Disneyland and Ocean Park
Whist I am grateful that my patents valued taking myself and my brother on culturally enriching and active holidays in places teeming with natural beauty, I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing from my childhood. A feeling like there was some magic absent in my life. So I was genuinely over the moon when I found out that there was a Disneyland in Hong Kong.
At the ripe old age of 19, I finally set off for the place where everyones dreams were supposed to come true, and sure enough, Disneyland did not disappoint. I got to meet Mickey, Minnie and Buzz, and watch the parade and evening light up firework display wearing Minnie ears and eating light up candy floss. The rides weren’t as big as I had imagined, but generally, all in all, it was a pretty fantastic day.
However what young naive Cait didn’t realise was that there is something better out there. Bigger, more shocking, more exciting. There is a place called Ocean Park.
Ocean Park is a theme-park-meet-zoo-meet-aquariam where real dreams come true. I don’t think it had ever occurred to me before that I had never seen a full sized octopus up close, or a crab bigger than the ones in Tenby, or an actual shark that could actually kill me. I spent most of my time picking up my jaw from the floor and that was before I realised they had pandas, and oh my gosh the pandas. I have never seen anything so cute in my life. If asked, I would say I’m a koala/elephant kind of gal but pandas are now a firm fixture on the ‘animals I love’ list. They’re just so adorable! Never have I ever seen such beautiful and serene simple-ness in such a huge animal, and it was perfect.
And if this wasn’t good enough there were rides, actual big, exciting, take a spare pair of trousers, rides. And a dolphin show! And hot dogs, with mustard, and tomato sauce, and relish (I had two). And finally, there was an end of the day show where they played a film on water! They projected an actual film onto shooting jets of water and then set THE WATER ON FIRE!
So to sum up, even though I spent years longing to go to Disneyland, Ocean Park is where I really wanted to be.
