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Sunday morning we hopped over to the grocery store at Parkview and bought some Spinach Bagels and cream cheese (a regular part of our morning routine). Once we were all ready to go, we hopped on the MTR (subway) and made our way to the Disney line. Disneyland has their very own subway system from the MTR to the park. Their train is outfitted with windows in the shape of the Mickey Mouse brand. Even the handlebars you hold onto while traveling were in the shape of Mickey’s head.

The train dropped us off at the entrance to Disneyland, where there seemed to be a lot more people than there should be for a rehearsal day. The park doesn’t open until mid-September, but until then they’ve been

Weather was mixed all day. It was humid as all hell the entire day, but the rain would go away for a while, then come back with a vengeance. No problem, when it rained bad we’d either take in a show or go stand in a ride’s queue line to get out of the rain.

First off I should explain why we were at Hong Kong Disneyland. Sharon’s friend Carrie has been working at the park for the past five months on one of their two live shows. She’s working on “The Golden Mickey’s,” a live-action show I’ll tell you a bit more about later. I believe her title is Production Coordinator or Production Manager. Basically, she makes sure everyone stays in budget. She’s been working hard, long hours on this show, usually from very early in the morning to very late at night. Well, the park is set to open next month, but until then they’re holding rehearsal days to make sure everything runs smoothly once they open to the masses. Only 5000 people are allowed into the park on a rehearsal day, which is very nice considering they’re expecting 25,000+ when the park opens.

So, we got off the Disneyfied subway and made our way to the park. The entrance to the park was quite packed with people. Far too many for them all to be there for rehearsal day. It became clear shortly that many of them were there just to look and brought along their very, very disappointed children. I saw a number of kids crying as we made our way to the entrance of the park. Poor kids. You only have to wait one more month!

As we entered the park we got our first taste of the Americanized names the employees, errr, cast members use. Most of these names are actually direct translations from their Chinese names. I saw simple names like Tracy and Mike, but also saw a guy named Jekyl and Jackson and Carrie told me there’s a guy with Fat Pig on his name tag, as well as an Alien and Salami. Love it! The staff was unbelievably helpful and sweet. We were greeted with, “Have a magical day” at the front gate and people waving at us with gloves that resembled Mickey’s hands. Scary ass four fingered freaks!

In Hong Kong, Mickey and Minnie Mouse are big time popular, but they actually have Chinese names. They’re known as Mi-Kay and My-Lei Losu.

We entered the park and walked down Main Street towards the castle you find at every Disney theme park. Now, this one looks much smaller than the one at Disneyland in Los Angeles. I’ve been told two different explanations for this. One was that they actually made the castle 2/3’s normal size since the park has less land than some others. The second explanation was that it was actually full sized, but on flat land versus having been propped up a number of feet like in Anaheim. The reason for this was to ensure an unobstructed view of the beautiful mountain side behind the castle. Either way it looks smaller. Whether it actually is or not I’m not certain.

We made our way to the Plaza Inn restaurant to meet Carrie during her lunch break. As we entered they had little plastic bags for us to put our rather wet umbrellas in and even greeted us with a hand towel to help dry ourselves off. I was expected some sort of Americanized burger joint, but instead was pleasantly surprised by Dim Sum faire, which wasn’t at all bad. We sat and talked about the park, then about an hour or so later we walked across the park to the Storybook Theatre to check out Carrie’s show, “The Golden Mickey’s.”

The show’s basic premise was that it was an award show which was being covered by a reporter named Bebe, a real life human being versus a character. The show was “giving away” awards recognizing Friendship, Heroes, Adventure and Romance. It was a mixed live action/filmed video presentation that I told Carrie afterward I rather resented enjoying as much as I did. She told us ahead of time that it was a half hour show, at which point I thought to myself, “Christ, I’m gonna have to sit here for half an hour watching a bunch of schlock.” Now, as long as you don’t think about it too deeply (and really, why would you?), you’ll really end up enjoying it.

It was odd to watch the show, too, as while the musical numbers were all in English, the bridge pieces were all in Cantonese. You can make out the basic gist of things, but I certainly didn’t understand what they were saying. Pretty much after Bebe came out and said “Hello,” I couldn’t understand anything else.

The show was a real Broadway production style, along the lines of Disney’s successful “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Lion King” stage plays. Most of Disney’s most popular films were represented in the show, including big numbers for “Toy Story,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Tarzan” (the guy who played him had the ladies swooning), “Mulan,” “Lilo & Stitch,” “The Little Mermaid” (the woman playing the little mermaid had the guys panting) and “Beauty and the Beast.” The “Tarzan” piece was probably the best, with all sorts of crazy acrobatics and what not. Like I said earlier, even little ol’ cynical Jonah came away enjoying the show and I’m not just saying that because I know someone who’s sweated for months on the show. It’s actually quite good.

After the show Jimmy, Sharon and I left Carrie to go do her work and we began to explore the park. For those of you who’ve visited the park in Los Angeles, Hong Kong Disneyland will seem small. Hell, for anyone who visits Hong Kong Disneyland, the park will seem small because it is small. There is Main Street U.S.A., as you’d expect, but there are only three lands– Adventureland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland– and the number of rides is rather small. Even smaller is the number of rides adults will truly love, although there were a few we didn’t check out such as the Winnie the Pooh ride because, hell, a grown man has a hard time facing up to the fact he’s riding around on a Winnie the Pooh ride. But you’d sort of expect the park to be small considering it’s brand new and they have plenty of land with which to expand onto. The Autopia is set to debut at the park in 2006.

HK Disneyland’s version of Space Mountain is fantastic. They’ve taken the stuck-in-the’60s ride at the Anaheim location and updated it with a 21st century feel. The boarding station is far better, absent the weird ‘60s feel spaceship and décor. Instead it’s been replace by a more celestial set-up with plenty of black lighting for mood. The ride in Anaheim is probably my favorite roller coaster of all time and the HK version is even better. Once again, updated look and feel inside and a generally smoother ride. It seems even faster, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been on the ride in Anaheim.

Easily the best ride at HK Disneyland is Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters. Think Mr. Toads Wild Ride meets the Haunted Mansion, but with an interactive spin. You hop onto a car, a “Star Cruiser,” on a moving conveyor belt, much like with the Haunted Mansion, and go through room after room of fun stuffs, much like Mr. Toads Wild Ride, but you’ve also got yourself an Astro Blaster with which to blast targets and defeat the Evil Emperor Zurg! And it even keeps a tally of your score! Although the score reset itself for some of us randomly, but whatever. You also can turn your car around 360 degrees, so as to mess up your passenger if you like. It was really a blast! Err, bad choice of words. We had so much fun on it we went twice. Carrie joined us the first time and she kicked all our asses, while Jimmy kicked ass on the ride the second time.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the park. We took in the Festival of the Lion King show, the only other show currently running at the park. While the design of the theater (it’s a show “in the round” as they say) and the costumes were quite impressive, the show itself wasn’t all that great. I guess I should note I saw the Broadway plan, too, and didn’t like it much either, aside from the costuming and sets. The story just isn’t all that compelling to me. Probably the best part of the show was in the very beginning. They had a group of warm up drummers in costume who were free styling some rhythms that really got the crowd going.

Also hurting this show were a few technical difficulties and one rather scary moment. Towards the end of the show our come two fire dancers with fire sticks a blazing. Everything’s going great, the sticks are being swung and flipped around with great skill, when suddenly on of the sticks breaks and one end of it falls to the ground! Suddenly there’s half a stick on the ground and all I could think was, “Fuck, what if that had flown into the audience?” The dancer picked the flaming stick up with his hand, threw it across the room towards one of the exits and ended up having to do it a second time because it didn’t go far enough the first time. It was actually a pretty scary moment, but all were safe once it was off stage and someone had come to stamp it out. I was told by a friend of Carrie’s after the show that the guy was fine and in fact was just really pissed that it happened. These guys take their jobs very seriously and he was terribly disappointed he didn’t get to complete his act.

Notably missing from the park was It’s a Small World. I thought it was an odd choice not to include, but familiars such as the Tea Cups, Dumbo, the Carousel and the Jungle Cruise were all there.

Overall I had a really enjoyable time at HK Disneyland. Had there been a full park, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it quite as much, but having a park with only 5000 people in it didn’t suck at all.

We met back up with Carrie at the end of the day, hopped back onto the Subway and went to a Thai place in town, the name of which escapes me right now. Quite excellent Thai food, that. The restaurant was located inside a massive mall right off a Subway station. It must have been five or six stories tall, with a massive restaurant taking up a good portion of the bottom floor. I’ve got a picture of it that I’ll post later on.

I believe that was it for Sunday night. My note taking dropped off precipitously, unfortunately, a mistake I won’t be making again on this trip. More soon with a look at Monday and our trek to see the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery.