A french best friends day in Disneyland Paris - April 16th 2016

[frenchieSteven]

Hello everyone and welcome.

For those of you who have been reading my pre-trip report you know that I'm planning a trip in Disney World with my best friend Robin for June 2017. And for those who haven't been reading it now you know too (and if you want the link is in my signature).

But I have another best friend. Back from when I was living in France (more information during my presentation later) and we managed to do one day in Disneyland Paris before I left France, and I thought I would do a report on this, because Disneyland Paris is my home park and I never did a report on it, and if I prepare a trip with a best friend, I can also talk about my other best friend.

I didn't take many pictures of the park that day, so I will be using some from other of my trips in Disneyland Paris sometimes to illustrate my words.​

 

[frenchieSteven]

Table of content

Introduction​

Presentations

Train trip
Walt Disney Studios
Disneyland Park
Walt Disney Studios again

Conclusion and castle pictures
​

 

[frenchieSteven]

Presentations

I will start the presentation with myself, Steven.

This picture is a little old, it was from Halloween 2015, but I wanted to use one from Disneyland Paris. I haven't change much anyway.
So I'm a french, I lived in France for 31 years until I decided to move to Canada.

I'm a Disney fan, always been, but a park fan only really since Christmas 2014 on my first trip in Disney World (you can find the report for that trip in my signature).
After this trip I decided to become an annual passholder at Disneyland Paris, since this park was only 3 hours of train from my city.
So for more than a year I went to the park once a month, sometimes more.

And on the last months I was in France I managed to share my love for the park with my loved ones in several trip, one with my father and sister, one with my mother, stepfather, my aunt and my cousin, one with my best friend (the one we are talking about now), and one with my brothers and my brother's wife.


So now for my best friend, Daphné.

She loves Disney movies, I think her favorite one is Beauty and the Beast. She likes the park, but not as us, she couldn't understand how I wanted to go that often, she is more the kind to go every couple of years.
We met each other in summer 2009, we were both going regularly in the same bar on karaoke nights, so at some point seeing each other there every weeks we started to talk, became friends and then best friends.
I am the godfather of her first daughter, and I was her best man or maid of honor, or maybe man of honor for her wedding. That was really amazing to have the chance to be there with her on big events like when she tried wedding dresses.
So of course it was a big tear when I decided to leave for Canada. So I manage to plan a small Disney trip of one day so we could share Disney together before my departure.

It was not possible to do a two days trip because she doesn't like to be far from her two daughters for too long. But it was okay to do a one day trip, taking the train really early the morning and arriving at the opening of the park, and take a train back in the evening.
One bad thing, we couldn't get a train late enough to see the nighttime show on the castle. But we were clearly exhausted at the end of that day.

So here for the presentations of ourselves and our trip. See you soon for the report on this trip.​

 

[frenchieSteven]

Train trip

Hello. So I'm going to start the report about this trip by the non Disney part, the trip.
I woke up really early that day, well I always wake up early on a Disney day, we had our train at 6:10am, and I had to take my car to go get my best friend who lives outside the city then get us back to park near a metro station and take the metro to the train station. So you can imagine how early it was to be able to catch that train, I probably left home around 4:30am.

Obviously the metro was pretty empty at that time, now that I think about it we often had taken the metro when it was empty, but usually late at night after one of our karaoke night. Always a lot of fun, like when I danced on the pole...
Or that day I offered her a gift I think for her birthday, and she made me wear it :

She loves that kind of cute things.

But back to this trip. We were on time for our train, not to early so we didn't have to wait too long (when I'm on my own I usually arrive so early that I have half an hour to one hour to wait for my train).
And the fun started, I won't post everything, but we have 16 pictures of us just in that train.
It started soft :

And then she started making faces, which I can't do because once I start laughing I can't concentrate enough.

And yes my face turns red when I laugh too much. And it ended with a few pictures where I'm wearing her bow :

I don't know why but it was not the first time that happened, and not the last as you will soon see.

One good thing about this train (it was usually the same I took everytime I went to Disneyland Paris) is it arrives just before 9am.
And the parks opens at 10am, officially.
So we were in no rush to go buy her ticket (I had a nice discount with my annual pass).

Like I was saying the official hour of opening is 10am, for both parks. But they let you in at 9:30am, and in the Disneyland Paris park you can go through main street up to the front of the castle, and then there are ropes stopping the access to the other lands.
Except if you stay in a Disney hotel or if you are an annual passholder, you have access to that park from 8am.

But since she had a regular ticket we decided to start by Walt Disney Studio park, here too they let you in at 9:30 so you can go wait for your favorite attraction.

And I'm going to stop this post here.​

 

[ArielSRL]

Sounds like a fun, albeit early, train trip!

in the Disneyland Paris park you can go through main street up to the front of the castle, and then there are ropes stopping the access to the other lands.

This is the way it is done now at Magic Kingdom, as of January.

 

[frenchieSteven]

Walt Disney Studios

Hi everyone. Like I was saying at the end of my previous post we were starting the day at Walt Disney Studios, home of my favorites attractions.
My favorite of all attractions I have done (there and in Florida) is Tower of Terror, no doubt about that the one in Paris is my favorite attraction of all times. The second one is Rock'n'Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith but I'm not sure if I prefer the one in Paris or in Orlando.

But that was not the first things we were going to do, there are two attractions in Walt Disney Studios which are always crowded, Crush's Coaster and Ratatouille.
Ratatouille has a fastpass line, so we were first headed to wait for Crush's Coaster.

(the sky looks grey on the two pictures so far but it was actually not pictures of that day, we have a few pictures of ourselves but not of the attraction so I'm using some of my other trips).
Like I was saying in the previous post the park officially opens at 10am but they let you in at 9:30am so you can wait in front of your first ride.
And sometimes they open some attractions before 10am, not all and not always the same, but we got lucky and Crush was one opening pretty soon after we got in line, and there was already a line, I think we waited 15 minutes before being on the ride because we had been early to enter the park.
I must say Crush is a coaster I don't really like, it gets me a little sick, there are no looping, but it turns on itself, like primeval whirl but at a higher speed, and the story is that you are a turtle in the Australian current, so you are going up and down while you are spinning. And people are for in the turtle shell, back to back, 2 facing front and 2 facing back (until it stars to spin).
But it was one of my best friend favorite so we had to do it, and it was one of my last trip so we were going to do the most of it.

After that we headed to Ratatouille but it was not 10am yet and it was still not open, and the fastpass machine were not opened either (but had already lines).
So instead we went to the closest area, Playland, a little land themed with Toy Story.

Here my best friend needed a picture to send to her brother.

Because of the fences that were based on toys her brother used to play a lot with as a kid, K'NEX.
Here we did two attractions, first was RC Racer, it's the little green car from Toy Story that you ride on a half-pipe, it gets really high, I love the feeling when you are all up and start to drop.
The second one was Toy Soldiers Parachute drop, like the name said it it's a drop kind attraction, but something far from Tower of Terror, the drop is slower, I don't think you get off your sit in this one, but the theme is nice, since you are in fact falling with a parachute over your head like the little toy soldiers, and you have a pretty view of the park when you are at the top before the drop.

When we got out of it there was some friends of mine collectors of pins who were there that day so we said a quick high but my best friend was impatient to move to the next attraction so we didn't get much time to chat.

Now we were moving on towards Ratatouille. I'm sorry still no pictures there, I'm surprised that I don't have any of those previous attractions, or maybe just that I never put them online, I'll check on my computer one day and add them to my facebook if I have some.
Ratatouille is a really nice ride, you are inside a rat and you are not on tracks, I think they are guided by wifi, there are three rats moving at the same time, and in some areas they don't take the same path. And it's a 3d attractions too, but it's really well integrated.

As I'm trying to remember what we did after I just recalled that Aerosmith was closed that day. But next was time for my favorite ride.

Tower of Terror. I think she got scared a little bit

But she loved it and that was a lot of laughs.
I'm going to give you the reasons why I prefer that one to the one in Hollywood Studios, first of all it's more like a real elevator, it just goes up and down, don't cross the hotel like the one in Florida, second I feel like the drops are bigger and maybe one or two more (my favorite part is when the elevator goes up at a high speed, then when it stops you get off the sit because of the momentum force and the elevator starts falling again before you are back so you stay floating in the air, that's the feeling I love the most).

And that was the last thing we wanted to do for now in this park (we actually got back later). So I'm going to stop the post now. See you soon.​

 

[ArielSRL]

I must say Crush is a coaster I don't really like, it gets me a little sick, there are no looping, but it turns on itself, like primeval whirl but at a higher speed, and the story is that you are a turtle in the Australian current, so you are going up and down while you are spinning. And people are for in the turtle shell, back to back, 2 facing front and 2 facing back (until it stars to spin).

I would not like this at all!

Tower of Terror.

My favorite ride at WDW.

 

[frenchieSteven]

Disneyland Park

Hello. Like I was saying when I left you, we were going out of Walt Disney Studio to the Disneyland Park.
And we started by going to Discovery Land, which is an equivalent to Tomorrowland, not the same name because it was designed not to be the future but the future as imagined in the past.
And we started there with Space Mountain.

A lot different from the one you know, starting by the propulsion in the canon that you see on the right of the picture and with looping and all.

I like when the CM is nice and put the astronaut to hide the other guests in your picture (they sometimes say they can't do it except on printed pictures).
It's been almost a year so I'm not sure about all the rides we did that day. Like maybe we did Star Tour, that's near and that would make sense.
But one we did for sure was Buzz.

We took a couple selfie in the line.

Sometimes there is a bug with the picture because it should show the score under the players.
But you can see we were trying our best to aim.
I won.

She did pretty well for someone who doesn't play often.

And I have done better than that, never reached the high score though, but my highest is somewhere in 700 000.
After that we decided to eat lunch. We didn't want to lose to much time so it was counter service. Just next to the attraction in Videopolis.

I made the call mainly because I like the Jedi burger.

And I don't remember what she ate.

After lunch we decided to do something that I suggested for the day but that we decided earlier to do only after eating.

Face painting and yes that was my suggestion.
And when we went to the register to buy tickets for that the CM there hand us over the "menu", and on one face was the girls and on the other the boys, so she started to flip it when giving it to me to present me the boy side, but I say "no I want one from the other side" while laughing a lot of course.
So with our ticket in hand we went to get our "makeup" done.
Mine was called blue fairy.

I really loved it, I would do it again, without the lipstick, it was a little too much but for that time I said let's go all the way.
And Daphné when with the cat face that she asked in blue too so we could match.

So now it was time for a lot of pictures with our new faces.

So sparkling .
The job was really well done I think, we love art, my best friend is an artist (by the way she just started a facebook page telling her life in drawings, some funny things with what her daughter say, I'm sure if you ask nicely she could translate them in english, here it is : https://www.facebook.com/crottedebiscuit/).

Now before adding something about that day I must talk about one bad experience that happened that day, which I would never thought could happen in Disney.
First of all let me tell you I'm a straight man, I just don't mind about my appearance and thought that face painting was pretty and was there to have fun so that's why I didn't hesitate a second to suggest that to my best friend and to go with it.
But after that I saw the look on people's face totally change when seeing me. And laughs in my back.
I was disappointed and sad by that.
And I forgot to say, that day was dapper day in Disneyland Paris, I really like that, people dressing in a way they usually don't, and I thought they would be the last people judging me for having a face paint. Well I was wrong.
That was for the guests, the CM were mostly nice saying things like "nice makeup" (not all of them though but it was better than the guests).
I guess it was a pretty interesting experience to live though, to see how some people can be treated and to imagine how hard it must be to people who lives that everyday, you know it but can't really understand it if you don't live it yourself.

Anyway that didn't stop us to have fun for the rest of the day, so with our beautiful faces we decided to go in front of the castle for some selfies.

After that I'm not sure at all the attractions we did, but obviously things like the haunted mansion and it's a small world...
One for sure was Pirates of the Caribbean.

And another for sure was "Le pays des contes de fée", it's a smooth boat ride with miniatures of fairytales, like in California I think.

We took several pictures in the boat.

Not much of the attraction itself (but if you go to my facebook page you can find albums of pictures for all my trips in public view so you can find some). That's when she started to try to have pictures where she "holds" the things :

Failed... And after this attraction we went back in front of the castle, and they have this eggs decoration for
Easter.

And so she wanted to make it look like she was holding an egg..

Failed again .
But I was nice so in the end :

That's a little better .
After that we were approaching the end of the day and we wanted to go back to Walt Disney Studio a little, but before the trip she said that she'd like a picture with a character and we hadn't done one yet, so on our way we stop in the line for one (well I keep the surprise but you already know by seeing the presentation post).
We took selfies again while waiting.

I really loved my painted face. And it was our turn to have our pictures with Thumper (Panpan in french).

That was really fun, I just realize that Daphné is not looking on this picture, I don't know what happened, but I'm smiling so that's good enough.
Well okay let's add a cute one.

I think I was afraid to leave makeup on him.
So we went back to the other park, so that will be for another post.​

 

[frenchieSteven]

Walt Disney Studios again

There was one thing I wanted to in that park, that I did only once before.
But before that we went back to the Tower of Terror.
Took a picture in the line.

Yes that bow jumped back on my head again (crazy kids that we are).

She was less scared than the first time, too bad for the hand in front of her face, I think letting your arms up in this ride gives you even more sensations. So much laughs.

And it was time for our last thing, there is a little show called Art of Disney Animation, it's a little show/movie with a CM talking to Mushu and explaining how animated characters are brought to life. But the part that interested me was in the exit room after the show, you can draw a character with instructions of a CM, and we were lucky because it was the last one of the day. And we got one not to complicated.

That's mine, I'm not a talented artist but I was pretty satisfied of this one. The first time I went there it was Mickey and the result was not really great. As for my best friend :

I told you she is an artist, you should definitely check her facebook page.
And we were done, we went out of the park, looking for something to eat in the train.
And back in the train selfies again.

You can see we had eaten because all the blue on my lips had gone onto my sandwich, that's why we decided to do that after lunch and not in the morning, good choice.
Once back in our city we took the metro and someone appreciated our makeup (nicer than the guests in Disneyland).
And that was the end of our day trip, we were exhausted.​

 

[ArielSRL]

Nice finish to the trip! Well, other than the rude guests!

 

[frenchieSteven]

Conclusion and castle pictures

So it's already the end of this report, it was quick only one day to tell you about. It was not my last trip in Disneyland Paris, I went back with my brothers a couple weeks after, and now I'm hoping my next one will be before the end of this year.
Life in Canada is good, but far from Disney, not even a Disney Store in Montreal.
I'm glad to be on the same timezone as Disney World though, it makes the trip there so much nicer (otherwise I'm really bad with jetlag).

So to end this report I wanted to share with you some of my pictures of my home castle.

The first time I saw it in years and first day of my first annual pass there.

Same day from behind.

That same day at night.

With a beautiful blue sky behind it.

From a side.

With the sun going to sleep.

With some Halloween decorations.

And that's all.
Next time you'll here from me will be on my pre trip report for my june trip with my other best friend, to talk to you about my trip in Colorado to see her in 15 days now. Then with our fastpass choices. And finally with the trip report for that trip this summer.
Bye bye.​

 

[frenchieSteven]

Nice finish to the trip! Well, other than the rude guests!

Yes that was not great, I would have expected that outside and would have been fine, but Disney was not the place where I thought it would happen.
But I'd do it again anyway I loved how it looked

 

[disneyworldluvr349]

With the sun going to sleep.

​

Such a beautiful picture!

 

[markpsych]

Great report, thanks for sharing