A Magical Time

Now, it's time for the post you've all been waiting for: Disneyland Paris! My parents and I were at the resort from the Monday after they arrived through Wednesday. We traveled there by a Eurostar train and through the "Chunnel" (the tunnel underneath the English channel), arriving at a station literally just outside the gates of Disneyland Paris. The Disney Express service provided us our tickets on the train, and gave us luggage tags so that we could drop our bags at the Disney Express counter at the train station, where they would be taken to our hotel so that we could pick them up later. Within minutes of arriving, we were within Walt Disney Studios, sister park to Disneyland Paris. This smaller park has fewer rides, making it an ideal first stop as the train reached the parks in the early afternoon, and the parks close relatively early during the off-season at seven o'clock.

Walt Disney Studios seen from outside the park. It was supposed to rain the entire time we were at Disneyland, a fact we had sadly accepted. And it did rain severely--once at 6 in the morning on Tuesday. The rest of the time it drizzled lightly at the worst, and at some points it was even sunny! For the most part it was overcast, however, as you'll see in the somewhat darkened photos.


The lines in both parks were pretty much non-existent. Rockin' Rollercoaster was a five-minute wait, unheard of in its other location, Florida.


This was one coaster that we had to wait a decent time for: Crush's Coaster.


The ride, however, was well worth the wait. Part dark ride (a la Peter Pan or Snow White), part coaster, it comes with cars shaped like turtle shells, with back-to-back seatin that holds four people, as seen in this model outside the ride.


The tiny bit of track you can see outside the building is from the very beginning of the ride and is fairly tame. After you go through that bit, you go into the dark ride section, seeing Nemo and his friends under the ocean. Then up the lift you go, finally getting to the top where you suddenly swerve to the side and drop sharply, car spinning at the same time. Imagine dropping a marble into a steep bowl and letting it roll around, and you may understand the sensation that is Crush's Coaster. While I thought it was quite a blast, I was alone when I went on the ride later in the trip--Mom said that the ride was amazing, but she'd never do it again.

Walt Disney Studios overall was fairly underwhelming, with lackluster themeing and few rides and shows, so we easily saw everything we wanted to before the park closed and we headed back to the hotel. The Sequoia Lodge was nice, reminescent of the Wilderness Lodge at Disney World, if not quite as expansive. We went to bed early after getting up equally early to get to the train station on time. the next day, however, we got up early to take advantage of a hotel special: Extra Magic hours. Guests of all Disneyland Paris hotels get to enter the Disneyland Park starting at 8 o'clock. Since the park doesn't open to the public till ten o'clock, that meant that we had two hours of little-to no crowds. Even though we were restricted to Fantasyland Discoveryland (the equivilent of Tomorrowland), it was amazing to walk through the park with barely any other people around. We got to walk onto rides such as Peter Pan and Space Mountain that normally would have required a wait, going onto every attraction available to us before the park officially opened to us.

If Walt Disney Studios was underwhelming, Disneyland Paris was the exact opposite. The detail was amazing. Everything was giant in structure and yet intricate at the same time. Take the castle for instance. It is big enough to house two stores, a second floor gallery of stained glass windows telling the story of Sleeping Beauty, and a dragon's lair in the basement.



There are two levels of walkways along the moat. Yet the columns have been detailed with Gothic-like architecture, with a Disney-twist.

It was an absolutely wonderful experience. Tuesday we spent at Disneyland Paris, Wednesday at both parks, going on any rides we hadn't had a chance to do yet, and re-doing ones that we had enjoyed. Then it was back on the Eurostar to be dumped off at St. Pancreas station.

Here is the album for the parks. Facebook recently expanded the number of pictures one can include in an album, thank heavens! More pictures, less albums.

Disneyland Paris

Hopefully I'll have time to wrap up my trip posts this weekend. My new internship is keeping me busy, but I'm enjoying it!