Post Day Two at Disneyland Paris
The next day had early entry at Disneyland Park and it was at a very civilized 8 am and lasted for two hours. Unfortunately, not that many rides were open during the early hours and those that were open, were mostly ones that we had been on the day before. In retrospect, I would have slept in later and had breakfast and just gone to Studios straight off and arrived before opening at 10:00. We also spent way too much time trying to round up breakfast. There was a little coffee and pastry window on main street, but the service, while very friendly, was not at the warp speed to those used to the efficiency of Starbucks. We ended up getting over to the Studios entrance right about or right after opening. I knew that we needed to make a bee-line for Crush’s Coaster.
Crush does not have a Fast-pass and the line builds really quickly. Even though we got to the gates of the park at just about opening time and hustled, straight over the line was already at 70 minutes. We usually do not wait in line for rides with a wait time of more than 35 minutes, but since this is such a well-regarded ride and we did not want to miss this one, we hopped in line. It turned out to be worth it – such a fun ride. DD was a bit hesitant as she does not like big coasters, but she even ended up loving it. We probably could have shortened our wait time a little bit if we had been waiting out front of the park before opening.
After Crush, we split up and hit a variety of rides. We really liked the theming of Toy Story Land – the rides reminded us a bit of Bug’s Land. Next up was the Ratatouille area. The theming here was great – so many little details on all of the buildings. The Ratatouille Adventure is a Fast-pass ride so we were able to use our magic Fast-Pass. We loved this ride – fun, unique and well themed. It does have elements of motion simulators though so if you are very sensitive to those rides, you might want to keep that in mind. We had a little bit of time before our lunch reservation so we immediately jumped back in the Fast-pass line to ride it a second time.
Lunch was at Bistrot Chez Remy, we continued the very detailed theming of the restaurant. This is a prix-fixe restaurant with two different price level menus to choose from as well as vegetarian choices and kids menu choices. The restaurant also has a decent house wine and a full wine list. This was an expensive lunch and took a lot of time out of the day, but it is definitely one to do for the experience. Theming was great and everything was done on perspective so you felt like you were "rat" size. Overall many of the items were very good, but certainly not to the level of some of our favorite Disney dining experiences (Carthay Circle, Napa Rose, Remy, Palo, and Victoria & Albert’s).
Ratatouille at Bistro Chez Remy
After lunch, we did the tram tour and then tried to catch Stitch Live, but the last show had just started. This park closes up pretty early and with a long, late lunch we did not get too much more done. We were able to get most of the rides done, but did not catch any of the shows during our time at the Studios Park.
We tried to do a bit of packing before heading back into DL Park for more rides and dinner. We rode more Fantasyland rides, Thunder Mtn again, and a few others. Because of the late lunch, we waited quite a while for dinner and by that time our choices were pretty limited. We ended up getting burgers (I was happy that most places had a veggie burger option) in Café Hyperion in Discoveryland. As I mentioned earlier, this park has several really nice “walk-throughs” that should not be missed. We enjoyed the Nautilus, the Castle/Dragon, Aladdin, and this park’s version of “Pirate’s Lair.” We really like Disneyland Paris and wish we had another day to enjoy it. It would have given us a chance to see some of the shows at studios and catch a few more rides.
Space Mountain at Night (it stayed light until 10pm at least when we were there)
Our car pick-up (included as part of our
ABD post-stay package) was scheduled for 5 am (!) for our 9 am flight so we figured there would not be much sleep anyway this evening. We stayed until closing and then went back and packed. After just a couple of hours of sleep, we headed off to the airport sad that our big adventure was over. We did not have any traffic issues driving to CDG Airport and actually arrived before the United check-in counter opened for the day. No problems with check-in or security and we found the airport easy to navigate (although we spent most of our time in the Star Alliance lounge). We had one last bit of pixie dust when we did our on-line check-in the day before and the option to upgrade to business came up at a very reasonable price. We had booked the tickets on miles because I just could not bring myself to pay the full business fare from San Francisco, so being able to upgrade for the long sad flight home for way, way less than the original price difference was great.
In summary, this was probably our best family vacation ever. This was due to a lot of factors, but a big part of that was due to ABD. Often people overlook this trip because these two cities are very easy to do on your own, but for us the ABD difference was price-less. Our kids had never been to either of these cities, and DH and I had not been to Paris. We wanted to see some “big-ticket” sites on a trip and add Disneyland Paris into the mix, and we were sold on this one. Without ABD though, it definitely would not have been as memorable of a vacation. Our guides were amazing and had the best camaraderie with each other and the guests. Also, while I love vacation planning, I just don’t have enough time. Planning our 2 pre-days was more than enough. I loved the mix of activities that ABD has as part of this tour with the highlight being the food tour. We also really appreciated the VIP tours/access at a couple of our stops. My only minuses would be I felt we needed more time in London and more time at the Louvre – we just see these as reasons to go back some time.