3 Days In Disney Paris - Day 3

Our last day at Disney Paris went somewhat like we'd expected.  The plan from the start was to have one day at the Disney Studios Park, one day at Disneyland Paris, and have a third day to ride anything we'd missed or anything we wanted to ride twice.  The real surprise to us on this day was the fact that we spent more time at the Studios Park than we did at Disneyland.  With all of the negative reviews we'd read about the Studios Park we expected that we might not even need a full day there, instead we found ourselves spending most of our extra time there.

The morning however was dedicated to Disneyland.  This is mostly because of the Extra Magic Hours. The highlight of this morning's Extra Magic Hours was actually moving around the park.  When we arrived at the foot of Main Street USA, I discovered a patty wagon parked at the side of the road.  I had read that some of the vehicles at Disneyland didn't really have a particular stopping point, but if you saw them parked you could just wave them down.  I asked the nice cast member hanging around the patty wagon if we could get a lift. He said "sure" and adventure began.  We sat at the back and watched all of the folks walking up Main Street.  It was so much fun.

We wandered around the park for a little while, rode Buzz Lightyear's Space Rangers Spin, and then at the gift shop we discovered something we really needed, flipflops. Our next stop on our trip was to Paris, and we had reservations at a Youth Hostel.  We forgot to pack our flipflops, and we had been keeping an eye out for them our whole stay at Disney.  Finally we found a pair and we were overjoyed.  Then things went bad.  The person checking us out forgot that we wanted the flipflops delivered to our room.  He went through the whole process and handed us our bag.

This was a problem for us since we had plenty more walking around to do that day.  We reminded him that we wanted them sent to our room.  He said he forgot, and he had to get a manager to see if they could fix it.  The manager eventually arrived and he said that since the sale went through, he couldn't do it.  He was really rude and we were very unhappy.  Our plan was to head over to the studios next, so we decided to visit the customer service office at the front of Disneyland.  We explained our story to the nice man there, and he said that this was unacceptable.  He then made arrangements for our purchase to be delivered, and then he made our sucky morning turn into a fantastic morning.  He told us as an apology for this problem, we could have a Fast Pass for any ride for any ride (excluding a few) in the either park.  Since Ratatouille was one of the exceptions, we chose Thunder Mountain.

So we knew we would get a daytime ride on Thunder Mountain later that day.  Our next step was to head over to the Disney Studios and get a normal fast pass for Ratatouille, the only other ride we really wanted to ride on a second time.  We got the fast pass after about a 45 minute lineup, and hung out at the studios for a while.  While hanging out waiting for our fast pass we rode the Slinky Dog ride, checked out the interactive Stitch show, took all kinds of fun picture, and were really reminded how much fun we've had at the Disney Studios Park.  Sure there are a bunch of Disney aficionado who really hate this park, but for our trip it was really great.

After our ride on Ratatouille and a great visit to the Disney Studios Parks, we headed back to Disneyland to ride Thunder Mountain. It was as great in the day as it was at night.  We then waited in line for the railroad, which had had really long lines every day we'd visited the park. We certainly didn't want to skip this classic Disney attraction, and we were really happy to ride around the park on our last day reminiscing about our fun time at Disney. After our railway adventure we had a bit of a conundrum.  We didn't really know what we wanted to do last.  There were a few rides we'd skipped, because we just weren't that interested.  One such ride was the Autopia.

We thought since we were heading on a road trip right after this Disney adventure that the Autopia would be a little silly.  Allison however thought that since she was doing all of the driving for the road trip, it was only right that I drive her around a little bit.  We got to our car and the fun began.  I don't think we stopped laughing once during the entire drive around the track.  It was the perfect last ride on our visit to two really fun Disney parks.

3 Days in Disney Paris - Day 2

Day two in the Disney Paris parks and we once again decided to take advantage of extra magic hours.  This time we didn't have a particular plan on which attraction we wanted to ride, unlike day one where we knew we wanted to ride Peter Pan's flight.  We had a few ideas about the rides that were extremely popular, but we figured we could just wing it.  Our lack of plan turned out to be a bad idea.

Our second day of extra magic hours started out great, in fact one of the highlights of the trip happened on in the first few minutes of our second day.  We started our day venturing up Main Street USA in Disneyland.  Our plan was to head towards Fantasy Land and figure out where we wanted to go from there.  On our way up Main Street we noticed something going on in a tucked away corner, there were a few people that appeared to be hanging out.  We stopped for a second to see what they were up to, and as it turns out they were there to see Goofy.  There was almost no line at all, and within minutes we were hanging out with our favorite character.

After hanging out with Goofy our morning slowed down considerably.  We had a reservation to have breakfast in Fantasy Land.  We were pretty excited about this since our hotel breakfasts were OK but nothing spectacular. We figured a breakfast in the park must be awesome, but we couldn't have been more wrong.  There was nothing additional to our breakfast in Fantasy Land, No characters to greet us, no fun new foods to try, nothing new at all.  In fact the breakfast selection was actually less than what the hotel provided.  The only thing this breakfast provided was incentive to get out of bed early, but after eating there that morning, the incentive was gone.

We had grand plans of checking out all of the lands and all of the hard to get on rides during our Extra Magic Hours, but unfortunately the only land that was open was Fantasy Land, and many of the rides in Fantasy Land were closed.  So other than a few dark rides everything stayed closed during the Extra Magic hours, a complete waste of time. We decided to take this time to just wander around around and explore what we could.  As soon as the gates to the closed areas opened we were off to enjoy our day of adventure.

We did all of the classic rides including Pirates of the Caribbean, It's a Small World, and Alice's Curious Labyrinth.  We also spent a great deal of time exploring Adventure Island where we found all kinds of fun bridges and caves to explore.  Allison rode on the Indiana Jones roller coaster, and was fairly disappointed.

Our lunch was both extremely disappointing and wonderful all at the same time.  We went to Casey's Corner where they sell giant hot dogs with insane toppings.  The quality of these hot dogs was kind of questionable, but the craziness and quantity of toppings was superb.  We went with a foot long hot dog covered in cheese and crunchy onions.  It was wonderfully insane.

We enjoyed a few more attractions during the afternoon, and then we headed to the Disney village for a meal at what would turn out to be the culinary highlight of our trip.  This time it was an all you can eat Tex-Mex buffet at La Grange at Billy Bob's.  I'm sure many people wouldn't be impressed by simple Tex-Mex, but since Allison and I haven't been living in a western country for a while, it was just what we needed.  The food was nice and fresh, the variety was insane, and best of all they have a section for adults.  It was a little crazy in the rest of the restaurant, but in the adult section it was a little nicer.  After filling our stomachs, we headed back to Disneyland to enjoy a bit of the nightlife.

The evening in the park was probably our favorite time.  We spent most of the evening exploring Frontierland.  When we first arrived it looked as though many of the attractions were closed due to lack of people around, but we couldn't be more wrong.  We started out with a ride on Thunder Mountain, which we had to wait for a little while, but it was great themeing all throughout the lineup.  After Thunder Mountain we wandered towards the Haunted Manor.

This was the part of Frontierland we thought was completely closed because no one was in sight at all.  There was no one in line for the Haunted Manor, so we were convinced it was closed.  We decided that we would check out the area around the Haunted Manor to check out the graveyards and creepy grounds surrounding the mansion. The grounds around the Haunted Manor were completely empty, and this added such a creepy feel.  It was dark and scary, and I had many a shiver down my spine.  As we walked back up towards the exit of the graveyard we noticed a few cast members hanging out around the entrance to the Haunted Manor.  We asked them if it was in fact open, and they said yes.  We made our way up the path to the attraction completely on our own.  Eventually a few other people showed up, but there was no more than 10 people on the ride the same time as us.  It was magical.

After our creepy adventure we decided that this would be the end of our day, and while watching the fireworks over the castle we headed back to the hotel.

3 Days In Disney Paris - Day 1

Phase one of our Disney adventure is over, and it was a fantastic.  As you may or may not know, the aim of this blog was to write about our adventures planning, and executing a trip to Disney World in Florida.  Life got in the way, and we had to delay our trip by a couple of years.  Then, life presented us an opportunity to get a taste of the Disney adventure before we headed to Florida. As it turns out, we were going to be near Paris France, and we had a couple of days to do something fun.  We decided that we would test out the European Disney waters.  This was not going to be replacing our Disney World adventure, instead it would serve as an appetizer.

We arrived extremely late to our hotel, the Sequoia Lodge.  It was a bit of a walk in the cool French air to get to our hotel, but once we arrived we found our lodgings to be spectacular.  First of all they set up our bed with all kinds of chocolate coins, and letters wishing us a happy anniversary (it was our 10th). We also discovered that we had a balcony, and it was huge.  It was big enough for 3 rooms worth of balconies, but it was all ours.  We put away everything we could, and instantly fell asleep knowing we had a busy day the next morning.

The weather on the first day of this Paris adventure was not going be in our favour.  On this first day rain was in the forecast, and rain is what we got.  It wasn't so rainy that it stopped us from visiting the parks, but it was a little bit grey.  We had a plan for this first day however, since every day of this trip extra magic hours were taking place in the morning at Disneyland, we decided that even if we were going to the Disney Studios Park we'd spend the first few hours at Disneyland going on the hard to get on attractions.

After a bit of research, I learned that one of the longest, and slowest, line ups in the entire park was for Peter Pans Flight.  Apparently it has something to do with ride capacity problems.  So on our first day we figured it would be best to get this ride out of the way.  Even coming near the beginning of extra magic hours, the line for this ride was pretty long, about 30 minutes, but it was well worth it, a great way to start this trip.

After our quick stop in Disneyland we headed straight over to Disney Studios and went for our first fast pass, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy.  This was the newest ride in all of Paris Disney, and is known to have legendary long lines (2 or 3 hours).  We managed to pick up a fast pass for a later that afternoon, and it was well worth it.  The rest of the studios was fairly quite, with only a few short lines here and there.  Allison even manged to get on the Rockin' Rollercoaster with only a 10 or 20 minute wait.  We managed to get into almost every attraction we wanted, and those that we didn't manage were shows that just didn't fit into our schedule later on.

The highlight of the day however was Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy, the newest gem in this park, and one of the only rides we took on twice (the second ride being on our last day). It was technically fantastic, and so detailed any Disney fan could only love it.  One thing that really surprised me after this first day was how much people on the internet really dislike this park.  Most people call it a half day park, and say that other than a few shows, and this new Ratatouille ride, it's not really worth it.  Allison and I enjoyed ourselves a whole lot at the Studios Parks, and as you'll see in the 3rd installment of this blog series, it was the park we visited most.

Our first day was also when we came across a problem that many people have at both of these parks, bad food options.  While our lunch was fine, our dinner was a huge disappointment.  I'd read on the internet that Paris Disney had pretty lousy options for food, I was blown away at how lousy they were.  It's not that there are no restaurants, it's just that so many of them have really bad food.  Our first dinner was at the Steak House in the Disney Village, and it was pretty bad.  We came when it was very slow, yet our food took forever, our sever left and didn't come back the whole night (we had to ask another server if we could pay him instead) and the steaks were pretty horrible.

Fortunately this didn't damper our day at all, particularly since we were expecting bad food.  After riding the Tower of Terror one last time, we decided to call it a night.  We were completely drained, from the lack of sleep the night before and the huge amount of walking all day, but happy.  We went to bed ready for our day at Disneyland.

Stay tuned next week for part two of our Disney adventure.