Hong Kong's playgrounds

 We woke up early to play at Disneyland. The park is less than 10 years old and I had heard that it wasn't good, but how often am I in Asia, let alone Hong Kong, and at only $60 US dollars per person, how could we not?! Upon arrival, we saw Main Street and the castle....it looked tiny. Smallest castle I've ever seen in a Disney park (and I've now seen 4 of them). The park was clean and EMPTY.

Have you ever had a dream where you are the only person in Disneyland? This pretty much happened today. At one point in Adventureland, I turned to Aaron and said "where IS everybody?!" The park is way smaller and they're still getting their bearings, but the small changes to make this park special really surprised me. 

 We went to Grizzly Gulch, a wild west abandoned town (was it supposed to be abandoned or was it just because there was no one there?) with a big bear problem. The runaway mine car coaster was fun, but very smooth. So smooth that we were a little bored. It had all the components of a great disney ride so we thought it would be a great tester coaster for children. The best part was going backwards and the bears....cute little hungry bears. We walked back around and hopped on a second time. Mickey and Minnie were there as well, and there were 2 people in line....2?! Not 20, not 200, but 2!!!

 We then walked over to Mystic Manor, a ride that is married to the Chinese park for 5 years.....good job Asia, holding my new favorite ride hostage. It's essentially their Haunted Mansion, minus the ghosts. There's an art collector Lord Henry and his friend and pet monkey, Albert (love Albert). They have a shit ton of art in their mansion and have just discovered a new music box with magical powers that make inanimate objects come to life....and wouldn't you know, Albert opens said box. The technology for this ride was amazing. Both Aaron and I loved it and went on it again at the end of the day. The wait was less than 10 minutes both times.

 Fantasyland was small, but all the lines were here. I guess HK Disney is more for toddlers. Minnie was on Dumbo. I have never seen the characters ride the rides. How special. I heard some girl call out "Millie" so I guess Minnie has a different name in different parts of the world. We saw the Golden Mickeys show and Mickey was called "Mike-ay". We also got to hear the Fab 5 all in Chinese.

 How fun that I caught the janitor drummers. I thought they stopped doing these. We also checked out Space Mountain  and once again, there was no line! Went on it twice in a row and man, it's so good! We then left (after 5 hours) for Kowloon to check out some night markets, searching for a cable that Aaron left at home. No luck. Then it was off to Lan Kwai where we walked around, and finally decided on soup dumplings for dinner. My favorite part was the red bean paste baos.

 We took the ding dings to Happy Valley Horse Race Track and Aaron got a frozen kirin beer. I thought it was taste good, but he was unhappy with it (though he could've fooled me as he finished it all). We stayed for 2 races.

 The first race, my horse didn't even get in the top 4! Shameful!

The second race however, I won the quinella place! I bet 20 HK and won 91! Yeah me! (To be fair, Aaron helped pick my numbers, so go him!)