Shanghai Disneyland Resort China

Shanghai Disney Resort opened on June 16, 2016, in Pudong, Shanghai, China. It’s the first Disney resort in mainland China and features the the largest castle of any Disney park, the world-first Zootopia-themed land, two themed hotels (with a third currently being built), and the shopping/dining district, Disneytown.

While the Shanghai Disneyland Resort China only consists of the one park, it is absolutely massive, at 225 acres in size. This makes making Shanghai Disneyland Resort bigger than both Disneyland Park (California) and Disneyland California Adventure Parks combined (157 acres).

Ride-wise, the park has 18 rides, compared to Disneyland California’s 35 (the park with the highest number of rides in it). You can guess from this that you will spend a lot of your day walking as it’s quite a distance between each ride, however not actually that many rides to do overall.

We spent two days in the park and devoted our time to exploring the unique features of the park as well as the top rides we had on our list to experience.

Key Features & Attractions at Shanghai Disneyland Resort China

Shanghai Disneyland Park

The main theme park, which features unique rides like Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure and a Zootopia-themed land, as well as the called the Enchanted Storybook Castle.

Accommodation

Official Disney accommodation includes the luxury Shanghai Disneyland Hotel and the family-friendly Toy Story Hotel. A third hotel is currently under construction.

We stayed at the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel (See below for more info on the hotel).

Disneytown

Disneytown is a shopping, dining, and entertainment district featuring international places to eat and shop. Located adjacent to the park, Disneytown is also the location of the early entry access point for hotel guests.

Shops include LEGO, Pandora and Pop Mart. Dining includes the Cheesecake Factory. The huge inflatable Donald is a must-see for cute photos.

Wishing Star Park

Wishing Star Park is a large public recreational area featuring a lake with a bird sanctuary, walking paths and a bridge that connects to the start of the Disneytown district.

Unique Attractions at Shanghai Disneyland Resort China

Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure

This ride is mind blowing! It starts similarly to the other Pirates rides around the world, but then morphes into an engineering masterpiece using massive wrap-around screens and advanced animatronics.

Zootopia Land and Zootopia: Hot Pursuit

The world’s first Zootopia-themed land, this is a very popular section of the park and is full of adorable photo ops. Zootopia: Hot Pursuit is the only ride in this “land”. It is a trackless, dark ride, putting guests into a police-car chase through the city’s districts.

Voyage to the Crystal Grotto

This is a slow boat ride that sails underneath the massive Enchanted Storybook Castle.

Camp Discovery Challenge Trails

The “trails” is very unique in that it is an interactive, rugged ropes course, set inside Adventure Isle featuring hidden ruins and waterfalls. It involves harnessing up and doing some active climbing.

Roaring Rapids

A river raft water ride that is centered around a mysterious cavern, and involves an encounter with a massive crocodile-like beast named Q’araq. This ride was closed in winter when we visited.

Top Attractions at Shanghai Disneyland Resort China

TRON Lightcycle Power Run

The original Tron ride, this is a fast, thrilling motorbike-style steel roller coaster that launches riders straight into sci-fi world of TRON. This ride is incredible and super popular so definitely needs early entry or a DPA to avoid a long wait.

Seven Dwarves Mine Train

Seven Dwarves Mine Train is an eternally popular family-friendly roller coaster featuring rocking mine cart vehicles, some lightly thrilling outdoor drops through a rocky landscape, and an indoor dark-ride scene with some very cute audio-animatronics of the dwarfs (singing in Mandarin). Similar to the other Mine Train rides around the world, this is a must-do ride for us in every country.

Parade

The Mulan float in the daily “Mickey’s Storybook Express” parade is only place in the world where you can see Mulan in her armour rather than her traditional princess dress!

Fireworks

Shanghai Disneyland’s nightly nighttime spectacular is called ILLUMINATE! A Nighttime Celebration. It takes place at the Enchanted Storybook Castle, typically starting between 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM (most often around 9:00 PM), featuring projection mapping, lasers, water fountains, flames, and fireworks.

The fireworks can be watched from across the Wishing Star Lake. A great view point is from the back side of the Disneyland Shanghai hotel, which is another reason the hotel makes for an excellent accommodation choice.

Unique Architectural & Walk-through Highlights

Enchanted Storybook Castle and Once Upon a Time Adventure

Representing all of the Disney princesses, the Enchanted Storybook Castle is the largest castle in any Disney park. The castle houses a royal restaurant, a boat ride, and the Once Upon a Time Adventure walk-through.

Alice in Wonderland Maze

The maze is a whimsical, large-scale walkthrough hedge maze, themed to Tim Burton’s live-action Alice in Wonderland film.

Merchandise

A special mention for the adorable Duffy and Friends mech that is available in Shanghai! These characters are only available to purchase in Asia and Shanghai Disneyland Resort China has an excellent range in shops outside of the park in Disneytown as well as inside.

What you need to know when visiting Shanghai Disneyland Resort China

Early entry

Early entry at Shanghai Disneyland Resort China lets guests into the park an hour before general admission. There are two types of early entry: one is a benefit that comes with staying at one of the Disney hotels, and the other can be purchased online. One of the biggest perks to staying at an official Disneyland hotel is not just the early entry benefit, but the access into the park.

The early entry location for hotel guests is seperate from the main entry – it’s located across from the Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Disneytown, which takes you right into the middle of the park, near the castle area. This is hugely beneficial to getting into the park ahead of the crowds lining up at the front gate and we found we could easily knock out at least two main rides during early entry, before the main gates opened.

App / park wifi

Shanghai Disneyland Resort has the trickiest app system we have used at any park, as the app only works while on the park Wi-Fi. You cannot use your own roaming sim and VPN and also access the park app at the same time. We had to ask a cast member how to actually get this working and she showed us how to turn off our roaming, connect to the park Wi-Fi and how to access the app.

We had issues with connectivity due to the spotty Wi-Fi which can be stressful as the park tickets and DPA (fast passes) are all inside the app. You can however also use your paper ticket that is issued at the gate when you first enter the park and this is what we ended up doing for most of our visit to avoid any stress with the app.

Highly suggest downloading the app before entering the park (we downloaded all apps we might need before leaving Australia just to be safe).

Disney Premier Access / Fast Passes

Since there aren’t a huge amount of rides and the park is huge, you can guess what that means – lots of people queuing for rides.

While early access helps with a few rides in the morning, Disney Premier Access (DPA) helps with rides throughout the rest of the day. There are two ways they can be purchased: in advance as a bundle, or on the day as a single ride.

DPA is digital only and must be purchased inside the official Shanghai Disney Resort app.

Buying a bundle in advance is cost effective if you want broad coverage of rides. The biggest benefit is that the rides have no fixed return time, so you can redeem them whenever you like. The downside of the bundles is they usually include a ride that doesn’t need a DPA so you do end up with at least one pretty useless DPA that you’ve paid for.

Buying a single ride is great if you just want to do one or two rides and can be purchased on the day. The downside is you will be given a fixed return time and must redeem the DPA during that time window.

Communicating

We used Google Translate with mixed results in China. We were lucky to find quite a few of the staff at Shanghai Disneyland Resort could speak English. Staff who were English-speakers had a special badge designating their ability to converse in English and were often summoned at the hotel or guest services locations when we had questions.

The majority of staff didn’t speak English and we were extremely grateful for their kindness in assisting us even when they couldn’t understand a word of what we were saying.

We had several cast members fixing our phones for us to help us with connecting to the park Wi-Fi, for example, or showing us how to us the local payment apps that were all in Chinese. A huge thank you to the wonderful cast members at every location throughout the park!

Where to stay: Shanghai Disneyland Resort

We had an incredible stay at the Shanghai Disneyland Resort. The Art-Bouveau-themed resort sits across the Wishing Star Lake from Shanghai Disneyland Resort, making it the closet hotel to the park.

Featuring 420 rooms and one restaurant, Lumière’s Kitchen, it’s a great base to explore the park and be able to return to the hotel to rest quickly or for a break to then go back again later to either the park or Disneytown.

We also enjoyed the cute little gifts that were included with the room.

The hotel offers water taxi or shuttle services to the theme park, however it’s only about a 15 minute walk, so we chose to walk to ensure we were at early entry as soon as possible and also to return again afterwards without waiting for a shuttle bus or water taxi to arrive.

Special Dining Mentions

Donald’s Dine ‘n Delights

Donald’s Dine ‘n Delights is a Donald Duck-themed casual bistro located in Disneytown just outside the main gates of Shanghai Disneyland. The menu features Western dishes with a twist and the food is the best we have eaten at a themed restaurant.

The CookieAnn Bakery Café

The CookieAnn Bakery Café is a 1950s vintage-styled lifestyle cafe located on Mickey Avenue at Shanghai Disneyland. They serve adorable baked goods and excellent crepes, which you can eat with a gorgeous castle view.

Lumière’s Kitchen

Lumière’s Kitchen is a Beauty and the Beast-inspired restaurant located on the ground floor of the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel. The restaurant is buffet-style and features a character dining experience for breakfast.

Cheesecake Factory

This is just a standard Cheesecake Factory but it’s worth noting that its an easy dining option when traveling with people with dietary restrictions or picky kids who just want simple food.

Il Paperino

This Italian-style gelato and ice cream parlor located on Mickey Avenue inside Shanghai Disneyland Park is absolutely adorable.

We picked up a The Donald Duck Gondolier Sundae here, which is a delicious ice cream assortment inside a detailed, reusable plastic gondola boat complete with a small figurine of Donald dressed as a Venetian gondolier.

Get more tips for visiting Shanghai and China with our Three Day Shanghai Itinerary First Timer’s Guide.