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[WiteHypno]

Hello I've been meaning to sit down and do this for a while, I've loved reading everyone else's trip reports in the run-up to my trip so why not contribute one myself?

Last year my sister Lizzie and I would occasionally jokingly say to each other that we should go to Disneyland together as we both have some savings and we're both 'adults' now so we could go without our parents for the first time (much to my Mum's disappointment).
Also, it had been so many years since we last went the idea became more and more tempting. So, in January I booked our trip for early September as I thought most schools would be back and peak season would be over, and also hoped that we might get nice weather as a bonus!

- DAY ONE -

My least favourite part of any trip is the anxiety and worry that comes with travelling, have I packed everything important? Did I print out the train tickets? Do I have English money for the train to St. Pancras?
But luckily everything went really smoothly, going through customs only took about 5 minutes which felt so bizarre in comparison to airports. Soon we were on our way and arrived at about 2:00pm, we decided to try and walk to our hotel  (the Santa Fe) to stretch our legs, but it was a lot warmer than anticipated and we hadn't gotten our bearings yet, so we weren't sure how to get through the village, we could only see the exit, so we gave in and got the bus.
Check-in took longer than expected, and we got a little lost trying to find our room and a nice cleaner helped us out and we got in, unpacked, and prepared to head over to the park.
This time we did walk through the village, and as soon as we saw the big lake, we were having flashbacks to our last trip, about 8/9 years ago.




Finally we got into the main park, and spent a good 10 minutes or so taking photos and drinking in Main Street and the sight of the Castle again after so long. Then we sped to one of our favourite rides and a classic of Disneyland, It's a Small World. The queue was short as per usual, probably 5 minutes at most, and it was a great start to the trip. We then mostly stayed in Fantasyland and explored Alice's Labyrinth, rode on Peter Pan's flight and span around on the teacups as well as just generally marvelling at the lovely weather and drinking in the atmosphere.









We walked briefly through Adventureland and snuck a glance at the sadly closed, Pirates of the Caribbean, a ride that has evaded us on every trip except our last one, so that was one disappointing thing about the trip (luckily there weren't many of those).
Frontierland came into our sights and we looked at the Thunder Mountain queue and it was under 30 minutes so we decided to brave it. Lizzie was slightly nervous as it was a ride that she scared her last time and we're both quite nervous of big roller coasters. However, as we knew we had also enjoyed it previously it wasn't a complete fear of the unknown and as soon as we got on the ride we loved it and laughed at our scared faces on the photos.



We then had some dinner in the Lucky Nugget Saloon as it was close by and I remembered that it was a restaurant within our price range and we both had the ribs menu. It was much more filling than I expected and I couldn't finish all of mine but it was good despite the ribs being quite fatty (that doesn't usually bother me but there was quite a lot of fat on them).

We spotted the shortcut back to Main Street and walked across to Discoveryland, after getting some nice sunset shots of the castle.



Neither of us really remembered the Buzz Lightyear ride from previous trips, so we both decided to give it a try as the queue was short and we both love Toy Story and knew it wasn't a huge rollercoaster ride. We were both terrible but it was really fun and ended up becoming one of our most visited rides on the trip. The Orbitron queue seemed fairly short too so we went for that but it was longer than anticipated and we also made the mistake of sharing a rocket. Lizzie sat on top of me but she just ended up squashed into my knee so we both ended up a little battered and bruised haha.





We were about to head home when we heard the announcement that Dreams! would be on in 15 minutes and we decided to stay because why not?
All the good places to sit were taken so we stood not too far from the entrance to the Plaza Gardens restaurant, slightly blocked by some trees and having to stand 'on' the rails to see a little better, it wasn't the best way to watch it, but what we saw looked good and I tried to take some photos but they were too blurry.
After that we headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest.

More to come~

[polar vixen]

Loving your trip repost so far, can I ask what dates you visited  I'm trying to work out when it does become quiet because of school s going back, but want to go as soon as possible!

[DisneyRon]

Loving your trip repost so far, can I ask what dates you visited  I'm trying to work out when it does become quiet because of school s going back, but want to go as soon as possible!

Check the title of the report miss vixen.
8-12 september in this case.

[polar vixen]

D'oh ::)silly me!  (she slinks away in shame)  I think it's the knowing I've got 350 ish days to go till we get to be in Disney, it's making me crazy!

[norhel]

Nice report so far :-)

[WiteHypno]

Sorry it's been a while since my last update, I've started class at uni again so it's all a bit hectic at the moment, anyway on to:

- DAY TWO -

We woke up to head down to breakfast at around 8:30am but the queue was so long it went all the way down to reception, so we skipped it for now and headed into the park for some early entry, we rode Buzz Lightyear, the Teacups and the Carousel before heading back to get our breakfast slightly later, now wishing we'd asked for park breakfast tickets instead of hotel ones, but it was pretty quiet at around 10:00am, only bad thing was all the pain au chocs had gone.



Ah well, we headed back to the park and spent more time in Main Street, looking through all of the shops and scouting out potential purchases and meandered back to Fantasy for another obligatory Small World ride, and then we went around to have a ride on the Pays de Contes Fees(? excuse my most likely incorrect spelling) and Casey Jr. which we had no recollection of at all, so it was fun to sing the song for that.





We then went around to Thunder Mountain for another ride, before going to explore through Adventureland as we skipped over it on the first day due to mostly wanting to do rides. Although Pirates was still closed, there's a lot more in Advantureland to explore, such as the Cabane des Robinsons and the caves and Skull Rock, which made for a nice and slighlty different activity, deciding which paths to choose in the caves and walking over rickety bridges. It was nice to enjoy the walk as an activity rather than a means of getting from one ride to the next.





We spotted Hook and Smee from Skull Rock, and lots of other characters that day, but we either saw them from a distance or saw them leaving their meet and greet spots.



We felt like we'd done everything in the Main Park that we wanted to that day, so we headed over to the Studios even though we were planning to go there the next day. We had a walk around and mostly just went on the 'family friendly rides', like the little Cars ride, Slinky's ride and the Flying Carpets.





By this point we were pretty tired, so we went over to watch Cinemagique to give our feet a rest. I vaguely remembered it from last time, but it was interesting to see clips of films in it that would not have been in there the last time I saw it about 9 years ago.

Although it was early evening we made our way back to the Santa Fe, looking through the Village shops on our way out and resting.
Before we went to dinner in the La Cantina however, I decided to go to reception to see if we could change our hotel breakfast passes for park ones. After a long wait in a short queue, we were told only one could be changed as all the other days had run out, and so only breakfast for our last day was changed, but that was fine, we were ready to accept a no.

Finally, we stuffed ourselves with lots of tasty food at the buffet in La Cantina, caught up on internet happenings by using the wifi and then went off to bed. 

[seraphelle]

Lovely report  Great photos 

[DisneyRon]

Lovely 2nd day by the look of it. Looking forward to the rest.

[WiteHypno]

Sorry guys, I've been so busy with uni work that I haven't had time to do anymore of this, I'll try and finish it ASAP, but in the mean time here's a little video my sis did of our trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leR1Sg4Fp7g&list=UU_cVGp6yu0U7NddXclMGMmQ

[RockNRoller]

What I love about trip reports is the photo's, even though I've taken loads myself I love them and you've got some fab ones here. Love the video too, you can see the two of you had a great time.

[WiteHypno]

-DAY THREE-

Because it's been so long since the last part and over a month since I was there, forgive the rest of these parts being a little hazy. There'll also be some spoilers for the Ratatouille ride if anyone doesn't want anything given way to them.

On this morning we made sure to wake up earlier to beat the breakfast queue at around 7:30-8:00am, heading briefly to the main park for some magic hours before going to the Studios for opening time.

We made it in a little after 10am and decided to go and try Crush's Coaster as neither of us has done it before, it wasstill being built the last time we were there! We got in to a 40 minute queue and were all happy, until we encountered the long list of warnings mid-way through the queue and we started to panic a little, my sister gets fairly anxious about things like this as well. She had to make sure that the ride didn't go upside down, as neither of us really like the idea of being upside down on a ride, the CM said no and we tentatively got on.
We were backwards which didn't really help things, and it lulls you into a false sense of security before thrashing you around in the dark, which was alright but we were both screaming so much with each turn haha. It was enjoyable once you knew that it was mostly just that, but we were worried our bags would come flying out and such, but I think it would be a better ride if it wasn't in complete pitch-blackness, but I suppose it's supposed to be a mystery.
Not a ride we were desperate to do again, but glad that we at least tried.





Next we headed down to the Ratatouille area and looked at fastpasses, but most of them were already gone and we wanted to get the Studios stuff out of the way in the morning and spend the afternoon/evening in the main park, my sister was too nervous to go on single rider for a ride we'd never done before, and the normal queue looked fairly long so we skipped it and moved on to Toy Story Playland again, and meandered through to go and watch Animagique.







Animagique was lovely, I'd forgotten most of it from before, and seeing any of the shows is a good way to sit down and relax before heading off to the next adventure.   
We had a bit of a walk through the Studios and came across the meet and greet stations for Buzz and Mickey. We hadn't properly met any characters up to this point so we both decided to get in the queue for Buzz as we're both huge fans of Toy Story and Buzz is one of my favourites from the series.
The queue seemed to move fairly quickly and we did some fun poses with Buzz and had High-Fives and we felt like we'd ticked another item off of the 'things to do in a Disney Park' list, meeting our first character of the trip!



We decided to try and do Ratatouille again, and the queue wasn't too bad, it was around 40 minutes, but it was here that we encountered our first and only major issue of the trip. We'd gotten into the room in the queue with the sign for Gusteau's (sorry if this is a spoiler for anyone!) and nearly through it when the queue came to a stand still.
We waited and one announcement was made after about 20 minutes, but the French was made first and they all started chatting over the English translation which was a little annoying, but there was an English family with us who heard it more clearly and said something about 'technical issues'. We decided to wait a little longer as we'd gotten so far through the queue, but eventually we gave up as we'd been in the queue for long over an hour and we knew we still had a couple more days left to try again.



After all of that we were feeling pretty tired and decided to go back to the hotel for a rest rather than powering through like the day before.
By the time we'd rested up we were hungry enough for dinner and we'd been eyeing up various places in the Village on our walks through and eventually ended up in Annette's Diner.
We saw a few people on roller skates but our water wasn't on them, but he was nice and friendly which is more important. We both had burgers from one of the cheaper meal deals, and they were nice but a little too fast-food-y for me, I prefer thicker, slightly better quality burgers but I enjoyed it nevertheless. It was a good reasonably priced meal and sufficiently filling.

We headed back into the park in the early evening and did a few more rides and as we were in Fantasyland we were reminded that we could go and see Dreams! So we moved out and tried to find a better view, and we were considering a spot off to the right of the castle but there was some space still down at the front with about 30 minutes to go, so we moved in and settled down.
The show was amazing, 100x better when you have a good view of everything, it made me well up and my sis was crying a little, we both sang along again to all the songs we knew and it was a perfect way to end the day after the slight disappointment earlier.