Fjords and Kilts and Hot Springs, Day 15 -- Disneyland Paris

Day 15 -- Disneyland Paris!! Sunny, 75°; changing to clouds and showers, 60°

We got up fairly early for our Disneyland day. We decided not to try to get there for rope drop, but we did want to be there around 10:00 a.m. So we got up and out of the hotel around 8:30, hit the Pomme de Pain in the plaza and then walked to the Metro stop right at 9. The train to Disneyland is very easy. When purchasing train tickets from one of the automated kiosks, Disneyland is one of the choices displayed in the main menu, so you can't miss it. It was about 3€ per person and about 50 minutes from "our" Metro station. When we arrived at the Disneyland station, we decided to buy our return train tickets before going into the park, instead of fighting whatever crowds we might be fighting when we wanted to leave.

Again, purchasing your tickets ahead of time is a smart idea. You can buy 1-day, 2-park tickets from the Disneyland website for less than the price of a 1-day 1-park ticket at the gate. So definitely check out that option. If you haven't purchased your tickets ahead of time, many of the Paris hotels have promotional vouchers that allow you to buy adult tickets for the price of a child's ticket. (But even this is more expensive than buying them online.)

We only one day, so we decided to spend it in the Magic Kingdom, rather trying to run around to see everything in both parks. I know that I would've liked to ride Rock 'n' Roller Coaster and Tower and Terror in the Studios park, but I was happy to do the one park and experience everything at a decent pace.

On entering the Magic Kingdom, we took a long time wandering down Main St. There are a lot of similarities to WDW's Main St. In fact, on the "side street" off of Main Street, you can still hear music lessons being given in the upstairs apartment. The windows in the buildings serve as tributes to people who have been important in Disney history. Casey's Corner is there, too, although we never did eat there. One of the differences from WDW that I really liked a lot was that there was a covered walkway that ran parallel to Main St on the other side of the merchandise shops. So when it was raining, or if it was really hot, you had a bit of shelter while walking toward the castle.

Entering the park:

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A couple pictures of Main St:

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And a nod to my namesake:

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The castle is the icon, obviously, and I thought it was amazing. Its design is recognizably Disney, but different from its American counterparts. The exterior sports a flying buttress and its interior has a second story that you can walk around in. You can still walk through the castle at any time. It doesn't close for shows, which is great.

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The castle also has an "attraction", which is essentially a dark tunnel with a dragon in it:

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A couple pictures of the upstairs inside the castle:

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After making our way through the castle, we rode Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This was essentially the same as Snow White's Scary Adventure, which recently closed at WDW, and was probably our longest wait of the day.

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After Snow White, I went to Star Tours to get FastPasses for everyone. Disneyland Paris still uses the classic paper FastPasses. However, they're only distributed when the stand-by line at the attraction gets to a certain wait time. So since it was only a 15 minute wait in the stand-by line when I arrived at Star Tours, they simply weren't giving out any FastPasses. So I walked over to Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast and got FastPasses there instead and walked back to meet my group at Toad Hall for lunch. I really liked Toad Hall. It's not an attraction like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, unfortunately; but it does have some great theming for a quick service restaurant. I got a sausage on a pretzel roll. Interestingly, it was served with a curry "ketchup" that I liked a lot. They also had fish and chips and (I think) a chicken sandwich. Some pictures of Toad Hall:

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After lunch, we used the Buzz Lightyear FastPasses. The attraction is very similar to the Orlando version, although the laser gun can be removed from its base, so it's not quite as important to "steer" the ride vehicle to face the targets. Unfortunately, this attraction was in real need of a good cleaning. There were lots of places in the queue with peeling paint and there were cobwebs everywhere. (This is fine in the Haunted Mansion, obviously, but not in the Gamma Quadrant.)

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After Buzz, we made our way to Phantom Manor, which is unusual because it's located in Frontierland. This version of the Haunted Mansion is located in the American Old West. The graveyard scene is very different because of the Old West theme. It was interesting, but I'm wouldn't say that I loved it.

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We sailed on Pirates of the Caribbean and liked it very much. It felt like it was a longer ride and we liked the differences from the WDW version. I also really liked the theming of the exterior with the pirate ship facing the castle.

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I have so many pictures that I think I'll just say that we were able to ride it's a small world, Big Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, Star Tours, and the Disneyland Railroad. I'll post more pictures of all these attractions tomorrow.

However, I'll say that we really liked Small World. The theming before you even enter the queue is really cute and fun, and reminded me of the attraction in Anaheim. But it's been 7 years since I've been to that park (and the attraction was closed for refurbishment when we were there), so I might not be remembering it exactly right. Big Thunder Mountain was pretty much the same as the WDW version, including the queue. The Indiana Jones attraction is an outdoor roller coaster, which includes a full 360° inversion. This was a very short ride, but I liked it a lot. It was the closest thing to a thrill ride in the Disneyland park. (Space Mountain is also located in the Magic Kingdom, but it was closed for refurbishment, so we didn't get to ride it.) The Railroad was pretty typical, but is a nice relaxing way to pass a half hour or so. And Star Tours is the "old" attraction from WDW, with Rex as your pilot. It was a lot of fun to see the classic version of the attraction, but the best part of the experience was that Rex spoke to the passengers in French, but everything else was in English. So Rex is telling us in French that it's his first time flying, but the Rebel Commander says his classic line, "Star Tours. What are you doing here? This is a combat zone!" in English. I'm guessing that this was because they would have had to re-shoot all the video to have the dialogue in French (dubbing French over the existing English would have looked terrible); whereas, with Rex, they could just re-record his lines without worrying about whether they matched how his lips were moving.

Small World:

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Star Tours, with an X-wing outside the attraction instead of an Imperial Walker.

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Inside the Railroad car. You can see that the seats face all four directions, not just forward.

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Indiana Jones' Temple of Peril:

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In the queue for Big Thunder Mountain:

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We didn't ride Peter Pan because, like WDW, it's an insane wait time and nobody in our group felt very strongly about riding it. We didn't ride Autotopia and we didn't walk through Alice's Curious Labyrinth. As I mentioned, Space Mountain was closed, so we didn't get to ride that; and that was my biggest disappointment about our visit.

We did make sure to get a spot at the end of Main St., USA to watch Disney Magic on Parade! I'm not a huge fan of the parades normally, but I wanted to see Paris' version. Overall, I liked it. I thought the floats were generally fun and had a lot to look at. The soundtrack was ok, except that we heard it loop over and over about 15 times over the course of the parade and eventually I got pretty sick of it. So I liked it, but it was not as good as the new Festival of Fantasy parade in Orlando.

I love "Tangled", so I was happy to see this float.

We all agreed that this Alice float was just a little creepy for some reason:

We had dinner at another quick service restaurant, at Cafe Hyperion, which is located in a building that also serves as a venue for live performances. It was called Videopolis. I loved the theming for this building. From the outside, you see part of a huge dirigible; and the rest of it is inside the building. I just thought it looked so darn cool. It had a definite Jules Verne feel to it for me.

When we were there, the stage was being used for Jedi Training. It's always fun to see the kids on stage with Darth Vader, but it was weird because it was "taught" in both English and French.

But even more unusual was that the burgers joined in with the Star Wars theme of the show.

We stayed until the park closed and watched the evening show, "A Night Time Spectacular Show: Disney Dreams!" This was not really a fireworks show, although there were some fireworks involved. The show is projected on the castle and of course, there's plenty of Disney music. We all really liked the show very much, even though we didn't have great a great location to view it. I'm not good at all at nighttime photography, so this is the only picture of the castle that I have. I took it right before the show started.

And finally, I mentioned that there is a covered walkway that runs parallel to Main St, USA. The displays on the walls showcase progress made throughout the 20th century. So there are actual gas lamps on one end of the walkway and at the other end are electrical lights. There are posters from major cities that show inventions of different eras. It's fun to walk through.

That was pretty much the end of our day in the park. Just a couple of general observations about our experience. The one thing that we didn't like about Disneyland Paris was that there was no "Disney attitude" in the Cast Members. There weren't a lot of smiles on CM faces and no happy greetings at attractions or even at the entrance to the park. They were really just employees and didn't seem to think they were part of the show.

But one of things that we loved about the park is that Pixar is integrated more throughout the park than it is in WDW. The music from "Up" is part of the ambient music as you walk around. Russell and Mr. Fredrickson are hiking by the water in one section. Wall-E and Eve are found in Discoveryland. I just loved seeing and hearing Pixar themes in more than just one spot.

We headed out of the park at 11:20 p.m. and fought the crowds back to the Metro station. And we were very glad that we'd bought our return tickets when we arrived at the park that morning. The automated ticket machines were mobbed. But we just headed to the platform and got the next train. We got back into our hotel rooms at 12:15. It was a long and tiring day, but we really enjoyed it.

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