Disneyland Paris Friday November 9th
Wake up and look out of the window and what do I see SNOW! Normally this would be great, I love snow but we have to drive to Leeds today to catch our flight to Paris. I am a little concerned about driving in the snow. However, we get on our way by 9.15 and by the time we have left Newcastle behind and are passing Durham the snow has gone. We make good time and get to Leeds Bradford airport for 11.15 which is great, except our flight isnt until 1.45, while it seemed like a good idea to leave plenty of time for the drive incase of snow problems, 2 ½ hours in this airport is going to be hard to fill! We find an Airtours playarea and Katie has a great time while we have a drink and a sandwich and eventually our flight is called.
Leeds Bradford is a small airport, we were at gate 11 and I dont think there was a 12. Theres not much in the way of duty free, one small shop, but the flights were only £60 and its a reasonable alternative to Newcastle, I would consider using it again.
They call our flight and we walk out on to the tarmac, I assume we are getting a bus, but no, we are boarding the tiniest aircraft I have ever seen. Its 2 seats on one side or the aisle and single seats on the other side Im not a nervous flyer but this thing was tiny we were in row 12 and that was the last row. 36 passengers in all.
The flight out is fairly uneventful, except that just as we are coming into land Katie drops one of the disks from her Viewmaster and it disappears into a gap between the seat and the wall of the plane. After we land I scrabble around on the floor trying to find it, and Katie crys, a lot. The stewardess offers to get an engineer to take up the floor (honestly!) and I tell her its not necessary, after a good search the pilot comes on the tannoy to tell us to hurry up, there;s a busload of people on the tarmac and they are all waiting for us. We hurry off the aircraft and as we are leaving Phil spots the missing disk it had rolled about 4 seats up the plane. We get onto the bus very sheepishly and arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport which is to be honest a dump.
We find our way to passport control where there is 1 man processing everyone and the queues are huge, I dont know what happened to free movement within Europe, but we had to wait to be scrutinized, not quite the States but close. As I overheard one man say There just letting us know were in France now. Eventually we get through passport control, find our bags (already waiting for us) and head for the exit which is quite hard to find. CDG airport is a very strange place, its circular with lots of tubes criss-crossing the center of the circle, its hard to explain but it feels very futuristic, or more like the vision they had of the future in the 60s.
Anyway, eventually we find the exit and the VEA shuttle bus and climb aboard. It takes over an hour to get to DLP, mainly because we spend at least half an hour driving around the airport to other terminals but not actually stopping to pick anyone else up. I have read that you can get the RER from the airport to DLP in 15 minutes, so I think if we go back I will look into this. Eventually we get to the Cheyenne Hotel this is great, I just love everything about it. There is noone waiting to check in, so we go straight to the desk. It takes me ages to check in because I have loads of vouchers for meals etc to be explained, and I want a charge card facility but eventually we get everything sorted and we are off to our room. We stayed in the Wyatt Earp building which is very close to the reception building, in the middle of the hotel. The room is ok. Its got a double bed and bunk beds, and its a bit small but fine. The bathroom could do with regrouting, and I have heard that the hotel is due for refurbishment, but I didnt have any serious complaints, it was just looking a little tired. We decide to dump our stuff and head straight to the park having been couped up on buses and planes all day, we walk, and get a little lost, but eventually we find the park and head in at about 7pm.
The ticket CM cant believe that we are going in for the first time and is really keen for us to go to the re-entry counter to have our handstamp checked, but we do get in, and WOW!
Its deserted, its freezing cold, but crystal clear, and everything looks beautiful. Xmas didnt start at DLP until the following day, so the tree and main street just had a few lights on them, but they looked lovely. In the central plaza there were hoardings around the Xmas tree with Halloween decorations, we wandered up main street and headed straight for Its a Small World. I wanted to do this today as I heard it changed for Christmas on the 10th. On this evening, it was the usual song, and there were some Christmas decorations up, but not all of them. We were the only people on the ride and it was lovely, Katie really enjoyed it.
After IASW we walked onto Dumbo Katie really wasnt at all sure about this, but she really enjoyed it, and when you went up high the view is lovely, I didnt think it would make much difference but I was really struck, I tried to take some pictures so I shall have to see if they came out.
After Dumbo we did Pinocchio Again Katie was not too sure, but she was fine, this isnt actually very scary at all, although a whale jumps out at you at one point, but not so that youd really notice if you werent looking for it. I wish we knew the story of Pinocchio a bit better, we werent always sure what we were looking at.
After Pinocchio we walked up to the castle, and I found the balcony in one of the shops where you can see the dragon, we had a peek over at him and he seemed to be pretty quiet.
We wandered back through main street and left the park at 7.45, just a quick visit but very magical.
We walked back into the Disney Village, and I thought it looked great (at night), the lights overhead look a bit like stars and make it feel enclosed. There was a bonfire and fireworks show scheduled, but Im afraid to say we were hungry so we decided to go to the Rainforest café instead. Phil and I had steak and baked potato (no veg which was disappointing) the meal was lovely but could have used some kind of side dish. Katie had something like chicken nuggets (ok, I admit it I cant remember), and we had a couple of drinks and desserts (Crème Caramel yum) and it came to about £50 which I thought wasnt too bad. We hadnt been to the Rainforest café before and I enjoyed it, the show is great although the thunder and lightening to Katie by surprise the first time, but she has calmed down by the 2nd time it happened. All the creatures kept moving and we were never sure if something had moved or if we had imagined it.
After dinner, I checked out the shops (now theres a surprise), I had heard that the world of toys shop sold Barbie stuff, but it doesnt. Well, it had one or two Special Edition Cinderella Barbies but not normal Barbie stuff. It did have loads of other lovely stuff though.
We walked back to the Cheyenne, this time along the correct path, which takes you past the New York Hotel, along a river and into the Cheyenne hotel. Its about 5 minutes walk from the back of the Disney village. We decided to go into the shop in the Cheyenne just for a look and I bought some pins. I bought a couple of packs with 3 small pins on them, and then traded them with CMs for bigger and better pins. I was also looking for a particular pin, called a Pin Traders Pin that one of the US Disers was looking for. While we were shopping Cowboy Goofy wandered into the store, it seems he hangs out at the Cheyenne as we saw him loads of times in the reception, and restaurant.
We finally got back to our room and set the wake-up call for 6.45 am Ouch.
Wake up and look out of the window and what do I see SNOW! Normally this would be great, I love snow but we have to drive to Leeds today to catch our flight to Paris. I am a little concerned about driving in the snow. However, we get on our way by 9.15 and by the time we have left Newcastle behind and are passing Durham the snow has gone. We make good time and get to Leeds Bradford airport for 11.15 which is great, except our flight isnt until 1.45, while it seemed like a good idea to leave plenty of time for the drive incase of snow problems, 2 ½ hours in this airport is going to be hard to fill! We find an Airtours playarea and Katie has a great time while we have a drink and a sandwich and eventually our flight is called.
Leeds Bradford is a small airport, we were at gate 11 and I dont think there was a 12. Theres not much in the way of duty free, one small shop, but the flights were only £60 and its a reasonable alternative to Newcastle, I would consider using it again.
They call our flight and we walk out on to the tarmac, I assume we are getting a bus, but no, we are boarding the tiniest aircraft I have ever seen. Its 2 seats on one side or the aisle and single seats on the other side Im not a nervous flyer but this thing was tiny we were in row 12 and that was the last row. 36 passengers in all.
The flight out is fairly uneventful, except that just as we are coming into land Katie drops one of the disks from her Viewmaster and it disappears into a gap between the seat and the wall of the plane. After we land I scrabble around on the floor trying to find it, and Katie crys, a lot. The stewardess offers to get an engineer to take up the floor (honestly!) and I tell her its not necessary, after a good search the pilot comes on the tannoy to tell us to hurry up, there;s a busload of people on the tarmac and they are all waiting for us. We hurry off the aircraft and as we are leaving Phil spots the missing disk it had rolled about 4 seats up the plane. We get onto the bus very sheepishly and arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport which is to be honest a dump.
We find our way to passport control where there is 1 man processing everyone and the queues are huge, I dont know what happened to free movement within Europe, but we had to wait to be scrutinized, not quite the States but close. As I overheard one man say There just letting us know were in France now. Eventually we get through passport control, find our bags (already waiting for us) and head for the exit which is quite hard to find. CDG airport is a very strange place, its circular with lots of tubes criss-crossing the center of the circle, its hard to explain but it feels very futuristic, or more like the vision they had of the future in the 60s.
Anyway, eventually we find the exit and the VEA shuttle bus and climb aboard. It takes over an hour to get to DLP, mainly because we spend at least half an hour driving around the airport to other terminals but not actually stopping to pick anyone else up. I have read that you can get the RER from the airport to DLP in 15 minutes, so I think if we go back I will look into this. Eventually we get to the Cheyenne Hotel this is great, I just love everything about it. There is noone waiting to check in, so we go straight to the desk. It takes me ages to check in because I have loads of vouchers for meals etc to be explained, and I want a charge card facility but eventually we get everything sorted and we are off to our room. We stayed in the Wyatt Earp building which is very close to the reception building, in the middle of the hotel. The room is ok. Its got a double bed and bunk beds, and its a bit small but fine. The bathroom could do with regrouting, and I have heard that the hotel is due for refurbishment, but I didnt have any serious complaints, it was just looking a little tired. We decide to dump our stuff and head straight to the park having been couped up on buses and planes all day, we walk, and get a little lost, but eventually we find the park and head in at about 7pm.
The ticket CM cant believe that we are going in for the first time and is really keen for us to go to the re-entry counter to have our handstamp checked, but we do get in, and WOW!
Its deserted, its freezing cold, but crystal clear, and everything looks beautiful. Xmas didnt start at DLP until the following day, so the tree and main street just had a few lights on them, but they looked lovely. In the central plaza there were hoardings around the Xmas tree with Halloween decorations, we wandered up main street and headed straight for Its a Small World. I wanted to do this today as I heard it changed for Christmas on the 10th. On this evening, it was the usual song, and there were some Christmas decorations up, but not all of them. We were the only people on the ride and it was lovely, Katie really enjoyed it.
After IASW we walked onto Dumbo Katie really wasnt at all sure about this, but she really enjoyed it, and when you went up high the view is lovely, I didnt think it would make much difference but I was really struck, I tried to take some pictures so I shall have to see if they came out.
After Dumbo we did Pinocchio Again Katie was not too sure, but she was fine, this isnt actually very scary at all, although a whale jumps out at you at one point, but not so that youd really notice if you werent looking for it. I wish we knew the story of Pinocchio a bit better, we werent always sure what we were looking at.
After Pinocchio we walked up to the castle, and I found the balcony in one of the shops where you can see the dragon, we had a peek over at him and he seemed to be pretty quiet.
We wandered back through main street and left the park at 7.45, just a quick visit but very magical.
We walked back into the Disney Village, and I thought it looked great (at night), the lights overhead look a bit like stars and make it feel enclosed. There was a bonfire and fireworks show scheduled, but Im afraid to say we were hungry so we decided to go to the Rainforest café instead. Phil and I had steak and baked potato (no veg which was disappointing) the meal was lovely but could have used some kind of side dish. Katie had something like chicken nuggets (ok, I admit it I cant remember), and we had a couple of drinks and desserts (Crème Caramel yum) and it came to about £50 which I thought wasnt too bad. We hadnt been to the Rainforest café before and I enjoyed it, the show is great although the thunder and lightening to Katie by surprise the first time, but she has calmed down by the 2nd time it happened. All the creatures kept moving and we were never sure if something had moved or if we had imagined it.
After dinner, I checked out the shops (now theres a surprise), I had heard that the world of toys shop sold Barbie stuff, but it doesnt. Well, it had one or two Special Edition Cinderella Barbies but not normal Barbie stuff. It did have loads of other lovely stuff though.
We walked back to the Cheyenne, this time along the correct path, which takes you past the New York Hotel, along a river and into the Cheyenne hotel. Its about 5 minutes walk from the back of the Disney village. We decided to go into the shop in the Cheyenne just for a look and I bought some pins. I bought a couple of packs with 3 small pins on them, and then traded them with CMs for bigger and better pins. I was also looking for a particular pin, called a Pin Traders Pin that one of the US Disers was looking for. While we were shopping Cowboy Goofy wandered into the store, it seems he hangs out at the Cheyenne as we saw him loads of times in the reception, and restaurant.
We finally got back to our room and set the wake-up call for 6.45 am Ouch.
