Happy Halloween trip- PTR and TR day one added

smallpig

Mouseketeer
Joined
May 3, 2011
Day One TR now added: http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=43006863&postcount=11

We're off again!

After a fantastic trip in June we are well and truly hooked, and fortunately have the Fantasy APs to facilitate the addiction.

I am a big Nightmare Before Christmas fan and have always wanted to go to Disney at Halloween, so after seeing the pictures from the Halloween celebrations of people with Jack and Sally, I knew we had to go.

My lovely OH and his family bought me a eurostar voucher for my birthday, so with the APs we are hoping for a fairly budget trip.

Who: Me (26) - big kid, love theme parks and silliness
Boyfriend - even bigger kid, loves sci-fi and more silliness

When: 13 - 15 October. MNSSHP is booked for the 14th.

Travelling by Eurostar to Paris as we may spend a day/first night there, but I know we both just want to get to DLP asap, so we'll see.. Have yet to book hotels but it will be back to the Ibis in Val d'europe. It's not luxury, but clean and cheap and will be shattered anyway!

Must Dos:
-Crush, was closed last time
- Indiana Jones, also closed last time
- Blue Lagoon for lunch, regret not going before
- Earl of Sandwich, yummy breakfast, cheaper than the hotel!

And pretty much everything else... can't wait!
 
Oooooh sounds fab. Cant wait to see all the pics and hear all about it popcorn::
 
thanks! the party tickets arrived in the post already!

I think we're going to swap days around and go straight to Disney on Thursday, then do a day of Paris sight seeing on Saturday when the parks will be packed. Our Eurostar isn't until after 9pm on the Saturday, so figure we can do our sightseeing without the cost of a central Paris hotel. Plus, Disney is all paid for except for food really, so can manage the cost more (and also, we just want more Disney!)
 
I wish we were going for Halloween I have done MNSSHP 3 times in WDW and love it would love to go in DLRP looking forward to your pictures ! xxx
 


It sounds like so much fun. Great plan for the Saturday as I imagine you'd get so much more sightseeing done in Paris as opposed to rides/attractions in DLP.
 
I am a big Nightmare Before Christmas fan and have always wanted to go to Disney at Halloween, so after seeing the pictures from the Halloween celebrations of people with Jack and Sally, I knew we had to go.

I'm a huge nightmare before christmas fan too (including the tattoos and crazy amounts of memorabilia! :lmao:) and we went in 2008 for halloween. I had my piccys taken with jack and sally outside Phantom Manor - they were seriously the best character interaction we have ever had, such great friendly people. Jack was just amazingly funny... so good! :goodvibes They also had a halloween town themed band in the graveyard of Phantom Manor that played songs from the film so def check that out :thumbsup2

Hope you have a great time, I'm sure you will! :yay:
 
I'm a huge nightmare before christmas fan too (including the tattoos and crazy amounts of memorabilia! :lmao:) and we went in 2008 for halloween. I had my piccys taken with jack and sally outside Phantom Manor - they were seriously the best character interaction we have ever had, such great friendly people. Jack was just amazingly funny... so good! :goodvibes They also had a halloween town themed band in the graveyard of Phantom Manor that played songs from the film so def check that out :thumbsup2

Hope you have a great time, I'm sure you will! :yay:

That sounds brilliant - I can't wait! Might come back with a bit more memorabilia too..!
 


Adding to my own PTR with thoughts on food (as always!)

Checking out the menus and as much as I'd love to try Inventions etc the prices are a little steep (and with only 1.5 days we want as much park time as poss!), so I think we'll go with..

Day 1 - arrive DLP around midday if all goes to plan.
Lunch - Earl of Sandwich OR if we can't wait to get into the park then maybe Col Haithi's as we liked the pizza last time!
Dinner - Annettes after park closing

Day 2 -
Brekkie at EoS was great in June, so either that or Cable Car Bakery
Lunch - blue lagoon (regret not going last time) OR Walt's perhaps
Dinner - MNSSHP tonight, so after a big lunch a snack on the move probably - assume the eating places in the lands that are open will be too?

Day 3 - off to Paris then home - sad farewell to DLP for now!

Am I missing anything amazing that I'll regret? x
 
Having some problems uploading pics, they keep getting distorted, so just words for now.. sorry there are so many of them!

Day One


The travel bit


The night before we left our landlord decided there was a pressing need to knock a hole in the wall to get to a pipe. So, all my well planned Disney prep was undermined by having to pack up half the kitchen to make room for this destruction to take place.

Our alarm went off at 5.30 - 'We're going to Disney today!!' :cool1:/ 'It's too early!' :sad2:

Climbing over boxes of kitchen utensils, we got ready and were out by 6.15 for the short tube journey to Kings Cross. Our train was at 7.22, just enough time to get a Cafe Nero breakfast (somehow last time we didn't see Cafe Nero, and had to suffer through a horrible mushroom bap thing from the other cafe!).

After a smooth and uneventful journey we arrived in Gare du Nord (can I just say how amazing St Pancras looks compared to Gare du Nord!). Following helpful advice found on the boards we found our way to the Metro, and were very impressed that we managed to buy our tickets to MLV purely with change from our June trip! A pretty straightforward journey on the pretty smelly Metro to Chatelet les Halles where we crossed to the other side of the platform (very easy, thanks Paris) to the RER A to Marne La Vallee Chessy, Parcs Disneyland.

The RER journey was uneventful, apart from a very annoying jazz busker. If he was on the Northern Line in London rush hour he'd get an unpleasant response I'm sure! Sat opposite some Americans who seemed to be going to some strange university competition and were talking about chinos.

We arrived at Val d'Europe around 11ish, having got to Paris just after 10. It felt like we'd barely been away (admittedly, our last visit was in June..!). As old pros we knew to go to exit 2 for the Ibis/Etap. Despite checking in early at the Ibis our room was ready - 209 - and was pretty much identical to room 213 we had before! For those who are interested, think a Travelodge in the UK. Very basic, but comfy enough and plenty of room for a single or couple. Bathroom is in a 'pod' like contraption in the corner of the room, not one for the claustrophobic but the shower is decent and it was nice and clean.

One last boring bit. Last time we bought a book of ten tickets to go between Val d'Europe and MLV. This time we somehow (i.e. I got it wrong) bought a book of ten T+ tickets which can not be used in these parts. Oops.

Correct tickets bought, we boarded the train to DLP! Woohoo!

Despite being October, the weather was absolutely lovely, and remained so until we left (when I like to think it poured down).

After doing the obligatory happy dance and pics of the DLH, we headed in, happily beeping our APs (free trip!). Lots of lovely pumpkin decorations at the top of Main Street, really nice and colourful without being tacky.

First on the agenda was food and big thunder mountain. We picked up fast passes for an hour and half later for BTM and after sadly discovering our favourite pizza at Colonel Hathi's was not on offer, headed to Fuente del Oro for lunch. The boy queued for an awfully long time for some fairly average food. But portions were more than enough - I had the 9.99 taquitos meal and he had the 12.99 fajitas including ice cream. More food than we needed!

Then, in true BTM style, it stopped working... so it was off to our 2nd fave Pirates of the Carribean. No queue until the boat loading area this time. Lots of the effects were working that hadn't been last time - for example the swinging pirate! It was great noticing new things each time round.

After Pirates we wandered through Fantasyland, queues for Snow White, Pinocchio and Peter Pan were long as ever, but we jumped on the teacups which we hadn't done before. Fun!

We then wandered round to Discoveryland (the boy's fave), and Buzz, which had a 5 minute queue. LOVE Buzz, it's so fun and great that every ride is different as you try and beat your score.

Wandered back over to BTM which we did once with our old fastpasses (expired but they let us on as it had been down), and once in the regular queue. Also LOVE BTM!

Then we remembered that the Star Wars characters were appearing today, so wandered over to Star Tours for an excited boyfriend to get his pic taken with Darth Vader. This was our first experience of a character scrum and it was horrible, people are SO pushy and the adults are the worst!

Hopped on to Star Tours (no wait), which was better this time than last. Last trip I sat in the front far right seat, so couldn't see anything but the motion was horrible. This time I was in the back far left which was much better! Still don't understand what the robot thing (not R2) is about. And still didn't get to Endor.

Feeling a bit worn out from all the action, we stopped at Cafe Hyperion for a hot choc. My first of MANY at DLP! Yummy!

We wandered back over to Fronteirland and did BTM again (3 times that day), and Phantom Manor. I'm sure they had turned the lights down at PM as it seemed a lot darker and all the special effects much more visible (and spooky!).

After a wander through upstairs at the castle (closed on our last visit), we were well and truly exhausted after the early start, and decided to beat the park closing rush and head to Annette's.

For some reason they had hardly any staff working at Annette's, so while there were loads of free tables we had to queue for about 15 mins. Not sure why, just the Disney spirit of queueing I guess!

I had the avocado burger which was pretty good (and huge!) and the boy the chilli burger (also huge!). As I had the classics menu I also got a chocolate brownie. Was expecting this to be like the one at the western place in the village - in a plastic packet - but was really nice with ice cream and cream!

Overall the food was pretty good, lots of it, and decent value for Disney (especially with the AP discount).

After dinner it was only about 8pm, so with not much to do at the Ibis we had a wander through the village. I bought one of the Nightmare Before Xmas hair clip hat things I'd seen lots of people with! We decided to head to the Hotel NY for a drink.

Wow, drinks are expensive! I had a Mojito and DBF a beer, we'd never spend £20 on 2 drinks at home but when on holiday... Was nice though, and we did get olives...

After that we headed back through the village to the glamorous RER and Ibis for bed!

Sorry that was so long! Day 2 coming soon!
 
Sorry for the long gap between posts - been a hectic few weeks with starting a new job. Have now got a yucky cold so sitting under my blanket reading the Dis to cheer me up!

Photobucket really doesn't like me at the moment, but one pic-
P1020108-1.jpg


Plan for Day 2 was to go to the Studios, and in particular to get on Crush! We were out of the Ibis by around 10 and had breakfast at the Earl of Sandwich - breakfast BLTs for both of us, pretty yummy. Then got to the studios by about 10.45 and the Crush queue was already 40 minutes, figuring we wouldn't see it any shorter we joined the queue - definitely worth it! What a great ride, I really didn't expect it to be as fast as it was, I'd put my bag by my feet expecting a gentle ride and held on to it like mad as we went up the steep climb (we were in the backwards facing part of the shell all 3 times we did Crush - scary!). Really great ride, never seen similar in any other park.

Also in the studios we jumped on Tower of Terror (0 min wait showing, really about 15) - great as always. I was in the back right seat by the edge, bit scary! Made it onto the Tram Tour which we didn't do last time... and won't bother with next time. The Catastrophe Canyon bit is fun but the rest of it is pretty slow and seems plagued with technical issues!

We had a reservation for 2pm at Blue Lagoon so after the tram tour headed back to the main park. I'd never eaten here before and always wanted to! We were seated by the water (but behind a tree). As non fish eaters our choices were a bit limited, but we knew that beforehand. We both had the chicken and DBF the banana desert trio and I had the gourmet coffee. Nipped to the loo after we placed our orders and the food was already there when I got back - which always worries me! Anyway, was lovely atmosphere and worth the money as a one off treat!

Afterwards we hopped on POTC to wave at our empty dishes which hadn't been cleared yet! We picked up fast passes for Buzz then went on the Nautilus as it was closed in June - DBF was very keen on the bit with the squid! I'd never done this before, I guess kids would find it boring but it was a nice thing to do without queueing! Then it was back on buzz again.

Figuring we'd have lots of time in the main park for MNSSHP we went back to the studios. I did Parachute Drop withthe single rider line (0 mins) - DBF was too scared to join me as he doesn't like heights! This was fun but not worth the 90min queues we'd seen, maybe for little ones!

We also luckily walked past the Crush entrance just as it was reopening after a 'temporary pause' so got a 15 min queue for that - woo! Finished off with Stitch Live in their last showing of the day before heading back to the main park (still love Stitch live!)

We were excited to pick up our wristbands for MNSSHP at the gates! The party wasn't starting for a little while but we did Phantom Manor, BTM and then also took a ride on the Molly Brown. We didn't do this last time and really enjoyed it - nice and relaxing and liked hearing the 'story' of Thunder Mesa.

After that they were starting to set up for the party, and roping off parts of the park. We flashed our pink wrist bands at the guy at BTM and walked straight on to the ride.

Next we wandered over to Fantasyland, we don't usually do many of the rides here as the queues are always so long. But we went straight on to Dumbo, the teacups, Snow White and Pinocchio. After that we were pretty hungry so had hot dogs at the Chalet au Marionette- decent enough (and my 4th hot chocolate of the day...!)

This is getting a bit long, but we also did:
POTC - no wait
Big Thunder Mountain another 2 or 3 times in the dark - great fun
Phantom Manor - with a girl in a brilliant costume of the bride from the ride

However, was pretty disappointed with the Jack Skellington character! We saw him after we came off PM, there was hardly anyone there so we let one or two kids go ahead thinking we'd be next. But the guy just kept wandering off and then pushy people just kept grabbing him and Sally and he would get annoyed and wander off. In the end I just felt like an idiot standing there waiting for a pic and got annoyed and left! So disorganised and disappointing! I did get a pic with a much nicer Winnie the Pooh though!

In terms of the event generally, there were loads of characters around in Fantasyland (which was pretty busy by around 9ish). Quite a few villains patrolling Frontierland as well. I didn't like the 'fog' in Frontierland, was just wet mist - gross! Some parts of the park that were open (between POTC and BTM, for example) were completely deserted which was pretty spooky!

If I was in charge (!) I'd have made better use of the Nightmare Before Christmas music and characters, despite loads of NBC merchandise I didn't hear them use the music for example.

I'm glad we went and had the chance to do BTM in the dark and see a different side to the park, we didn't see any of the shows properly so can't comment on those.

Feeling cold and tired after 12+ hours of Disney we headed back to our little ibis home for the night around 11.30.
 

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