We enjoyed an amazing family holiday in Hong Kong in October 2024, kickstarting our love for travelling in Asia and creating some brilliant family memories.
On this page we summarise what we booked in terms of flights and accommodation, as well how we settled on our final plans.
Itinerary
This was our first visit to Asia and with a new culture, new experiences and being with the kids we thought we’d start by dipping our toe. We’d been told Hong Kong was a great place to start given its western influences, and it was somewhere we’d always wanted to visit. So we decided we’d just do a relatively short break here, rather than any sort of longer trip. Hong Kong is a great place to stopover or to twin with another location, but equally you can just do it as a city break like we did.
Given we were only going for a week, we decided to go in one of the UK school half terms. From our research we read the best times to visit were in the Autumn when the typhoon season has ended, and Spring, as it’s starting to warm up again. Summer seemed to be the least attractive time as it is typhoon season which brings the possibility of some extreme storms. We opted for the October half term which happily coincided with Halloween.
We flew out on a Friday and back the following Saturday – so technically 8 nights, but because of the flight times it worked out as 6 nights in hotels. A lot of people thought we were mad going this far for just a week. But it worked incredibly well and we’d without doubt do it again.
As this was our first time in Asia, everything was completely new to us and although it was only a city break, we wanted some extra guidance. We normally like to book our trips independently, but here we decided we’d book through a travel agent. Our preferred tour operators are Kuoni and Trailfinders just because we find them to be more of a halfway house between a package and an independent trip where you can bespoke your trip and make it your own.
In the end we popped into Kuoni by chance, got talking and ended up pulling together a trip. This was broadly in line with what we’d priced up ourselves on Expedia, but gave us the extra comfort of using a travel agent to support us. We ultimately booked the following trip:
Flew out of Manchester with Cathay Pacific on Friday morning, landing on Saturday morning
3 nights at the Shangri-la Kowloon
3 nights at the Disneyland Hotel (booked through DVC)
Checked out on the Friday, flying back at around 1am on the Saturday morning, arriving back into Manchester late on Saturday
We felt this itinerary would give us some time in the city to see the top sights, and then enough time out at Disneyland to properly enjoy the park. While we could have stretched it by another day to arrive back on the Sunday, we didn’t know how we’d adapt to the jet lag so we thought we’d give ourselves a day back home to rest and recover before work and school.
Flights
In terms of flights you do have a couple of options with the main airlines being Cathay Pacific and British Airways. BA fly from London, but Cathay fly direct from Manchester so this was our preference being based in the North West. The route has been disrupted a little by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine so you do take a slightly more roundabout route.
The flight itself was fine at around 12 hours out and 14 on the way back, but it was about the longest we’ve ever flown at was probably about our limit. We’ve never flown with Cathay Pacific before and really enjoyed it. The seats had plenty of room, great in flight entertainment, including live football which we thought was incredible, and the staff were lovely. We also got seats reserved together as a family without having to pay which is always appreciated and makes a big difference to the budget.
Accommodation
Given it’s a major city there are a fantastic array of hotels suiting all standards and budgets. The amazing public transport system also means you have a bit more flexibility in that location is perhaps a little less important given you can get around so easily.
As it was our first time in Asia, and we didn’t know what to expect, we wanted to book somewhere a little nicer where we knew we’d be taken care of, and were prepared to spend a little more this time. We initially looked at the Harbour Grand in Kowloon as the pool overlooking the harbour looked amazing. However Kuoni had a limited number of hotels on offer at the time, as demand was only just picking up following the pandemic. They suggested the Shangri-la Kowloon and this looked amazing, and is actually in a slightly better location with it being closer to some of the main tourist attractions.
We always do our research before we book anywhere – primarily through Tripadvisor and vlogs and this hotel looked perfect. We’ve done a full vlog on the hotel on our Youtube channel (see below) but this really was a fantastic hotel. We did have one hiccup in that the room Kuoni had booked (a deluxe harbour view room) didn’t actually sleep 4 people, unless one of the kids shared the bed with us. We weren’t best pleased but after a few phone calls Kuoni did upgrade us to a suite that slept 4 which was lovely.
Our upgraded suite came with a massive bedroom, and a second massive living room, where we put two rollaway beds for the kids. Both of these had large TVs and were brilliant, very clean, high quality, just a lovely place to stay. The bathroom again was massive with a lovely bath, walk in shower and loads of nice toiletries. Everything was brilliant quality. There was also a second smaller bathroom with a toilet and a little kitchen as well. We were provided with slippers, kimonos and welcome snacks and gifts so it was a lovely place to stay with excellent service.
Moving onto the Disneyland hotel, there are actually 3 hotels at Disney’s Hong Kong resort. The first is Disney’s Hollywood Hotel which includes quite a bit of Marvel theming, the Explorers lodge, which very much reminded us of Animal Kingdom Lodge in Florida, and the Disneyland hotel. This is probably most akin to the Grand Floridian in Florida or the Disneyland hotel in Paris. Given we didn’t know if or when we’d be coming back we really wanted to stay here and make the most of our time. Fortunately we were able to book using our Disney Vacation Club points. This was a tad pricey at 32 points per night, but its only a little more than some of the top resorts in Florida and saved us a chunk of money so felt worth it.
To book we had to call DVC and then request they make the booking for us. So it was a little more involved than a normal DVC booking and not quite as flexible but it worked just fine. The only downside really was that we couldn’t then link this booking to our online Hong Kong Disneyland account to book hotel extras, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
Again we’ve done a full review of the hotel on our Youtube channel which is linked below, but the hotel is amazing - very grand with lovely Victorian architecture, designed to be like a seaside resort. There are numerous restaurants and cafes, an indoor and outdoor pool, mini golf, a maze, and perhaps the best array of extra activities we’ve ever seen in any Disney resort – just fantastic for families. We’d thoroughly recommend a stay here and would love to return one day.
