Sorry I haven't posted in a while but I've been away you see - in
Disneyland Paris :-D
I booked the tickets last October but I've been keeping quiet about it as a surprise for my sister - 5 months is a very long time not to let it slip!!!
Originally my sisters OH booked it as a surprise for her birthday but the wonderful
Thomas Cook decided to ring up their house phone and confirm the 'surprise' booking. The only saving grace was that she didn't know me and my OH were also going, let the lies begin....
....They were all under control until her OH decided to book them tickets for
Matilda the musical in London before realising he couldn't go. Being the lovely sister she is she offered me the spare ticket, the only problem was it was on the day before we were supposed to go to Paris - queue loads of lying about train times, meeting places and trying to dodge each other on the tube.
To cut a long story short I blew the surprise too early, we had originally planned to give the surprise away on the
Eurostar but I stupidly mentioned not going to work as Mickey (Mouse) needed to see me. Ooops!!
Oh well, it meant I could relax and enjoy Matilda....
The stage...
and the yummy interval ice cream...we only had one pot each though, unlike my mum who has one of every flavour!
The show was really good but it was time to have dinner and a few drinks and get into the Disney mood.
My sis and her husband....
and me practicing being French ;-)
At about 9pm we were all exhausted and decided to head back to our hotels to get a good nights sleep before getting up early and heading to Paris.
We had picked the
Travelodge hotel as it was close to Kings Cross station and was a bargain at £35 (including early a £10 check in fee) but I didn't expect us to be quite so close to the train tracks.
The beautiful view from the room....
....and I did record the sound of the noisy choo choo trains (with the window CLOSED) ..... but I cant upload sounds on here :-(
Trust me it was loud!!!
But after a few quite hours of sleep it was time to check out, fill in the feedback form (yes we put the trains were noisy) and head to the Eurostar.
It sounds a bit stupid but I was expecting a bit more than just...well a regular train. Not quite sure what I had in mind but I was a tad disappointed.
Never mind the excitement would soon come. After one false start - a woman in our carriage thought her husband had been left behind so screamed at the top of her voice, making all the children cry and slamming the emergency stop button before discovering him coming back from another carriage - we made it on our way.
And at 2pm local time we arrived :-D
We dropped our bags off with the Disney Express to be taken to our hotel and off we went to explore.
"M.I.C.K.E.Y M.O.U.S.E" (this has to be sung in a silly way)
We decided to head to Walt Disney Studios first.....
.....to go straight to Toy Story Playland
Where we bumped into some famous characters...
Rex looked very calm and sweet but turned out to be a bit hungry for humans
So we left ToyStory land and headed to see some of the stars of Cars and Monsters Inc.
After we successfully screamed louder than all the children we
headed to the 'Studio Tram Tour', a special effects and prop show.
After all that excitement we headed out of Disney Studios
and went to get some food in Disney Village before heading back to find our hotel.
We decided to eat at the Rainforest Cafe which was very strange and full of jungle animals and its own weather - the food was ok despite being massively overpriced.
mmmmmm fajitas
Next off to the hotel to check in.
The other hotels on site looked promising...
and I even thought for a minute that my mum had come to stay.
But no it wasn't mum, and no our hotel wasn't quite what we expected, it looked more ghetto than Santa Fe, I think I would have been happier in the Jail one.
Never mind the room might be ok...
.... well not my choice of decor but it was a bed and we were all very tired and achy, and on the plus side the soap was pretty :-)
The next day after a very confusing cattle market style breakfast that looked huge but actually only consisted of croissants, toast and cereal we headed straight to DisneyLand Park...
...To go on the Buzz Lightyear Lazer Blast ride where it was our mission to work for Star Command and defeat the Evil Emperor Zurg with our lazer beams.
Of course we succeeded - BUZZ LIGHTYEAR TO THE RESCUE!!!!!! A very cool ride!!!!!!
Keeping in line with all things Buzz we headed to Pizza Planet for some lunch :-)
And after filling ourselves up on all the pizza we could eat it was time to hunt out some Disney characters
and then for some shopping.
Mr Potato Head pick and mix :-D
My amazing creation ;-)
and of course we had to try on every silly hat in the whole of DisneyLand
After all that excitement we headed to Main Street for the parade
After all the fun of the parade and far too much pizza we headed back to the hotel for a few drinks.
The hotel bar didn't look any more impressive either.
The next day was our third and last day and time to watch a stunt show go on a few rides and then head home.
The stunt show featuring Lightning McQueen from
Cars
And a few of the rides.
Not sure the OH was impressed with
It's a Small World, especially as we sung the song for the rest of our time there.
After a nice timid kiddy ride we went on Pirates of the Caribbean
This is only a small log flume and I had been persuading the OH the whole time we were there to go on some of the scarier rides but he's very persistent and kept refusing. Finally he agreed to go on Indiana Jones - and oh my I knew he didn't like them - but I never thought he was so terrified. I have never seen anyone so scared in my whole life. Oh how I wish I had a picture of him on the way around, sadly I was too busy consoling him!!!
So our trip was nearly over, as our last ride we decided to go on the train that goes around the circumference on the whole park.
Very bad idea!!!
Not only was it another train ride when we were just about to board the Eurostar then another train for at least five hours - but it also took forever. We queued for about an hour an a half and it turned out to be pretty rubbish anyway, very unorganised and worryingly slow!
Never mind, despite the rubbish train at the end we had an amazing time and were all thoroughly Mickey'd out... and as they say.....
