So when in Paris it would be rude not to pay a visit to Disneyland! I'd been to Disneyland Paris twice before but hadn't been since 2003 and it was also the 20th Anniversary this time so I was excited to see the changes and celebrations. We started the morning early getting up about 6.30 and taking in the view from our hotel room:
It reminded me of the Sound of Music or something from Austria, it was pretty. We had breakfast in the hotel and then got the shuttle bus to the parks area. Today we would visit Disneyland and I was super excited to be getting back to a Disney park.
The Christmas season was starting during our visit so they seemed to be putting decorations up slowly but surely over the few days we were there. The first day the entrance was already decorated for Christmas.
The entrance to Disneyland Paris is alot different from WDW. In Paris you go under the Disneyland Hotel to get to the entrance. In WDW the nearest hotel is a monorail ride away from any of the parks. Anyway once through the entrance we landed in a somewhat familiar Main Street USA:
They had their Christmas tree up on the entrance hub but there was a green fence around it. You could still get a good picture of the top half though:
Then once we went around the Christmas tree that familiar excitement struck with the first view of Chateau de la Mickey! It's never a Princess castle it's Mickey's House!
We hung around Main Street for a while admiring the shop windows and shops themselves which already had their Christmas decorations up as well:
We waited at the hub for a few minutes as the 20th Anniversary Train was due to start. While I was waiting I took pictures of the castle and a cute Christmas Winnie the Pooh who had come out to greet guests.
Soon enough the 20th Anniversary Train came by. This was similar to the Villains Mix and Mingle in WDW in one sense. The train comes along stops in front of the castle and all the characters get off and guests can go meet them and attempt to get their picture taken and what not. Villains Mix and Mingle, villains come out do their show and then guests form an orderly queue to meet and greet their favourite villain.
So having five visits to WDW behind me I picked a character at random and went to queue for a picture, except there was no queue. There was a system that can only be described as a mob circling the character with a CM shouting stay back and Goofy will come to you when he is ready. Goofy picked children under the age of ten the whole time and there was no system of first come first served. People pushed in from the back and skipped and it was in general a complete and utter disastrous way to meet a character and complete waste of time because unless you were under ten it was clear Goofy didn't want to know. I eventually just gave up and snapped this picture before leaving.
After about ten or fifteen minutes of the "mob" sessions the characters get back on the train and everyone continues on their merry way.
Continued in next blog post
No comments:
Post a Comment