joanjett1976
<font color=blue>Shane in the study with the candl
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2004
- Messages
- 764
Hi everyone!
Promised a review, so here are highlights of my recent Disneyland Paris solo trip:
Took a 6am train from Cannes to DL where I was afraid to nod off and accidentally end up in Belgium, finally arrived at the Holiday Inn, a cute new 'friend of Disney' resort close to the parks with a vintage circus theme (mind you, not in a garish Vegas, Circus Circus nightmare inducing clown sort of way!). Dropped off my bags and hopped a train to Paris for a four hour exhausting shopping jaunt.
Was the only person at the DL main gate at 8:20am the following morning. Surely something must be wrong. Indeed, park opened at 10am, and not 9. Doh! Gots to move on over to the DL resort and try to make the most of a 34 Euro breakfast buffet. It's cold here, which means you will be forced to see me in my favorite winter hat in all my pictures.
At 9:30am, I am finally allowed inside the park. Overall aesthetic impressions: beautiful, surprisingly large park with incredible attention given to detail, costumes and architecture. The overall feel is that of WDW's artsier little sister that just came back from college with a backpack full of litterature and designer duds. It was Halloween and the Pumpkin Men were everywhere. Looooooove the Pumpkins and their daily duels with the Pink Witches (who are all sorta cute underneath all that make up and smell like strawberries and hairspray. all of them.) Frontierland is transformed into Halloweenland where candy is handed out by the Pumpkins and children are given makeovers, where their faces are painted like bats and their hair looks like orange cotton candy.
A few rides I found to be actually superior to their WDW and DL (Anaheim) counterparts. ladies and gents I would like to crown: Pirates Of the Caribbean (surprising second drop and eerie), Phantom Manor (foyer load in area and spooky), Space Mountain (amazing launch, soundtrack and loops) and Big Thunder Mountain (packs a punch, especially in the evening). Characters were aplenty and included some that don't usually make the WDW rounds. Villains ruled the coop and were particularly rude and generally nasty (big up to maleficient who was terrific!). Ride intros were done in a plethora of languages: French, English, German and Spanish.
The only thing that left me a tad bummed out were the park's inhabitants (ok, ok, the ahem, guests). There seems to be no such thing as an organised line, any character encounter was immediately transformed into a football tackle and the opening of doors into a rather, ahem, personal encounter with your line mates. Most guests semmed to enjoy talking their way through the preshows and in some cases: GASP: the actual rides. Almost threw the back row of my Pirates boat into the water. Argh, mateys; don't yap your way through my favorite ride
The studios on the other hand seemed like a work in progress, even though any place that enables me to ride Aeosmith's Rock N Roller Coaster four consecutive times in the front row, by myself, before breakfast, will always hold a special place in my thrill lovin' heart!
And so I spent 3 days, by my lonesome self, exploring DL, from rope drop to park closure, decked out in my dorky hat and lanyard! Packed up my mouse ears, suddenly overflowing luggage and headed home...but not before picking up some champagne and a rather humongour wheel of gouda at the amsterdam airport.
Whoa, chatty! Ooooh, before I forget, here's a link to a 'best of' photo album, a brief overview of my trip (only the gf can sit through all 600!). So, a big shout out to the dozens of strangers who accepted to take my picture and follow this link: http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2118342852
Promised a review, so here are highlights of my recent Disneyland Paris solo trip:
Took a 6am train from Cannes to DL where I was afraid to nod off and accidentally end up in Belgium, finally arrived at the Holiday Inn, a cute new 'friend of Disney' resort close to the parks with a vintage circus theme (mind you, not in a garish Vegas, Circus Circus nightmare inducing clown sort of way!). Dropped off my bags and hopped a train to Paris for a four hour exhausting shopping jaunt.
Was the only person at the DL main gate at 8:20am the following morning. Surely something must be wrong. Indeed, park opened at 10am, and not 9. Doh! Gots to move on over to the DL resort and try to make the most of a 34 Euro breakfast buffet. It's cold here, which means you will be forced to see me in my favorite winter hat in all my pictures.
At 9:30am, I am finally allowed inside the park. Overall aesthetic impressions: beautiful, surprisingly large park with incredible attention given to detail, costumes and architecture. The overall feel is that of WDW's artsier little sister that just came back from college with a backpack full of litterature and designer duds. It was Halloween and the Pumpkin Men were everywhere. Looooooove the Pumpkins and their daily duels with the Pink Witches (who are all sorta cute underneath all that make up and smell like strawberries and hairspray. all of them.) Frontierland is transformed into Halloweenland where candy is handed out by the Pumpkins and children are given makeovers, where their faces are painted like bats and their hair looks like orange cotton candy.
A few rides I found to be actually superior to their WDW and DL (Anaheim) counterparts. ladies and gents I would like to crown: Pirates Of the Caribbean (surprising second drop and eerie), Phantom Manor (foyer load in area and spooky), Space Mountain (amazing launch, soundtrack and loops) and Big Thunder Mountain (packs a punch, especially in the evening). Characters were aplenty and included some that don't usually make the WDW rounds. Villains ruled the coop and were particularly rude and generally nasty (big up to maleficient who was terrific!). Ride intros were done in a plethora of languages: French, English, German and Spanish.
The only thing that left me a tad bummed out were the park's inhabitants (ok, ok, the ahem, guests). There seems to be no such thing as an organised line, any character encounter was immediately transformed into a football tackle and the opening of doors into a rather, ahem, personal encounter with your line mates. Most guests semmed to enjoy talking their way through the preshows and in some cases: GASP: the actual rides. Almost threw the back row of my Pirates boat into the water. Argh, mateys; don't yap your way through my favorite ride
The studios on the other hand seemed like a work in progress, even though any place that enables me to ride Aeosmith's Rock N Roller Coaster four consecutive times in the front row, by myself, before breakfast, will always hold a special place in my thrill lovin' heart!
And so I spent 3 days, by my lonesome self, exploring DL, from rope drop to park closure, decked out in my dorky hat and lanyard! Packed up my mouse ears, suddenly overflowing luggage and headed home...but not before picking up some champagne and a rather humongour wheel of gouda at the amsterdam airport.
Whoa, chatty! Ooooh, before I forget, here's a link to a 'best of' photo album, a brief overview of my trip (only the gf can sit through all 600!). So, a big shout out to the dozens of strangers who accepted to take my picture and follow this link: http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2118342852
I had a great trip and I promise to post details when I have some time (I don't want Viki to yell at me). JoanJett - great trip report and pictures. 
Happy Halloween!
Actually we got to Beach Club Villas yesterday and quickly switched into full Food and Wine Festival mode. While we waited for our villa, we went to Epcot and started drinking in New Zealand, then caught the boat across to Morocco and took in the sights. We went to the Spirited Ball at the American Adventure Pavilion last night and ate and drank tons. The Blue Crab with Johnnyseed Cake and the Duck Confit with Cranberry Risotto Cake were surprisingly novel, yet quite tasty. We dined as spirits from America's past wandered around and danced (yes, they were dancing; we don't waltz well). Then we had reserved viewing for Illuminations on the promenade in front of Italy. I'll freely admit that I cried (well, it had been over a year, and it's almost like church for me). We didn't go out last night because we were exhausted. We probably won't do PI before Wednesday or Thursday night. Tonight we're doing 
