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A first timer’s guide to Shanghai Disneyland 2024 (Part 2) - The New Zootopia Area
This continues from Part 1 of our Shanghai Disney Resort series which you can read here.
Zootopia
The next day, we woke up earlier to try to make it to the park earlier. We’re not the ones who go to the parks for rope drop because for us that’s when there are some crowds. We usually aim to go right after the initial crowds have gone in.
This time, we were eager to go in early because of the new area that has just opened exclusive to Shanghai Disneyland - Zootopia! The previous day, we had seen the insane queue times of 90 minutes just to enter the area. There was then another 60-90 minutes for the Hot Pursuit trackless dark ride. It’s the only ride in this area. Besides that are eateries and merch shops.
With such crazy wait times, and the risk that the ride could be closed (it happened a few times on the first day) we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to ride Hot Pursuit. So we just went ahead to buy Premier Access. It costs 180 Yuan (about 30 SGD) per person and enabled us to also skip the queue to enter the land. We saved a ton of time with the Premier Access and found it totally worth it. These days (October 2024), you might not need the Premier Access anymore as there isn’t that queue to enter the land.
Hot Pursuit was an amazing ride. The queue experience itself was already amazing, with the brand new animatronics looking so realistic, the characters’ movements were so smooth! It’s a far cry from the older animatronics that move slowly and clunkily. The ride is a trackless ride with a fun story and ride experience, and it’s friendly for kids too.
The whole Zootopia area was filled with fun little (and large) references to the animals and tropes from the movie. By the way, the movie was renamed “Zootropolis” on Singapore’s Disney Plus, as well as in some other part of the world, just in case you were searching for it on the streaming service. One awesome part to look out for is a window in one of the buildings that will open and out comes Flash the sloth! There’s a whole mini story that plays out with dialogue (in Mandarin) that you can enjoy.
With so much to see and do in this unique new area, looks like we'll break up this post on the Disneyland park, so look out for more on the rest of the Disneyland park, Disneytown and the Toy Story Hotel in upcoming posts!
