Please note - Since this article was written Splendid China has sadly Closed.
When you need a break from Mickey and his friends, why not head to Splendid China?
It is located off the Orlando Bronson Highway 192 quite near to the Disney main gate.
We found the park particularly interesting as it caters more for adults and older children, and as we have two moody teen-agers who are easily bored, it was a relief that it passed the teen-age test.
The park is set in over 75 acres so you can expect to do a lot of walking. Most of the greatest landmarks in China have been re-created including The Great Wall, The Imperial Palace, The Summer Palace and the Leshan Buddha and many others.
The Great Wall of China is fantastic, it is over half a mile long and looks authentic, but it is a miniature, right down to the size of the tiny bricks used for its construction.
I suppose it would have been a bit unfair to expect it to be as large as the original which is over 1500 miles long.
We were astonished at the effort that has gone into all the re-creations.
The replica of the Imperial Palace (forbidden city) is another amazing sight and with the gentle Chinese music in the background it is easy to forget that you are in a theme environment.
The Leshan Buddha was very impressive at 35 feet tall it was an amazing sight, although apparently it is very small compared with the original, although I must admit it was not a ‘famous sight’ that our family had ever heard of.
We thought that Splendid China was an excellent place to spend an afternoon and evening and watching all the Artisans hard at work was so interesting. Needless to say we all had our names written in Chinese script, as a memory of our trip.
We found the food in the restaurants to be of a very high quality and recommend arriving later as the theme park seems to come alive after dark. All the buildings, even the miniatures have lights inside and with the gentle music it really is a very relaxing environment.
The only problem now is that after such a wonderful experience at the Splendid China Exhibition, we all want to visit China (The country) to see the real sights which could turn out to be a very expensive trip.