Disney Asia parks-A comparison guide

This post has actually been created on request. If you have come over from the gram then you may be one of the people who have asked but essentially after visiting all 3 Disney parks in Asia over the last 9 months I have been asked many questions asking for advice and comparisons and a handful of people have requested some kind of post that compares the three so that has led me here!

In this guide we will cover the following areas and hopefully if you are thinking of visiting one of the parks; Hong Kong, Shanghai or Tokyo then this should give you a good overview and an idea on what to expect.

What will we cover?

Ticket costings

Hotel options, both official and partner/offsite options

Transport links

Rides, best rides, wait times, fast passes & comparisons

Food options & prices

Merchandise, how they compare and costings

Parades/shows and character meets

Ticket costings and where to buy

Okay lets start with an essential one! Tickets!! Very important. Firstly I will cover basic tickets and then add-ons below.

Hong Kong-The best value option is to get a two day ticket which is currently on offer for £67 (1 day is £58 or £43 for a child) this is via Trip which you can find here

Shanghai-A 1 day ticket is £48 per adult and £32.70 for a child. Again the best option is via Trip as with most attractions in China, they are the official ticket seller and it will link your passport details (essential in China). You can find tickets here

Tokyo-A one day ticket is currently around £48 for an adult, £40 for a teen ticket and £27 for a child (up to 11 years). The best place to buy is on Klook and you can get your tickets here. Something worth bearing in mind is obviously Tokyo has 2 parks, Disneyland and DisneySea so you will absolutely need at least two days for Tokyo.

With all ticket prices that is the starting prices and are subject to fluctuations, as you can see the prices are pretty similar with Hong Kong coming in slightly higher however the 2-day ticket works out great value and to be honest I think they are all very good value.

Zootopia Hot Persuit ride at Shanghai Disney

Ticket extras, early birds and Premier access

Both Hong Kong and Shanghai offer the option to purchase an “early bird” ticket which I think is an excellent add on, priced at £20 (Shanghai) and £18.73 (Hong Kong). Personally I wouldn’t bother purchasing for Hong Kong, the park already opens pretty late (10.30am at this time of year) and most rides also open at this time, I will cover this in my in depth Hong Kong Disney guide but essentially very few rides open early and with the right plan you can make it round them all. Shanghai on the other hand I think is definately worth and we regretted not buying the early bird because when we tried to nearer our visit Trip no longer had them available and the Disney app just would not work for us as we didn’t have a chinese number (it is super glitchy regardless).

Unfortunately Tokyo do not offer any kind of early bird and if you have seen anything on Social Media you may know that the lines are huge and start very early. When we visited last year we got there nearly an hour and a half early to queue, largely because of the fast pass situation which again, I will explain more below.

Premier access

Okay so of course each park has a different system…They would not want to make it easy!

Shanghai-There are various offers for the premier access you can choose a set of 3, 6, 8, 11, 14 or 15 so many options and the prices range from £97 to £335. For me the best option would be the 6 adventure set at £140. Personally the 3 rides that the premier passes are needed on are Tron, Seven Dwarfs mine train and Zootopia. You can buy individual premier access in the app, most are around 180 yuan which is around "£20 which again we couldn’t get to work on our visit but we will be returning next year so I will report back when I try a different sim. I will point out that on Trip it still states you have to activate your passes in the app so you could have the same issue. Again you can find more information here

Hong Kong-Hong Kong premier access is a lot cheaper here and the ticket works differently as you buy on top of your ticket whereas Shanghai it includes your entrance. Now they offer a 8 ride pass for £39.20 which is really good value however I would say if you have a day and a half you should comfortably get on everything and you can also buy premier access in app for individual rides for around £11 per ride which is a solid option. Personally the one that has a longer wait and possibly worth a premier pass is Big Grizzly mountain.

Tokyo-The complicated one…..So to be fair the systems at Tokyo put a bit of a downer on our visit (I can’t lie) as it just felt quite stressful. Having said that it isn’t super complicated, just when we visited it was really busy hence us having to queue early. Now the first system is the Priority Pass. This is a free system and you can only use when you have been scanned into the park, there are obviously a limited number available per time slot and you can only get a new one 120 minutes after the start time of your previous priority pass. The other is the paid premier access, again you can only purchase once you are in the park and if you have a ride plan your timings are at the mercy to when you can get the premier access times. The more expensive rides are 2000 yen (around £10) and some are cheaper. Some are worth it and some I wouldn’t pay again but I will detail this in my full Tokyo Disney guide.

I would say if we are comparing all 3 offer amazing value in terms of tickets as there are some really unique rides at both Shanghai and Tokyo and the tickets are actually much cheaper than Paris, Hong Kong is the smallest park but its still great and the 2 day ticket is great value and with it being smaller you have less need to purchase premier passes so for this one personally its a tie.

Hotel options, both official and partner/offsite options

Shanghai-Shanghai has two hotel options onsite the Shanghai Disneyland and Toy Story Hotel.

The Toy Story hotel is between £210 and £320 a night (based on a family of 4 sharing) and can be found here

The Disneyland hotel ranges up to £520 a night but the cheapest I can see is £357 and can be found here

Aside from these two options there are SO many well priced hotels in the area. One notable mention and right next to the park is the Shanghai Melia Parkside. Not themed and no pool but does look stunning you can check that out here now one benefit of staying out of the city is you will pay less, are more likely to find family rooms and more likely to have a pool….however I would personally stay in downtown Shanghai as taxis are very reliable, comfortable and affordable. We paid around £15 for a lovely taxi van directly to the park, it is around a 45 minute journey so worked well for us. When we visit next year we are doing Disney on our last day so have opted to stay our last 2 nights nearer the park as it is also nearer to the airport (Pudong) so it makes more sense for us.

Hong Kong-Hong Kong has 3 main hotels on site, the Disneyland Hotel, Explorers lodge and the Hollywood hotel.

Personally this is the Disney I think is definately worth splashing out for. I spent £320 for 2 nights at the Hollywood hotel which I feel like is excellent value especially considering the prices of hotels in Hong Kong. The theming is excellent and the pool is amazing, you can also use the pools at the other Disney hotels and of course you have the shuttles for free, plus you actually have a special hotel guest line to get into the park and for security. The Hollywood is definitely the cheaper of the 3, starting at £160 per night for a family of 4, explorers lodge starts at about £185 per night and the actual Disney hotel is currently closed for renovations but if I recall I believe the price was starting at £370 when I looked for August. You can find explorers lodge here and the Hollywood hotel here.

Aside from these there isn’t a great deal in the area. If you aren’t aware, Hong Kong is made up of several islands and Disney is on Lantau island. Now you can get the metro to Disney however I would recommend arriving by cab, they are affordable and more time efficient. I would personally stay on site with this if you can but if you are staying at Hong Kong island or Kowloon you can access via taxi.

Tokyo - Tokyo

You have 5 Disney official hotels to choose from, the budget options are Toy Story (around £185 pn) and Celebration hotel (around £150 pn) Ambassador hotel (around £450 pn) Disneyland Hotel (around £350 pn) and the very fancy Disney springs which is stunning but should be at a whopping £1350 per night.

Partner Hotels….There are quite a few options, we stayed at the Grand Bay Maihama and we absolutely loved it. Sunrise over DisneySea each morning is spectacular, they have an indoor pool, a good breakfast and dinner buffet and family rooms start at around £180 per night, you can find the link here personally it is next door to Toy Story hotel and from what I have seen, nicer than the budget options from Disney so this will always be my choice for future visits (unless I get rich and can afford Fantasy Springs).

In terms of staying in the centre I personally wouldn’t as it is at least an hour from most of the neighbourhoods in downtown Tokyo and you will have to change 2 - 4 lines depending on where you are staying. As mentioned above due to the premier pass situation I also recommend arriving for rope drop so you can secure the passes so for this reason I would for sure have a few days in the Tokyo Bay area.

For me Hong Kong has to Win here based on the affordability and quality of on-site hotels, followed by Tokyo and then Shanghai but if we are talking prices It would be Hong Kong, Shanghai and then Tokyo.

Transport links

I have obviously touched on this above however I will also break down briefly below.

Shanghai- around 25 minutes from Pudong airport via cab or 45 minutes from Yu Gardens in downtown Shanghai. You can also get the metro as Disney has its own station however for conveinience I would reccommend getting a DiDi as they are affordable and much easier.

Hong Kong-Around 15 minutes from Hong Kong International airport via taxi or you can get the Tung Chung Line and then change at Sunny Bay and get on the disney resort line (this is much more time consuming and I would get a cab). Again its around 1 hour from Kowloon on public transport with 2-3 changes or you can jump in a cab which would take around 25 minutes depending on time of day.

Tokyo-Around 40 minutes from Haneda Airport (either in a cab or public transport) or 1 hour 20 from Narita (via public transport-car is around 2 hours) and as mentioned above around an hour from Tokyo central, we were going to the area near Asakusa and it was 55 minutes across 2 different lines.

I would say Shanghai or Hong Kong are the easiest to get to both in terms of distance, affordability of Taxis and the fact that the public transport is easier to navigate than in Tokyo.

Rapunzels Lantern ride at Tokyo DisneySea

Rides, best rides, wait times, fast passes & comparisons

Okay firstly I am going to hit you with which in my opinions are the best rides/attractions in each park:

Shanghai-Pirates of the caribbean (incredible) Zootopia (also unreal) both unique to Shanghai, then I would also hit Tron, the Seven Dwarfs train (but wait times are so high so needs a fast pass) then do not miss The Pixar Adventurous Journey and the Pirates of the Caribbean stunt show.

Hong Kong- Big Grizzly mountain, Mystic Manor, Many adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Oakens Sliders (again only if wait time is low as it is short) and Jungle Cruise is a fave. Also I love frozen ever after but as you can go on at Tokyo and Paris I would say not essential.

Tokyo Disneyland-Beauty and the Beast (I hate spinning rides but this was life affirming for me haha) Monsters inc also one of my favourite ride EVER, Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise. I would also reccommend baymax on vibes alone but we bought a fastpass and I wouldn’t spend again on it.

DisneySea-Rapunzels lanterns is just magical, I love the Venetian gondolas, Raging Spirits, Indiana Jones, Flounders Flying Coaster, Jumpin Jellyfish, Journey to the centre of the earth, Tinkerbell’s Buggies and Toy Story Mania. Basically like so many. I will also say when we visited Fantasy Springs it was our first time on frozen ever after so big hype, since then we now have one in Paris but at the time we were STOKED.

For me the best park for rides/unique rides is for sure DisneySea….I would then say Tokyo Disney and Shanghai as joint second with Hong Kong coming in third.

In terms of wait times I would say Hong Kong has the easiest wait times which is kinda surprising given it is the smallest and has the shortest opening hours. Having said that, Shanghai is good too if you take off the “big hitters” as these times can be huge and Tokyo generally wait times are good due to the fast pass systems it can just be tricky to navigate. With all you need to go with a game plan and I will get one on each of the individual guides for each park for you all.

In terms of fast passes there’s actually not that many I would pay for and here is what I think is worth it:

Shanghai-Tron (esp as my kids don’t want to go so only for 2 of us), 7 dwarfs (I am not waiting 75 mins) I personally wouldn’t for Zootopia as you miss some of the immersive queue so I would try and go first thing before its too busy.

Hong Kong-Big Grizzly mountain. That’s it to be honest, largely cause you can get on the others and for me, again the kids don’t want to go on so its worth it just for me.

Tokyo Disneyland-Beauty and the Beast, I would pay for Monsters inc but you can’t you need to use the free priority pass.

Tokyo DisneySea-Rapunzels lanterns and Toy Story Mania. In my opinion worth the fast pass but you may get on Toy Story with a short wait.

Food options & prices

Okay compared to Paris (my nearest park) the food was great at all the parks (Comparatively). Now for me the absolute stand out was Tokyo Disney and DisneySea. I know people love Japanese food but if I’m honest I would generally choose Chinese food or food in Hong Kong over Japanese as a preference but I will say the food at Tokyo is so good. We had quite a hit list and one thing we loved so much and the cost was incredible. I would say Shanghai and Hong Kong were fairly comparable price wise, snacks around £6-8 and mains £12-18 so not super cheap but definately some tasty offerings.

Shanghai-My highlight in Shanghai was the Winnie the Pooh Toastie with beef ragout and mushroom, of course the pawsicle from Zootopia and the Xiao long Bao icecream from the coach cafe in disney village.

Hong Kong-The highlight for me was the Char Siu and Scrambled egg croissant from main st bakery, the milk tea slushie with salted caramel soft serve and the lime slushie with pineapple dole whip was something I ordered 3 times over.

Char Siu and scrambled egg croissant at Hong Kong Disneyland

Tokyo-Don’t miss the many types of churro (average price around £2) our favourites were the creme brulee flavour and the potato and gravy churro (yes you heard me) and we enjoyed the alien mochi (I do think they are overhyped) and had some great fried rice in DisneySea Other highlights were the curry tiger bun, I loved the pizza with cheesy tater tots and green apple slush (this along with a coke was £10 for the whole meal-unbelievable), in Tokyo Disneyland and the fish bun which was a bao with deep fried battered fish from toon town. I feel like you need to try as many popcorn flavours as you can, I actually loved the cheese flavour and the roast beef. So yeah in short, for me Tokyo Disney food was part of the experience. It did help that the temperature was good, around 17 degrees c whereas both Shanghai and Hong Kong the temperature was 35 degrees meaning eating isn’t top of my priority list.

In summary cost wise Tokyo wins for sure and I would say Hong Kong and Shanghai on a par. All are great to be honest, and they all have some great snacks and good quality meals.

The famous Alien Mochi at Tokyo DIsneyland. They are good but I’m not sure completely worth the hype

Merchandise, how they compare and costings

Okay so firstly what I will say is the merch in Asian Disney parks is amazing!! having said that I would definitely say the parks have different things I would shop for. Here’s what I would prioritise checking out:

Shanghai-Pins!! Not cheap but their selection of pins is incredible, so many unique offerings, tonnes of fidget spinner type pins and then some beautiful 3D offerings too. Honestly stunning. Expect to pay £10-15 each depending on complexity. They also have a dedicated chip n dale shop some lovely, unique home decor and also the Zootopia selection is obviously 10/10.

Hong Kong-Ears!! So many ears. And great price! Often around £16 and In Hong Kong you get so many coupons! I will touch on this below. Clothing is also excellent and great prices.

Tokyo-Because of the scale of the two parks expect so many shops that are unique, my fave two shops were the monsters inc store in the Tokyo Disneyland park and the fantasy springs store in DisneySea because it has so many exclusives. We bought the amazing lost boys hats, I got some gorgeous pins (the selection isn’t as good as Shanghai though), an incredible monsters inc jumper and some dreamy bags. I would say Tokyo is great for accessories and limited-edition pieces. On the whole it is great across the board.

In terms of costings, Shanghai is definitely the priciest (still cheaper than Paris of course) then it’s tricky as generally Tokyo is the cheapest but honestly we got so many coupons in Hong Kong, it made it very good. I bought 5 pairs of ears in Hong Kong as they averaged £12 a pair with my coupons 🙈 as apposed to €25-30 in Paris.

Chip n Dale Meet n Greet at Hong Kong Disneyland

Parades/shows and character meets

Characters!! You may or may not be aware that in Asian Disney parks Mickey and friends are not actually the main draw……Duffy and friends are. Now if you want to meet Duffy and the gang you will be looking at hideous wait times to be honest. Other than that we found generally it was good. In Hong Kong we met Jessie, chip n dale and spiderman and only waited around 15 minutes. We didn’t actually meet anyone in Shanghai other than Ant Man and then in Tokyo it is very easy to see Mickey’s friends in Toontown (main park) and there were lots of characters wandering.

With parades I will say the Hong Kong and Shanghai parades were incredible (so unique) they had characters and floats you don’t normally see which we absolutely loved and a heavy focus on Pixar in Hong Kong which was awesome and a mulan float in Shanghai (12 year old me was so happy 🥹) Tokyo I’m kinda ashamed to say we didn’t actually catch the parade as we were so busy trying to hack the passes but in DisneySea the “parade” is on the water so definitely unique. My experience in the last year, of course it’s always changing is that Hong Kong was the best parade 😬 and in our experience we had the easiest character greets in Hong Kong too, I guess the perks of being a smaller park?

EPIC pin selection at Shanghai Disney Resort

Summary

To summarise I think you will have the best time no matter where you visit in the Asia parks, heck I’d even say if you are a hardcore Disney fan a tour of all 3 parks is so doable if you had a couple of weeks. Realistically Tokyo has the biggest offering with 2 parks, great prices and unique rides but the other two are absolutely worth a visit. Yes Hong Kong is pretty small but allows you to slow down, has great merch, an awesome parade and great food. Shanghai is very unique, has Zootopia (which is incredible) and definitely offers something different as it only partly owned by Disney so the layout is very different (and really good).

If you have any questions at all drop me message below or reach out to me on socials but I would definitely get these parks on your list ✨💕