1 Dec 2013 - Ocean Park (海洋公园)

Our plan today is to visit Ocean Park (海洋公园).  We took MTR from Tung Chung station to Admiralty station where there are direct bus (Citybus Route 629) that ferry passengers to Ocean Park.  The journey was about half an hour.  As I've already purchased the admission tickets (at discounted rate) online before this trip, we went straight to the entry gate without having to queue for tickets, we were greeted by a huge christmas tree once we entered the park.

The last time we came here was more than 10 years ago and this place had changed quite significantly.  As today is a Sunday, the whole place was pretty crowded.  And the weather was quite warm.  The first zone that we went to was the Old Hong Kong Street (香港老街).  Jerlene and Javier had a chance to sit on a rickshaw and made a phone call from an old style telephone booth.

They also experienced being a Tram driver.

Our whole family then went on a Merry-Go-Round ride before taking the cable car up the hill to another part of the park.

The cable cars were totally different from those that we took 13 years ago.  I still remember at that time, it's more like a chairlift whereby our legs were dangling in the air while going up the hill.

The view from the cable car was great.

At one of the game stalls, Jerlene managed to win a cute Plush Dino all by herself.  Javier was a bit sad as he did not win anything.  I then helped him to win a Plush Turtle at another game stall.

By noon, the weather got really hot and it's time for some ice cream to cool ourselves down.

Next we went into a Jelly-fish enclosure.  These creatures are beautiful and yet mysterious.  Their photos usually will turn out to be one of the best in the entire trip.

The next section of the park consists of different zones such as Tropical Rainforest, Arctic and the Antarctica.

Instead of taking the cable car back to the lower section of the park, we took an express train.  Throughout the journey, there are multimedia display all around the train cabin.  The Giant Panda enclosure is one of the more popular attractions in the park.  Initially both pandas were sleeping. So we decided to stay around for a while, hopefully the pandas will wake up.  Our patience paid off and we managed to have a very close encounter with the pandas.

By around 5:30pm, we were all very tired and decided to call it a day.

There is a musical fountain spectacular display in about an hour's time but we decided to give it a miss.

Other than the warm weather and the huge crowd, this is quite a fun place for a family outing.  Before we left the park, Jerlene performed a levitation trick in front of everyone.