a spilled mess of spaghetti. He did such a thorough job. It took him quite a while, just a little spill, really. We joked that in Australia, instead of moving the soiled bin out of the way and scrubbing the mess off the cement, they would have just moved the bin over the mess to hose it out later.

The only downside was that we then had to do the whole go-to-the-airport-fly-out-at-midnight thing – not easy when we’d been on our feet all day! A very long and very tiring day – but worth it for the silly-wide grins on Sasha and even Indi’s faces. So then it was on to Rome…

Should the next flight be part of this or next? Toughie. Suffice to say that after a couple of long days in Hong Kong, the idea of getting on a flight at midnight for 12 hours wasn’t exactly on top of the wish list. But we did. Unlike the rather comfortable Airbus we’d had to HK, we ended up on an older 747 – and it was kinda showing its age – primarily in the leg room and AV on-demand departments. Surely those seats up the front weren’t all full…?