We started the day off with chocolate croissants and espresso from Marks and Spencer’s (a little grocery store connected to the airport right next to our hotel). The croissants were still warm…Paris!!
We splurged on the TGV train to Disneyland. It took 9 minutes vs. the 60-90 minutes the RER would take. Worth it! It had us at the park by 10:15am despite a slower morning start.
Just like in Anaheim, Paris Disney has two theme parks, Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios. Today we started at Studios. The parks here offer an unlimited fast pass (for a few) to skip bigger lines for several of the rides. Since we thought today would be the only day we’d be in the parks we got the unlimited FP.
Our first destination was Ratatouille.
We’ve been excited about this ride because it a trackless attraction like some of our favorites from the Asia Disney parks. (Mike just calls them Disney Parks.)
Basically, you are a rat and you go through the restaurant from the movie trying to avoid bad things. In 3D. We were underwhelmed. It seemed like the cars just parked you in front of a few movie screens and you’d watch an animation until you’d be moved to another screen. A real underuse of the trackless system, which for other rides adds variety and seeming random experiences to each time you go on the ride.
Classic Tower of Terror was next. Great ride as always.
We grabbed a crepe and saw the show Mickey and the Magician. It was cheesy fun. I might have teared up at the end. We then finally found Rockin’ Rollercoaster. It was changed a bit. It used to be that the ride vehicles represented a limo that you are hopping in to get to an Aerosmith concert. Now it’s just a vague experience of being on stage (perhaps?) with the ride of performing a concert…? Who knows. It hurt a bit, but still kind of fun.
We really enjoyed Crushes’ Coaster.
You hop in these turtle vehicles and ride the EAC. The shells turn at times and it’s a fun and excited ride, not to be missed.
It was 3pm and we’d done everything we’d wanted to at Studios. Time to head back to Disneyland.
It was really warm in the sun. And it was hard to find much shade. I was getting roasted and tapped out by the heat. Wanting to get the most out of our fast passes we headed to Peter Pan, which was closed briefly for repairs. As was Thunder Mountain. We did finally go see Mickey’s Philharmonic which lacked the clever proscenium expansion and the Donald Duck butt in the back of the theater at the end. No Goofy walking through, either.
The rest of our evening was Star Tours, Hyberspace Mountain, Thunder Mountain a couple of times and finally Peter Pan.
I was tapped out. We decided again to take the TGV back to our hotel so after a a gelato in Disney village we trained back to the hotel and had dinner there.
At the hotel we showered off our Disney funk, packed our bags and crashed for the night. Coming home tomorrow!!
Art’s Travel Adventures 