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When we visited THE AVENUE OF STARS! a couple of days ago, we saw a shop there where you could buy tickets to visit Hong Kong Disneyland. Now while I don't know that much about Disney, or have seen many Disney films, I thought I knew where the Disney theme parks in the world were. There's Orlando, and Paris, and that was it. Turns out there's one in Hong Kong, and many other places in fact. Obviously Katy already knew, because she's into Disney, and so we bought the tickets and caught the train the next day, which is today's yesterday. Confused? Good.

The train that arrived at the station - the breezily named Sunny Bay - was a white train with Mickey-shaped windows, like a set of merging portholes. The inside was bedecked with Disney memorabilia, with little statues of various Disney players like the little grasshopper fellow from Pinocchio (Jiminy Cricket), Minnie Mouse, Donald Duc, and others that carried on through the carriages. There were curved seats covered in a blue fabric, and Mickey's head-shaped handles for you to hold on when the train shudders to a halt. They were cool and I wanted to nick one, but didn't.

The station at the Disney park end of the line was a large old fantasy station, not unlike the station at Stoke-on-Trent. It amuses me that in the imaginations of the designers, the perfect magical train station looks a bit like the station at Stoke-on-Trent. Not that I'm in love with the station at Stoke-on-Trent or anything, it's just a nice place and I've been there a couple of times, to catch trains. It seemed like a nice touch making the station really nice. They didn't have to do it.

We arrived quite early, in perfect timing for the opening of the park in fact, so we sort of just surfed right in with the small, pulsing crowd. They were excited as were we to see what was inside and immediately I was impressed. Main Street USA was a mock-version of an old turn-of-the-century American town, and it was gorgeous. I don't quite know why but I loved it. Maybe it was the freely available camera film or maybe it was the sweet shop to shelter from the rain but I loved it. Maybe in a past life I owned a sweet shop in a small American town. Maybe.

Main Street was just the prelude to a bigger show, which was made clear by the white piece of rope blocking off the rest of the park. We were at the rope before the rest of the people came and about ten minutes later the crowd was gathered at the rope, waiting. Then Stitch arrived. I'm not so keen on Stitch; in fact I think he's a bit of an arse. Anyway Stitch arrived, danced a bit, then a kid cut the rope and we were let into the rest of the park. By this stage it had begun to rain so everyone rushed for the nearest shelter they could get to. Unfortunately this shelter was Tomorrowland, which also contained the best ride - Space Mountain. Somehow we got to the ride before the masses and got actually inside the ride compound without much hassle. We were quickly strapped in and taken on a tour of the universe, only much smaller and with a loud rock soundtrack. I was disappointed by the lack of cautionary signs advertising how the ride was unsuitable for pregnant women or the over 75's - a good indicator of the amazingness of any ride is if your baby will come out if you ride it - but it was actually very fast and a bit of a stomach wobbler. Maybe that was a deliberate trick, lulling you into a false sense of security then hitting you with quite a fast ride. Anyway I really loved it and rode the whole thing with an enormous grin on my face, apart from the bit at the end where they take a picture of you. My face was steeled into a weird teeth-gritting contortion, like I was holding a pencil length-wise in my mouth. How disappointing.

Next thing we did was Astro Blasters. It's a Buzz Lightyear (yay) shooting game where you have to aim for the Z's. You have a lazer gun and a spinning car - both of which you control yourself - and you have to score the most points possible. You control the spinning of the car with a small lever you turn left or right to spin left and right, and I did amazingly. I scored an incredibly 99,500 points, which might be a world record or something, and Katy scored much much less. She did apparently beat the people in the car in front of us though so she didn't do too badly. They probably didn't know they had to shoot the gun.

The rain was extremely heavy by now so we went to the closest place, Fantasyland. It was very girly, unlike the chic futuristic manliness Tomorrowland, but Katy liked it. We saw It's A Small World, which uses tiny singing mannequins to celebrate the nations and cultures of the world. It was a singing dancing boat ride and it was strangely enthralling. The music occasionally descended into cacophony between rooms - you floated from one room/country to the next - which made for some interesting listening, but the workmanship on the ride was exceptional. Every single dummy mouthed the words and played their various instruments perfectly. The workmanship on the whole park was amazing, and the level of effort and attention to detail (something I never normally notice) was so high that I actually actively noticed it.

After IASW the sun came back out so we walked leisurely to the teacups. Katy posed in a stationary one and we waited in a shortish queue to ride on them, which actually went surprisingly fast. I always thought of the teacups as a stupid girly ride but actually they're pretty good. Maybe not quite manly, but not girly... they were a womanly ride. Is that sexist? I'm not trying to be sexist. From the teacups we hit The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride, which was like a ghost train but instead of ghosts, it featured Winnie the Pooh. It was a Pooh train. I giggled at the sign advertising the area as "Pooh corner", and told Katy that maybe they should put the sign over by the toilets. She smiled, but I think she was humouring me.

There was an extremely woman in the queue for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh , a whole family of rude women in fact, who used the old "put your kids in front so they go first then get their parents who go on the ride with them and screw the rest of the queue" trick. Well, we stopped them - when they tried it, the whole queue seemed to get quite annoyed at their games and Katy told the woman in charge what they'd done. They were stopped for a few minutes and lots of people (including us) got to ride before them. Maybe it's petty but it was satisfying. Incredibly satisfying. The ride itself was alright, just a windy ride through a Pooh story. Tigger was there, and Eeyore, the whole gang. It ended quickly though, I'd have preferred a Saw-like twist ending where you find out Piglet is actually Pooh's damaged alter-ego or something. Didn't happen though.

We rode the train next to see a bit more of the park and got off at Main Street USA. We ate a bit, saw a really cool brass band play "Walking on the Sun" by Smash Mouth (remember them? Smash Mouth? You remember Smash Mouth, don't you?) and we bought a hot dog and a weird quiche and worked out where we'd go next. They were holding a big parade up by the roundabout at the top of the road so we figured we'd go check it out. The heat was really picking up at this point so we weren't that perturbed by the "YOU WILL GET WET" signs that were dotted around the area we were stood in. After some waiting the parade started, and due to the hot day the theme was the Fire Service. We saw dressed-up characters like the Toy Story crew, Mickey and Minnie, Daffy and Daisy, Goofy, everyone all in fireman gear and squirting water everywhere. The Disney Princesses were there walking about, some Venus flytraps, and some people dressed as gardening implements all conveying a rough watery theme. The Disney characters were on enormous vehicles - Buzz was on a big spacey thing and Mickey was riding a massive fire engine thing which probably wouldn't have been practical in the event of a real fire but in the event of a big wet Disney parade was perfect. I really enjoyed it and got a bit wet, but not too wet.

After that we dried in the baking sun as we walked to Adventureland. The Lion King show was just starting, which we watched, and it was also very impressive. All the gang were there - two incarnations of Simba (one human, one animatronic [I hope]), Timon and Pumba, everyone. Unfortunately no Rafiki, the baboon guy, didn't show. I really liked his stic when I was younger, as I had a bit of an obsession with walking sticks. For some reason I just thought that there was nothing cooler than a walking stick. Anyway there was no Rafiki, no Mufasa, but it didn't matter - there was a massive elephant, a massive giraffe, lots of massive animatornic animals and lots of much smaller dancing humans dressed as animals. They told a live-action version of the story of the Lion King and, apart from the main singer really milking every single scale-running wobbly word of the songs, the show was awesome. They even had fire, and big tattooed men playing with it! Amazing.

After the show we took the world's shortest boat ride across to Tarzan's house, in a tree, and there was lots of Tarzan stuff inside. Then we took a boat ride around the little river they have there. As soon as I got on the boat I could tell that Sharon, the boat's tour guide, was a mentalist. If you're a tour guide in China then you have to be a mentalist, and it seems that Hong Kong is no different. I've had tour guides explain the subtle differences in Chinese number plates; tour guides openly flirt and constantly talk to one member of the group; and then there was Sharon the mentalist, more mental than the rest. She told jokes, shrieked at everything that happened, and screamed in half-English, half-mental, into the microphone. I wasn't that keen on Sharon but Katy liked her, and the rest of the boat. Maybe they're all mental too.

After the boat ride we rode the flying Dumbos, which was also awesome. You could control if your Dumbo went up or down, but it didn't matter ultimately because they all went up at the end anyway. Still we stayed up all the way round, obviously. I think our Dumbo was the real one though, the one from the film. I don't know why, I just have a feeling. From the Dumbo's we went to Mickey's Philharmagic, which was a longish wait (in comparison with the other waits) for a 3D music film, with lots of things seemingly flying into the audience and with water spraying effects and different smells filtering through. It's what's popularly called a 4D film but it actually isn't, it's 3D smello-o-vision. I still enjoyed it though, even though I'm not so keen on 3D, because it was sort of based on Fantasia, which is one of my favourite ever films.

Food came after the 3D show - Katy had spaghetti bolognese, and I had fish and chips. You ate inside a large ballroom, sort of like the one in Beauty and the Beast where they dance together, and they had sculptures up of the dancing sequence. After we ate we caught the Disney train back to normality - a Hong Kong normality, closer to an English normality than China could ever be - and rested.

Night, then day again. Today we tried to find the amusing and politically incorrectly named Mongkok. We failed and found a book shop instead, and a disgusting smelling fruit market. We bought some ice tea and returned home. Later on we left again, for food. We went to a really nice, really cheap (important in the city of over-priced food) place called Ebenezer's Kebabs. It sounds like a very different place to what it actually is - a small, slightly underground restaurant, that looks like a chip shop with tables in it. The tables make the place look nice. The first time we went, a couple of days ago, a really friendly but quite pushy man was acting as the maitre d' of the place, but this time we entered the Most Intensely Terrifying Man in the World had taken over. Only he could bring chills to your already-quivering spine with the news that they didn't have any coke, only pepsi. We ordered our kebabs - mine lamb, Katy's falafel - ate our food, and scarpered, scared for our lives.

Xie xie! Rob