THE DRIVE to Disneyland: Driving in the French Countryside was beautiful, but quite daunting. Robert was absolutely exhausted from driving all day, but we made it. Driving in France is a cross between English and American Driving. It’s similar to English driving because there’s similar road markings, tons of roundabouts, and the countryside is all green surrounding the motorways/freeways. It’s similar to American Driving because everything is on the right(driving on the right of opposite traffic, onramps are on the right, you turn right on all roundabouts). It was an interesting experience being even a passenger in the car.
THE LANGUAGE: I thought going to France for my birthday was going to be this grand experience where I would show off that I can speak some French. I got a slightly different reality. Not necessarily a bad thing, just…I need to brush up on my French a little more before I try again. I got by with a few things—ordering food was alright, but everything else I basically spoke in English because we were in Disneyland most of the time where everyone is trained to speak in multiple languages.
THE HOTEL: At Disneyland Paris there are 6 hotels in the surrounding area outside the Park. We were at the Hotel Cheyenne, which was themed like a Western Town, complete with 14 western shaped buildings, each holding probably 50-200 rooms. Then there was a town hall(Reception) building, restaurant and old western saloon.
Disneyland Hotels are great….if you’re a family. They’re themed, which is pretty cool, and fun to take pictures of, but it’s WAY TOO overcrowded with families of screaming kids and foreigners. It’s REALLY annoying. Given that Robert and I were foreigners, but the ones we ran into were worse. Everywhere you go it’s like your personal space is being invaded.
Robert and I went to the buffet the first night and it was ALL sorts of crowded…and this was at 10pm. There was this kid in the back of me that every time the line moved up, and I moved to get away from him, he would get so close to me I swear his nose was touching my hair. A little too close for my taste. Also, wherever you went you had to be extra careful that no one was going to ram into you and knock your food over because people were rushing around and switching lanes in crowded spaces like it was rush hour traffic in LA.
Robert and I ended up getting up for our allocated breakfast at 7am, hoping it would be less crowded…which it was. We then enjoyed a nice, quiet, free continental breakfast before walking to Downtown Disney or “Disney Village” as they call theirs, at just after 8am. The good thing about staying at a Disneyland Hotel is that you get limited access to the pack 2 hours earlier than anyone else.
DISNEYLAND PARK: Basically Disneyland Paris was like an alternate universe version of Disneyland California. Everything was the same, but slightly different…and slightly European.
The overall experience was great. Some things we liked better than the Californian
Counterpart, some things were cooler, but some things we just missed about the Anaheim Disney.
Main Street USA.
DiscoveryLand(AKA TomorrowLand)
The Castle of Sleeping Beauty.
The Entrance to Adventureland (AKA Agraba)
The Cinderella Inn Restaraunt.
Jack's Garden/Bean Stock.
AKA Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.....outside rollercoaster experience!
Robert looking like a Western Cowboy in Frontierland.
Frontierland train DEPOT.
Robert acting like a Frenchman eating his croissent...I'm just happy to be in France!
Big Thunder Mountain...on it's own private ISLAND! (The Station is on the mainland, but then it drops you into a deep dark tunnel underwater and you come up on the other side on you're own rollercoaster island!
Phantom Manor (AKA Haunted Mansion).
Wandering around the log cabin/fort thing that is the entrance to Frontierland.
Outside one of the shops there was this statue of a stack of suitcases. I like old fashion luggage, so we took a picture of me by them, and then went inside a shop for souvineirs.
Down main street, right before the round about area in front of Sleeping beauty's castle there was a MAIN PARK INFORMATION board. I thought it was pretty cool, even if it wasn't 100% accurate.
Star Tours! (The old version with Rex!)
Just enjoying our day.
The Castle and Main Street USA all lite up at night.
Walt Disney Studios(aka California Adventure) entrance.
(Monster's Inc. SCREAM Monitors. Scream into them and see how powerful your scream is.)
Cool display of old license plates, and a coca cola machine in a shop in Walt Disney Studios.
Water Tower outside Walt Disney Studios.
Hollywood backdrop and a raised camera to set the scene in Walt Diseny Studios.
Walt Diseny Studios, with tower of Terror looming in the distance.
Rock n Roller Coaster--SOOOOO much better than California Screaming. Indoor laser lightshow roller coaster set to songs by Aerosmith.
A Car Stunt show featuring Lightening McQueen from CARS. Pretty epic.
Toystory Playland...small area(like a Bugs Life in CA), with 3 rides inspired by Toy Story.
AND THAT...was disneyland. (For a full detailed report and comparison of Disneyland Paris to Anaheim DIsneyland, see my next blog.)
On the way back to Calais (the ferry port) the next day, Robert and I stopped off at a museum/ex-Nazi underground missile bunker in Saint Omar. This was once the place where Hitler commissioned thousands of missiles to be built underground and then launched towards London and parts of Belgium. It was interesting to be in a place where Nazis once were but also a bit eerie. It took us about 3 hours to wander around the place and look at everything and see most of the short films on missiles and the wars and stuff. The saddest part was at the end where they talked about the concentration camps and they had some of the uniforms and personal effects on display.
The Dome, from a distance.
The inner workings of the V2 Rocket.
The "Flying Bomb".
(The Tunnel to the entrance of the dome bunker. Back in the war, this was used as an underground railway tunnel that delivered the half built rockets to be assembled and launched out of the dome.)
However, one of my favorite things during his museum was to learn more about Wernher Von Braun. He started off as a teenager in Russia, wanting to build rockets just as a hobby. Then he was recruited by Nazis to build missiles for the war, only to be fired later on during the war. Just before WWII ended, Von Braun was hired by US Military to work for them. He was pardoned for being an ex-Nazi and granted US citizenship and went on to be part of NASA and was the chief architect of the Saturn V. Pretty impressive.
