Home

[DisneyRon]

I've been going over the various posts, adding the odd relevant photo that I took at a later point in my visit, and extending explanations a little, correcting spelling mistakes, that sort of thing.

As I'm typing this my Thalys is speeding along towards Paris (well, relatively, it's not allowed to go truly fast until it passes Brussels). The trip to Rotterdam and the hour there were uneventful, but now I'm onboard the Thalys the pre-Disney jitters have started to set in.

I've been listening to a whole bunch of classic Disney soundtracks while on the train, and that really brings a smile to my face, especially in the knowledge that I'll be at DLP in a few hours.

I actually have the real-time wait-times open on a separate tab to see where I'll probably go first when I arrive in a little over 3 hours (assuming I manage to catch all my connections in one go).

I hope to work on this report while I'm still at the park while the memories are fresh.

[gemma2806]

Fantastic have a wonderful trip! 

[Aurora1]

HAve a great trip! And I`m looking forward on your report!

[itslizi]

I hope you have a magical time. It's a good way to go about it, as it's bloody hard to remember everything that happened each day once you're home.

[DisneyRon]

Thank you Gemma, Aurora and Lizi, I'll do my best and will let the magic do its thing.

The Thalys arrived at Paris Nord on schedule, and thanks to a little planning on my part I managed to catch all my connections on the first go. I arrived at Disneyland 5 minutes ahead of schedule.
Dropped my suitcase off at the Express desk, grabbed my tickets and then into the park itself.


First order of business was Pirates of the Caribean, the wait according to DLRPR was only 30 minutes, so that was as good a time as any. Heading along the back passage to PoTC was easy enough, as this walkway is never that busy it seems. Arrived in good time, sped through the queue and thoroughly enjoyed my ride.

Next up was Phantom Manor, which only had a 15 minute wait listed, I think I've been on this ride when I was in the park for the first time, but that was more than 18 years ago! Enjoyed the ride, but did notice that, like others have said, the animatronics are in need of some major maintenance. Quite a few things didn't work I think.


Seeing that time was proceeding apace, and I wanted to do a few more things before dinner, I headed over to the Studios park to check out Ratatouille: the Adventure. The waiting time on this ride had been consistently high throughout the day, and was still at 75 minutes when I got there. I decided to use my DLH Fast Pass for the day for this ride, as I was unlikely to do many more given what time it was.

The Fast Pass reduced the 75 minute wait to about 10 minutes, which is far more manageable, and it was certainly worth it. The ride is truly amazing, extremely well done. Score one for the Imagineers on this one.

By now it was a quarter to six, and I had a table booked at the California Grill for 7, and I wanted to freshen up a bit before heading off to eat. Went over to the hotel, checked in, got my room keys, and went to look for my room, as my luggage had been sent ahead by Disney Express. I managed to get lost a little and found myself on the wrong floor looking for my room. Found it eventually and was quite pleased with how it looked. Nice large King Sized bed and a comfy sofa in the room (which I'm sitting on as I type this), plenty of space too. Really happy with it.


Cleaned up a little bit and headed off to the California Grill for dinner. The food was in a word, amazing, and I deeply regret not bringing my phone or camera to take snaps of some of the dishes. Especially the Dessert.

I had a "dessert d'Olaf" (or Olaf's Laugh in English) which is basically an Olaf figurine built from Vanilla Icecream, with a coconut fondant base topped with dabs of cream, chocolate arms and hair and a sweet Meringue as the head. I actually felt bad eating this work of art, he was delicious, but he looked so cute and nice.

Dinner was finished in under an hour, so I thought I could grab a ride or two before dreams and closure of the park.


I took this one as headed into the park, the crowds were already gathering for Dreams as I passed through Main Street on my way to Adventureland.

After a few detours (due to sections of the park already closing for the night) I ended up at PoTC again, now with only a 5 minute wait I was in a boat in no time at all. And those there were some of the last guests of the evening. The ride will be closed until Thursday.

On my way back to Main Street for Dreams I noticed that Peter Pan's Flight was mostly empty, so I went for a quick spin on that, I had never ridden it before and was pleasantly surprised. It's a really nice dark ride.

Thanks to this unplanned stop at Peter Pan's I did miss one final ride on Phantom Manor, but that's not really an issue.

By the time I ended up back on Main Street Dreams was well underway, and I decided to skip it in favour of watching it entirely on a different day.

Heading back to the Hotel I made plans for a quick drink at Bar Fantasia and then off to my room to type up the day's report.

At Fantasia I noticed that they served the Blue " Glow-Tini"  I  had heard of in another thread on these forums, so I decided to grab one to try. It's a 17 euro cocktail with citrus vodka, blue curacoa, peach liquer and pineapple juice. It tastes heavenly, with only a minimal hint of actual alcohol, but that doesn't make it any less potent though, my goodness, that's a strong drink.


Well, that's it for me for day 1, I'm off to bed, early start tomorrow for EMH.

[Aurora1]

Hope you had a good nights sleep! Have fun on new adventures!

[DisneyRon]

Well, so much for todays plans. Bumped my head and need stitches. That'll be a few hours gone.

[msRavenswood]

Well, so much for todays plans. Bumped my head and need stitches. That'll be a few hours gone.

Awww, poor you! Get well soon, I hope the rest of your trip makes it up to you!

[DisneyRon]

Well, so much for todays plans. Bumped my head and need stitches. That'll be a few hours gone.

Awww, poor you! Get well soon, I hope the rest of your trip makes it up to you!

3 hours spent with the er so far, this is taking a very long time

[itslizi]

What, how did you manage that?!

[DisneyRon]

What, how did you manage that?!

Inattention for the most part really. I'll explain once I'm turning in for the Day.
Suffice to say, I have 3 stitches in my head.

[DisneyRon]

well, I'm back and for the most part intact.
I have the Buffalo Bill show at 21:30, and after that I'll most likely hit the hay.
So I'll write up my day now, as I've got about 90 minutes to kill.

The day started off a little early as my mental alarmclock assumed that waking up at 3:30 in the morning was acceptable while on holiday. I managed to convince it otherwise and continued dozing until about 6:30.

After getting a nice and early breakfast at Inventions I headed into the park for EMH.

A ride on Pinocchio's Voyage and Peter Pan's Flight were the first points of business and after that a ride on Buzz Lightyear's Laser Blast followed (I scored a meagre 13000 points). Walking back from Buzz I spotted a very distinctive bag on a bench, complete with someone who looked a lot like one of the forum avatars here. I had found Andybear!!


We chatted for a bit, took photos of each other and together to prove that we had run into each other in the park and chatted for a while over a drink in the Marketside Deli.

After going our separate ways I picked up a shirt in one of the shops and used the Shopping Service to have it sent to my hotel for pick-up later. I then made my way to Phantom Manor to make use of its ridiculous 5 minute queue time.
I then made my way to the Frontier Land Depot and spotted these guys on the way over



After waiting for the train and riding it to Discoveryland I made a trip on Star Tours and from there heading back in the direction of Main Street to freshen up before heading to Chez Remy.

Unfortunately the striking fellow below ruined my best laid plans by getting in the way of my inattentive head.


Initially I didn't even realise something was wrong, as a fairly tall person I bump my head more often than I'd like and usually I just shrug it off. This time however, when I felt what the lump was like I came back with a hand covered in blood! I quickly made my way to the nearest CM and she escorted me to the first-aid post. The doctor there told me it was too serious to just bandage up and called for someone to drive me to the Hospital. I spent a little over 4 hours in the hospital, most of it waiting in the ER for a doctor who would put in the stitches.

I have to say Disney's response to this "emergency" was extremely professional and courteous. I was very happy to have these people around to help me, I'm a little less pleased with the hospital service as you might imagine.
Nothing against the doctors or nurses who treated me, they were courteous, professional and fast, but the waiting was terrible.

After returning to the park at 17:40 (the incident happened at around 12:55) I was introduced to someone from customer care who wanted to compensate me for my lost time in the parks (it wasn't even their fault, I was just being absent-minded). I received a VIP ticket to the stunt show on Wednesday in WDS, a VIP ticket for PoTC for when it reopens on Thursday and a beverage coupon. I was quite stunned, I certainly hadn't expected anything like this. So props once again to Disney for making my stay as amazing as possible.

In the Hotel I managed to change the booking on my Buffalo Bill ticket from the 18:30 show to the 21:30 one, and since I was going to have to wait a few more hours I used my spare meal-ticket from Lunch-time (by now it was 6 o'clock and I hadn't eaten a bite since breakfast) to have a light meal in Inventions before topping off at Buffalo Bills Show.

Hopefully tomorrow won't be as much of a roller-coaster of emotions and occurrences, but I do hope I'll enjoy myself.

[BlackPearl]

Great report and pictures! Thank you for posting.
I hope you enjoy Buffalo Bill's even with stitches on your poor head.
Have a great time!
(by the way, I liked the Glow-tini, too  )

[Uragano Tati]

I'm so sorry for your misadventure, but luckily everything is ok now! And it's something different to tell!
I really love reading your amazing live report!
Have a great time and pay attention! 

[DisneyRon]

Back from Bill's amazing show, I had a blast. And I even have a cowboy hat as a souvenir.
The food was pretty heavy stuff, but tasted great. Well worth a visit in my opinion, but bringing an apetite is required as you'll be full pretty quickly otherwise.
There so much great interaction with the crowd in that show, it is a blast just being part of the audience!

Now I'm off to bed, I hope I don't ruin the nice pillows, as there is a fair bit of blood in my hair still. I'll wash it out tomorrow, but right now I didn't want to risk messing with the wound and those stitches.