Spring Break 2026: Hong Kong (Part Three) – Disneyland

Part One

Part Two

Knowing that travelling across the world and spending 10 days in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language can be overwhelming and exhausting, we planned our trip with the framework that it would get easier as we went along. Thus, we started in Kowloon, moved to Hong Kong Island, and ended at Disneyland.

Peter and I had discussed the idea of taking our kids to Disneyland a few times over the year. We both have fond memories of visiting Disneyland in California as kids. But it’s a big, expensive trip and we wanted to make it when our girls were the right age to enjoy it. Looking at the cost of it, I had joked over the years that I’d rather spend that money travelling internationally and visiting Disneyland in Tokyo, Paris, or Hong Kong. We considered seriously making the trip to Los Angeles for Spring Break in 2025 but then Trump was re-elected and there were terrible fires and we began looking elsewhere.

As soon as we started making serious plans to visit Hong Kong, we knew that Disneyland would be a part of it. Disneyland Hong Kong opened in 2005 so it obviously wasn’t there when I lived there. It’s located on Lantau Island and easily accessed by MTR. Because it’s outside of the main part of the city and because we wanted to embrace the whole experience, we opted to stay on-site, at one of the Disneyland Hotels. There are 3 hotels and we picked the Explorers Lodge, which is the mid-priced one. We were spoiled after our experiences with Dorsett but our room at the Explorers Lodge was large and clean and the resort had a lot of fun Disney details that the kids really enjoyed. The outdoor pool at our hotel was closed because of the season but it opened the last morning that we were there and so these Canadians definitely took advantage of that!

The MTR line that takes you to Disneyland runs from Sunny Bay to the theme park and as soon as you get on the train, your experience begins. The train has plush seats and Mickey Mouse-shaped windows and the announcements are done by Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy (in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English). It makes it pretty exciting and you start to get that feeling of magic right away.

We had pre-purchased two day passes and arrived the afternoon before we would enter the park itself. (Tickets were much cheaper than they would have been in California!) The MTR station lets you off close to the park entrance and we ended up walking from there to our hotel, which took about half an hour and was fairly hot and tiring. Every other time we took the free shuttle that frequently went back and forth. Both foot and car traffic were very minimal and after the bustle of Hong Kong Island, it was a bit strange to be somewhere so quiet.

Disneyland Hong Kong is quite a bit smaller than both Anaheim and Orlando and so was very do-able in two days. Being guests at the hotel, we had a separate entrance line which allowed us to get into the park more quickly at opening. From there, it was ours to explore! While Pearl has been to Playland in Vancouver twice, Rose had never even been on a roller coaster, so it was very exciting to get to experience all of this together.

I think I will always remember the looks of pure joy and excitement on my girls’ faces as they experienced Disneyland. In the end, that was my favourite part and over and over again, I found myself watching them to witness it.

Before Disneyland I would have said that my kids had had a lot of exposure to Disney but being there I realized that there were lots of movies they hadn’t seen. They were excited to visit the World of Frozen area of the park and we spent a fair amount of time there.

Not being a superfan Disney family (and, probably, because we don’t have super little kids), we weren’t focused on meeting characters. We saw Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and Oaken wandering around but none of us had much desire to line up for over an hour to meet them. This freed up more time for rides and explorations. The park is extremely well done with all of its details and designs and even in long lines for rides, there is so much to look at and experience that we rarely felt like we were wasting our day.

As well, Disneyland Hong Kong features a lot of characters that we were unfamiliar with. Duffy and Friends are extremely popular in Asia but entirely unknown in our part of the world. While the entrance to Disneyland still has the iconic features of Main Street USA, it obviously doesn’t focus on America and its presidents. Instead, Duffy is the focus here.

Knowing we wanted to spend the evening at the park, we headed back to our hotel for a couple of hours in the afternoon in order to rest and get out of the sun. The weather the entire time we were at Disneyland was high 20s, no rain, which was great but fairly hot at times.

We did find some spots to cool off.

In the afternoon, as we were walking back to the park, we were stopped by a couple from (I think) England. They were leaving for the day but still had a few Premiere Access passes left unused. These allowed you to skip the line on certain rides, something that could save you 45 to 60+ minutes. Since the passes had to be used that day, they didn’t need them anymore and gave them to us. This generous gesture allowed us to skip two long line-ups and made the second section of our first day at Disneyland extra fun.

By the end of the first day, we had been on most of the rides and through every section of the park. We joined the crowds near Cinderella’s castle for the evening show. Peter and I both recalled the Electric Parade and the fireworks at Disney as children but weren’t entirely sure what to expect here. But we joined the throngs and patiently waited. In the end, the show is a series of movie clips projected, along with music, against the backdrop of the castle. There are also water features, fireworks, and drones. It was fun and impressively done but also probably longer than I would have chosen. We were glad we watched it, but we also all agreed that on our second night we would take advantage of everybody else watching the show and go ride our favourite roller coasters instead.

On our second day at Disney, we got more strategic. We aimed for busier rides at the beginning of the day when we knew lines would be shorter. We also made good use of the Disneyland Hong Kong app, which tells you in real time how long waits are at various spots. We split up a couple of times in order for the girls to go on the rides they wanted (and once so that Peter didn’t have to re-ride one that made him nauseous).

I think we re-rode our favourite ride – the Grizzly Mountain mine carts – four times that day!

You could definitely do all of Disneyland HK in one day, especially if you were strategic about it, but having two days really was ideal. It let us move at a more leisurely pace and allowed us to revisit rides and spots we really enjoyed. We did stop to view some street performances and a musical Moana show but, like meeting characters, that wasn’t really where our kids’ interests lay.

Depending on the kind of person you are, you may have noticed that I haven’t said much about food yet. So far in Hong Kong, we had been spoiled when it came to food and this did shift when we went to Disneyland. We knew that food at the park would be expensive and so we knew that we didn’t plan to eat there much. Our hotel had multiple restaurants and, of course, there are many places to eat at the park. We weren’t against it altogether, but we could have easily doubled our expenses by eating solely at Disneyland. Our initial plan was to stock up on snacks and sandwiches at the MTR station before getting on the Disneyland train. Well, if you have stumbled across this blog while planning your own trip, let me warn you: You cannot do this! While every other MTR station in Hong Kong is essentially a mall and finding a 7-11 is as easy as turning around, that is not the case at Sunny Bay. There’s nothing there!

So we got on the train without much food. There is one 7-11 on the Disneyland property, about a 20 minute walk from our hotel and so on our first afternoon, Peter went there and got us some food but found that options were limited. For dinner that night, we had a selection of ramen, cooked with the hot water provided in our room.

We actually had a lot of fun trying out the different ramens and rating them. The next day, while the girls and I had a rest time, Peter went further afield and took another MTR to find a grocery store. There he was able to stock up on sandwiches, onigiri, fruit, yogurt, drinks, and baked goods. With that, we took food into the park with us and snacked and ate as we chose. (There was a nice, covered picnic area near to the Arendelle Castle.)

Lest you think we’re terrible parents, we did get the girls ice cream sundaes on Day 2 and they were enormous and delicious! (Peter and I split one.) And we let them pick out souvenirs at the shops.

Disneyland is a corporation and I think it makes sense that people have a lot of different feelings about it. But they do theme parks well and I’m really thankful that we had the opportunity to experience this with our kids while they are kids.

After a morning swim once the pool opened for the season, we checked out of the Explorer Lodge. Our flight left that evening so we had a good chunk of the day to still be in the city. We gave Pearl and Rose some options and in the end they chose to go back to Mongkok and revisit some of our favourite spots. The Dorsett Mongkok kindly allowed us to stash our bags there and we spent an afternoon walking around, visiting the park with the koi and turtles, and stocking up at our favourite bakery.

We flew out of Hong Kong on Thursday evening at 7:25pm and arrived in Vancouver on that same Thursday at about 3:30pm. It was exhausting and a lot less exciting to get on the SkyTrain and the bus than it had been two weeks previously but it was also quite delightful to return home.