At Shanghai Disney Resort, Mulan, Mickey and Dumplings

My husband was there last month when he went with some colleagues on the last day of a business trip. He said he went on 2 rides because the lines were 3 hours long, then found a restaurant and drank beer with a buddy the rest of the day. On a positive note, he said the cost to get in was about half the cost as in the US.

Thanks from Orlando for a trip around the Disney globe.

I think that parents bringing their adopted children to visit the land of their birth would first consider teaching the child his birth language. Otherwise the child's feelings of being an outsider are further enforced.

This is another smarmy piece where someone puts down a place they visit through subtle and not-so subtle digs at the place, the people who built/run-it and those who visit it. For instance, a "three dimensional cartoon;" "Disneyland park as unnaturally clean and cheerful places;" "the Mad King Ludwig spires;" A Potemkin village shopping strip;""Disneyland's propensity for turning dark, anxious European fairy tales into shiny, bulbous entertainments." They liked the idea of Shanghai Disney because they "had long resisted Disneyfication." It is nice that Julie Lasky and her husband Ernest were so hip and cool as to avoid Disney for all these years. Perhaps one day their daughter Shan can visit one or more of the other Disney locations with a friend's family who actually enjoys Disney and can giver her another perspective. If you like a place, fine. If you don't, fine. But can't the Editors at the Times keep the ugly snarks out of the pieces they run?

Wow.. Surprised by the criticism of Disney and then you think that's a good place to "reintroduce" your child to her birthplace. I feel a bit sorry for your child.. Are you going to remind her when she's 16 about the time you "schlepped all the way to China" just for her and had to endure Disney???

It sounds like Shan is running the family.

"Everything is copy."
Nora Ephron

I'm glad the Lasky family enjoyed Shanghai Disney Resort. Hopefully she will report on the rest of the first trip back to her daughter's birth country. My son was adopted from Paraguay. We took our trip to Disney World in Orlando before traveling to his birth country. He, my daughter and wife all enjoyed the spectacles in Disney World immensely. We would like to visit other Disney parks. Yet it's been the trips to the land of his birth that have captured my son's imagination and his heart. At nine years old he toured Itaipu Dam, the greatest hydroelectric plant in the world which someday will power all that nation's plug in cars and trucks. That same trip he gawked at other kids who looked just like him -- black hair and dark eyes. In his late teens he walked to the rim of the Iguazu Falls, a collection of over 150 waterfalls. Later, he saw street kids huffing fumes from aerosol cans to get high. After college graduation, he walked in and about the 17th century Jesuit Mission at Trinidad, then was our Spanish/English translator (Spanish learned in college and volunteering in a bilingual school) while a young engineer showed us around a Yerba Mate plantation and processing plant. My son is 26. He loves his life in America. Knowing more about the land of his birth, both the highs and lows, has given him a broader perspective from which to assess his widening world. I'd love to read more about Julie Lansky's daughter's reactions to being in China, the land of her birth.

So is Shanghai Disneyland good or no?

Toy Story? Post war? Hardly.

This was a lovely memoir piece. The mother's love and deep familiarity for/with her child shines through. The language and descriptions were evocative. I felt like I was there. And by there, I mean in a surreal place I'll likely never go myself.

What a beautifully written and entertaining article. I loved reading each sentence, and felt like I was there with you all, too. Too bad this family friendly piece will be banned in China (as are all NYT articles).

Disney is surreal enough, and it's clear the writer has reflected on how Disney seems even more surreal when filtered through the lens of a visiting American to Asia Disney. But the real story here, hinted at in the opening paragraphs, is how it feels for a child to re-enter the estranged country of her birth. Unless this is an early draft of a much longer piece which would make that clear, it instead reads as the story of a parent trying to reconcile her feelings of inner conflict about foisting American culture onto her child. I feel that nearly every day, and my children are not adopted.

OK so you dislike Disney theme parks and view China from the lens of a lonely planet guide. What is the point of the article? I read it thinking it was a piece on Shanghai Disneyland and how they interpreted it for a Chinese audience instead it seems its about how you finally enjoyed a theme park?

An interesting read, but perhaps an odd choice of perspective. I don't mind an eye critical of Disney, but viewing Shanghai Disneyland through the lens of someone who seems unfamiliar with other Disney parks lessens the depth of any cross-cultural contrasts.

The writer and her family were not only outsiders in China; they were outsiders from the very concept of a Disney park.

I'm somewhat baffled by the point of this story.

Awesome story and an eerily familiar tale as my family just returned yesterday from Shanghai. We also took our 10 year old daughter back to her home Province in China, also Jiangxi. We thought that Disney was a perfect way to end a long emotional trip back. It turned out to be the perfect ending to a great trip. A fantastic country filled with great people who welcomed us warmly. Lots of staring too...some of the villages we visited probably don't get too many foreigners.

As an adoptive parent, I don't get the notion of "re-introducing" a child to his birth country via an amusement park that, in its American iterations, is already several steps removed from any sort of reality. When my son was about the same age as our daughter, we took him to his birth country on a group tour with other adoptive families. It was great, and we did not have to deal with extra mind-bending layers of complexity, nor did we get distracted by thinking about what Disneyification means in the context of another country. We thought about his country. Not ours.

I'm puzzled if this is a review of Singapore Disneyland, an adoption story or what? I think I would have preferred the reactions of a Chinese-America family visiting the park. Layering in the adoption angle just didn't feel right.

Maybe you should have lightened up.