Trip Report Arlo's first holiday trip report

[TCO]

Hi everyone I've never done one of these before and didn't expect to so my memory of what we did day to day may be a little off and it may be lacking in detail:

This was Arlo's first holiday, he is 15 months old so we were apprehensive about his first flight and our first experience of a family holiday.

Day one:

We were up early for our 09.15 flight from Manchester to Charles De Gaulle, it made a change to wake arlo up rather than the other way round, a change he wasn't best impressed with.

After a final case weighing we were picked up just after 6 and off to the airport. Check in with Airfrance was a doddle and they let us keep the pram with us until boarding as was security as they let us through the queues quickly due to the pram. Terminal 3 at Manchester is a little lacking but nice enough and Arlo was happy enough looking out at the planes

The flight itself was better than expected, He wasn't happy for the first ten minutes then fell asleep.

When we arrived at CDG it turned a little stressful as there wasnt much info on where exactly to go and when we arrived at immigration via a Monorail it was chaos with a sea of people instead of organised queues, eventually we got through and along with twenty or so other people from our flight spent the next 15 minutes looking for the right carousel as the flight wasn't listed, we then found the pram and headed for the exit. I then turned on my phone to see 8 voicemails from RS transports but the driver was still there and our shared shuttle ended up being a private one albeit without a child seat.

The journey to Seqouia Lodge was only half an hour or so and check in at the hotel was fine with us being assigned a room on the fifth floor of the main building. We headed to the room and noticed a CM clearing a room and taking a Mickey balloon out, Nikki decided we may as well ask and he was more than happy to give Arlo the balloon which was nice (while it lasted...), the room itself was beautiful, theming was just right and tastefully done.

After a quick freshen up we headed to the park via a quick Earl of sandwich. I was actually stunned how gorgeous the castle is, I didn't remember it being so nice, after taking a few photos we decided just to have a walk around fantasyland and go on its a small world and call it a day.

Arlo loved IASW and we barely waited at all but as we were getting him out of the pram his newly acquired balloon became untied and off it flew- easy come easy go!

After going for a swim and giving Arlo his bath we went back out for tea at Rainforest cafe again with no wait, I had the chicken tikka burger and Nikki had the menu cha cha with the tortellini and we just gave arlo some of ours, we then shared a Creme brûlée, Arlo loved the Cafe as we were sat near the elephants which he couldn't take his eyes off!

And that was day one!

I'll do more later (if I can remember when we did what ha)

 

[tinks_1989]

so glad you are doing a TR

 

[TCO]

Just a quick edit on day one that I missed, our room didn't have a cot some rang reception to request one along with an iron and a bottle warmer and they were all in our room when we arrived back after visiting the park, it was great to have a warmer as it allowed us to buy milk from the shop in the train station and pop it in there for a few minutes for his bedtime bottle

 

[TCO]

Day two:

We got up nice and early and headed for our first sitting breakfast at Cafe Mickey, we were only the second family in there at 07:45 and got a bit of food (not much really, got Arlo some scrambled egg and some cereal) and then Pluto, Minnie, goofy and Frisr tuck (I think it was) came out, they all came around the to the table. Arlo took to Pluto and Goofy, mainly because of their whiskers.

At this point I noticed it had started to rain so I ran back to the room to get the waterproofs while Nikki and Arlo stayed, when I came back the characters had been replaced by Mickey and chip and dale, they had already been round the tables but as chip and dale are favourites of mine we asked for a picture before leaving

We got in the park shortly after 9 and went over to Dumbo, the wait was about fifteen minutes but arlo loved watching the ride whilst in the queue anyway, when we got on I went in the one in front of Nikki and Arlo to get some photos

We then headed to adventureland but didn't realise it wasn't open till 10 even with EMH as it was only quarter to or so anyway we waited and then went straight on Pirates seeing as its a big favourite of mine, Arlo clung to me like a Koala going up the slope as it was quite loud but he was fine after that.

We then spent an hour or two pottering around the park without going on too much and then headed into Walt Disney Studios. I hadn't been in before and wasn't expecting much at all but was pleasantly surprised, we had heard the tram tour was closed for a few days after today so headed there and did that after a ten minute wait and then headed over to the toy story part. Arlo is only big enough for slinky so we did that but he wasn't too keen, in fact he looked quite queasy on it!

I couldn't resist a go on tower of terror (another favourite of mine) so waited the fifteen or so minutes before doing parent switch, the cast member showing people into the lift was fantastically creepy and the ride held up well to its WDW counterpart.

We thought Arlo would like playhouse disney live and as luck would have it we noticed it was only 8 minutes till the next English show, or so we thought, it wasn't till we got in that we realised we were in Stitch live, we didn't even know that was a thing! It ended up being a great mistake though as Arlo laughed his head off at parts of it, especially the very very very very very very bit! After coming out we spotted that there was in fact two areas next to each other for stitch playhouse Disney and then headed next door for the playhouse Disney bit which was good fun and arlo loved the bubbles.

Time for a nap, managed to get Arlo asleep for an hour or so so I took the chance myself to get my head down as well!

We went back into the park at about 8 and decided to get a spot for dreams and then I would go and get some food, we ended up sat on the grass between the frontierland and adventureland paths as a lot were and we didn't realise you weren't meant to, m quest for food wasn't successful as all the outlets in adventureland were closed so had to settle for a caseys hot dog and the biggest park queue of the whole trip!

The hotdog was fine and the show was fantastic but fighting our way down main street with a pram afterwards was an experience, thankfully I had Arlo in my arms as the pram took a knocking with people pushing past!

 

[tinks_1989]

I love that you and Argo are dressed the same so cute

Another great day!

 

[TCO]

He's my best buddy I copy off him

We had the same toms on as well ha

 

[tinks_1989]

He's my best buddy I copy off him

We had the same toms on as well ha

That's too cute DD and I only have one matching outfit and she wears it better then me lol

 

[Mum to Belle]

He is such a little cutie!!

Sounds like a great start to your trip!

 

[TCO]

Day Three

This way quite a quiet day really as we decided to do it at a slow pace as to not burn Arlo out.

We started with Breakfast at the Seqouia Lodge or that was the plan, how we actually started the day was being stuck in a lift for twenty minutes, oh well these things happen. As for breakfast if you've stayed in the Disney hotels you know the drill, had a bit of cereal and toast along with a couple of pain au chocolates for later (yes I'm one of those people :s) I cant quite work out the need or desire for a dish of garlic puree at breakfats and not what you want to smell at 8am lol

On the way back to the room we saw Eeyore was there and waited to see him, this was the first time Arlo really warmed to the characters fully:

We then headed out for the last hour of EMH, we went straight to the Buzz Lightyear ride (somehow Nikki beat me and Arlo, our laser must have been broke!), as we exited we noticed that Space Mountain was only a five minute queue so I went on then did Parent switch which worked out really well, I couldnt believe how long the queueing area is it must have took me five minutes to walk through it and I vaguely remember queueing outside when I went 6 or so years ago, I must have been mad!

We then spent another few hours in the Park trying our best to avoid the rain but we managed to do the carousel, Peter Pan, IASW and Pinnochio before heading to adventureland and another ride on pirates of the carribean then lunch at the pizza outpost. I had the 4 cheese pizza which was decent enough and larger than expected and nikki had the vegi pasta meal which she and arlo enjoyed.

On the way out we stopped on main street and got Arlo a plush Pluto which he took to (the first of many soft toys we ended up going for) and then stopped by the bakery for a slice of chocolate cake and cheesecake. The cheesecake was delicous, I couldnt put my finger on what made the base different but it was lovely.

And that was that as far as our day in the park went, we took Arlo for another swim and I took him down the slide a couple of times which he loved as he's in his element splashing around then in the evening had a lovely meal and a cocktail at Planet Hollywood.

 

[tinks_1989]

Another great day apart from the lift breaking down.

Xx

 

[TCO]

Day Four

Today was our last full day and we had booked for a 09:15 Breakfast in the Park although we got up a bit later than expected and only got in the park at 09:00 and went straight to the restaurant and they were happy to seat us early which was nice as we got out for 09:30 to enjoy the last 30 mins of EMH.

We did Dumbo again then decided we would head to Frontierland as we hadn't really ventured there yet, we decided to try Arlo on the Phantom Manor as he hadn't been phased by anything before, well he was more than happy as he found some Dutch girls in the queue and turned on the charm! As for the ride itself he was fine it didn't bother him at all.

http://i.imgur.com/XYf05.jpg

We then did the parent switch on Indiana Jones before meeting Baloo and heading for some lunch at Hakuna Matata, I had the African Chicken and rice but wasnt impressed, less so when I managed to knock over my full Coke all over me! Ah well at least the magnum was nice.

We hadn't seen a parade by this point so decided we would try and catch the Stars and Cars one, on the way out of DLP we noticed the Birthday Train was going by and went to see Donald, the scrum was horrendous and people were unbelieavbly rude, some English girls in their twenties barged Nikki out of the way whilst she was holding Arlo to get to their friends at the front but eventually Donald held people back so Arlo could get a photo which was nice! Onto the parade and we enjoyed it but Arlo didn't see much of it:

http://imgur.com/Klrwz

http://i.imgur.com/fwbhE.jpg

After that I did my normal Disney thing of buying a silly hat and wanted to get Arlo some ears but he wasnt too impressed:

http://i.imgur.com/D51Sn.jpg

We took in our last stroll around WDS before going back to DLP to mop up some rides before taking in the parade.

We did IASW again as it was Arlos favourite and then went on the storybook boat rides which we didn't even know existed and then took up a spot near Bella Notte for the parade. I expected Arlo to be bored but he loved it and went a bit crazy when the Captain Hook float appeared and started making really excited noises which amused everyone around us.

Afterwards we noticed the queue for the Mickey meet and greet was only 5 minutes so we did that although Arlo didn't want to leave the queueing area with the cartoons on, Mickey was great and we got some really good photo's from the Photopass although they were a little pricey but worth it.

A final stop by Pirates for one last ride and then we headed back down Main Street for the last time on the trip

We had a cheapish tea at McDonalds that night after spending a good amount of time and cash at World of Disney and then headed back to the hotel at about 9ish