DISNEYLAND PARIS: Time of my Life

Sleeping Beauty in her special edition dress!

 Ok, so where to begin? Taking a train to France was a lot of fun, mostly because we slept through it! We were running on 4 hours of sleep to get to this train so sleeping was a necessity. The trains were pretty smooth and everything worked well. Disneyland is literally right outside the train station which was fantastic for us!!!

Our hotel was soooo cute! We stayed at the Sante Fe and it was route 66 and cars themed. We had comfy cones in our room and Mater sleeping and it was so adorable and comfortable! The breakfast was a really good continental breakfast. The croissants were so yummy! I also enjoyed getting cereal and hot chocolate.

Ratatouille!!!

So the Disney park. It was amazing! Very small and not as crowded as I expected. Rain is a state of being, we were almost always wet and there are not as many characters. For a while, it was really easy to think that we were just in California...until you heard something in French. I had such a fantastic time. It was their 20th anniversary so Mickey and friends had special edition costumes. Ali and I managed to get a picture and autograph with Mickey in his normal and special edition costume. So that was really fun. I loved every moment in this park! When we arrived on Thursday we had 8 hours in the park until it closed and we managed to ride 12 rides!

This was mostly due to a very nice man and sheer luck. We rode Snow White first, also known as Blanche-Neige et les Sept Naims. It was the same ride, just in French. We thought it was very symbolic that our first ride in Paris was the first animated movie. We also rode Les Voyages de Pinocchio, Phantom Manor (Haunted Mansion), Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan's flight, Le Pays des Contes de Fees (Storybook Land), Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, Indiana Jones, Casey Jr., walked through Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Adventure land, and Alice's Curious Labyrinth. Yeah, we are pros. So the nice man, we waited in line for Snow White and we were heading towards Peter Pan when we saw the line was long. So we decided to get a fast pass. While we were waiting a man walked up and handed Ali two fast passes that we could use immediately. We were feeling pretty blessed.

Mickey in his 20th anniversary costume! My hair is a disaster lol

Alice Curious Labyrinth was really cool. Basically we walked through the entire story and "met" all of the characters. They were there in the form of plastic statues but it was really fun. At the end was the Mad Hatter's Tea Party so you could take pictures in the red chair. That was cool .We also saw Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb but we could not get pictures or their signature. They just weren't out long enough. Adventure land was filled with this maze-like tunnels that were really fun. We also found Davy Jones locker and Hooks Pirate ship. That was pretty great. The Indiana Jones ride was an outdoor roller coaster that was really fun. Pirates of the Caribbean was in its original state which was cool. I have been on the "classic" ride for 10 years since the one in Disney World has Jack Sparrow now. It was great.

So my journal entry is really specific as to what we did when and all of our adventures but this blog post will be more of an overview because I am really tired and finally sick. It was all worth it though! Also, if you are every around me I can literally walk you through the whole park with my pictures. I have about 1,000 from the past day and a half. It was amazing and soooo much fun. So Phantom Manor was different from the Haunted Mansion. Haunted Mansion is a fun scary right? Phantom Manor is a dark scary. I don't know if the opening premise is different, it was in French, but the ride itself focused on the Bride and just scary dark images. The ballroom scene was entirely different and the song they sing was only in the ride for like 20 seconds tops (it was in English!). The pictures and things were just dark. I don't really have another word for it, but it was still fun.

20th Anniversary dessert. It was yummy fudge

So this park had the first Storybook Land ride that I had ever been on. It was sooo cool! They had stories that I didn't think they would showcase like Peter and the Wolf, Fantasia, The Sword in the Stone, and oddly the Wizard of Oz. Not sure why that was there. The detail work in these models were just fantastic. We rode this one twice because it was that good and the line was short! Sleeping Beauty's Castle was sooo gorgeous. It had a mixture of stain glass windows and tapestries that told the story. There were evening sleeping guards when the fairies put them to sleep it was beautiful. Under the castle was a dragon which was super cool to see. I loved it. Disney is just amazing.

What else to tell you? Their parades were fantastic! Jungle book had a huge theme in this park! It was fun to see, I really want to watch the movie again. We also saw Merlin, the Blue Fairy and Fairy Godmother which is very rare indeed and they had their own float. That was really cool. Peter Pan was also around a lot even though the memorabilia where still non-existent.  The second parade was a light parade. That was really cool too. The villains got a brief chunk of this parade which was really fun. Also the closing show for Disney Paris is amazing! You can watch it on youtube! It featured Peter's shadow and sang Be Our Guest (french), Friend Like Me (French), Out There (Hunchback, French), Step in Time (English), I See the Light (English), and just had really cool effects.

Sleeping Beauty's Castle!!!

Space Mountain 2 was really different and very fun. It had more barrel rolls which was awesome. We watched the Tarzan show which I enjoyed a lot. The songs were half French and half English which just made it very cool. It was pretty much a mini circus with silks and trapeze and things. It was neat. Cinemagique and Animagique were hilarious. Animagique we thought would be a 4-D movie. It was actually live action. They used black light to make it "Dark, but not scary dark...Just really dark". The black light was a great effect because you only saw the puppets costume and scenery. You could not see the people who worked the puppets at all which was really neat. Cinemagique used a ton of different movies that were not just Disney. My favorite part is our character ends up on the Titanic right when its sinking and he hears Jack calling for help. He opens one cabin and finds Jack Sparrow pointing a gun at him saying "This shot is not meant for you". The next door he finds some creepy doll thing? That throws up on him, then he finds the Incredible's having the fight at the kitchen table and so on and so forth. He doesn't actually save Jack though...it was just a fantastic wonderful thing.

We also rode Rocking Roller Coaster (a bit different and french), Armageddon (scary which was great fun too cause Ali freaked out more than me), Tower of Terror (the best!), and Crushes Coaster. This is in Disney Studios, the other park which is just incredibly tiny. This park also had a parade which featured old cars that were transformed to have a specific movie theme. So Ratatouille had the sign for the restaurant and Remy and Emile. Mushu had a car and Snow White's car had an apple at the front. The Villains had a car too which was just great. It was such a wonderful place. Alright, I am going to find some dinner. If you can, have me walk you through the pictures. There is so much more to this story than I am going to type out but I will have it in my journal! Have a wonderful Bastille Day! Hope everything is good for you :) Love you tons!   

I was being cute.