Fun with Friends at the Oriental Pearl Tower

Hi!!! Long time no post. It’s been pretty busy with review and exams these past two weeks, but almost done! (Bio tomorrow) Yesterday, I finally got my SATIIs out of the way and I was going to suggest going out for dinner. As it turns out, I didn’t need to. My dad’s college classmate in Munich, the same ones we visited, came to Shanghai on Thursday with her two kids. We had such a great time at her place last summer in Munich(actually, I pretty much cleaned off the berries) so I really looked forward to seeing her again. Dinner was a must and so was visiting LuJiaZui, so why not kill two birds with one stone: Eat at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

(The restaurant is in the second ball)

About the Tower

The Oriental Pearl Tower is among Pudong’s first attractions. It’s 486 meters high with the restaurant at 267m, pretty high up there! There are also observation decks, including one at 263m with a cool glass walkway:

As well as an arcade/amusement park at 98m

Not a fan of heights? At the ground floor, there’s a Shanghai city museum, an aquarium nearby and some pretty decent restaurants.

The Restaurant

The Revolving Restaurant is one of the coolest eateries EVER!!! For 328RMB/ person (a bit overpriced), you get to eat dinner while enjoying a full 360 view of the Bund and LuJiaZui over the course of 2 hours.

Another perk, there’s no epic queueing to get up there. Those going to the restaurant have a “Special entryway” up the tower. They expect you to go straight to the restaurant, but there’s nothing to stop you from heading down a couple of stairs to the observation deck. As long as 1/2 of the group is in the restaurant 30 minutes before the reserved time, everything’s fine. It was 5:30 and everyone was pretty hungry, so we headed directly for the food.

Food

Speaking of food, it was mediocre at best. There was a large selection, but it was more quantity over quality.

Most of the food was slow to be replaced or over/under seasoned. The Japanese/Seafood section, usually my favorite, lacked quantity or quality. We had to wait almost an hour before they stopped “running out of sashimi”. The rolls were also horrendous. The worst part was that nearly everything was cold and had obviously been sitting out for a while. This was especially obvious in the soft skins and pooled fat of the Cantonese roasts.

Not everything was bad though. The sausage was better than most places in China and the grill was pretty great, but had pretty epic queueing. The highlight was definitely the mini hot pot. There was a pretty wide variety of items ranging from tofu to pork belly to seaweed to more exotic items such as quail egg and intestine.

Fortunately, our guests were far more impressed with the food.

Visiting tips:

Unless epic queues and cheesy arcade games are your thing, don’t buy tickets for anything other than DINNER at the revolving restaurant. Avoid going between 4-6, since that’s the awkward time between peak meal times with the worst food.
Remember, queues are unavoidable. A direct ticket up does not mean a direct ticket down. It took us a good 40 min to actually get down.
Definitely go slightly before sunset on a clear day, especially in the warmer months. It is BEAUTIFUL.