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Day 236

 

The next morning we left for France.  We had some to kill before our flight, so we checked out (we didn’t leave the room until 11:07 and they called to make sure that we were leaving by 11), and then had some breakfast.

 

We reserved a van to take us to the airport, and what showed up was more of a bus, but it worked just fine.  There were no direct flights on Star Alliance partners, so we got a chance to stop off at our favorite airport one more time - Bangkok!  3 of us were upgraded, so on the 6 hour flight there, Megan, Keira and Lily had business class. They wouldn’t let us all into the lounge, so Elenna and Keira sat by the gate while the rest of us went into the lounge.

 

The first flight was 6 hours, and we didn’t land until midnight.  I started to wonder why I gave up my business class seat for it and how much I was spoiling my daughters.  Liam was upset that he wasn’t in business class in either flight, and nothing is more funny that a 5 year old complaining about the lack of business class (although I am certainly worried about what kind of kid I’m raising).  Liam stayed up the whole flight, but when we were sitting at the gate for the next flight, he fell asleep.  Apparently, he stayed asleep through almost the entire next 12 hour flight.

 

The second flight was very turbulent, which I knew Megan wouldn’t like.  Despite that, since I kept the business class seats for this flight, I probably got about 8 hours of sleep on the 12 hour flight and felt relatively rested.  The customs line separated into a line for people under 12 and over 12.  We all stayed in the under 12 line for about 20 minutes, but when it was clear that the line would take another 30-40 minutes, we had the three girls go into the over 12 line and get the bags.  The line was kind of annoying because the woman running the line let a couple of families out of the line and up the front but not us.  I guess Liam looked too old to get that treatment.

 

The plan was to take a train to Disneyland, so we took a monorail to the train station.  It was a bit confusing about where to go to get tickets for the train, we first waited in a line for tickets for trains that went far away.  We eventually found a place, but by then, I was able to get tickets on my phone.  We got tickets for a train that was arriving in 8 minutes and we went to the gate and the woman looking at our tickets told us to go down the escalator to the end of the track and to hurry.

 

We went down the escalator and there was no train in front of us, with 5 minutes to board, we wondered why we had to hurry.  Then Elenna turned around and saw that there was a train and the beginning of the track, and we realized that was what the woman had meant.  So we ran there, pulling our bags and got onto the train with about 1 minute to spare.  Keira, Megan and I stood in the vestibule with all of our bags while Liam and Elenna sat on the upper deck of the train and Lily stood at the top of the stairs to the upper deck.  Luckily, it was only one stop and 10 minutes until Disney.

 

Getting that much luggage onto and then off of a train is alway a bit of work, but we exited and walked over to an area that Disney has where you can drop off your luggage at the train station and they bring it to your room.  It took a while (the guy checking in our bags had to hand write out a bunch of baggage tags because they weren’t ready for 14 bags to arrive to one reservation).  Then we were on our way to the park, since it was 11am and our room wouldn’t be ready until 4.

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The Disneyland Hotel was beautiful.

 

There are two parks in Disneyland Paris - Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios.  The tickets allow you to go back and forth between the parks.  We didn’t buy fast passes for this first day and just decided to walk around and do whatever rides had short lines.  We had originally planned on having dinner at Pym’s Kitchen (themed from the Ant-man movies) at 6, but everyone was tired, so we moved it up to 2:45pm.  But when we got there, the kitchen was “broken”.  Megan was able to get the woman there to get us into Remy (the Ratatouille themed restaurant instead, switching our reservation there for tomorrow, allowing us to come back to Pym’s tomorrow for dinner).  Megan has a way of sweet talking people into getting us things when the establishment has an issue.

 

We walked over to Remy’s and it is a cute restaurant - everything is themed like the movie, so it is as if you are at a mouse restaurant.  I ordered a steak and quickly realized that I was not in Japan any more, and I wasn’t going to get kobe beef level steak any time soon (especially not in Disney).

 

We went back to the hotel and checked in.  The hotel is beautiful, and the girls all loved it.  For the next 3 days they kept talking about it; Lily in particular would often exclaim how pretty it was. Liam immediately crawled into Megan and my bed and fell asleep.  Megan did a little work/scrolling on her phone for a couple of hours.  I did some blogging.

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However, I am not the type of person who likes to sit around when we can be doing things.  Megan was of the view that we had two full days left at the parks, so it would be better to get everyone some sleep to avoid two days of crankiness.  I had decent sleep on the plane and thought that 12 hours of sleep wouldn’t really be possible for me and I would just wake up at 4am hungry.  So I went back to the parks by myself at 8pm.  I went over to the Spiderman ride, since we don’t have that in Florida and rode that 3 times in the single rider line before the park closed at 9.  Then I walked over to the Disneyland park and went on the Buzz Lightyear ride.  Both rides are shooting games, and those are my favorite.  Megan’s plan was to eat breakfast at the parks the next morning, so I bought 3 large Mickey donuts, eating one on the way back to the hotel.  I got one for Liam, assuming that he would likely wake up early and then be hungry, and one for me to eat the next day, figuring that I would also wake up and be hungry.  

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The next morning, Liam work up around 7 (we we planning to get up at 7:30) and crawled into bed with me.  So even though he slept well on the plane, he still slept for 15 hours.  When I got up, I gave him the donut and his ipad.  I had already eaten my second donut at 4am, when I woke in the middle of the night and was hungry.

 

We left for the park and were at the gates by 8:30 (our hotel gave us 1 hour early entry into the parks). There weren’t many rides that were only in Paris - the best one by far was the Crush Coaster. I had a really strong memory of going on that coaster in Shanghai, only to go back to Shanghai and realize it wasn’t there, and that it was, in fact, in Paris.  There was an Indiana Jones roller coaster that most of my family thought was too jarring to ride ever again.  Pretty much every other ride that they had was also in a different park, although rides like Hyperspace Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, Snow White, Small World, Peter Pan etc. were similar but not 100% the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Its the little things that are different that make going to the different parks worth it.  Such as the castle, which we ranked as tied for 1st (among the non-US parks) with Hong Kong's castle.

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We ate lunch at Coco’s restaurant which was quite good, and of course it had churros, which raises the level of any restaurant.  We finally got our dinner at Pym’s kitchen, and the food there was solid.  At dinner, Liam fell asleep.  He had started coughing during the day and blowing his nose a lot (or at least rubbing his nose against us), so it looked like he was coming down with a cold.  Keira was getting tired so she took him back to the hotel.  Elenna went back to the hotel to get her Eyore blanket to stay warm for the light show.  The plan was to try to do the Alice in Wonderland Maze, then camp out in front of the castle an hour before the show.

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We got to the park 100 minutes before the show, but people were already sitting in front of the castle to see the show, so Megan decided it was better to sit now and skip the maze.  From a viewing perspective, it was good she did becasue within 10 minutes we were surrounded by people who were all sitting up right next to us.  I was trying to take up as much space as I could to make sure Elenna had space when she got back, when a family sat next to me with a bunch of little kids, and the kids would step on my hands and almost sit in my lap.  Luckily, the family left and Elenna came back and we had a decent amount of space.  

 

Elenna was tired and lay down and fell asleep.  Earlier in the day, Megan had said that never in a million years would she have gone back into the park the night before to do more rides.  I would have to say the same thing about sitting in front of the castle for 100 minutes to see a light show.  The shows are always good, but I’m not sure what I would think was worth sitting on the cold ground in a crowd for that long. But the show was neat - the wrinkle here was that in addition to projections on the castle and fireworks (which happens in all of the parks) there were drones that had lights as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I wouldn't normally sit and wait 100 minutes for this, but the light show was pretty cool.

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We got up and did it all over again the next day.  Megan asked at 7:30 if we were going to wake everyone up and rope drop, and although Liam might have benefited from more sleep we were already essentially locked into that plan, since the girl’s room was a 3 minute walk from ours and given that we didn’t tell them otherwise, we were sure they were getting up.  Liam got up hungry and we gave him a cake that we had bought in Japan and then were off to the park.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Day two was shoulder pet day.. No, that isn't Abu from Alladin, its Albert from the Mystic Manor ride in Hong Kong.​

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Liam still had a stuffy nose and a cough, but otherwise seemed fine. When we got into the park, Mickey was waving to people from a balcony, and Liam jumped out of the stroller and then skipped over to see him and wave and dance.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liam wasn't showing any ill effects from his coughing, at least not first thing in the morning.

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We got to meet up with a few characters duing the day.

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If you want to know how to do Disneyland Paris, this is the way.

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This time we ate dinner at Walt’s restaurant, a fancy restaurant on main street which was pretty good.  We took things relatively slow, and after dinner Keira and Elenna wanted to go back to the room.  On the way back we did a princess meet and greet.  We didn’t know who it would be with, and it ended up being Rapunzel, who is Lily’s favorite. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Who doesn't like seeing Rapunzel?

 

We then dropped Liam off at the kids club next door, as as we did, Cinderella was right there, so she signed Liam's autograph book too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A little Disney magic to unexpectedly run into a princess.

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Lily, Megan and I went back to the park.  We did a last few rides that we had to do for Lily and my rankings of the parks, and then headed home.