HK Day 2: Part 2

Afternoon tea at the Peninsula was worth the wait.  After spending almost exactly 2 hours standing in the queue, we were swiftly seated and had our orders taken in maybe 5 minutes.  T chose the Organic Peninsula blend along with an iced cappuccino while I had the Peninsula afternoon blend.  Both of us had the regular "tea set" which came along with a lychee mousse topped with homemade organic strawberry jam.

After waiting so long, we (probably like everyone before us) felt somewhat entitled to a leisurely tea experience.  By now, the live music seemed to encourage us to linger over our tea rather than making us feel that the time was passing slowly.  The 5 or 6 piece group (hard to tell, as they were a level above us, mostly obscured from view by columns) played 3 song sets of popular American tunes between 10minute breaks.  They were very good, though.  I think I forgot to mention in the previous post that not 5 minutes after we walked into the hotel, the band played "Part of Your World" from the Little Mermaid.  It was like they were playing it for us!  [Our wedding music was adapted- cleverly and carefully by Brudder- from the score of the Little Mermaid.]  We thought that was pretty perfect, and they did play one or two other Disney songs.  I remember hearing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" anyway.

 

Though the edibles don't look like a lot in the photos, we were really quite full (maybe it was because we each drank 2 pots of tea) and couldn't finish the last 2 raisin scones.  One of the waiters swiftly boxed them up for us and we headed to Disneyland!

The taxi ride to Disneyland was about half an hour.  After seeing what we think was a building owned by my grandparents - it has a bathroom fixtures showroom in the bottom- I promptly fell asleep.  T woke me as we approached the gates welcoming us into the Disneyland Resort.  We were greeted in 3 languages by Cast Members who quickly determined our preferred language and took our luggage to deliver to our room (this 3 language greeting is something we are starting to get used to, and is not peculiar to Disney).  Check-in was quick and easy and we were happily surprised to find out that our room comes with complimentary park passes - enough for 7 days!  Perhaps we will spend more than half a day in the park after all.

After a short nap, we explored our hotel and the other one on property - the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel.  We are staying at Disney's Hollywood Hotel which I would equate to something like the Swan or Dolphin in WDW.  The room is similar to your standard American hotel room in terms of size, plus it has a tiny mini fridge.  It's significantly smaller than our room was at Tokyo "Dizunee Randuruu."  This hotel, like the Ambassador in Tokyo, is art deco themed, and reminds me of a land version of the cruise ships.  The lobby even smells like the lobby of the Dream.  There are 3 restaurants in the hotel - Chef Mickey's (looks similar to the one in Tokyo and WDW, we'll report back after breakfast tomorrow), The Lounge (looks... like a lounge...), and Hollywood and Dine (not much like Hollywood and Vine in Hollywood Studios in WDW, this is a small quick service sort of replacement for the lack of room service).

Chandelier in the Disneyland Hotel, not quite the same as the Roots' photo...

I had wanted to stay at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel because it is themed after the Grand Floridian in WDW.  Alas, because we booked through DVC, the lottery got us into Hollywood instead.  From the outside, it looks like a mini version of the Grand (minus the monorail, small houses, and DVC sections).  Inside, it's also a mini version of the Grand, complete with the decorative elevator shaft in the lobby.  But the artwork is much more heavily/overtly Disney themed, including a 2 story painting of Aurora's castle in the staircase leading to the conference rooms.  That hotel has a Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique on the bottom floor as well as 3 restaurants: The Enchanted Garden (looks like the one aboard the Dream, same general theming outside, anyway), The Crystal Lotus (T says they're supposed to have really good dim sum - perhaps we'll try), and Walt's Cafe (not sure what the theme was here, perhaps something from Edwardian Britain, because the waitresses were all wearing aprons like Mary Poppins's).  Unfortunately, all the restaurants were closing as we made our rounds, so we couldn't try any of them.

We learned a new shirt-rolling technique from Pinterest, so our clothes look so neat and tidy!

Back at the Hollywood, we settled on "Cafe Mickey" take-away sandwiches from Hollywood and Dine with a Sprite and watermelon juice.  Back in the room, we unpacked our bags, and settled in only to find that none of the available outlets appeared to be providing electricity.  Each of the outlets available have switches to turn them on and off, but possibly because we were attempting to plug in our power strip, none of them were working (we tested with an electric kettle provided in the room).  Of course, we'd just fully settled in (read: unpacked all the clean clothes), and I was 90% sure we'd need to change rooms.  A quick call to the front desk sent someone in less than 5 minutes who was able to flip a switch in the closet and fix the problem!  Hurrah!  So now, we have power, a pot of sanitized boiled water, and neatly arranged drawers of clean clothing.  T has also finished captioning all the photos on Flickr, so I think we're all caught up.  It's also 2:40am, so we'd better get to sleep!

Tomorrow:  The Big Buddha