Hi All
When 12 April 2012 - DLRP's 20th Birthday
Who:- My wife Julie, My son Thomas and myself Andy (and a cast of thousands).
We left home at a very early time of 2am on the 12th to catch the 3.30am shuttle from Folkstone to Calais.
After an uneventful drive through the early hours we arrived at the DLRP car park at around 8am and made our way to the park.
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We made our way past the 20 or 30 strikers just outside the train station. To be fair they were in good spirits and not bothering anyone.
We were routed to the turnstyles to right hand side near Salon Mickey.
It was a long wait and people were getting agitated by people trying to push in to get to the front.
Around 9.30 we made our way into town square and watched the opening ceremony. I couldn't really see much so moved back to watch the events unfold on the giant screen.
The flashmob dance by the castmembers was amazing.
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I then made made my way up Main Street with the Castmembers lined up each side cheering and clapping. The most incredible atmosphere that I can not even begin to describe.
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During the chaos I found myself seperated from Julie and Thomas. It was then that I realised that I had left my mobile phone at home.
We eventually met up and made our way to Advetureland for Adventureland celebrates. We were there quite early but were quite near the front and a nice French family asked if Thomas would like to stand with their children right at the front.
The show was incredible with live music and vocals from The Jungle Book, which just happens to be our favourite Disney film.
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After the show things got even better as they allowed about 10 children onto the stage for a meet and greet. Guess who got lucky.
A rare Mowgli autograph
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More to follow
Great pictures, I guess your son will never ever forget that day :D
How amazing! Meeting Mowgli too! :0)
How fabulous. Looks like the start of a fantastic trip.
Nice report so far :-)
Lovely photos and report so far! :) Looking forward to reading the rest :thumbs:
Great trip report. Thanks for sharing! :)
Awesome pictures, how lucky to get picked for that special meet & greet. Looking forward to the next update.
Nice trip report Andy!!
Oh goodness you got to meet some fabby characters and this is only the first part, I along with many others can't wait to see the other parts :)
Thank you all for the nice comments.
Part 2
We had a slow walk to Fantasyland and stopped to have a look at the refurb on Captain Hook's pirate ship which is now looking extremely smart and back to how it should look.
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On our way we bumped into Peter Pan outside his ride. Another autograph opportunity taken!
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We arrived at Castle Courtyard and took up front row spots for the next show at 12.00 noon with Snow White, her prince, all 7 dwarves and Micky and Minnie.
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At the end of the show we managed to get both Minnie and Mickey's autograph.
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Our personal opinion is that the Fantasyland show was the weakest of the four we saw but that may be down to personal preference, it was however still a good show and on the plus side we got to see all the dwarves, not so fortunate in getting any of their autographs though. Grumpy certainly stayed in character!
After the show we headed for Discoveryland. On passing through the parade entrance gate we noticed an additional stage off to the left and next to the entrance to Discoveryland station which at first we thought was the stage for the 1.00pm show. A cast member told us that "something special" would be happening at 7.00pm that evening but wouldn't elaborate any further. Mental note - come back at 7.00pm! We continued on round to Orbitron where the show was due to take place.
More to follow....
We arrived at Orbitron for the 1.00pm show and managed to secure front row places again. After a 30 minute wait the cast arrived which included Stitch, Angel, Chip, Dale and Clarice. The show was a dance show to pre-recorded music, very fast moving with some cast members on skates. Personally this wasn't my cup of tea but Julie and Thomas loved it.
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We headed off to Frontierland for the 2.00pm show but unfortunately although we were there early so were many others and we were unable to secure front row spots. I much preferred the live music with this show and it was perfect theming for the land. The cast for the show were a live country band with Big Al, Wendell, Shaker and Liverlips, Goofy and Max with additional cast members dancing.
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I can't stress enough how good this show was, though why it was it put on here, when there is a perfectly good theatre a short walk away, I'll never know.
We were now starting to feel the effects of our 1.00am start, we therefore decided to take a break and try to see if we could find the Adagio Apartments which we were staying at for the first time.
Wonderful report so far - I may or may not have tired to spot myself in the Fantasyland photos. :P I failed.
Nice to see some photos from another perspective! Looking good. :D
We were inside eating at Cowboy Cookout - quite frustrated, as the band were outside, and so we lots of characters!
I have been searching for max everytime i go to i go to a disney park and some cast members don't even know who he is!
you are so lucky! :thumbs:
Great, great report so far - I really like reading all these reports from around the 12th of April. Those special celebrations really look like they should be performed more often. It's almost a shame to see such a good, fun, themed show as Frontierland Celebrates! only being used this one day. ever.
It looks like you had a wonderful time there :D
I feel the same, these shows should be performed more often.
Great pictures, thank you for posting.
My daughter went crazy again seeing Angel. She always asks, why she isn`t doing meet and greets, if she is therre sometimes.
THat`s another nice thing in these shows, characters, that are usually not there.
Aurora1
Great report so far! Makes me wish even more that I was there.
After a short drive to The Adagio we checked in with no problems and made our way to our appartment.
The appartment was roughly what we were expecting. Cheap and cheerful but nice and clean. I'd recommend the Adagio to anyone on a budget.
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A nice suprise was that we were about 50 yards from the entrance to the Val d' Europe shopping centre, so we decided to have quick look around the food court and get a snack. The choice of restaurants was varied and a lot cheaper than Disney, although quite a few of them did not open until the evening. So we grabbed a quick McDonalds as we were keen to get back to the park.
As we arrived back at the park Main Street celebrates was just coming to an end. This was a rework of the Mary Poppins show that was on a couple of years ago but included Duffy.
We had a slow walk to Discoveryland to find out what was going to happen at 7pm. We stood chatting a fantastic cast member Simone
but she would not tell us what was going to happen.
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We had some time to kill and at 6.30pm we decided to do our one and only ride of the day, It's A Small World.
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As we made our way back to Discoveryland we bumped into this fellow.
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It turned out it was a repeat of the Discoveryland celebrates show for Prince Al-Walid and his family. We were allowed to take a few photos and then asked to move on before the show started.
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We then made our way to Central Plaza and wait for Dreams to start.
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I can't find the words to describe Dreams. The show is the best thing ever done at DLP. I had seen some of the videos on youtube but none of them even come close to seeing it live. The perfect end to a perfect day at Disneyland Paris.
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More more!
Now there's one little man who does like his characters :lol: Nice read :thumbs:
Quote from: "Epcot_Boy"Now there's one little man who does like his characters :lol: Nice read :thumbs:
Sometimes the quest for autographs would be worthy of Indiana Jones but good fun all the same.
Despite planning an early start no-one remembered to set their alarm and so we woke at about 10.15am. After a quick cup of coffee and a bath, Thomas had a couple of croissants and we headed for the park.
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We arrived about 11.30am and headed straight for Frontierland via Main Street. Look who we found with virtually no queue, no-where near as popular when Mickey's not with him.
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After having had only one ride the previous day we wanted to try to get our fill today. However, the queue for the Fastpass for BTM looked at least 30 minutes so we headed through to Adventureland for Pirates of the Caribbean which was virtually a walk on, so much so that we headed back round for a second go as soon as we'd finished. This time there was a brief queue of only about 5-10 minutes. After this we headed for Fantasyland and got our Fastpasses for Peter Pan. Still determined to get more rides in we headed off to Snow White where there as 20 minute queue so we took the opportunity to take some picture and appreciate the detail.
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We had lunch at Au Chalet de la Marionette; half a roasted chicken for Julie, hot dog for me and chicken burger for Thomas. Time now for our Fastpass for Peter Pan.
We walked back through Adventureland towards Frontierland where we met Rafiki and Thomas played the African drum.
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The BTM Fastpass still had a huge queue so we gave it a miss and so we continued round for a trip on the Molly Brown followed by a visit to Phantom Manor (not one of Thomas's favourites).
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We headed through to Discoveryland where we took a trip on Star Tours and decided to get our spot for the parade. On walking past It's a Small World there was virtually no queue so we had a ride on that and then decided to watch the parade from the extended queueing area for Small World right at the start of the parade.
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After the parade we fought our way through the crowd for our second Fastpass ride on Peter Pan. We wanted to check our Reservation for Cafe Mickey that evening so while Julie headed for City Hall while Thomas and I tried once again to get a Fastpass for BTM only to find them closed. On meeting Julie at City Hall we discovered we didn't actually have a booking for Cafe Mickey today, it was in fact for Saturday. Dilemna now on where we should eat. We headed for the Disneyland Hotel to ask a question at the Concierge Desk and took the opportunity to take some pictures in the foyer with the 20th Anniversary carpet.
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We took a slow walk through the village checking the various menus before finally agreeing on The Chicago Steakhouse. Myself and Julie went for the Menu Jazz both choosing the Rump steak while Thomas had chicken breast. The service here is fantastic and it's so nice to have a meal where the tables aren't packed tightly together. I had the Apple pie for desert whilst Julie had mini deserts and Thomas had ice cream.
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After dinner we headed back to the park and took the opportunity for a few more photos of the 20th Anniversary sign. We especially liked the way Tinkerbell's wings change colour.
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We took up a spot in Main Street ready for Dreams and today we appreciated the show rather than trying to take pictures. We did find that tonight we were noticing more detail, perhaps as a result of the straight on view rather than from the side the previous day. Regardless it was once again a fantastic show. After this we headed back to the Adagio with a mental note to remember to set alarm!
Lovely trip report- I have a soft spot for Fantasyland dark rides (Snow white and Pinnocchio especially), and I just love pics of the murals in the queuing areas- so thank you for those, now Im really excited for my own trip in august :D! Very jealous about the 20th celebrations, its looks like an amazing day :D
Highly enjoyable :) Can't beat a great trip report (With great photos). Thanks for sharing :)