Shanghai Disneyland 2024 (Part 1)

Oct 1

4 min read

There was a period of time when I thought I would never go to Shanghai Disneyland because of all the negative talk surrounding it. You probably have heard some of it too, like disorderly queues (if people even queued), lots of shoving and inconsiderate behaviour, and so on. Like in this YouTube video.

But we did some research (like this other YouTube video) and there was a good mix of positive and negative experiences that people shared. There was a sense that things were improving over time. Plus, we were starting to think of going to every Disney park around the world. So after lots of deliberating, we finally booked our tickets to visit Shanghai Disney Resort for the first time in forever!

Find the not so hidden Duffy friend

A trip to Shanghai

We had never been to Shanghai so thought what better time to might as well squeeze in some city sightseeing with the Disney park. So it was a 5 day 4 night trip, with days 1 to 3 in the city, and days 3 to 5 in Shanghai Disney Resort.

A foggy/smoggy Bund

We did more research on when might be the time of the year with the lowest crowds, and figured that it might be in the winter months, so we booked tickets for January. Later on it turned out that other months had even lower crowds like September (from random checking of the wait times on the app).

Here's a crowd calendar on Thrill Data.

Getting there

We found some great deals on China Eastern from Singapore to Shanghai. The flight was about 5 hours. Economy tickets on China Eastern were about SGD600, and Business tickets were at SGD1,600 - which are quite a steal! Considering Economy on Singapore Airlines was about SGD800-1,000 and Business were - wait for it, SGD3,400 (whut!).

Secret things I find on Google Flights

Getting from the city centre (around the Bund) to the Disney Resort took about 30-40 minutes using DiDi, which is their local version of Uber/Grab. Prices are really reasonable (about SGD20-25), cheaper than Singapore, and with the convenience it was definitely more worth it than taking the train, which will take much longer and requires changing trains. Not forgetting having to lug your luggage around! A random memory from the DiDi ride was that the car had a sweaty smell heh.

View from our DiDi ride hail

Hotel accommodation

Shanghai Disney Resort has two hotels at the moment - the Disneyland Hotel and the Toy Story Hotel. We wanted to experience the opulence and luxury at the former but it was really expensive. At the time of our research it was about SGD800+ compared to Toy Story’s SGD300+. Of course this will change based on the dates. For example, a quick check for January 2025 shows SGD640 compared to SGD476. So we stayed at the Toy Story Hotel, which was awesome in its own way! More on that in the next post.

Screenshot: Shanghai Disney Resort booking page for Jan 2025

By the way, a third hotel is currently in the works! Details are scarce at the moment, all we know is that it’ll be a deluxe hotel with 400 rooms. The Shanghai Disneyland Hotel has 420 rooms, while the Toy Story Hotel has 795.

Check in day

Initially, we hadn’t planned to go the Disneyland park on the day we travelled from the city to the resort. We had planned to just check in to our hotel and explore the place, chill, and check out Disneytown - more on that in the next post (this phrase looks familiar).

Having checked in at 2pm, we thought, why not just enter the park today instead of waiting for tomorrow? So that’s what we did. We had already pre-booked tickets for the next day. We went to the hotel concierge to ask if we could buy tickets and if there were half-day ones. Lo and behold they did indeed have the half-day tickets. These weren’t available for purchase on the website so it was a pleasant surprise. Prices were about half of the full-day tickets. That’s one perk of being a Disney hotel guest!

Another benefit was the complimentary shuttle bus from the hotel to the park area. In the mornings, there are buses that bring you to the hotel guest entrance at the side of the park. This brings you straight into an area just before Tomorrowland. You’ll get to avoid the longer walk from the bus bay to the main entrance and having to queue with the larger crowds.

getting from the shuttle bus dropoff points to the shanghai disneyland park

A is where the hotel shuttle bus can drop you in the mornings. The red path brings you to the side entrance.
B is where the shuttle buses usually drop guests and you’ll have to walk along the pink path to the main entrance of the park.

The park itself

We were super excited as we headed towards the park. The feeling of going to an entirely new theme park for the first time! And not just any park but Disneyland! Priceless feeling that.

There were a few rides that we had at the top of our list - Pirates of the Caribbean and Tron. We had never taken Tron before since the only other one is in the US. And from what we’ve researched, this Pirates ride is nothing like the others around the world. We’ve taken the ride in other parks and they’re slow and chill, but this was - whew. You’ve just got to experience it yourself, highly recommended. The action, immersiveness, effects - imagineering at its best. We managed to take it twice in the end. Both times, the queues weren’t too bad, about a 15 minute wait.

I took Tron after dark and the effects were awesome. It’s a rare Disneyland roller coaster! I’d say it’s pretty mild, no loops and drops, more of an exciting train ride with lots of cool light effects. There was a long queue of about 60-90 minutes the whole time we were there so I just got the Express Pass to skip the line.