Feature Article: Hong Kong Disneyland - A Review - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
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We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Hong Kong Disneyland (HKDL) opened in September 2005, the fifth Disney resort in the world. From the start, the park was surrounded by controversies over problems with crowd control and cultural sensitivities. I decided to see the park for myself in March when I visited a friend who was studying in Hong Kong. I arrived at Hong Kong International Airport (Chep Lap Kok) around 10:30 pm. Hong Kong Disneyland is located on Lantau Island, west of the more populous areas. There are three colors of taxis in Hong Kong, red, green, and blue, each color assigned to different parts of the city. We needed a blue Lantau taxi but at this late hour, all we saw were reds and greens. We convinced a green taxi driver to take us to Lantau and by midnight, we were in our room at the Hollywood Hotel. The Hollywood Hotel would be the equivalent of a moderate resort at Walt Disney World. The décor is Art Deco. There is a lot of wood and chrome – very southern California! Amenities at the hotel include take-home Classic Mickey slippers for the whole family, toiletries (the bottles have Mickey ears!), stationery, and free bottled water. There were also robes in the closet to use during our stay. Your other option for lodging is the deluxe Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel, a copy of Disney's Grand Floridian Resort.
My hotel room rate was 1100HKD ($142US) per night during Regular season for a standard Garden View room (the other choices are Sea View or Park View). You can purchase park admission at the hotel's reception desk. Unlike the American parks, there do not seem to be legitimate discount ticket brokers and there is no difference in price between advance purchase and gate price. There are three types of park tickets, Regular, Peak, and Special. We visited on Friday, a Regular day. Peak tickets are for weekends and school vacation periods. Special tickets are for specific dates, such as the one-week New Year’s vacation, Golden Week, or Christmas. There are three levels of pricing - Adult (11-65), Child (3-11), and Seniors (65+). Our Regular Adult tickets were 295HKD ($38US).
We woke early and shared a breakfast of chow mein and mango pudding ($4US) at the Hollywood & Dine counter service restaurant. Afterwards, we walked around the grounds, checking out the pool, concessions, and playground, all of them retro-Southern California-themed. It was a bit chilly that morning (
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