12 parks in 16 days! Trip Around the World!

Trip report from 12/19-1/6.

Day 1 - Away We Go
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

Enough talk. After over a year in planning, over five years since we last tried to do a similar trip, AND Kendall getting run over by a car in Zimbabwe in that time frame we are finally embarking on our adventure across the globe to do all 12 Disney Parks over Christmas break.

First thing’s first and we had to pick Lucy up from school. Given it’s the Thursday before Christmas break we weren’t too concerned about her missing half a day today and a full day Friday because as everyone knows, the week before Christmas break is spent watching Christmas movies and doing Christmas puzzles and worksheets.

After we picked her up, we went home and waited for our taxi. We had never ridden in a taxi in our town so we were already starting our journey with a brand new experience. Ride sharing does not exist in Ashland, KY and taxi’s are primarily used for medical transport so this was a somewhat bizarre experience for us. Traditionally, we typically just park our car at the airport when we fly out of our local airport because if we go out of Huntington it’s on Allegiant for a quick trip to Florida. This is obviously NOT a quick trip and as such we took a taxi for the first time ever as there are no ride sharing services in our area. It costs $10/day to park at our airport, and when you’re gone for nearly 20 days, it just makes financial sense to take a taxi for $82 dollars round trip.

I cannot even remotely convey the amount of joy I have when we have the ability to fly out of Huntington Tri-State Airport. The convenience of flying out of a small regional airport a mere 25 minutes from our house in which the security line if you have TSA precheck is nonexistent CANNOT be understated. It feels like your own private airport. From when the plane touches down to getting home it typically takes us about 45 minutes. When we fly out of Cincinatti or Columbus, it takes 45 minutes or more from the time we touchdown to just get to our car. Add a 2.5 hour drive after a long day of flying just puts a sour taste in the mouth after a vacation. We would love to fly out of HTS more often but it is incredibly cost prohibitive except when using Allegiant or redeeming award flights on American Airlines.

We arrived at the airport 1.5 hours early which for Huntington is just excessive, but we always budget for a flat tire, or some other bizarre occurrence. As always, the TSA precheck line had zero people in it, and from drop off to gate it wasn’t even 10 minutes. We hadn’t eaten lunch yet today, and unfortunately food options are super limited at HTS, in that outside of one vending machine there often are none. Thankfully today the small kiosk that sells pizza and some snacks was open, and Kendall and I split a small pizza while waiting for our flight.

HTS is a small regional airport with two gates. Back in its hey day it had a number of carriers, but these days it’s limited to American and Allegiant. It’s small and efficient and we love flying out of it when we can.

This is the entire terminal. Not the smallest commercial airport I’ve flown out of, but it’s up there.
Today is by far the most pedestrian of the flights we are taking on our trip, being a standard flight on Allegiant. No fancy lounge, no lie flat seat. Just an standard A320, with a seat with about 17 inches of width with no recline that feels like you’re sitting on a 2×4. You get what you pay for and for this flight of just over 1.5 hours it was just $402 dollars for 3 people including the 3 carry on bags so you can’t really complain on the cost front.

I love this airport!
Boarding and take off and were on time and our flight to Sanford was about as uneventful as it gets. We were seated in row 7, Seats D,E,F.

We never pay for seat selection so these were the Allegiant assigned seats. For a 1.5 hour flight it honestly doesn’t matter to us. The seats have the standard 17 inch width and 30 inches of pitch. This is one of the ONLY times in life being 5’3’’ comes in handy.

There are many disadvantages to being short such as a general disadvantage at the majority of sports or a lower lifetime income compared to your taller cohorts in the same field, but there is one advantage that far outweighs any disadvantage. I can fit comfortably in an Allegiant seat! It’s a pretty great trade off in my opinion.

We landed at 5:08PM two minutes earlier than our scheduled arrival time. Thankfully, my parents live in Orlando and as such they are our own personal uber, which definitely saves on cost. I texted them that we had landed, so they could be ready to pull the car around to pick us up and take us to the Disney’s Polynesian Resort where we were staying.

After we landed, we we were picked up, it was getting close to dinner time, so on the way to the Polynesian we stopped at Lucy’s favorite restaurant, Chick-fil-a. I had originally had ‘Ohana booked and timed the reservation for the Magic Kingdom fireworks, but it was pretty hectic couple of days leading up to this trip, so we decided having a quick dinner and early bed time was in our best interest. Just for the record, if you are foodie, THIS IS NOT THE BLOG FOR YOU. We do a wide variety of activities when we travel, but food has never been our priority, and the one area we can skimp on the budget. My food reviews will be composed of words like “Tasty”, “Yummy”, “Standard”, “Adequate”.

Upon arrival at Chick-fil-a we walked in and it was slammed. Chick-fil-a is always crowded but today was excessive in that when we walked in, there wasn’t a free table anywhere and people were even standing around waiting on tables. We didn’t quite know what was going on, until we saw Santa and a Santa Cow in the corner and realized why it was so crowded. Santa Cow and Santa made their rounds to the table like it was a character dining at Disney.

Lucy clearly is enjoying Santa Cow
Unlike Disney however, it was significantly cheaper. Like $250 dollars cheaper. The food was more than tasty, and tasted just like our Chick-fil-a at home.

 

[Rimmit]

Day 8 - Paris Park Hopping
“We’re halfway there. Whoa oh, livin’ on a prayer.”

We all slept in due to the jet lag and woke up around 10:00AM. We were not going to miss out on a wheelchair today so the first thing I did after waking up was to go and fetch a wheelchair. Kendall managed to do something we thought was impossible yesterday in that she walked the entire park day. While she could try for that again today, this trip is a marathon and not a sprint, and we didn’t want to risk burning her foot out at the beginning of our trip and then struggling to even get through an airport by the end. For that reason, we still opted to rent a wheelchair. The really nice thing about renting a wheelchair at Disneyland Paris is if you do a multiday rental you can bring it where ever you want and then just return in on the last day of your rental. You don’t need to return it at the end of every park day.

After we were all up and ready we went into Disneyland for lunch which is ironically our closest food option. The park seemed a little busier today than Christmas day. The weather was a also better with clear skies and sun so maybe that had something to do with it.

There are in-hotel options to eat at but they are pretty pricey and all sit down restaurants. Gibrn our limited time here we’d rather use that time going to the park than sitting down for a full breakfast.

The Market House Deli was the closest quickest thing we could find and we had the “Ham and Cheese Toastie”. It was basically a ham and cheese sandwich and no one really liked it. It was even too cheesy for Kendall and that’s saying a lot. We then leave Disneyland and head over to Walt Disney Studios Paris. A lot of people are not aware that there are actually two parks in Paris. This is probably because the second park has been absolutely awful for so long, that people pretend it doesn’t exist. Over the last 19 years or so Disney has been injecting money into it, building more attractions, and now they are in the process of a full blown reimagining with a new entrance and new lands.

So much so that they are even changing the name to Disney Adventure World.

Yes, the name is as creative as it sounds. The walk isn’t even 8 minutes and we pass by the front of the hotel and snap a quick pic.

As we walk we see the Mickey Water Tower. It reminds of the tower that used to overlook MGM/Hollywood Studios prior to it’s demolition.

We enter the park, to mark our 6th Disney park this vacation and signifying our halfway point of 12 total parks. There are construction walls up every where and anyone that went to Epcot during the dirt pit days knows just what this looks like. They at least put some pics of what the area is aspiring to look like so you have something to look forward to.

We can only hope they do a better job with this than the new communicore plaza that literally did nearly nothing to enhance Epcot.

We purchase a Premier Access for Tower of Terror as the wait is over an hour. We’ve been on the Tower of Terror more times than we can count in WDW, so we were definitely interested to see the version here in Paris.

Our Premiere Access time comes up and we head over. I don’t want to really spoil anything so I’ll be pretty vague, but I will say the queue is relatively similar, albeit the pre show a little different. The ride itself is very creepy and gives off The Shining vibes. There is even a little girl like in The Shining. I am kinda shocked something like this exists in Disney to be totally honest as it is super creepy. We all felt it was scarier than the version in Orlando and actually liked it a little more.

After we finished at the Tower of Terror we crossed over the plaza to the show, Together: a Pixar Musical Adventure. They did not allow pictures at this show, but it was a beautifully produced show.

There were some slower parts at times but overall it was very enjoyable. The show basically was a conglomeration of music from various Pixar films with dance routines held together by a loose plot. Highlighted films included Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., and Coco. Our favorite part was the Coco portion of the show. The production was great and well worth taking the time to watch.

We then went over to Crush’s Coaster. We purchased Premier Access for this ride as well as it had a 75 minute wait.

This was our favorite ride in all of Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios the last time we came.

The ride is really neat in that you ride inside a turtle shell car that freely rotates. It’s somewhat similar to Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, except those cars are controlled in their rotation and this is random and occurs based on weight distribution.

The loading area is nicely themed, and they have the “Mine” birds all over, saying “Mine”, except in French.

We loved it last time and loved it this time. It truly is a coaster that makes you feel like you are in rolling through the EAC. It’s very smooth and the rotation and track give you a really smooth whirlwind feel as you ride. I really wish they’d bring this one to the US.

It’s now snack time and we go to a snack stand near the Pixar musical show. Lucy has been eyeing a hotdog there for a while, Kendall and I get a Mickey chocolate chip cookie and Lucy gets her hot dog.

The Mickey cookie looks better than it tastes. It’s kinda hard and pretty tasteless to be honest. I was not impressed. It was cute though.

 

[Rimmit]

We then head toward the Avenger’s Campus as our next ride was Avengers Assemble: Flight Force which was the Rock n’ Roller Coaster last time we were here. On the way we see the Wasp up high on a catwalk.

The building looks totally different from the last time we were here.

We use the standby line as it’s just a 25 minute wait. It had a pretty cool looking queue with a high tech feel.

It even had a fully animatronic Iron-Man. Sadly the queue was moving too fast for me to listen to the French Speaking Iron-Man,

The actual track system is identical to other Rock n’ Roller Coaster so from a thrill perspective it’s the same. Lucy and Kendall are not Marvel fans and thus preferred the Aerosmith theme more. I personally liked the theming more than Rock n’ Roller Coaster and I enjoyed the addition of the video screens throughout the ride along with a plot that was more complex than making it to a concert.

We were hoping the time for Spider Man W.E.B. Adventure would decrease and we wouldn’t need to buy a Premier Access, so we then headed over to the other end of the park to do Ratatouille : L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy, otherwise known as Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in the US.

Upon arrival to Remy’s they just let us use the Premiere Access line for free due to Kendall being in a wheelchair. Interestingly enough, the Cast Members throughout our time in Disneyland Paris were very insistent on Kendall getting a disability card. We explained many times we did not need it and she just needed a break from walking every now and then, but on rare occasions they’d shortcut us in the queue or on this occasion just give us a Premiere Access for free. This is a stark contrast to the US and the Disability Access System here where they do everything they can to deny people and is NOT for mobility issues. We never bothered to get the disability card while in DLP or this whole vacation in general as Kendall really didn’t need it as she only has some mild mobility problems these days. I just find it interesting the Cast Members were definitely persistent with telling us to get one though every time we approached a ride in a wheelchair.

We then headed over to Cars Road Trip which is right next to Remy, but it was closed for some reason. This was new from the last time we were here. It gets absolutely awful reviews but we had never done it before so wanted to see it just once.

Then went back to Spider-man WEB Adventure hoping the line time would drop, but it had not. The line was still 50 minutes and we were running out of time in the day as we had a scheduled meet and greet at the hotel, and we still needed to park hop over to Disneyland Paris to see the fireworks and also get some dinner. At this point we are out of time so we buy the Premier Access.

This is the exact same ride as in Disneyland, but we have never been on the one in Disneyland. The reshow was very well themed, and had an appearance from Peter Parker.

For those unfamiliar with the ride, this is an interactive ride akin to a more advanced Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger or Toy Story Midway Mania. You ride in a car and instead of shooting with a gun or other device, you use your arms to “sling” webs at targets.

It was nothing spectacular but the technology was impressive and worked way better than I anticipated. It was not perfect though, and definitely get’s frantic at times while doing the game. All our arms were pretty sore by the end. This was my first time doing this attraction and I thought it was pretty fun but not great, and nothing I would make concerted effort to do, but if it didn’t hinder our day I’d do it again.

We then went to “Stitch Live!” which I nicknamed Turtle Talk with Stitch. We had been trying to see this all day, but we kept missing the shows which run every 30 minutes, albeit it’s every 60 minutes for an English show.

It’s the same type of attraction as Turtle Talk with Crush except with Stitch. They have alternating English and French encounters which was great, otherwise doing this in French would definitely have been pretty difficult. There were no pictures or videos allowed during this show. Lucy loves Stitch so I was excited for this. There were no more than 12 kids when we did it and we were hopeful Lucy would get picked from the audience for a question but sadly she did not. We all felt Turtle Talk was a little better and funnier than Stitch Live! but still enjoyed it.

Now it was almost time for our scheduled meet and greet at 7:00PM at our hotel. I was not aware of this until this morning when I saw on a forum that as a benefit of staying at the Disneyland Hotel you can schedule a meet and greet with a princess. You schedule it on the app and pick a date and time. No one had ever informed me of this on check in and had I not seen it posted somewhere would have had no idea. Given the last second nature of this stay I had no time to investigate the benefits of the hotel and was excited for this perk, so we had to leave the park to get back to the hotel in time for our appointment.