Hong Kong : Ocean Park (25-11-2011)

We initially scheduled Ocean Park to be on a Sunday, but due to the Christmas season approaching and also Malaysia's and Singapore's school holidays, we anticipated there to be a big crowd on weekends. We pushed forward Ocean Park to a Friday but it turned out that the place is really packed!


Entry passes to Ocean Park is marked with Ocean Park's animals. I think the passes in Hong Kong are always so colourful and cute. Upon arrival, we found the wind to be quite strong. The weather is fine for the day. Nice day to walk around and explore the park. This park is definitely bigger than Hong Kong Disneyland.



After getting the park maps and schedule for showtime, Uncle Othniel and little Brendan started scrutinising the maps. While Disneyland itinerary was mostly mapped out by Chanel and myself, Ocean Park's highlights was practically marked by the guys. Unfortunately, most of the rides are more suitable for older kids.

 

We started by taking the cable car up to The Summit where most of the "chee-kek" rides are. For us, the main focus at The Summit will be the marine mammals show at the Ocean Theatre. There are tons of rides like the crazy roller coaster rides, Flying Swing, The Abyss, Eagle, and many more. I would have love all this if I'm still a teenager, however now, I'd rather just standby and watch. Some of the rides at The Summit are not for the faint hearted. My kids would love to go for it if not for the age and height requirement. Oh, thank goodness. haha.



Taking the cable car up to The Summit. You get spectacular views of Ocean Park Waterfront and overlooking Ocean Park's area.

  

The top left picture here is actually many, many toys vending machines. Just so many of them to tempt young kids. Here, we see Eryn posing with a Mermaid and the kids taking the kiddish train ride "Toto The Loco". The kids got excited and posted inside the huge teeth. Err..... I don't know what species that would be. A shark, maybe?



The marine mammals and trainers show at the Ocean Theatre. The dolphins are such fine creatures. They're a sight to behold.  The kids were thrilled in seeing a real sea lion and was amazed at their huge sizes!



One of the two major giddy roller coaster rides in Ocean Park. Just looking at this from the top of the Ferris Wheel makes my tummy churn. Can't imagine going through this. The previous day's Space Mountain ride in Hong Kong Disneyland made me feel like puking. This would probably make be faint. This ride was close though. We later found out that another monsterous roller coaster ride was located near the Raging River ride. Apparently, this roller coaster ride was not in the Ocean Park map. Must be something new, I think.



View from the gondola on the top of the Ferris Wheel.



The interesting looking train called the "Ocean Express" which we took from The Summit to get back to The Waterfront. This ride is so much more faster compared to the cable car. The train resemble a submersible machine. It's a little dark in there and it looks like we are riding in the sea, with videos of the sea above us, on the ceiling of the train.



The Ocean Express Summit Station looks really cool.

 

Kids love this place. Nice place to just walk around and 'lepak' too. It's not really that cold. Heard that the summer heat can be a hindrance. So, make sure you plan your trip during November  which I think would be a good time to go.

 

More fun stuffs to see and do. Those cute jellyfish keychain are so cute.

 

Hey, what am I doing with 6 kids on the Frog Hopper ride? hahaha.... Well, for each ride, only one adult is allowed and therefore, I'm the "chosen" one. Looks like a kiddish ride, but you can see the kids' faces that the hopping can make your heart skip a beat or two!

 

The panda  bears we saw. Managed to take one during feeding time. The rest were sleeping. The picture below the panda pictures is Brendan and Jeriel with Ocean Park's mascot.

 

The Grand Aquarium is amazing. There are tons and tons of fishes and sea animals and lots and lots of sharks swimming around. Here, we see colourful sea cucumbers, starfish, a sea dragon and squids. There are many other other fishes as well swimming in huge aquariums. There's even big snow crabs and a very, very huge sand shark that looked bigger than a human! The photo we took of it wasn't that clear, so am not posting it here.

  

Little baby sharks swimming around in one of the tanks

  Sharks, sting rays, fishes, swimming in one of the tanks in the Grand Aquarium, Ocean Park.

"Symbio!" -a multi-media nighttime spectacular 360° water screen show at the Aqua City Lagoon in Ocean Park, Hong Kong

Hong Kong Disneyland (24-11-2011)

The following day after our arrival, we went to Hong Kong Disneyland. Although it was a Thursday, it was quite crowded.


We got our cute Disneyland entry passes. It was such a nice and sunny day.



Disneyland, here we come! Ya, feel shy only, to say that this is my first Disneyland trip too.

 



Right in the middle of Main Street lies a tall Christmas tree. Everything in here is so fun and colourful.

 

The front and back view of the Disneyland Rail Station near the entrance of Hong Kong Disneyland. We took the train ride to Fantasyland as our first itinerary of the day.

  

Goofy, Minnie and Mickey Mouse joined us for a ride on Dumbo The Flying Elephant too!



See the boarding pass? That will be given while you are queueing up for the Dumbo The Flying Elephant Ride which will be collected once you're in the Dumbo ride.

  

In a rush to go for a show, we saw Tinkerbell!! Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stop by and take a photo with her. In fact, we didn't have the chance to snap a photo together with any of the Disney characters due to the long queue which I think can take at least 20 minutes.



The newly opened Toy Storyland. We didn't manage to go for any of the rides here. Brendan wanted to go on the Slinky Dog but we had to negotiate with him for other rides as we had to rush for The Golden Mickey Show. Most shows require you to be present 30 minutes before showtime.

 

We queued up for about half hour for this Soldier Parachute Jump before decided to call it quits. We didn't want to miss our Golden Mickey Show and therefore, we didn't manage to experience this new ride in Disneyland. I think the queue is easily 45 minutes long.



The Golden Mickey Show!! This was the show that made us missed the rides in Toy Storyland. It's one of the main shows and it's truly a remarkable performance they have there. Not to be missed.

 

Beauty and the Beast dance performance. Sooooo romantic.

 

The casts from The Golden Mickey Show - you definitely won't miss the main characters like Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Stitch, the characters from Toy Storyland, Belle and many more.



Colourful balloons that lights up at night!

 

Flights of the Fantasy Parade is a must to see. It is only shown once a day in the afternoon and therefore, it would be good to grab a good place prior to the parade to get a clear, good view of the whole parade. Dumbo The Elephant was the first car parade to show up .



Winnie the Pooh and friends. Tigger and Eeyore are so cute!!



It's amazing to see people strapped to harnesses springing up and down. They're the tiny little "bees" jumping on the trampoline.



The Lion King and jungle characters

 

Lilo and Stitch

  

Tinkerbell and cute little ferries on little lady bug cars 

 

Disney princesses.



One of the "fairy" pulled out some kids from the crowd to have a dance in the parade.




Toy Storyland toy characters. They look just like the ones in the cartoons, except that these ones are bigger than humans instead of the other way round.



One of the happening area : Tomorrowland. A warning for those who are afraid of fast roller coaster. Avoid Space Mountain. It will drive you crazy. Brendan and his friend, Jeriel, went for two rounds. Chanel and I went in without thinking and came out 'mabuk' for a while. hehehehe...We screamed our heads off. Well, literally.



Wooooo.... I love the castle at sunset. It's so beautiful!!



We visited the toilet a lot in Disneyland. Apparently, the fever Eryn developed was due to her stomach pain and diarrhoea. She practically visited the ladies every hour and kept complaining of stomach ache. What an adventure. Sigh!

The fastpass machine. This prints out the fastpass tickets for faster entry into three of the rides in the park i.e. Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, Space Mountain and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. This saves you lots of time as you can always come back at the stipulated time with minimal queueing time.



Day and night scene for "It's A Small World". So pretty right?




Different illuminations at night at the castle. I'm in dreamland.......




One of the photo taken in "It's A Small World". Most of the other photos taken are not so clear.




Such a wonderful sight!




We spent some time lingering at Main Street at closing time. It was "snowing" and we had fun in the snow and looking at the almost empty street while waiting for friends to finish shopping.




Cheerful mood after Hong Kong Disneyland. All feeling extremely tired, especially Eryn who went to the toilet more than a dozen times!! We actually spent  approximately 12 hours in Disneyland (^--^)



Taking the MTR train from Disneyland to Sunny Bay for transit to Tung Chung. From Tung Chung, we had to take a commuter bus. It was too late to take the hotel shuttle from Disneyland, and Tung Chung too. I love those Mickey windows and the Mickey handrails on the train. So, it's worth spending more time back in Disneyland and miss the hotel shuttle. At least this would be an interesting experience for the kids.

Here are some snippets of some videos taken in Hong Kong Disneyland  :

Fireworks in Hong Kong Disneyland

The Golden Mickey Show
Festival of the Lion King Show
The Toy Soldier Parachute Jump at the newly opened Toy Storyland. The queue for this ride is tremendously long.

Hong Kong vacation 23rd-28th Nov. 2011

We recently took the kids to Hong Kong for our first ever family overseas trip. We have kept this a secret from the kids until the night before we were to fly.

When I took the kids to make their passport two weeks earlier, they asked what is a passport and after explaining it to them, they asked why do they need the passport.

We went together with Chanel and her family. It started when Chanel called sometime in July (I think) to ask whether I'm keen to go for family trip to Hong Kong together. It was quite a rush decision at that point of time and after discussing with hubby, we decided to go for it. We were lucky that we got extremely good rates to stay in Hong Kong Skycity Marriott Hotel at a fraction of the actual cost.

A quick check with hubby's Enrich points showed that he has some points expiring in December this year and is good for a one way trip for two adults. However, buying the tickets for the kids separately is quite costly. We took Air Asia there and came back with MAS. The rates we got for Air Asia were considered quite expensive too. Oh well, you can't have it all.

Thus, began the journey of lots of planning and researching on our itinerary for a 6 days 5 nights trip, or rather, a full 4 days trip as the first and last days were our arrival and departure days.

Kids eating french fries while waiting for our hotel shuttle at the Hong Kong International Airport. Noticed the mask below Eryn's mouth? Upon arrival, Eryn was diagnosed as having fever at 39.5c. We were called to fill in some forms and and interview to check on the symptoms for bird blu. Gosh, that was really a bad start for us cos we've just arrived Hong Kong. The airport health authorities told us that if Eryn's fever is not down below 37c, we'll have to see a doctor and give him the airport health check-up slip.



Our 6 days 5 nights stay in the 5-star Hong Kong Skycity Marriott Hotel. The room is quite big with two double bed and a sofa too. What a pleasant stay we have there. Which was also the reason why we forgo staying a night in Hong Kong Disneyland Resort which would have cost us at least 4-5 times I believe.




Brendan and Eryn looking out from our hotel window the next morning (day 2). We have arrived Hong Kong at night around 8:20pm and by the time we reached the hotel after the health interview, buying kids' paracetamol and a quick dinner, it was almost 11pm. Eryn didn't have a good sleep, kept tossing and turning due to her fever. As Chanel as arrived earlier than us, she had dinner with Jazz, who was kind to pass over her daughter's, Faythe's unopen bottle of fever medicine from Malaysia. I kept getting up because of Eryn and only manage a total of four hours sleep.



The cards on the left are Octopus cards for two adults and two children. If you are visiting Hong Kong for a few days and plan to travel around a lot, the Octopus card is extremely convenient to use. The card on the right is our Hong Kong Skycity Marriott room card.

Will continue to blog and post more photos on our Hong Kong trip later on.