Just Back too !!

[disneyangel]

Hi All

Just got back (literally) we landed around 9.40pm back at Edinburgh from our day trip to Seq. lodge. DH , DD(3) and I had a fab time with very small queues - most things were walk on for the whole holiday apart from today. Only downside was very loud music on tues night from disney village (i presume) till 2am. Not a happy bunny as I'd been up from 4.30am the day before ,still only one bad point. On the up side i nearly cried(with joy - i should add) when i saw my daughters little face on her first trip around 'It's a small world' and again whilst watching animagique and tarzan.'l try to get a trip report in the next week or so as promised !

Thanks for all your help and tips It made our great holiday even greater.

Angela

PS My daughter loved Salon Mickey as everytime we went there she had a cake or cookie and after my previous concerns on whether it was okay to take her she behaved (in there at least) like a star - my little star

 

[diberry]

Great news - so glad you had a wonderful time and that your little girl enjoyed all the magic!! Looking forward to reading your trip report!!!

 

[Ware Bears]

Brilliant news! Glad you enjoyed your trip. Now its down to all the boring things like unpacking and the washing!

 

[Joanne UK]

Sounds like you had a lovely time. I've had tears in my eyes a few times too seeing my childrens' reactions whilst at Disney.

 

[bonhoga]

Sounds like you had a great time, can't wait to hear the details - really good to hear about Salon Mickey

Kaye

 

[Cyrano]

Glad you had a great trip. I wish I had found this board for your first visits
Looking forward to your trippie once you have caught up

Reid

 

[DisneyRGB]

Glad to hear you and your daughter had such a great time! Looking forward to hearing more about it!

 

[Bexx]

I'm so glad you had such a good time! Look forward to hearing more about it!!!

 

[Miffy2003]

Welcome home!

It sounds like you had a magical trip I can't wait to hear all about it

 

[disneyangel]

Well here goes guys !!

We got up at 4.30am to catch our 6.55am flight and lifted our little sleeping beauty in the car in her jammies as soon as we were ready to go.After a wait at the airport we were ushered onto a shuttle bus and drove to what seemed like the back of the airport bearing in mind Edinburgh is not that big.There we had to get on the smallest plane I'd ever flown on ,don't know the name but it has two seats on one side and one on the other and only about 25 rows.Still it got us to CDG in its allocated time and after another transfer on a bus we finally got to the terminal building. We only waited around 15mins (in glorious sunshine as Bilboo previously stated)and the VEA shuttle arrived. After debating VEA against TGV we decided on the bus because we thought Jess might sleep on the bus after her early start however the adventure proved too much and she only closed her eyes just as we pulled into the Newport Bay which was a great pity as we were getting off at the next stop The SEQUOIA LODGE - yippee

We checked in with a combination of my pigeon french and the receptonist's (sorry -castmembers) pigeon english and left luggage and headed straight for the park.However the early rise was telling on our tummies so we stoped for lunch at King Ludwigs ( now being a canny scot - i hadn't planned to eat here as there was no shareholders discount) however the lure of lager for DH and a free menu enfant which included a pasta dish(my daughter was delivered to the wrong country by the stork , she's really a little Italian she would live on pizza and pasta and as you will discover later is a bit of a primadonna with a little hot headed temperament although on the counterside she is like the italians very affectionate and can turn on the charm) - sorry I'm prone to digressing (sp ?)and you'll find that several of these mad statements will appear , I will try to put them in brackets so you can choose to bypass them to get to the real disney stuff but i know people like Di will appreciate them.

Anyhow after lunch which included for me a mini selection of puddings ( -as I'm a real sweet tooth)we headed for the park. We walked through the turnstiles under the bridge(as per Steve's recent photo) and i was already to see the castle however what i did see was a green 'wall' with a huge pumpkins head peering out which by saturday had been unveiled. It was quite fun going in each day and finding more and more pumpkin men and witches appear in main st and especially frontierland. I'd planned to 'do' some of frontierland on Tuesday then do a circuit round the park on the train . Our first stop was the Mark twain which Jess had a run on but it was moored for the season so we didn't stay long and we then headed for Pocahontas Indian Village. We planned on staying for a while to let Jess run around after sitting on planes and buses all day (anyone with or who has had a toddler will understand this notion - its is necessary to divert pent up energy becoming a tantrum ) however a sneaky couple of cockerels from critter corral put that plan out of action as they kept following her about and she was not very amused ( I suppose at her height they are a little scary !) so we headed past the Tarzan queue to the railroad station and by the time the train arrived she was blissfully asleep in daddy's arms.
We got on the train and instead of doing our planned circuit got off at main st and headed back to the hotel. We were allocated a room in Yellowstone lodge. The room was quite a good size with two double beds , a cupboard thingy with a TV on top shelf and doors which could be closed over and drawers underneath . It also had a slightly odd designed toilet/bathroom which had the toilet right behind the door and the sink was outside this room next to hanging rail/dressing area.
After a short rest (for DH) DD had woken up by now and we had been off to book our various dinners at the concierge we went back to main building for dinner at the Beavers Creek. I had chicken , DH -steak and our little princess had (well at least a bite of) a Mickey Pizza and a few dips of tomato sauce. (She hasn't really got the hang of eating chips she uses them as implements to get at the sauce usually). Jess had a smartie ice lolly and I had the sweet buffet but only managed two trips and one was fruit salad so that doesn't really count as our little princess was becoming miss impossible and after taking all the ice cream off her lolly to get to the smarties was now not impressed that the ice cream could not be stuck back on.She thought this was a design fault by nestle we thought otherwise(ie her 2 year old reasoning) but being used to the consequences of the world not turning around her decided it was the perfect time to leave before she joined the ranks of the other chldren nearby who were screaming through dinner.
WE then had a quick explore of the hotel and headed back to our room for bed.However someone with a cheesy taste in music ie YMCA , DISCO etc and a very large set of speakers decided we were not getting to the land of nod just yet(this was around 9pm). Now don't get me wrong at any time i've been out I'm as party as the next person to singing/dancing along to these tunes but given our early rise i wanted to get some shuteye before hitting the studios in the morning. By 11.25pm when my mind was trying to sing along as the rest of me tried to close down I pulled my clothes on over my nightie and went to complain. I was advised it would be finished by 12. However it continued till 2am. Not my best first impression of Disney I have to say.

Having reread this I sound like a right moan but this was one of only two things I really disliked and I'm sure my other days will read better. (part two later in the week !)

 

[Bexx]

Wonderful Angela - thank you!

Looking forward to hearing more about Desserts of DLP!!

 

[Cyrano]

Angela, lovely update of your trip. Looking forward to more

Reid

 

[diberry]

I really enjoyed reading that Angela - thank you! It was really interesting and I love all the little details and funny anecdotes, as you said!! A nice line in dry humour too!! Looking forward to the next installment!

 

[Miffy2003]

Great start Angela! Looking forward to more please

I would have been fed up about the music as well.

 

[Ware Bears]

Double posted in error

 

[Ware Bears]

Me too! If they are going to play it that loud, the hotel should have better soundproofing.

Lovely report, I am looking forward to the next part.

 

[DisneyRGB]

Great start to your trippie Angela, looking forward to reading more!

 

[disneyangel]

Part 2

WE missed our breakfast slot on Tuesday of 7.30am due to us sleeping late so instead decided to visit Salon Mickey before going off to the Studios. It was a bright crisp morning with clear blue skies and the 4 of us set off (DH-Kenny, Jess , Baby Simba - who we'd purchased the night before in the hotel shop and who them became a constant companion and me) .We got there about 10am and knocked on the locked door however no-one replied. I was very disappointed but DH insisted i check with guest relations and luckily i did because they'd just not heard us , I'm obviously not big on the VIP circuit and will need to practise my knocking technique for my future visits. Salon Mickey was smaller than I expected but very elaborate and to Jess's joy had a big plate of cookies and muffins.I have a great picture of her sitting eating a cookie in front of the bust of Walt
We shared this with Bilboo and family although at that point we didn.t know who he was and then headed of to the studios.
In the courtyard there were a number of characters including Minnie -all dressed up in gold and with sunglasses , Donald and Goofy. . We then walked through studio 1 and I was very impressed I love the Old American Styling with the gas pumps and the murals on the wall and them we went back out into the sunshine and headed for our first ride - The flying carpets.We had a couple of shots on this as there was only a small queue (5 mins or so at most) and headed in to see the Art of Disney Animation. Luckily a show was just about to begin so we had a quick look around the preshow room and headed into the cinema. The compilation which followed had us all spellbound (apart from Jess saying 'I've got that one' a few times )as it was so well edited.The part where they showed Bambi's mum being shot almost made me cry (again ). WE then headed through to the section where Muchu tells you all about how animation was done and we bypassed the next section to see Animagique.

What can I say about Animagique except that it's absolutely fantastic. It's so well done , the pacing was great, the use of both French( for Mickey) and English(for Donald) and alternating the songs made it great and the Puppets were amazing and even now I've been home for a week I can still hum the tune..la la la la animaqique.

After this we decided lunch was called for as we'd only had cookies amd muffins for breakfast(which my sweet tooth appreciated but not my tummy).My plan was to go to Cafe des Cascadeurs but unfortunately it was closed. I think for the season as it isn't even listed on the map description.The backlot express was also closed and as we didn't want a huge lunch we bypassed Rendez Vous des Stars and headed back for En coulisse.It was pretty average we shared a menu pluto and menu enfant between the three of us and then went for an explore the rest of the park.After a quick tour and another application of suncream (i kid you not !- Us Scottish people are almost blue (sorry Reid nothing to do with football-more skin tone !)and need frequent suncream attacks to cope with the beautiful weather we had.)

We decided against Cinemagique (not sure DD would appreciate)and TV tour (no-one has said anything good about it) and all went on the studio tour which was pretty similar to WDW although I think catastrophe canyon was less scary second time round.Kenny (DH) was keen for a shot of Rock 'n' Roller coaster so he headed off there and Jess and I returned to the flying carpets. DH thought the coaster was as good as WDW and as the flying carpets were even quieter than earlier Jess had free reign there and we were on about her 6th turn when Kenny came back.

We all then headed for Armageddon but I took cold feet as I thought it might be too scary for Jess and we sat opposite next to.. Jessica's all time favourite attraction in the whole park. The 'Singing In the Rain ' umbrella. She ran through this getting splashed (no idea about standing under the umbrella - she's more used to Scottish weather where rain is the norm) so by the time DH came back we had to change her into her spare set of clothes.Now being in the potty training window I'm used to carrying extra clothing around however I did not have an extra set of shoes and since her canvas doodles were now saturated we had to hang them on the side of the buggy and take her off barefoot to watch the stunt show. WE were both impressed and it (and a fruit ice lolly) kept Jess's attention for the whole show.

After this we decided to head back to get changed for our evening , we had booked dinner at Inventions following lots of recommendations from you guys. Our meal was fantastic however we had to eat it in shifts as from our first character interaction (Chip and Dale) onwards Jessica was terrified.The only people she warmed to were Mary Poppins and Bert who plied her with lollies to try to get her to talk to the other characters.The castmembers involved were really good and tried all sorts of techniques ie, pretending to be shy themselves(Tigger and Pluto) and sad she wouldn't speak (Eeyore) but she only calmed down near then end in time to eat three puddings - 2 yogurts and a chocolate pudding(that's my girl) and to say goodbye .

 

[diberry]

It was lovely to read your report Angela with all the little details - very interesting! That Animagique tune is nearly as bad as IASW!!!!

 

[disneyangel]

That's the one I thought I'd come home humming but actually the 'worst' offender is Casey Junior. Altough each time I hum it it reminds me of the fab time we all had on our trip and how much i can't wait to go back.