Americans in (Disneyland) Paris

[Linda67]

There is something about the DLP TOT that gets me everytime

The drop just feels much more extreme to me but I know it can't be

 

[smallpig]

Great report - like hearing the comparisons to the WDW versions. I always thought not understanding the voices in Phantom Manor makes it more scary!

 

[goodmorningirl]

Hi everyone. I hope some of you are still interested in my report. I have been super busy with the holidays and working on my MFA in creative writing. I feel like all I do is write! lol

I don't remember exactly how the rest of the trip went, but I have some more pictures so I'll try to do the best I can.

We returned to Disneyland and went to the castle where we took this shot.

I absolutely love this picture. It's one I wanted before we even got there.

We headed toward Adventureland to check out all the Peter Pan stuff. Peter Pan is my absolute favorite movie and I was sooo excited to see Skull Rock and the Jolly Roger.

We went into Skull Rock and got these shots.

From Skull Rock we could see a show going on. Now, coming from Disney World, it is very very weird to see Hook and Smee as face characters. It was cool to see, but I prefer ours.

On the way out, I ran into this guy. He looked good, but spent zero time interacting with me. Perhaps it is because I don't speak French, but he did say hello so I don't know.

We went over and rode the Haunted Mansion again along with Indiana Jones.

I wanted to go on the little Storybook Boat as we don't have the here. I really liked the little dioramas. I loved loved loved going into the Cave of Wonders.

I'll end there for now and hopefully get another update up tonight. Stick with me guys!

 

[Ms Poppins]

I'm reading along with you

Still laughing about your TOT thrill

I think they only use the face characters for the 'show' for captain hook and smee, probably because they are speaking for the show - usually they are always in full costume.

More please

 

[jamieclayton9]

I am really loving this Trip Report

Can't wait for more

 

[markpsych]

Great report. Love your pictures

 

[jothp]

I have enjoyed reading your report so far and am looking forward to the rest. It is really interesting hearing about the differences between our park and WDW

 

[goodmorningirl]

I’m so happy you guys are still hanging in there with me and are enjoying my report.
Things are again a bit fuzzy after the storybook ride, but I’ll do my best to get it right.
We had lunch booked at the Agrabah Café.

I heard okay reviews of it, but really just wanted the atmosphere. The themeing in this area of Adventureland was so Aladdin. I really loved it. Our Adventureland is themed this way, but not as much as DLP. I felt in places I was really in Agrabah. It doesn’t hurt that my favorite country in Epcot is Morocco.
I will say that the buffet at the café was good. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. Cory really liked the crepes you could make and some of the more adventurous food that I was too shy to try. Here are some pictures from the area.

Let me preface this photo by saying that while researching DLP I saw this window spot in the Aladdin walkthrough and HAD to have our picture in front of it kissing. I know, I know, total photo dork. So when it came out like this, I couldn’t be happier. It’s definitely one of my favorite pictures from our DLP trip.

We headed back toward Discoveryland to catch Captain EO. Let me preface this by saying I in no way mean to offend anyone who may truly love and enjoy this 3D movie. It is our opinion and I hope everyone understands.
Okay, so once I told Cory about this movie featuring Michael Jackson, who neither of us are huge fans of, he was confused on why we had never experienced it. The movie hasn’t been in Epcot for some time, but was brought back recently with Michael Jackson’s death, so we haven’t had an opportunity to see it. We had an interest in seeing the movie I had heard was interesting to say the least.
Cory showing his excitement.

We waited for only about 15 minutes and then watched the movie. I don’t really have words for it, except that there was a definite campiness to it that I don’t think was necessarily originally intentional. Throughout the rest of the trip, Cory and I would randomly sing just the line, “Gonna change the world!” to each other. We’re weird like that. After coming out of the theater we had this goofy high that lead me to buy a Captain EO shirt, a purchase I don’t regret as it was a fun experience for us.
We paused for a few pictures in Discoveryland.

After our fun in Discoveryland, I really wanted to get some cotton candy as I had seen other people walking around with it. We found that it was in Fantasyland and were not prepared for just how large it would be.

Wow. I felt totally awkward walking around eating this, but it was so yummy.
After that we went back toward the Disney village outside the park and were getting hungry. We went to King Ludwig’s Castle and waited a good 35 minutes to be seated. I have to say, this meal was very expensive and the food was mediocre at best. It was a real disappointment especially that the food in WDW never seems to be. I feel like the food is not as big of a concern for DLP as it is for WDW. I just didn’t feel like DLP was on the same level, at all, when compared with WDW in the food department. This isn’t to say we didn’t have any good food. Walt’s was good, and so was the counter service restaurant we went to the day after this one, but all in all it was mostly disappointing.
After dinner, we stopped to get some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and returned to the hotel. The next day would be our last and we had to do as much as we could before we had to leave, and we still had a few things to do!

 

[goodmorningirl]

Hi everyone!

A quick, slightly off topic post.

Cory and I had an Alice in Wonderland themed engagement party back in July for our 2013 Disney World Wedding. We worked really hard on all the details and did a lot of DIY projects. We were featured on The Disney Wedding Blog which was amazing!
Here is the link to that: http://www.disneyweddingblog.com/2012/01/alice-in-wonderland-engagement-party.html

Fast forward to this morning when the Disney Wedding Blog put the nominations up for the 2011 awards and we were on it for Disney party!! I cannot even explain how amazing it feels to be nominated. I didn't think we had a chance at all!!

So now here is my shameless plug. If you have a second and click the link below, you can scroll to the middle of the page and vote for us. It takes literally a second and you don't have to sign up or anything. You can vote once a day until Feb. 27th and it would mean so much to us if you could.

http://www.disneyweddingblog.com/2012/02/vote-for-2011-disney-wedding-awards.html

We appreciate any votes. Thanks everyone!

I will be updating the report later today.

 

[tinks_1989]

Hi everyone!

A quick, slightly off topic post.

Cory and I had an Alice in Wonderland themed engagement party back in July for our 2013 Disney World Wedding. We worked really hard on all the details and did a lot of DIY projects. We were featured on The Disney Wedding Blog which was amazing!
Here is the link to that: http://www.disneyweddingblog.com/2012/01/alice-in-wonderland-engagement-party.html

Fast forward to this morning when the Disney Wedding Blog put the nominations up for the 2011 awards and we were on it for Disney party!! I cannot even explain how amazing it feels to be nominated. I didn't think we had a chance at all!!

So now here is my shameless plug. If you have a second and click the link below, you can scroll to the middle of the page and vote for us. It takes literally a second and you don't have to sign up or anything. You can vote once a day until Feb. 27th and it would mean so much to us if you could.

http://www.disneyweddingblog.com/2012/02/vote-for-2011-disney-wedding-awards.html

We appreciate any votes. Thanks everyone!

I will be updating the report later today.

I voted I am so jealous we really wanted a WDW wedding but due to familly being unable to fly to America it couldnt happen

 

[goodmorningirl]

Thank you to any of you that have voted for us, specifically you Tinks 1989, you guys are the best! A Disney wedding is tough to have people fly to even when it's only a few states away. I couldn't imagine trying to get people to come from overseas. It's really hard.

So our last day in DLP we had the breakfast buffet again and it was highly disappointing again. Just…gross. We went into DLP at opening and went into Fantasyland right away. There was almost no one there at this point which you can see in the pictures. I took a lot of picture of the buildings as they were different than ours and I though the architecture was done very well.

It’s a Small World

We took a ride on Dumbo. Cory was reluctant at first, but we never go on it in WDW as it is more for children, but we went on as there was no line.

By Pinocchio’s Ride

Snow White’s Ride

These two were at the end of Snow White’s ride and Wow. Just Wow. These weird mannequins were super creepy.

More around Fantasyland

I loved the lanterns hanging in the Teacups ride.

 

[luvgoing2disney]

Thanks so much for the trip report and congratulations on your engagement. (Voted for you, BTW. We need to get some more votes coming your way!) I started reading the thread as we are beginning to plan a trip in another year or so, our first ever to DLP or Europe. Did you find the language barrier tough to overcome?

 

[goodmorningirl]

luvgoing2disney--You're so sweet! I appreciate your vote, I'm trying to rally my troops on Facebook too lol This was our first trip to Europe and we had such an amazing time. The language barrier wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Most of the CMs in DLP knew English or at least to get by with us. And besides DLP we did go into Paris for a few days where we found most people spoke enough English to understand also. I think if you go further from the cities, you would probably find an issue. Sometimes we had communication issues with English in DLP. We had to get change after our meal at Walt's so we left the resturant and brought it back. When we went to go back up to give it to our server, the hostess was confused by what we meant when we said we wanted to give the server a tip. I think we finally said gratuity and she then understood. It was little things like this that tripped us up, but I wouldn't be really worried about the language barrier. Even when we couldn't understand the voice overs on the rides, we still really enjoyed it. I'm going to continue the trip report through our trip to Paris so hopefully that will help you even more.

 

[goodmorningirl]

After the teacups we continued on our Alice theme and went into the Maze.

I really loved all of the Alice in Wonderland things. I am a HUGE fan of both the classic Disney movie and also the original novel. It was so fun to be so immersed in the area and it was fun spotting all of the Cheshire cats.

We saw Rapunzel’s area and saw she wouldn’t be back for another hour or so. I was really disappointed. We really love this movie, but we weren’t going to wait that long. I was lucky enough to get my picture with this little guy. He’s my favorite.

We were getting hungry so we went back toward Adventureland and ate at Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Outpost.

I was a little nervous at pizza as we are from NJ and were raised on amazing pizza. I have to say though, it was actually very good. I wish I took pictures of the inside which was themed really well with moving birds and lovely plants. I would definitely suggest going there.

On our way out, we went to go inside the castle, but found the area that was upstairs was closed off. Another disappointment. We did get to see these beautiful windows though.

We also got to visit Maleficent who is now restricted to the area under the castle. This dragon is done so incredibly well. We were both really impressed. Loved her.

It was time for us to make our way out of the park and back on the train to Paris. On the way out we window shopped and got these pictures of the adorable windows. These were done really well.

Cory spotted this Woody and it made us both laugh. Love the creativity!

We went back to our hotel, got our bags, and got on the train to Paris. I was sad to be leaving DLP, but I also just wanted to go back to WDW even more than I had before, which is a lot because I always want to go very badly. Cory and I opened up our books and relaxed anticipating our arrival in Paris.


Would you guys enjoy reading about our experience in Paris?? If yes, I will continue with that.

 

[luvgoing2disney]

Yes, please continue with the trip to Paris!

 

[goodmorningirl]

I’m so excited that you want me to continue with the rest of our trip in Paris. I’m having such a good time writing this and I’m so happy you want me to continue. I’m going to try and give as much detail as possible to help anyone who may be planning a trip to Paris on their own. So, without further ado, Paris!

Let me just give some quick and hopefully not too boring background on this part of the trip. I'm sorry there aren't a bunch of pictures in this post. I promise there will be more later.

On May 27th, we took the train from DLP into Paris, arrived around 1:30pm and then took the Metro to the 19th arrondissement where our hotel, Mama Shelter was located. We, or should I say I, planned this entire trip ourselves. We had to keep it within a certain budget, just graduating from college and all, so I knew we couldn’t stay right by the Eiffel Tower the entire time we were there. We would be in Paris until May 31st when we would leave around 1pm to get back home.

Now, my dream for as long as I can remember was to have a hotel room overlooking the Eiffel Tower. I researched this and found that every room with the Eiffel Tower out their window was waaayyy above our budget. I figured we could at least stay near the Eiffel Tower for some of the time and outside it for the rest to cut down on cost. We also bought a Metro ticket that lasted 3 days I believe. We decided to use it for the first half of our Paris adventure as the second hotel was right around the corner from the Eiffel Tower, closer to things than Mama Shelter.

We got off the Metro and rolled our suitcases down to Mama Shelter. The neighborhood was in no way dangerous, but I was nervous not really knowing where I was. There was also a kind of shady club across the street from us, but we were in a city so I wasn’t too surprised. We found the hotel pretty easily and checked in. I chose this hotel because it was just really cool. It was a little more expensive than what I originally was looking for, but it was so unique! We really loved it and even wanted to continue our stay there instead of moving on. I would definitely suggest checking out their website even if you aren’t planning on going there.

Okay, finally, some pictures!

The inside of the elevator. There were two elevators. One was in French, the other in English. They had odd facts such as words Shakespeare invented. It was really cool to read them as you were going up or down.

Outside the elevator on our floor. These boards showed the weather and things going on in the neighborhood each day.

Sweet dinosaur at the end of our hallway.

I don’t know why he was making this face. Maybe getting tired of me asking him to get in another picture?

Coming into the room.

The bed.

Area in front of the bed with the Apple TV that had free movies. We watched The Hangover one night for probably the 6th time.

The bathroom.

If you look closely at the picture of the bed, you will see the lights on either side have masks over them. This is one of the many funky things that made me choose this hotel. Here’s a close up of Superman.

We loved Mama Shelter so much! The black walls were so awesome and when we get a house, I may just need to copy that. It made it so relaxing. The one thing that was weird was that the door to the hallway didn’t just close on its own like most hotels ; you had to make sure you closed it. We were pretty exhausted so we hung out a bit. We decided to just hang in until it was time for dinner.

For dinner we turned right out of the hotel and back toward where we came. We were surprised that restaurants were closed around 5pm. We quickly learned that restaurants didn’t seem to open for dinner until closer to 7pm. So we walked around a bit and came to a small hole-in-the-wall type restaurant that we decided to pop in and try.

I wish I had taken more pictures and remembered the name. It was authentically French which is what we wanted. When we sat down, we learned they had English menus. Score one for us! I don’t remember what we ate except that Cory ordered a salmon hamburger he really enjoyed. The only reason I remember this is because the waiter said it exactly like Steve Martin says it in The Pink Panther. I almost died laughing at our table . It was great. We order a bottle of white wine which was delicious! Cory doesn’t usually like wine, but he helped me finish this bottle.

After a delicious meal and a little tipsy from the wine, we went back to the hotel to get an early night’s sleep to get up early the next morning.

 

[goodmorningirl]

I don’t see any new responses, but I’m hoping you all are enjoying the report.

We started our first full day in Paris very early to try and get to the Louve before the crazy crowds usually arrived. We grabbed a yummy pastry from a bakery down the street from our hotel and got onto the Metro and to the Louve.

Our surroundings after coming out of the Metro.

I loved these two structures outside of the Louve.

The Louve!

We got there and there was no line! I heard so many stories of the absurd lines getting in and how some people never got in at all! The Louve was a place I had to see while we were in Paris so I was thrilled to see it was only a 5 minute wait, if that.

Under the famous pyramid.

The following pictures were some of our favorite pieces of art.

I love Egyptian anything. If I had a past life I guarantee I lived in Egypt.

And now, the most famous lady of the Louve…the Mona Lisa. I heard the picture was actually small, and it really was, but larger than I imagined. The museum wasn’t very crowded in most areas, but I guess that was because everyone was gawking at the Mona Lisa. Ugh. We pushed, very nicely I promise, our way toward the front banister that held you back from the painting. It was really quite cool to see in person.

Close-up.

Farther away so you can get a better idea for size.

Another famous lady.

And now more pieces of lovely art.

Love this. Reminds me of Ophelia from Hamlet.

And the view from one of the windows of the Louve.

 

[jessrose18]

thanks for the update! glad there wasnt a line at the lourve.. we used the side entrance last time and there wasnt a line either.

 

[tinks_1989]

Loving all the updates!

I just noticed your ticker 2 weeks till your wedding planning session so excited! x

 

[goodmorningirl]

Thanks for the comments guys! Tinks 1989: I can’t believe we are going in 9 days! I am so excited to finally get everything rolling for the wedding and to just be back in WDW again.

We continued our journey through the beautiful Louve and I have to say, Man was it hot! I believe they don’t use air conditioning to preserve a lot of the artwork, but we were dying. Every once in a while, we would come across a grate in the floor that was blowing up some cooler air and we would just stand over it for a couple of minutes.

Here are some more photos of our journey through the Louve.

Cory actually got me this same little hippo in the MET in NYC a few years ago so it was awesome to see him.

More Egyptian stuff!

I felt like he was going to come to life.

Cory really liked this baboon.

We spent a few hours in the Louve and we started to get hungry. You could spend weeks in the place I’m sure, but we saw the things we really had as must sees and decided to say goodbye to the Louve. We couldn’t miss out on the famous pyramid though!

I love this picture.

I really wanted to see the Obelisk that was not far from the Louve so we started walking through the garden/park area toward that.
You can see in this photo that Cory does not look happy. Well, that is because we had forgotten our sunglasses and for some reason, the dirt or sand that is in this area is so white that it was incredibly blinding. It was really painful to walk around on it trying to see where we were going.

We stopped for lunch between the Louve and the Obelisk and it was good, but the service was SLOW. It was a little frustrating, but we were so hungry we decided to wait out the slow service for our menus, our drinks, and then our meals.

As we were walking I looked to our left and saw this! Our first sighting of the Eiffel Tower. I felt so giddy and almost suggested we stray from our plan of waiting until the end to see it, but I knew that wasn’t the smart choice. I took a picture from the distance and became more excited to see it later.

After a good walk we finally made it. It was in the center of a busy road, but we dodged the traffic and got to see it up close. Wow! So cool. I’m so happy we got to see such an awesome piece of history.

This is the area around the Obelisk. You can see there is also a gorgeous fountain near it.

We made our way back toward the Louve and the Metro station, this time along the street instead of through the park area.

I just loved this building.