Hong Kong Disneyland: Tomorrowland

We’ve finally arrived at Tomorrowland, a space port of the future.

Tomorrowland is a staple themed zone in all Magic Kingdom-style Disney parks around the world. It’s like Sci-Fi meets Fantasyland – a optimistic view of the future with a focus on space travel and exploration.

Due to time constraints, I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time in Tomorrowland during this trip. I’ve decided to share mostly photos of this area at night, where smooth streaks of lights circle around this futuristic port.

There are five main attractions here. One exclusive is Stitch Encounter, an interactive character show where guests view and show and “interact” with Stitch.

Orbitron is a simple spinning ride (with up-down motion) that is surprisingly popular.

Autopia is the park’s circuit driving attraction. It’s not a race. Guests get to drive a slow electric vehicle along a guided track. Despite severely long wait times (due to low capacity, and the whole fun factor of the ability to drive), this ride can be disappointing for some guests. The accelerator pedal really just means “roll forward” and the steering wheel.. well, frankly I’ve had a more exciting experience not holding on to the wheel and let the vehicle do the driving – that is, have it bump along the track.

My favourite ride here has to be Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. It is an interactive dark ride, set in the Buzz Lightyear universe (Buzz as a “space ranger”, not a children’s toy) and while not exactly thrilling or mind-blowing, it is a lot of fun shooting targets with the laser guns. Astro Blasters in Hong Kong feature fully-rotatable ride vehicles (controlled by guests with the joystick!) and movable laser guns. This is a slow-moving ride and there is a mix of moving and static score targets in the ride, with different score values.

The most exciting thing that can happen while on this ride is when the ride encounters a temporary stop (due to guests requiring more time to board or step off ride vehicles), because the score targets are still active and this really means a lot of easy points, especially if you stop in a good position for a valuable score target (always aim for the Triangles!)

There are no prizes for getting high scores here, so get your cameras ready to snap your score displays at the end of the ride. Highest score that the ride can display is 999,999.

The real space travelers and thrill-seekers will run to Space Mountain, Tomorrowland’s only roller coaster attraction.

This is an indoor roller coaster ride, built by Vekoma. Ride vehicle sits 2 per row, so you can have an exhilarating space journey with someone (screaming) beside you. There are projections of stars, lighting effects and glowing planets within the darkness. Otherwise, it’s extremely dim that most people will not even know where the roller coaster is heading.

I’ve taken this ride over 20 times since Hong Kong Disneyland opened, so the ride is no surprise to me. Like any crazy Disney park fan, I have the ride soundtrack in my smartphone. As the ride music is arranged nicely to fit with the ride elements, I could really know what is going to happen on this ride using the music as a guide.

That’s what you get for going on roller coasters way too many times.

The other buildings at Tomorrowland are restaurants, with very nice sculpted roofs, trimmed with the finest light trails.

Comet Cafe serves “BBQ, Wok and noodle specialties from the Jiang Nan Region”. Not very popular, as most park guests are from Asia and paying theme park prices for something that could be gotten much less around Hong Kong isn’t very exciting.

Being a space port, Tomorrowland has the largest restaurant in the park: Starliner Diner. It’s fast food fare here – Burgers, fries and chicken wings.

And that concludes our quick tour around Tomorrowland, and all the themed lands in Hong Kong Disneyland. Stay tuned for the next update, which will be an dazzling one: Flights of Fantasy Parade.