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Hi there

Yesterday I came back from a little week in Paris/DLP and what a great trip! I went with one of my friends, Kristian, who had been to DLP once before and had been on most of the thrill rides but not the classic attractions. So we ended up giving each other new experiences of both parts, which ended up making the trip absolutely unforgettable. We also had a day in Paris.

This is the place where you can read my report, see my photos and eventually a trip video. I'll once again start with a "Pre-Trip" report:

Originally we should have travelled with the danish DLP touring company Magic Tours, but that tour was cancelled and we was unable to use any of their alternative trips. We ended up going by Eurolines and staying 4 nights on Hotel Santa Fe with 5 days access to the parks. The Eurolines part was a bit tiring with coach change in Hamburg, 3 different drivers and some delay, but we each safed 100 € compared to the original trip - leaving more money (for me) to buy stuff at DLP and in Paris

We left Aalborg at 2:40 pm on monday the 26th of July and changed busses in Hamburg around 10.30 pm - it has never taken me so long to travel only 450 km, but we got great spots and was ready for an uncomfortable night with way less sleep than you would want.



At 2.15 AM our driver turned on the lights and said: "Good morning, we are now taking a 45 minutes break" - Yay, way to go. Wake us at 2.15 with a nice Guten Morgen/Good morning after having slept app. 30 minutes since leaving Hamburg at 11.00 PM. :lol:

Well, this would not be the funniest with this driver. Early in the morning (app. 5.00 AM) he stopped the bus again to ask if anyone was going to Eindhoven (clearly indicating that he didn't want to go to Eindhoven) and one person carefully raised his hand causing the driver to roll his eyeballs all around his scull and I am not kidding he asked this poor guy: "Are you sure??" - what kind of question is that

So in Eindhoven one of the main roads were blocked, causing our driver to take a small villa road with this giant tourist bus, when he found that this road was blind and ended with a bicycle-road he had his moment of glory that me and my friend would remember, quote and laugh over on the rest of the trip:

After 2 minutes, in which he only said "Mann, mann, mann, mann" he yelled so everyone could here it: "Diese scheisse-Eindhoven, Mann, mann, mann!" The man from Eindhoven was still in the bus and everyone was having a laugh despite the time and lack of sleep - it made the night for us

At 11.00 AM we arrived in Paris taking the metro and RER to Marne-la-vallee and the magic. We checked in at the Hotel around 1.30 PM and was ready for the parks at 2.30 PM. The magic was here :-)

Day 1 to follow shortly :-)

[toritinker]

looking forward to reading the report!!!!

[davewasbaloo]

Mann, mann, mann what a start. Hope it got better!

[disney-dan]

Holy shart, nearly 24 hours travelling?  :shock:  :shock: Dunno if I could manage that :lol:

[DLP-Photos.com]

Day 1 - Disneyland Park:

As said in the Pre-Trip report our day in the park started at 2.30 PM and we went to the Disneyland Park for a start - after all this is where the magic is in my opinion. Because we had not had breakfast or lunch (just a bon with chocolate from the day before early in the morning) we were quite hungry, so we visited the Deli Market House on Main Street U.S.A - the smell of the croques was insane and really bad, so we decided to eat our fresh sandwiches in the Discovery Arcade. It turned out they weren't that fresh, but hey, without real food for half a day we made it through the hard baguette with ham :lol:



After this we discussed what to do for a start and of course we went to the information board to check out the waiting times and it was here we realised that even though my friend had been to Disneyland before he had not tried any of the classic and most amazing attractions. Actually he had only tried Space Mountain, Star Tours, Indiana Jones, It's a small world and Pinocchio in the Disneyland Park as he recalled it. So off we went to Frontierland to start a tour of the classic masterpieces of WDI. First stop: Phantom Manor!



After a short wait we were guided to the elevator and every effect was working and we had a great cast member. The ride in our Doom Buggy was just as amazing as always with all effects working as I recall and my friend was very impressed with the effects although it lacked some shocks, but the storytelling of this attractions adds up to this and so much more a wonderful attraction. Afterwards we strolled around the graveyard:



We wanted to try Big Thunder Mountain, but the over 60 minutes wait made us save it for later in the afternoon only to leave for Adventureland and the first retry for my friend: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril. It is fun, but the uncomfortable seating is way worse than the attraction is fun, so we actually decided not to try the attraction again on the trip (We couldn't keep that promise though )

Afterwards it was time for part 2 of my tour of WDI classics and masterpieces: Pirates of the Caribbean. We queued outside the tent in front of the building :O I had never queued that long for Pirates, but I was very happy to, it meant that people wanted to go - even despite we do not have Jack Sparrow and the other characters. I hope we will keep the original attraction for many years - this is the magic that inspired the succesful movies - NOT the other way around!



Although my friend was impressed by the effects and story, I do believe he found the ride a bit too long and not thrilling enough. I enjoyed it and he did too. I've always wondered why we need an on-ride photo on this ride and later on the trip we started to make a couple of silly ride photos, but we will come back to this

We still expected the line for BTM to be over the 1 hour, so I said I wanted to try Le Pays des Contes de Fées most of all to take some photos. The ride had been closed on my two latest trips in October 2008 and 2009, so I hadn't been on it for years. It was a great revisit, although this land within the land really is aimed at really small children, we joked about trying Casey Junior, but I ended up guessing I couldn't get into the train due to my height (2.05 m), so we dropped it and went towards BTM for the first of a total of 11 rides on this great attraction.







The queue at BTM was app. 50 minutes so we went on (it took just 40) and I used the waiting line to photograph lots of the great themening and details in this queue. I love these details and if you study them you tend to forget how warm it can be inside that house :lol: The ride itself was as awesome as ever, and you even got a bit wet on the first lift hill - great in the heat. My friend was also happy with the ride and especially the final tunnel sequence impressed him - a brilliant ending to a great and funny attraction that combines the thrill and magic of WDI. One of my favorites - no doubt!









Before BTM we had actually taken fastpasses to Indy and we ended up trying it again the same evening that we had promised not to try it again on the whole trip

After this we got our food at Col. Hathis - I got the Pizza Royale and my friend got the Pasta Bolognaise. Not amazing cuisine but still way better than lots of fastfood chains. We went for the hotel just to get my tripod and then the rest of the day was dedicated to video filming the Fantilusion Parade and taking photos of the Enchanted Fireworks.



Coming back to the park at app. 9 PM I got a great spot near the gazebo on Town Square - I had wanted to go inside the gazebo to get an elevated view to use for both the parade and the fireworks, but this place was taken already. My spot was great up until 5 minutes before the parade - then people began to push in front of me and even the children right out to Main Street U.S.A had to go up onto their parents' shoulders - I understand why people do this in 3rd, 4th and other rows - but in the first row?? This of course made people stand on the little hedges around the flower beds makin my spot (which I had been in for almost 1.5 hours) unusuable.   :x

I walked around to try and find a spot but ended with my parents' camera on my tripod for video taping (it shoots 720p video with autofocus, while my DSLR also shoots 720p but only with one static and manuel focus point). I held the tripod up in the air - only in my own height not to block someone elses' view of the parade. I ended up getting some great video (you can see it later in the trip video that I will post after the report), but I had to run through Discovery Arcade in order to find a usuable spot from which to photograph the fireworks in the short amount of time between the parade ends and the fireworks began.

The fireworks began and I was still finding a spot, when I did so I quickly got the camera rigged and turned on to the right program and settings and then I went crazy with the remote control. It was quite a different spot to photograph the fireworks from, but after seeing the photos I am pretty happy actually. The fireworks was beautiful and extremely well timed to the great music by Alan Menken from Enchanted. Me and my friend was a bit hard to impress though having just seen the Tall Ships Races 40.000 € Fireworks display in Aalborg 3 days before leaving (see photos here: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=5302&start=540)









After the fireworks I took the traditional night time photos of the castle, Main Street U.S.A and the castle seen from Main Street U.S.A. Afterwards we wrapped up and finally got a good night's sleep in a real bed after a night in a bus with app. 2 hours of uneasy sleep. What a day to start out with - the magic had taken us







Tomorrow I will post day 2 - we visited Paris and Disneyland Park in the morning and night on this day

[toritinker]

woooooooooow i love the firework pictures!!!!!!!!!!!! amazing quality and made me really excited!!!
11 rides on BTM? haha you must really love it!!!  
can't wait to read more
xx

[DLP-Photos.com]

Please note, that I have uploaded our silliest on-ride photos to the thread dedicated to those. Drop in, if you dare

And thanks toritinker - it is a very beautiful show

[tubbsy]

:lol: We do that in Legolan  as we visit a lot! We have lovely photos of us on the Dragon but now we see who can pull the silliest face-I normally lose as my son and DH are mad! :lol:
11 times on BTM? Wow! I wonder if you are starting a competition to see who can ride it the most during their holiday! :lol:
And your firework photos are beautiful. They got me excited too

[loladelorean]

Fantastic trip report nicolai can't wait to read the rest
Your ride photos made us laugh I think we will try to so some as well in November!
Your photos of the fireworks and the queue area at btm are amazing more please! Lol

[norhel]

Great photos I must say! :-)
And to bad that you couldn't use the place you had chosen for the parade....

[never2old]

Great report so far, and gorgeous pictures, as always!! Can't wait to read more!

[DLP-Photos.com]

Day 2 - A daytrip to Paris

Thanks for the comments - I hope that my future updates will be just as good and pictures too

We started day 2 with breakfast in Chalet de la Marionette at 8.15 (in the hotel we would have had to wait until 10 am to get our breakfast (too late when you want to use extra magic hours before going to Paris). The breakfast was great as always - the fruit seemed a bit more fresh than the next mornings in the hotel and they had yoghurt here, which they did not have in the hotel. After breakfast we went for the next of my classic attractions: Peter Pan's Flight - I'd never understood why this has longer queues than Snow White and Pinocchio, but I figured out that in order to try one of these it probably would have to be in the morning, so it was Peter. The attraction is beautiful and the ride system great - I spotted several cars in the miniature London scene, which was way brighter than on my latest trips - thumbs up!



Afterwards it was time for my first lesson from my friend: Space Mountain: Mission 2. I had said prior to the trip that I might try this, but I had never guessed it would be right after breakfast on the first morning possible. The queue was only 5 minutes, which was great for me - it gave me no time to think about it perhaps making me quit it. As for the ride: is was not that comfortable to sit in and I was a bit too concentrated on "surviving" so I didn't take the time to enjoy the ride. But it was quite fun and I knew that I would be willing to go again (ended up going 7 times). I was a bit proud of myself before entering Buzz Lightyear - I won that round, but with the embarrasing score of app. 70.000 :-( Poor Zurg was missing a complete arm (the one with the gun)

After this we exited the park at app. 9.40 noticing they already let people into the Studios. We noticed this and used the memory the following morning to go on Crush with a reasonable queue.

Before going to Paris we decided to buy a Travel Card for 5 zones allowing us to travel freely for a day for the price of 18 € (Disneyland -> Paris was 6,70 each way on it's own).







We arrived in Paris by Chatelet with our first stop, Notre Dame, just minutes away. I had been there a couple of times before but it still impresses me how many details you'll find on the front - amazing! It was filled with people but they queue was moving really fast, so we decided to go inside.





It is really huge and impressive inside - the beautiful details unfold around every archway really. I could have spent a complete day photographing inside, but we stayed for app. 30 minutes taking a walk all the way through the main room. Of course the lovely stoned glass windows are beautiful and worth a photo or two. Here are my favourites from inside the church:









After Notre Dame we went to another beautiful church - Saint Sulpice. We are both fan of movies, so this visit was mostly due to the church's appearance in the Da Vinci Code. Inside, the church is beautiful and I am sure it is on the outside too - unfortunately most of it was under scaffolding for a refurb. The alter (room) is something special in here - I couldn't get to photograph this, because they were in the middle of a session while we were there.









We took the metro back to Rue de Rivoli continueing towards Louvre. We would not go inside but the outside of Louvre is so special that it is a must-see on a daytrip to Paris no matter if you are visiting the museum or not. It is so wide, extravagant and filled with atmosphere - plus it is very, very hot! :lol:







We walked about for a bit and started to feel a growing hunger, so we found a place to buy a sandwich and a beverage and we then sat down by one of the huge fountains in the public park right between Louvre and Concorde. If a baguette for lunch, a view towards Louvre and the Paris wheel isn't a real French lunch I do not know what is





After this we went towards Champs-Elyssess for a short time of shopping. We went past Place de Concorde before entering the giant boulevard on which they were still removing barriers and seating areas from the Tour de France final on Sunday.

This would turn out to be a very expensive shopping spree for me, which started in the Paris Saint Germain Shop. I have a collection of original football shirts and I always get one with relevance to the city I visit. SO I ended up buying the new 40-year anniversary away shirt with official badges, name and number paying no less than 100 € - that is one expensive collection you see





After studying Arc de Triumph my shopping spree continued in the record store FNAC. I bought a special tin box edition of Disney Treasures with Mickeys early B/W days and a unique to FNAC Limited Collector's Edition Blu Ray of Casablanca filled with extra material. It is amazing how sharp the picture is thinking about the movie is from 1942! Amazing.. I needed to stop spending all my money, so I resisted from buying a beautiful Alice in Wonderland/Tim Burton book and the Lord of the Rings Blu Ray box (insanely low price) in Virgin Megastore. I needed some money for DLP too



We also visited the Peugeot show room which had a special Shanghai World Expo exhibition and Disney Store, which - I am sorry to say - was quite a mess. Upstairs it was ONLY Toy Story and downstairs it was a sale that could have been seen in silly Danish mall.



After this it was time for our final stop - the Eiffel Tower. We took the Metro to Trocadero walking the final way towards this majestic piece of architecture. We discussed whether it was beautiful or not and I actually do not find it beautiful - it is just extremely impressive and an one h*ll of a construction - that makes it breathtaking. Before getting to close we took the standard "hey-I-am-bigger-than-the-tower" photos and had quite a laugh.





We then walked under the tower which makes it even bigger and more impressive. Some street dancers were doing a pretty amazing show with the acceptance of the police, so it was pretty organised. I am still flabbergasted however by seeing parents not even noticing the dancers inviting their children in to the middle - two children were taken in there to dance and one pair of parents didn't even notice it before their child already was running towards them again screeming :O



We walked towards the nearest metro station - blind as we were we did not find Bir Hakeim and ended up walking nearly 1 km to find a metro station. However this took us directly to Nation from where we took the RER back to DLP - the clock was now app. 7 pm. What a day in Paris - we had really seen a lot in a short amount of time

We entered the park for the last couple of hours with a stomach aching for fish'n'chips So we went towards Toad Hall which was closed. We then went to Marionette (closed), Col. Hathi (closed) and Bella Notte (closed) - I guess it was because Fantasyland and Adventure land closed at 10.00 pm because of the fireworks but this meant that the restaurants in Main Street U.S.A was absolutely stuffed with people. They could have one restaurant open in Fantasyland until at least 9.30 to take some of the pressure off the smaller Main Street places like Casey's or Victoria's. We ended up eating some nuggets in Videopolis at 9.40 PM.



While our Captain EO showing on Tuesday evening was cancelled after the pre show due to technical issues, this wasn't the case this night and we got our first showing of this classic that none of us had seen before. My friend is a big fan of MJ and I am big sucker for WDI story telling. So you might guess that we absolutely loved the show - I actually didn't find it dated at all. Of course the effects was old, but the story and music was so amazing and this makes this a more-than-one-show-per-trip experience which HISTA was not! However, we did find the new old pre show very long and a bit tiring. A lot of people walked our during this - I understand why they want to show it, but it didn't work IMO.

We had decided not to see the parade/fireworks and go to Frontierland in stead. We queued up for BTM at 10.30 with a 30 minutes queue. This ride is so much fun at night! We got out at 10.59 and ran towards the entrance and only two people were let in after us We got a nice surprised when coming out the first lift hill - the fireworks had started. Everybody in the train cheered and went crazy with jubilations - it was a magnificent sight and very magical.  This was when we decided to drop the parade/fireworks again on Thursday to get this experience once again. I filmed it and you guys can see it in the future trip video.

The perfect ending to a hard but amazing day 2

Day 3 will follow tomorrow with further groundbreaking experiences for me!

[SwipatronSparks]

cant wait to see that video it sounds amazing, and sounds like you had a good trip =]

[tubbsy]

Fantastic trip report. I cant believe how much you managed to do!

[toritinker]

wow disney...then paris..then back to disney?! what a lot you guys can fit into a day!!!!!!!