HONG KONG: HK Ocean Park

Hong Kong Ocean Park

Hong Kong Ocean Park is a theme park and aquarium hybrid. It's not as great Sea World yet but I would say it's getting there. When we were there in September 2009, they have ads of their future expansions. I'm not sure if those expansions are already open, but I'm sure you can look them up on google.

We started off our visit by taking the cable cars to take us to the other side of the park. If you're afraid of riding rickety contraptions and if you have that "made-in-China sucks" mentality, then this ride might be a nightmare for you. As we rode the cable car, we were definitely hearing a bunch of metals shaking that if you let your imagination work, you might think they are loose knots and bolts that's keeping your car attached to the cable.

Sea Lion in action. HK Ocean Park

Wildlife-wise, Hong Kong Ocean Park is better than both Sea World Orlando and Sea World San Diego. In the area called Pacific Pier, they have an almost natural habitat for sea lions where you can watch about 20 sea lions either relaxing on a rock or swimming. You can also view them from the lower level deck swimming under water and it's a great site.

Pacific Pier front

Near the Pacific Pier is a stage where a typical whale and dolphin show play takes place. There's also a Coney Island-like area where they have boardwalk games and also typical carnival rides. At the edge of the park is where their aquarium building is located. They do have a wide array of fish and a really nice "island in the middle" setup for the aquarium. You can then slowly spiral down the steps to get deeper into the aquarium and the deeper you go, the bigger the fishes are. The only problem we remembered here is that the deeper you go, the darker it gets as well. It's a huge tank so the farther the fishes swim from the glass, the lesser detail you see.

Entrance to the Ocean Express

Going back to the entrance part of the park, you have the option of riding back the cable car, take really really long sets of escalators, or take an underground train which they called the "Ocean Express". Their station on both sides of the park kinda make you think that it's an attraction thrill ride. It looked kinda cool from the outside and the station is well decorated as well so we rode this one going back. It also looked like the "safer" route after hearing all the clanking and rattling of the cable cars. The train itself looks well-decorated so again you'd think that it's a thrill ride. Once in the train, all you see are screens on the train ceiling and then it started showing some underwater clips as the train starts moving making an illusion that your train is moving under water.

A couple of pandas and you can see a number
of people watching them behind a glass

For some people that goes here, the highlight is being able see pandas. There's a couple of them with a setup that makes them feel like they're in their natural habitat. Watching them eat bamboo leaves is really almost like just watching tv. It's not everyday you get to see a panda not more being this close so watching them give you that feeling like they're still on tv and not real.

Now we're behind the glass watching the pandas
just like the people from the picture above =)