Jedi Training at Hong Kong Disneyland

Hey Guys, here’s a quick post to tell you about the awesome Star Wars experience that we had at the end of last year.

We made our annual trip to visit family in Hong Kong last December, and as is traditional for us, we stopped off at Hong Kong Disneyland for a day with the kids. Even though the park is pretty small (there’s a general lack of space in HK) there’s usually a few new attractions up and running each time we visit. With Disney buying up the Star Wars brand in 2012 (for $4 Billion!!!), it hasn’t taken them long to develop some cool new attractions to push on the back of The Force Awakens, to a whole new generation of tiny Rebels and Jedi.

Stormtroopers on Patrol

For a start they’ve up-cycled the classic Space Mountain ride in to Hyperspace Mountain; an intense, rib jarring coaster ride through the galaxy with a fleet of unfriendly Imperial Tie Fighters on your tail. As we stumbled out, we were confronted by a Stormtrooper Garrison led by the evil, chrome-plated Captain Phasma, who rounded up this family of rebel-scum for inspection, eventually choosing to release rather than imprisoning or exterminating us.

We slipped straight from the clutches of villains and in to the company of heroes as we joined the queue to meet the Little & Large of the Millennium Falcon crew; everybody’s favourite walking carpet Chewbacca and R2D2 – just as exciting for the parents as it was for the kids!

Meeting Chewie & R2D2

But the real highlight of our Star Wars experience was signing the Boys up to ‘Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple’.

Our younglings donned the customary brown robes, joined a group of eager padowans upon the open air stage, and under the watchful gaze of Jedi Masters, received their weapons ready for a lesson in lightsabre combat.

Young Jedi 

After running through various fight sequences and picking up some new combat skills, the embryonic Jedi were soon thrust into action when their secret location was uncovered by the scourge of the galaxy himself, Darth Vader, and the Seventh Sister Inquisitor (from the Star Wars Rebels cartoon on Disney XD) who burst in to the Temple.

Each eager young Jedi took his and her turn to battle the two Sith Masters in front of their cheering families, eventually forcing Vader to unleash his secret weapon upon the young rebels; the terrifying Kylo Ren!

Such was the ferocity of Ren’s combat skills that it eventually took the Jedi Masters and their army of young apprentices to combine their mastery of The Force to drive the evil Sith Lord from the Temple. Victory was theirs!

It’s hard to put in to words how cool it was to watch the Boys take part in this awesome activity and to cheer them on to victory as they defeated the wheezing galactic bogeyman who unnerved their parents when they were children themselves! We were both pretty envious.

The best news is that there’s no additional cost in enrolling your Kids in Jedi Training; it’s covered in the cost of your ticket to the park (prices here). However, places are limited so you need to enrol them as soon as you arrive (at The Space Trader Station in Tomorrowland) to try and guarantee them a place. Also, don’t be late for the performance, as we saw a number of inconsolable kids being told they were too late to join in. There’s also an age limit of 4-12, so it’s pretty much impossible for the shorter parents out there to sneak in on the action.

We’re looking forward to heading back to Hong Kong Disneyland next December for more Star Wars action (hopefully with some new Rouge One inspired rides), as well checking out the currently ‘under construction’ Iron Man Experience, which is due to launch this month!

Disneyland + Star Wars + Marvel = Best Day Out Ever!

Tuesday, 3 January 2017

Trip Review: Gothenburg, Sweden

A trip to Sweden has become an annual thing, usually to visit friends in Stockholm and Leksand, but this year we decided to give the second city a try, and jumped a Ryan Air flight to Gothenburg.

Training in Progress

Annual Trip

As usual we travelled en mass with a group of 8, including the little ones. City Breaks are not ideal for small kids due to the amount of hiking around you inevitably do, but we went for it anyway.

It’s a little embarrassing how great Sweden is; I mean everything works, runs on time, it’s clean and accessible. Due to the Scandinavian knack for design, it’s all pretty great to look at as well!

We rented a great apartment at Hotell VR40, just 10 mins walk from the centre and each bagged ourselves the Gothenburg City Card top help us get around.

The City Card may seem a little pricey at 375 SEK (24h) or 525 SEK (48h), but it gets you on pretty much all the public transport, on boat trips, in to museums and lots more fun stuff. Believe us, it’s worth your money. Find out more Here.

So once we were settled in to our awesome apartment and picked up our City Cards, we hit the streets of Gothenburg to take in the sights. Expect lots of canals (it was modelled on Amsterdam) and boulevards. A historically significant seaport, the maritime influence runs through everything from food to architecture (even the opera house is designed to reflect ship hulls and sails).

Gotebörg Street Art

A great way to see the city is by canal, and we used our City Card to join the Paddan Tour which snakes through the city’s waterways, under its many bridges and even out into the sea. This is a great experience for the kids, so if you’ve got the little ones with you, strap on a life jacket and climb aboard.

Enjoying the Paddan Tour 

Sunny Gotebörg

As usual we made a beeline for the fish market to check out the local seafood. In Gothenburg it’s a place called Feskekôrka (Fish Church – you’ll understand when you see it), where we gathered together a variety of fishy delicacies to make an awesome seafood picnic at the canal side.

The Famous Feskekôrka Fish Church

Fishy Delicacies at Fish Church 

With bellies filled, we headed for Gothenburg’s hipster area Haga, which is a great place to chill out and stop for Fika (coffee and pastries – usually super-sweet cinnamon rolls). There are also lots of cool shops where you can blow your money on vintage clothes, high end trainers and antiques.

Hipster Haga

Day 2 saw us catching the ferry out to Styrsö to check out one of Gothenburg’s many sleepy outlying islands on it's beautiful Archipelago, where the boys spent the majority of the time spotting jellyfish from the docks and harbour walls.

Exploring Styrsö

Island Life

On our return to the city we headed to the amazing Universeum science centre, where you get to walk around their manmade rainforest complete with tiny monkeys swinging above your heads. This place is heaven for kids and we spent several hours inside, where the boys got to hold tropical snakes, explored the universe at the great Space exhibit and marvelled at the stunning array of sea life at the aquarium. Again our City Card got us in here, as well as the more adult Museum of World Culture next door.

Universeum & Boys at Liseberg

As if the Boys were not hyper enough by this point, Universeum just happens to be right next door to Liseberg, Gothenburg’s superb amusement park. Whilst our City Cards got us in for free, if you want to hit the rides and rollercoasters, you’ll need to buy a Ride Pass (SEK 195 per person). It’s well worth it though; the rides are amazing!

Ready for some fun at Liseberg

We spent the bulk of our last day at Maritiman; Gothenburg’s floating maritime museum. This is not like any museum we’ve ever been too. Maritiman comprises of 19 assorted vessels, all linked by walkways which allows you to walk through each of the ships in their fleet. The highlights for us were the hulking Småland Navy Destroyer and the Nordkaparen Submarine; boys being boys, they obviously loved the giant artillery of the Destroyer and the torpedo room of the Sub. Don’t leave Gothenburg without visiting Maritiman!

Ships at Maritiman

And then it was all over. We can’t recommend Gothenburg enough, even with small kids in tow. It’s cool, it’s beautiful, the museums are superb, the locals are friendly, it’s easy to get around and the canals really set it aside from its big brother Stockholm. In fact it’s overtaken the capital as our favourite Scandinavian city!

Sorry Stockholm (we still love you), but bravo Gothenburg!