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[DisneyRon]

It is time for my visit to DLP for the parks' 25th anniversary, Andybear and I are visiting together this time.

Like my earlier reports I'll endeavour to keep a "Live" report of my visit.
I'll be adding photos to the report once I return home.

The 25th started early as I took a train at 7:30 in the morning, I arrived at Chessy after a fairly uneventful journey at around 14:00. Andy's train arrived about 10 minutes later.

We took the bus to Sequoia Lodge to check in, Andy checking in to her Montana room, and I checking in for the Golden Forest Club. We had a reservation for the Buffalo Bill show at 18:30, requiring us to check in by 17:30 for our tickets, so we decided against going to the parks and decided to do some shopping at the Village instead.
In the Lego store I managed to find a Saturn 5 rocket kit, which was released to commemorate the moonlanding in 1969. online the kit is sold out so I was quite surprised to see the huge kit in a Lego store. I bought it right away and dropped it off at the hotel.
A few stores later it was time to go and check in for Buffalo Bills show.
Andy and I elected to be part of Red River Ranch at the show.
After the opening musical number we were seated in the arena.
After a lovely show and meal our ranch came out on top as well.

By now it was a little past 8 in the evening, we decided head back to the hotel after doing a little more shopping.
Both of us enjoyed a Red Glow-tini cocktail in the bar and then we headed to our rooms to get some sleep and type up the days report.

Tomorrow we'll have our first actual park day.

 

[DisneyRon]

Day 2

After having breakfast Andy and I met up around 9:00 to head into the parks.
We started off with a trip to Phantom Manor, as it was showing very low waits indeed.
From the Manor we headed up the path to Pirates of the Caribbean, doing a character meet or two along the way.
After pirates we headed towards Hakuna Matata for lunch.
After lunch we headed into Discoveryland to take a ride on Star Tours 2.0, our flight took us to Naboo for an exciting Pod-race and a Battle around a Trade Federation Droid Command Ship.

After exiting we walked from the Star Wars area around Space Mountain, and seeing Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast with literally no wait (they were letting everyone in through the FP entrance, the main queue was closed), I decided to take a spin and shoot some holes in Emperor Zurg.

Leaving Discoveryland we made our way to Fantasyland for a relaxing trip on It's Small World, which looks amazing in its fully refurbished form, with all puppets working and all colours nice and bright.

Andy and I parted ways here for a little while, as I was extremely tired and decided to head back to the hotel for a bit of rest.

I headed back towards the parks around 17:00 to make use of my Hotel Fastpass for Ratatouille, consider my surprise when Andrea joins me in my rat having gone through the single rider queue without either of us being aware that the other was close.
After the ride we headed towards the boutique here, as it had not yet opened last time we visited DLP.

By now it was time to head to the Disneyland Hotel for our reservation at the California Grill for dinner.
After an absolutely wonderful meal we headed back to Sequoia Lodge to retire for the night.

Tomorrow we hope to see the parade and  fireworks.

[Lavi]

Happy to read a new trip report from you! Have a great trip!

[DisneyRon]

Happy to read a new trip report from you! Have a great trip!

I hope you'll like it Lavi.

Day 3

I woke up at around 5:15 with a bit of a sore throat, but otherwise had a good night's sleep.
I dozed a little until about 7 or so and went downstairs for breakfast.

Around 9:00 Andy and I met up again to head into the park.

Andy went to queue for the meet and greet with Donald, while I continued into Fantasyland on the way towards Pirates.
The rest of the park doesn't open until 10:00 obviously, but I had forgotten that, so I had a little time to kill.
I did a spin in the Mad Hatters Teacups, my first time if you would believe it.

After the ride with the cups I made my way over to Pirates, only to discover that they were having technical difficulties (which continued for most of the day it turned out), with this unfortunate news I decided to walk back to where Andy was queueing for Donald, along the way however, I spotted Genie setting up, and quickly joined the short queue.
A few quick photos and some Genie hugs later I continued on to Donald's spot, where Andy was just finishing up.

Together we headed into Frontierland to visit Phantom Manor again, which had only 5 minutes wait.
From there we headed out into Adventureland to see if Pirates was open again (it was, but with a 60 minute wait, and it would be down again shortly after), instead we headed towards Cowboy Cookout BBQ where we would be having lunch.

After lunch we headed back to Fantasyland and rode Le Pays des Contes de Fées.
This is a lovely relaxing boatride, especially on a sunny afternoon.

After this we made our way to the Royal Castle Stage for the 2 shows, as they are pretty much back to back, so you can easily watch both in one go.
Happy Anniversary Disneyland Paris includes a lot of different characters in a fun, dance filled show, led by Master of Ceremonies Max (of Gooftroop fame).
The Starlit Princess Waltz features as one might suspect as many princesses as they could fit on the stage.
Aurora, Cinderella, Jasmin, Snow White, Ariel, Rapunzel, Belle and Tiana are all present here, along with their Princes.
It is quite a sight to behold.

After the show we decided to head back towards our hotel, but first made a stop at the PhotoPass store to pick up Andybears photos with Donald. I noticed they had the Disneyland Paris A to Z book here (which I hadn't seen in any other shops yet), they had 4 new copies left, and one seriously dog-eared "tester" copy.
When we left, they were down to 2 new copies.
This is indeed a beautiful book, and it is bilingual, its content in English and French.

Back at the hotel we took some time to rest, and met back up at 18:00 for dinner at Hunters Grill.

After dinner we made our way back to Disneyland Parc to see the anniversary fireworks of Illuminations. And I must say, it is quite the spectacular show. A great use of the castle as the projection surface, with spectacular water and firework effects. Definitely worth seeing if you get the chance.

Upon arriving back at the hotel after the parks closed, we enjoyed a cocktail and after coming back to my room, wrote the days report.

Tomorrow we visit Walt Disney Studios.

[DisneyRon]

Day 4

Andy and I met up around 9:45 to head toward the Walt Disney Studios.

First we visited World of Disney for a little shopping, I had my purchases sent back to the hotel.

In the studios our first stop was Slinky Dog for a quick ride, after that we wandered around a little (in the rain unfortunately), looking for rides and character meets with reasonable queues, not finding many, we decided to head out for lunch instead.
We visited the new Five Guys restaurant which is "hidden" down the far end of World of Disney, towards the parking area there. They serve some very tasty burgers and fries there. They also have Coke-Freestyle machines, which is a definite plus.

Returning to the studios from Lunch we headed to Animagique to watch the new show Mickey and the Magician, which turned out to be a really nicely done musical medley of many different Disney stories, complete with their principal characters (stand-outs including a performance by Genie, Belle and Beast, and an amazing rendition of the Circle of Life).
After the show Andy and I headed back to Ratatouille, and seeing a much more reasonable 20 minute Single-Rider queue, we went in for a spin with our favourite Rat chef.

After our ride I felt really tired, so I headed back to the hotel, while Andy would go for a few more rides and possibly character meets. We arranged to meet up after the Disney Stars Parade, which would start at 17:30.

After resting a little while I headed back to Disneyland Parc for the parade and found a great spot at the crossroads where the parade turns onto the central plaza from the Castle Stage area.
However, I had done a nasty fall in mainstreet while heading there, and while I felt fine, my leg was starting to hurt more and more (turned out that I bruised my knee a fair bit in that fall).

The parade itself is quite beautiful, with many large and impressive floats (though I had seen some, Malificent's mechanical dragon for instance), and many dancers. The music I didn't like as much, as these were essentially really base heavy renditions of classic Disney songs.

After the parade Andy and I met up and headed towards Adventureland to see how Pirates was doing, and seeing only a 10 minute wait we headed in. After the ride we headed towards the exit of the park, as we had a 19:30 reservation at Inventions, thanks to some detours for the preparations of the fireworks later that evening we almost didn't make it to our reservation in time, but we managed.

Inventions itself was great, with many characters making their rounds, perhaps because the restaurant appeared to be fully booked for the evening. They were turning away walk-ons and no less than 8 characters were making their rounds in the dining area.
In the time we were there we met Mickey, Minnie, Hook, Eeyore, Rabbit and Tigger.
We also spotted Goofy and Smee, but they didn't visit our table.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. My knee was now quite swollen and stiff, but I hoped a nice hot shower would help there, along with some Ibuprofen.

The shower helped somewhat, and after packing my suitcase for tomorrow I wrote up my report for the day.
Tomorrow is our final day here, and I'll be heading back home by TGV and train around 16:00.

[Zee79]

Oh no, hope you are ok. I fell on, well into haha, one of the boats hitting my hip quite badly one year, so know how you are feeling. The Disney magic helps with it until you stop moving then the pain is back. Hope it's feeling better soon. Loving the report 😊

[DisneyRon]

Oh no, hope you are ok. I fell on, well into haha, one of the boats hitting my hip quite badly one year, so know how you are feeling. The Disney magic helps with it until you stop moving then the pain is back. Hope it's feeling better soon. Loving the report

My knee is a little stiff and swollen still, but other than that I can move about well enough.

Now onto the final day's report.

Day 5

We started our day at Walt Disney Studios around 10:30, and ran right into a pop-up character meet near the entrance. After taking pictures with a couple of the characters we made our way into the park and headed to Ratatouille. The Single Rider queue said 10 minutes (it turned out to be closer to 30, but that's not important), so Andy went for that and I used my final Hotel Fastpass.

Leaving the studios, we headed to Disneyland Parc and went to Fantasyland where Andy wanted to meet with Pooh, when we arrived there was quite a queue, so rather than waiting together, I said my good byes to Andy to get a few more things in before I needed to head out to the train station for my TGV.

First up was lunch, I headed to Toad Hall for a chicken sandwich and fries and after finishing headed over to Pirates for a quick run. Thankfully the wait was only 10 minutes, so after the ride I headed into Frontierland to visit Phantom Manor, which was also showing only a 5 minute wait.
After a nice and spooky run I headed back towards Main Street and decided to catch a train-ride around the park.

Unfortunately I was unable to complete a full circuit of the park, as our train had a bit of a technical issue at Discoveryland station, and it was going to take a bit of time to fix.
Time I did not have unfortunately, as I wanted to head to the trainstation.
Walking out of the park from Discoveryland I headed to the station and picked up my luggage from the Disney Express location, it was very busy in the station, with many people waiting for their trains home.

My own TGV ended up being delayed by 22 minutes, meaning that I would be unable to catch my connection from Brussels back to the Netherlands. Thankfully the train company was able to change my Thalys tickets to normal International train tickets so I could get the next train to the Netherlands.
In the end I arrived back home some 30 minutes after originally planned, which wasn't as bad as I had feared.

[Andybear]

There are two things that DisneyRon hasn't mentioned.

One - he whinged about his health the whole time.  I was glad of the time I spent on my own because of this. 

Two - I was ill myself from Tuesday night, involving taking antibiotics and using a walking stick for the rest of the the trip, but I just kept going without constantly moaning about it.

Never again.

[DisneyRon]

There are two things that DisneyRon hasn't mentioned.

One - he whinged about his health the whole time.  I was glad of the time I spent on my own because of this. 

Two - I was ill myself from Tuesday night, involving taking antibiotics and using a walking stick for the rest of the the trip, but I just kept going without constantly moaning about it.

Never again.

Your health issues were private, so I felt that it was not appropriate to mention any of those here.

This is a public forum, private matters have no place here.

[polar vixen]

Well said disney ron. I wasnt sure if the prior comments were a joke between you but i hope they havent put a slur on what should have been an enjoyable holiday. Also was wondering if the random characters come out every day in the studios  and roughly what time? We always seem to miss them!

[DisneyRon]

Well said disney ron. I wasnt sure if the prior comments were a joke between you but i hope they havent put a slur on what should have been an enjoyable holiday. Also was wondering if the random characters come out every day in the studios  and roughly what time? We always seem to miss them!

There is no formal schedule for the pop-up characters I think, since they're not listed on the program itself.

However, it would not surprise me if they generally bring out a group a little after park opening to kind of "catch" the 2nd wave of people heading into the parks to promote better dispersion of guests, ensuring not too many visitors bunch up in any given location.

[loladelorean]

Well said disney ron. I wasnt sure if the prior comments were a joke between you but i hope they havent put a slur on what should have been an enjoyable holiday. Also was wondering if the random characters come out every day in the studios  and roughly what time? We always seem to miss them!

I was thinking the same - somewhat aghast at the comments but I'll leave that between you guys!
DisneyRon, thank you for sharing your detailed trip report, it was a pleasure to read.