Americans in (Disneyland) Paris

[goodmorningirl]

Hello, everyone!

First, let me give a brief introduction to this trip. My fiance and I graduated college in May and we always talked about doing something big to celebrate our graduation. So, after much planning, we decided to go to Europe for 21 days in the middle to the end of May. We went to Ireland first, where we got engaged , then on to the UK, and then we took the train to Disneyland Paris, and then ultimately Paris before we came back to the states and back to real life. Being that I have never been overseas, let alone Disneyland Paris, I knew I had to do a ton of research. Thankfully, I had this board to help me in all of my planning. My fiance and I are a master of Disney World in FL, having been more times than I could count, so we wanted to make sure we got the most out of Disneyland Paris.

I decided to write this trip report to help people who were in the same position as I was. I wanted to reassure them, specifically Americans and other English speakers, that just because you can't understand what your ghost host is saying on the Haunted Mansion or other rides does not mean you won't have a blast ! I hope that I will both help and entertain you all!

 

[budbeerlady]

Cannot wait to read more, I would love to be able to take Dd some day.

 

[mr.bungle]

In! I went in like 1998 and I barely remember it. I can't wait to go back, so I'll need to live vicariously through your TR.

 

[jessrose18]

joining in

 

[lilwitch646]

Sounds awesome! I love Ireland and France, but never been to DLP. I can't wait to read your TR.

 

[goodmorningirl]

Hi Everyone!

I'm so happy to see people are excited to read my report! Here is a quick first post:

We woke up early to catch the earliest train from London to Disneyland Paris. The train ride was four hours long. I tried reading, but I was too excited to get there.

We jumped ahead another hour which just added to our already exhausted state of mind. We finally arrived at the stop and jumped off of the train. Disney songs played as we went up the escalator.
Once we were outside the station, we were a little confused about where exactly to go. Cory, who always thinks he knows where he is going though he is just guessing, said we should go one way. As we were walking that way, large rolling duffel bags behind us, I told him I didn’t think we were going the right way. Instead of following him into who knows where, I stopped at the very handy information booth. The very nice woman told me we needed to get on the bus. Mind you, the bus station was literally right outside the doors of the train station. Oh well, not off to a great start. We stood with our obnoxiously large bags and waited for the bus.

After a quick ride, we found ourselves at the Cheyenne Hotel.

There was an enormous amount of construction going on. I’ve never seen construction like this in Disney World. I know it needs to be done, but it ruined the “magic” a bit. We went to the check-in desk, weaving in and out of people who find it okay to just plant themselves in the middle of the walkway (a theme we would see all too often in DLP).
I was very excited to ask for Just Engaged pins or I’m Celebrating, but no. They had no pins, zero. Again, I was disappointed and wished I was in Disney World. We made the long trek to our room. It had a double or queen bed and a bunk bed against the wall. Obviously, we wouldn’t need that, but it is a good idea for families with kids who are too old to ‘sleep together’. We dropped our stuff in the room, put our pins on, and headed out to Disneyland Park!

 

[PrincessCharlie]

Reading along! Excited to hear more and I hope you put in a bit about paris!

 

[goodmorningirl]

Welcome PrincessCharlie. We actually went from Disneyland to Paris for a few days, so I can definitely include those at the end of the trip now that you're interested

 

[goodmorningirl]

We heard there was a path you could take from Cheyenne to the “Downtown Disney” area and then on to the parks, but we took the bus the first time. It brought us right back to the stop where we had started. Everything is really in one area and is accessed through a central hub. We decided to do Disneyland Park first as Magic Kingdom is my favorite park in WDW.

We approached the park and went under the Disneyland Paris Hotel. This hotel is really gorgeous and I’m sure it is very nice to stay in. I dreamed of staying here, but after looking at the prices, knew the money was better spent elsewhere on our 21 day trip.

We put our tickets in, went under the entrance way and were on Main St.

The castle immediately caught my attention. The style was much more whimsical than WDW. It was also pink which was the most obvious difference.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about it right away, but I have come to like it in its own way. While the castle is Sleeping Beauty’s, I feel it reminds me more of the Beast’s castle in ways.

We went directly toward Discoveryland to hit Space Mountain: Mission 2.

This was an absolute must ride for us. The lines were surprisingly short and we were on in 5 mins. The ride was really awesome. The way it counts you down, obviously in French which made it even cooler, was really exciting. It was also completely different from ours aside from the name. The coaster had corkscrews and loops which was great.

The theme of Discoveryland is different than Tomorrowland in ways aside from the difference in name. While they share most of the same rides, Discoveryland is very “steampunk” in nature as opposed to futuristic. Neither of us are really into the steampunk thing, but I think it worked well for the area and I did like it there.

We knew our ADR for Walt’s was coming up, so we decided to head back toward Main St. to not be late for our reservation. They were doing some refurb on the building so most of the window seats didn’t really have a view. We were seated in Walt’s with little wait and were put right under the Phantom Manor photo and a nice window we could see out of which was a nice surprise.

Throughout the restaurant they have different pictures of the different attractions and I was really hoping for Phantom Manor as Haunted Mansion is one of my favorites back in WDW.

The food was really delicious and we were both really impressed. For an appetizer, Cory got some kind of crab and I got a salad.

I had steak for the main course and neither of us can remember what Cory got, though I believe it was a type of fish.

All in all, the meal was very expensive, but worth the splurge. We knew we were going to go here, so we made sure to fit it into our budget. If you can swing it, I would definitely suggest going here.

Up next: Where would we head to next? And what ride that was supposed to be closed for refurb was actually open?!

 

[markpsych]

Excellent report & pictures! Looking forward to the rest

 

[Linda67]

Glad you enjoyed your meal at Walt's
I'm looking forward to hearing about the rest of your trip

 

[JohnnySharp2]

Interesting to see your Tomorrowland and Discoveryland thoughts.

I have never thought the WDW works as it should, too many attractions are not a vision of 'tomorrow' anymore for me.

 

[tinks_1989]

update soon please

 

[goodmorningirl]

Thanks for your comments and hanging in there. With Thanksgiving and some deadlines for my graduate school, I haven't had much time to update. But, I'm back!

We had a lovely meal at Walt's and decided to hit Frontierland next.

The Haunted Mansion is one of my favorite rides in WDW and I was really looking forward to riding the Haunted Manor in DLP. We got on line which was a little long. I think the ride may have stopped for a bit. It was hard to tell considering we don't speak French, but we were waiting quite awhile outside the doors. But, we were able to get this cool pic.

It was great the way you enter through the front door here. The ride was very cool, though again I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. I wanted to understand the story. I knew it was different from ours at WDW, but I couldn't make much out except that there was a big, scary phantom guy. The themeing in the area outside the manor was great.

We exited Haunted Manor and found that Big Thunder Mountain was actually open!! It was so cool that it was on it's own island and we were really looking forward to going on it!

We found these cute guys on the roof as we were waiting in line.

The ride was awesome! It was better than ours in WDW and I wish I could ride it again.

We wanted to make sure we got on all of the rides that we don't have here in WDW so next was Indiana Jone's Temple of Peril.

This ride was okay. Cory liked it better than I did. I just thought it threw me around way too much and I hurt afterwards.

Up Next: Which land would we venture to next?

 

[tinks_1989]

great update you should read the story behind Phantom Manor its quiet interesting


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Manor

 

[goodmorningirl]

Thanks for the link, Tinks 1989. I wish I searched for the story before I went. Now I want to ride it all over again! lol

I may have time for a second update today, yay!

 

[tinks_1989]

Thanks for the link, Tinks 1989. I wish I searched for the story before I went. Now I want to ride it all over again! lol

I may have time for a second update today, yay!

I didnt read the story till this year and havent rode it since so really looking forward to it as well! x

 

[goodmorningirl]

So after getting a bit beat up on the Temple of Peril, we headed back to Discoveryland.

I don’t remember why we went back and didn’t venture into a land we hadn’t seen yet. I think we wanted to save the others for the next time we came to the park.
We went back on Space Mountain which again is just awesome.

Below is a photo of the queue area before you get in the ride.

Then we went on Buzz. Cory of course did amazing as always. I always do good, but almost never good enough to beat him.
Just a tad impressed with himself.

Us with our respective positions in the Star Fleet.

We then went to explore the Nautilus. I wish it was like the ride that was in WDW when I was a kid, but the walkthrough was still really cool and another thing we didn’t have at our park.

Hidden Mickey? Lol

My main goal at this point was to get me a Mickey’s Premium ice cream bar my absolute overall most favorite thing in Disney World! So, I went to the nearest ice cream stand and found…that they didn’t have it! What?! It must have just been that one cart, right?! Nope! No cart in either of the parks had my favorite Disney treat! Oh well. Cory couldn’t help but laugh. He told me I should have seen my face because it looked so devastated. Well, at least we were in Disney.
It was getting late and the parks closed crazy early, so we made our way back into Disney Village for dinner. We went to the NY Deli not expecting much to be honest. We’re about an hour from NYC and you can’t get better than that. So when our Panini’s were below par, I wasn’t really disappointed, though I expected more from Disney.
We went into the movie theater curious to see how expensive a movie ticket was in France and found this hilarious poster. Do they not use the word Hangover in France?

After dinner, we stopped for a Starbucks delicious Passion Tea Lemonade, or I should say I did. This I in front of the hotel New York.

We got these photos around our hotel before we returned to our room to get some much needed sleep.

 

[goodmorningirl]

I hope you all are still following along. Sadly, I stopped writing in my journal after the previous day so I don't know exactly what we did in order or whether or not we did it on this day or the day after when we left. So, I'll just put it together as best I can I'm realizing I have very little photos from the Studios. I think we were just so busy getting from ride to ride.

This morning we headed to the Studios first.

We wanted to get on TOT and RNR as soon as we could to avoid long lines longer in the day.

On the way to TOT we found this.

I liked the theming around TOT.

And here it is. The Tower of Terror!

One word for this ride, wow! The WDW ride moves you forward into the shaft before you actually drop. So while it is a surprise when you drop, you know it is coming because you know you are in the shaft that allows that. On this one however, you begin in the shaft and just drop completely randomly. We were expecting to move forward as we do in WDW so we were both in complete shock when we dropped! It was awesome!

After TOT we headed to RNR which was having some difficulties. We passed the time by meeting some characters.

Love this guy. <3

And I snapped this picture which I sooo much!

We got on RNR with a short wait and it was another great ride. I think this one and WDW's were on the same level. I don't remember really thinking one was better than the other.

We then headed over to Crush's Coaster. The line was absurdly long and there were no FPs. I have no idea why there are no FPs for this ride as the line is huge all of the time. Cory thought it would be very lame, but being the amazing fiance that he is, he waited with me. I'm not exaggerating when I say we waited at least an hour. But in the end, it was worth it! I'm bummed we didn't get on it again as it was a blast!! I really wish we had this ride in WDW. I loved it!!

We then went into Toy Story Playland and this area was really well themed. I loved how everything was big.

We went on the RC Racer and it was fun, but really just a carnival ride I've been on a few times before.

After Toy Story Playland, we went on TOT again and then made our way out of the park. It didn't take us long to get through the whole park and I think we were done by around 1pm or so.

Next we made our way back into Disneyland Park.

 

[tinks_1989]

One word for this ride, wow! The WDW ride moves you forward into the shaft before you actually drop. So while it is a surprise when you drop, you know it is coming because you know you are in the shaft that allows that. On this one however, you begin in the shaft and just drop completely randomly. We were expecting to move forward as we do in WDW so we were both in complete shock when we dropped! It was awesome!

LOL! DH first TOT ride was the DLP version which was also my first DLP TOT so I was expecting it to be the same as WDW and was just as shocked as him on our first drop lol!

Loving the report