Introduction: Going To Shanghai To Try Out Dragonair's New Economy Class

I’m really behind on trip reports. I owe you Jason’s Seoul trip report, and a few other smaller trip reports. Normally I wouldn’t write these tiny trip reports, but I aim at reviewing each shorthaul product at least twice, so I’m going to publish this hopefully within this week (though my estimates are usually completely off).

Zhouzhuang, Shanghai

While Shanghai is on the bottom of my parents’ bucket list (and not on my sister’s bucket list at all), it was at the top of mine. A trip to Shanghai with my aunt was always a possibility while my sister was at school (I have midterm), but it wasn’t until October that we sprang at it.

By Cathay packages, hotel plus flight rates were coming at almost HK$6000 under how much they’d cost separately. Unfortunately all Cathay Pacific and codeshare flights were blocked out for packages, so we had no choice but to choose Dragonair to take advantage of the fare. And it isn’t really fair to take business class without parents, given that they’re paying. 😉

Dragonair Airbus A330-300 Economy Class

I went with the flights that fit the schedule of most leisure travelers. A big mistake, given that I almost had to stick with a middle seat again on the return (I snatched our two last row window pair at the last minute, and it was 23 minutes into online check-in)…

Dragonair Airbus A330-300 view from ~~torture chamber~~ 44F

My itinerary was:

KA 804 HKG – PVG 10:55 – 13:30 333 Y
KA 891 PVG – HKG 18:30 – 21:05 333 Y

Now, it’s the first time I’ve been to Shanghai, so I had no idea where to stay. TripAdvisor wasn’t my first resource this time given how expensive the top hotels were, so from the hotel front I eventually went with the Hyatt on the Bund. I wanted to familiarise with the Hyatt brand, the Grand and Park were too expensive, and the Andaz was full (which is pretty disappointing given the cheap price and how much I want to stay there), so…

Our package included a Guestroom (which is the room used for packages and tours), but since they said all Guestrooms were full, we were allocated what seemed like a Twin Room instead (according to the pictures on the website).

Hyatt on the Bund Shanghai Twin Room Details (courtesy Hyatt)

The Hyatt on the Bund is a Category 4 hotel, so my (“upgraded”) Twin Room cost 15,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points. Were we not on a package, for our dates points would definitely be the better rate, but unfortunately I don’t have a Hyatt Gold Passport account, so…

Hyatt on the Bund Shanghai Guestroom Details

Hyatt on the Bund Shanghai Twin Room View (courtesy Hyatt)

This brought the package rate up to ~HK$9150.

Cathay Pacific Holidays Package Price Details

From the package, I was actually earning AsiaMiles from the package and the flights, so I found it to be a great deal.

On a tangent, I won’t be doing recaps of trip reports anymore, instead I’ll be putting my thoughts at the end of the last installment of each trip. I’m finding them to be pretty useless, so…

I’ll be trying to publish one installment per day, but I’m still kind of busy, so expect gaps. 😉