Trip Report DVC, Dinosaurs, Buckets & Booze! Now with added London & Paris! COMPLETE!

Ariel1986 · Dec 12, 2019

We continued to walk along the Thames to an area in London called the Southbank. There were some Christmas stalls here and a little Christmas festival! I don’t seem to have taken any photos of it, but I had some mulled wine (a warm spiced wine drink we drink loads of here at Christmas!) and we also ate some very tasty mini donuts. Happy and full we were moving on to our next destination at the fair...

Yep those tiny little things on top there were swings- this ride is London’s Starflyer! A 60m high ride which we were just tipsy enough to be brave enough to get on! It was quite the view overlooking the Thames, but the ride span so fast the only photo I have is us at the start wandering what we were doing!

After we had feet back on solid ground, we crossed over the Thames via bridge and went on the look out for somewhere to eat. We stopped at a pub near Covent Garden where we both ate pie & mash! And Alisa discovered the delicious British dessert of Sticky Toffee Pudding (warm sponge soaked in toffee/syrup) :hungry:

From here we made our way home! We had a lot of fun on the way back just being silly and laughing. I didn’t take many photos, so that wraps up this days London post. But we were up and back in the city in the morning!

Sunday November 17th

We woke up slightly later today as our plans in London weren’t until 1.30pm, so a lay in and a longer chat with coffee and crumpets started the day!

Before we knew it we were on the train, across London on the tube and at our destination- Aqua restaurant at The Shard London (very tall glass building on the Thames) for a Mary Poppins’ themed Afternoon Tea!

Alisa had a glass of Prosecco that came with 3 cordials to choose from to flavour it!

Cute Mary Poppins theming for our tea!

They even had a Mary Poppins bag for photos!

The whole experience was fun and the sandwiches & scones tasty- and this was where Alisa discovered the awesomeness that is the very British cheese & pickle sandwiches! Branston pickle is a chutney type thing (nothing like a dill pickle!) that we eat with cheese and other things that is delicious! Alisa loved it so much she’s been buying it from British stores in Tampa

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Oops I let this one slide a bit didn’t I! Let me try and get this one wrapped up since it’s now 2 months ago since our London & Paris adventures!

Sunday November 17th continued...

So after finishing our lovely afternoon tea we were pretty full & sleepy, but wanted to persevere seeing a little more of London & one of my favourite bars. We headed back on to the tube and made our way over to the Westminster area of London.

On the way out of the station we saw a poster to London’s buckets! The whole time we were waiting for Disney’s Skyliner to open and amongst all our adventures on the buckets on our trip in September, I had COMPLETELY forgotten that London has some!

I’ve only ridden them once about 7 years ago & they are only one stretch across the river a little on the outskirts of London, but now I want to go back and ride them! We didn’t have time this trip but I think it’s a must for the future. These are VERY high though and above the River Thames the whole way!

So funny there was a bucket cameo even in the London part of this trip report!

As we exited the station we came upon Big Ben. Unfortunately at the moment Big Ben is having a huge 2 year refurbishment, so it’s not looking it’s best for the city & the tourists! Alisa still needed a photo though of course.

We continued on around (via a red telephone box of course) to get to the St James Bar in London.

Just before we got to the bar we came across a film set! There were lots of cameras and trucks and actors in 1920s maybe 1940s style costume. We tried to see if we recognised anyone but we didn’t. Eventually we asked some security and they told us it was filming for Disney’s Cruella De Vil origin story! How cool! They were filming some flashback scenes from her childhood. Of course we would see a Disney film being made whilst in London being Disney twins! Perfect.

Now onto my favourite bar in London- St James Bar! A couple of years ago they had an AMAZING fairytale menu that included this incredible Beauty & the Beast Enchanted Rose Cocktail:

Unfortunately they no longer had this menu as they change it every 6-8 months for something new. It’s a shame as it would have been perfect with our BATB love & matching tattoos, but they still had a pretty cool new specialty menu. Based around travel and the drinks were themed in look & taste to different countries!

This was the menu!

I got the drink based on Thailand. It even had a little gong you could hit with a little hammer!

Alisa had a cocktail from the regular menu and after these we decided we should head home since we had a busy day of travelling tomorrow!

Once we were back in my hometown we met Russ at the Ale House where we had been on our first night with Alisa and had a few drinks whilst just having a fun time chatting about life. Alisa and I then went to Pizza Express again for dinner! I don’t have any photos, but our waiter from Friday recognised us and came over to chat and we once again had delicious pizza. It was quite early when we got back to mine, but somehow we still ended up talking & laughing until past midnight! Oops! Oh well, it wasn’t until about 10am that we had to leave so at least we had a lay in!

Coming up, its PARIS TIME!

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Monday 18th November

We both had a decent sleep and woke up about 8.30am. We needed to be at the airport at around 12- and there was a bus that takes 30 mins to the airport (actually just as easy/quick as it’s direct & much cheaper than a taxi) 10 minutes walk from my house. So we had plenty of time to get ready. Russ had gone to work at 6am so I’d already said goodbye to him for the next few days

He probably enjoyed the peace actually after 4 days of Alisa & I!

We started our morning with our now routine coffee on the floor by Alisa’s air bed and then a final crumpet with cheese and pickle for breakfast. We were chatting away and enjoying the morning when suddenly we had less than an hour for both of us to get washed & dressed & Alisa to pack! So much for having time! :joyfull:

We managed it though and before we knew it we were on our way to London Stansted Airport! It’s not really in London and only 30 mins from my house- and is a really handy airport for flights to Europe! At this time there aren’t any direct flights to America though from here, that would be really handy!

Alisa has membership for access to various airport lounges, so we were able to start our journey in style after going through security!

They even had cheese and pickle in the lounge as a snack option so Alisa was happy! :joyfull:

Almost time!

As seemed to be the theme this morning, suddenly we only had 15 minutes to get to the gate- and the note on the boarding pass said we MUST be there 5 mins before boarding closes. Argh! Luckily it is a small airport and we ran to get there- arriving out of breath and in a panic as we were in the 5 minute window, only to be met with a giant queue for our gate anyway! Oh well, at least we weren’t going to miss the flight!

We did have a little drama whilst boarding in that England’s/Europe’s budget flights are VERY strict in what you can bring aboard as your “personal item/carry on” compared to in America (from my experience, and now Alisa’s!). Alisa’s bags were deemed as “two carryon’s” as she had a large backpack and a small case and she would have to pay £60 for one and check it in the hold! I said it could then be my carry on, but as I had a backpack & a purse already they said I couldn’t. Then became a crazy 5 minutes of repacking our purses into backpacks and my backpack into Alisa’s so somehow we managed to get though with it all and no fee! Alisa‘s backpack (which I now had) was literally falling open with my backpack and purse stuffed inside but somehow I got through as I went to another lady at the gate! The lady Alisa was dealing with was so rude, it brought a little sourness to the boarding, but I guess we did buy the cheap seats and I really should of thought ahead with Alisa’s luggage as I know what the British/European airlines are like! Alisa still had to check her carry on case when we got to the plane. but there wasn’t a fee at least.

Anyway, after all the drama we were FINALLY on the plane and in the air! And a MUCH nicer lady serving the drinks lifted the mood and we were cheersing and on our way!

Now on landing unfortunately there was a little more drama to come... but it’s kinda funny now we have some hindsight! We landed about ten minutes early and were in the terminal collecting Alisa’s case by 4.55pm. We had planned to catch the high-speed train to Disneyland Paris which takes just 12 minutes, but the next one wasn’t for an hour. Alisa checked the Uber app and it showed one would take about 45 minutes and wasn’t too expensive. I hadn’t realised Uber worked in France since it doesn’t in my hometown or that many places in England, but being Paris it made sense and it seemed like we might as well. Big mistake...

We should of known as soon as the Uber driver came and found us as he had parked in the wrong spot to where the app said for us to wait, but we didn’t really think too much then. Even when it took us 25 minutes just to get out of the airport due to the traffic we still felt fairly positive... hey we’d still get to the Disneyland hotel before the train would have gotten us- and we would have had to walk from the station to the hotel if we got the train.

We then ended up in traffic for another good 30 minutes and it was a little agonising since we didn’t have much time this evening and just wanted to get there! The fact is what dark and raining also made it feel later than it was. Oh well, we probably would be there the same time as if we’d got the train and then walked... and we were sat in a warm car and were being dropped at our hotel. But. Then came the madness. We FINALLY left the traffic and started getting near to Disneyland. Hooray! We could see signs! But wait... why is this driver now turning off the motorway when the signs clearly say for Disneyland to keep going?? The driver’s GPS started showing for him to do a u-turn and he looked confused. Eventually he started to make the turn back and the GPS added another ten minutes to the journey time and Alisa and I both groaned. We were back on the road in time though.

Then, as we were literally about to enter the Disneyland area and could see the signs showing the way to hotels he kept on going. What was he doing?! Alisa had asked earlier if there was an entrance sign to Disneyland Paris like WDW and I had said no... but then we came upon this!

I realised he had driven us to the entrance of the parks! :facepalm:

This was a mistake (again) as the parks are located in a different area to the hotels, you can’t get to the hotels from the car park of the parks! We drove into the entrance and the driver stopped and spoke with the lady at the gate for a few minutes and we assumed she was giving him directions to our hotel so we felt a little better. She definitely told him to go ahead and turn left. He. Did. Not.

We ended up driving into the car park and around in circles and pretty much right up to where we would of got out at the train station! We were both really stressing now and I almost told him to stop and we’d just get out here as I knew how to walk to the hotel from here, but he kept driving round the car park and eventually exited onto the main roads again. I quickly got my phone out and typed the route in (we had both switched our phones off before the journey as we both had only had about 10% battery when we arrived) and showed him the route to the hotel. Due to the types of one way roads in the resort it said it would be 10 minutes, but FINALLY, finally we made it! Even if he did drive past the entrance and had to turn around again!

Alisa and I got out of the car kind of flabbergasted and the driver was almost laughing as he got our bags out of the boot. We didn’t even say anything we just made our way into the hotel. That 45 minute journey had taken over 90 minutes! We actually were only about 30 minutes later than if were had gotten the train, but the point of the extra expense of the Uber was to save time! Oh well. And the cheeky driver changed the price quoted to an extra €30 more when Alisa was charged! At least Uber reimbursed the extra. We do laugh about it now!

So. Drama over, we were finally here! Disney’s Hotel Cheyenne. An American Old West themed resort. Alisa thought it was hilarious that it was so over the top themed to “old” America. Luckily there was no line at check in and we were in our room shortly. Because it was so cowboy themed we named our room “the boot“ and now we always refer to when we slept in the boot in Disneyland Paris :joyfull:

A few room pics. As well as the place being Old West themed, the rooms were Toy Story themed. This hotel was a “value” hotel and really, they’re not as nice as WDW’s values. And much more expensive! I find Disneyland Paris’ hotels sooo much more expensive and really not worth it all compared to WDW. None of them are very nice- and they hadn’t been updated for years and years. I think they’re all undergoing or have undergone upgrades now, but they’re just not that great to be honest. Although one plus (for us) is that the hotel has a Starbucks next to reception!

This was the pull out sofa bed that I slept on.

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

So, drama over we were trying to decide what to do for the evening. Originally we had wanted to grab the train into Paris (you can do this from the station next to Disney Village) and go get something to eat with a little look around. With the original plan for the airport train we were hoping we would be ready to be on our way into Paris after check in around 7-7.30pm and in Paris by 8pm. Paris is open late, restaurants often stay open until midnight and the last train back was after 1am, so we figured there was enough time and we wanted to keep our day tomorrow for Disneyland.

However with the Uber, getting ourselves refreshed and phones charged, it was already 7.45pm. We wouldn’t be on a train for at least half an hour. Was this a silly idea? Unsure of what to do we headed to Disney Village which was a ten minute walk from our hotel. When we got there though the restaurants all had long lines and the one bar we tried to go into was packed, expensive and the bartenders ignored us for other patrons even ones who just that second came along. We decided right let’s just go to Paris, why not!

There isn’t much choice in Disney Village anyway- it’s very small compared to Disney Springs and every place is an Americana style sports bar or diner- along with Rainforest Cafe, McDonald’s & an Earl of Sandwich. We were in Paris, we wanted to go to a bistro!

Since it was Christmas time there were several stalls in Disney Village serving “Vin Chaud” which is sort of like mulled wine that we have over here In England, a spiced hot wine, so we bought two to have something to drink on our way. It wasn’t very good though

but it was something! We finally made our way to the train station, worked out the ticket machines and got ourselves on a train to Paris!

It was 9pm and freezing when we arrived but we did it! We were in Paris!

The train station we arrived in (Chatelet Les Halles) is an area I’m familiar with from past trips with Russ, so I knew we were near plenty of places to eat. There’s a street called Rue Montorgueil which is quite a famous historical street and it’s full of bistros and shops and bars so that’s where we headed. It was all lit up for Christmas! The bistro on the corner with the red awning is where he headed for our late dinner!

We checked the menu and noticed they had a great set menu- Walnut Salad, Steak Frites & an Espresso for €12.50 which is about $14! It was tasty and we had a complimentary bread basket too that was refilled more than once. Sitting under the heat lamps and looking out at the street, the earlier journey debacle was a distant memory! I FaceTimed Russ and then Alisa and I ate and had drinks (wine & beer was reasonable too) whilst marvelling that we were actually here, in Paris! It was just like Epcot! :joyfull:

Full and happy we decided to take a stroll to explore a little and head towards the Louvre, as it was only about 15-20 minutes walk away. We approached La Seine river and continued our evening adventures!

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Just as we started walking further, out of nowhere there she was! The Eiffel Tower all lit up & sparkling! I’ve been to Paris quite a few times, but I’ve never seen the tower at night with all the lights- and it always surprises me when suddenly you can see it from various parts of Paris! It’s so pretty and looks much bigger in person! We both gasped and got excited! Terrible photo but it really looked amazing in real life.

Onwards we walked!

And before we knew it we had crossed over the road and into the area of the Louvre!

Now of course the Louvre was closed and the area blocked off at this time, but it made for a great view and photo opportunity!

Still trying to capture the Eiffel Tower without success :joyfull:

We carried on walking a little and then realised we both fancied some cheese! And some more drinks. Instead of walking further (originally we thought we might walk all the way to the Eiffel Tower! But there definitely wasn’t time for that) we decided to head back towards the train station area so we weren’t too far away for the last train, as it was 11.30pm at this point. After wondering a little while, as if by magic this amazing little cafe covered in flowers and fairy lights appeared! It was soooo pretty and it even had a cheese menu! A selection of 3 cheeses & bread for €9 euros. Plus, it was still open! Perfect!

Look how pretty! :inlove:

Cheeeeeeeeeeeese :hungry:

And bread and wine!

It was all so delicious!

Swissmiss · Jan 19, 2020

What a great idea you had to go into Paris to eat - most of the food choices at DLP are just awful! I did discover however that you can order some food to go at that sports bar, and their chicken nuggets are actually really good (think strips of chicken breast which has been breaded). So now I tend to get that and go sit by the lake to eat them - I find it much more relaxing.

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Swissmiss said:
What a great idea you had to go into Paris to eat - most of the food choices at DLP are just awful! I did discover however that you can order some food to go at that sports bar, and their chicken nuggets are actually really good (think strips of chicken breast which has been breaded). So now I tend to get that and go sit by the lake to eat them - I find it much more relaxing.

Good tip! And yes I’m sooo glad we went into Paris in the end. It turned out perfect and really turned around the day! It’s really not too difficult either, the train took 35-40 minutes, but it didn’t feel that long actually.

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Before we knew it we’d spent over an hour at this bar drinking & enjoying the cheese and bread- and the last train was in 25 minutes! We were only about ten minutes from the station, so we quickly paid and started making our way there. The streets were very quiet and soooo pretty. And we were tipsy and happy! We decided this should be where we stay next time we visit, instead of the boot!

We also saw a lot of these scooters around- they are ones you activate with an app and it charges you per mile or something. We thought it would be a fun way to see the city until we realised that Paris has a lot of cobbled streets!

We found the train station in good time and our platform and before we knew it we were on the train back to Disneyland Paris. It was very quiet when we arrived and we enjoyed walking through an empty Disney Village along to our hotel in the Old West. This in our drunken minds was extra funny to us, being in Cowboy Town whilst in Paris.

Pretty exhausted by now we got to our room and ready to bed- and watched the very scary French Stacey! This lady has the weirdest accent ever! The “top tens” are in English, but this lady is clearly French yet for some reason speaks in a faux English accent. Like D**k Van D**e fake cockney accent! It’s so bizzare sounding (especially to me) that it’s hilarious!

Anyway, fake Stacey sent us off to sleep (way past 2.30am!) and we set our alarms to get up and out for the extra magic hours which started at 8am!

It was a crazy day with an awesome Paris evening adventure ending!

Swissmiss · Jan 19, 2020

The fake accent probably got drilled into her at school. My DD had a teacher that kept “correcting” her pronunciation/accent - until I wrote her a note telling her that she was welcome to correct my child’s grammar, but that I would be responsible for her pronunciation/accent so that her elderly grandmother would be able to understand her.

Oh bother! · Jan 19, 2020

Ariel1986 said:
Oops I let this one slide a bit didn’t I! Let me try and get this one wrapped up since it’s now 2 months ago since our London & Paris adventures!

Sunday November 17th continued...

So after finishing our lovely afternoon tea we were pretty full & sleepy, but wanted to persevere seeing a little more of London & one of my favourite bars. We headed back on to the tube and made our way over to the Westminster area of London.

On the way out of the station we saw a poster to London’s buckets! The whole time we were waiting for Disney’s Skyliner to open and amongst all our adventures on the buckets on our trip in September, I had COMPLETELY forgotten that London has some! I’ve only ridden them once about 7 years ago & they are only one stretch across the river a little on the outskirts of London, but now I want to go back and ride them! We didn’t have time this trip but I think it’s a must for the future. These are VERY high though and above the River Thames the whole way!

So funny there was a bucket cameo even in the London part of this trip report!

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As we exited the station we came upon Big Ben. Unfortunately at the moment Big Ben is having a huge 2 year refurbishment, so it’s not looking it’s best for the city & the tourists! Alisa still needed a photo though of course.

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We continued on around (via a red telephone box of course) to get to the St James Bar in London.

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Just before we got to the bar we came across a film set! There were lots of cameras and trucks and actors in 1920s maybe 1940s style costume. We tried to see if we recognised anyone but we didn’t. Eventually we asked some security and they told us it was filming for Disney’s Cruella De Vil origin story! How cool! They were filming some flashback scenes from her childhood. Of course we would see a Disney film being made whilst in London being Disney twins! Perfect.

View attachment 442196

Now onto my favourite bar in London- St James Bar! A couple of years ago they had an AMAZING fairytale menu that included this incredible Beauty & the Beast Enchanted Rose Cocktail:

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Unfortunately they no longer had this menu as they change it every 6-8 months for something new. It’s a shame as it would have been perfect with our BATB love & matching tattoos, but they still had a pretty cool new specialty menu. Based around travel and the drinks were themed in look & taste to different countries!

This was the menu!

View attachment 442205

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I got the drink based on Thailand. It even had a little gong you could hit with a little hammer!

View attachment 442197

Alisa had a cocktail from the regular menu and after these we decided we should head home since we had a busy day of travelling tomorrow!

Once we were back in my hometown we met Russ at the Ale House where we had been on our first night with Alisa and had a few drinks whilst just having a fun time chatting about life. Alisa and I then went to Pizza Express again for dinner! I don’t have any photos, but our waiter from Friday recognised us and came over to chat and we once again had delicious pizza. It was quite early when we got back to mine, but somehow we still ended up talking & laughing until past midnight! Oops! Oh well, it wasn’t until about 10am that we had to leave so at least we had a lay in!

Coming up, its PARIS TIME!

The Ale House.... are you in Chelmsford??

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Oh bother! said:
The Ale House.... are you in Chelmsford??

Good deduction lol! You know Chelmsford? Small World!

Of course!

Oh bother! · Jan 19, 2020

Ariel1986 said:
Good deduction lol! You know Chelmsford? Small World! Of course!

I also live in Chelmsford and am very upset by the Disney store closing!!

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Oh bother! said:
I also live in Chelmsford and am very upset by the Disney store closing!!

Omg how crazy! It really is a small world after all! And yes so am I, I loved that store! They seemed to have random park merchandise appear all the time unlike the usual permanent stores. We have Primark though at least!

Oh bother! · Jan 19, 2020

Ariel1986 said:
Omg how crazy! It really is a small world after all! And yes so am I, I loved that store! They seemed to have random park merchandise appear all the time unlike the usual permanent stores. We have Primark though at least!

That is something!
If you see someone wearing a lot of Disney skirts or shoes it’s probably me so do say hi lol

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Oh bother! said:
That is something!
If you see someone wearing a lot of Disney skirts or shoes it’s probably me so do say hi lol

Ditto lol!

Darstarr · Jan 19, 2020

My friend was visiting family in Ireland and she and her husband took a quick trip to Paris for their anniversary in the middle of their Ireland trip. They were flying a cheap airline and their bags were overweight. They opened up their luggage and started putting on all their clothes. Other passengers around them started clapping and cheering

Ariel1986 · Jan 19, 2020

Darstarr said:
My friend was visiting family in Ireland and she and her husband took a quick trip to Paris for their anniversary in the middle of their Ireland trip. They were flying a cheap airline and their bags were overweight. They opened up their luggage and started putting on all their clothes. Other passengers around them started clapping and cheering

Brilliant!

Ariel1986 · Jan 20, 2020

Tuesday 19th November

It’s Disneyland Paris day! We woke up to our alarms at 7am and even though we’d only had maybe 3-4 hours sleep I felt surprisingly ok! We both got washed, dressed & packed and left our boot room to go check out and grab a Starbucks. We had aimed to leave the room by 7.30am, but it was nearing 7.45am when we actually did.

As funny as we found our resort I didn’t actually take any photos! So here’s a google image to give you an idea of our Old West accommodations. The buildings were facades which held all the rooms inside.

So once we had checked out we headed to bell services to see about storing our bags. They let us know we could also store them at the station by Disney Village for a small fee and we decided this would be a better idea since we would be getting a train from this station to the airport (no Uber for sure this time!!) and so rather than walking 10/15 minutes to and then from the hotel to collect our bags later on we decided to take them to the station to store. This only caused a tiny bit more drama when we came to do so (a theme of this trip was drama followed by awesomeness!) and I’ll get onto that in a minute.

So we grabbed a couple Starbucks and started walking with our bags to & through Disney Village.

This is the lake that three of the other hotels are surrounded by on the walk to Disney Village & the parks. We called the Newport Bay Hotel at the end Fake Yacht Club lol.

Hello old-school balloon!

I didn’t actually take any photos of Disney Village as nothing was open and it doesn’t actually look that great in the day. It’s very dated/90s now and looks quite tacky so it wasn’t looking too pretty this morning with the grey skies!

Finally we made it to the station around 8am so we were running a little late for the morning hours, but we found our way eventually to the locker/storage area upstairs and made our way in. And it was then we saw the lockers only took cash! Of course. The security man there said I’d have to go get cash and just pointed to the door, so Alisa decided to stay with our bags and I left to go find a cash machine.
Surely there would be a cash machine in this giant station with trains to Paris & even international trains right? Nope! After searching for 5 or so minutes I went and asked at the information station and they told me the nearest one was Disney Village

This was slightly annoying in itself, but worse because to get back into Disney Village I had to walk in the opposite direction as if I was going towards the park and go through security (both ends are kept secured like in Disneyland LA) and then walk back to Disney Village. It only added another 5 minutes maybe, but it was frustrating! And I couldn’t let Alisa know as I knew she had her phone on airplane mode to save data. I’d already been nearly 15 minutes at this point!

Dashing into Disney Village I asked a cast member where there was a cash machine. She said it was by McDonald’s- that was all the way over the other end of the Village!

I practically ran over, feeling quite stressed now and tried to find this cash machine. Nowhere to be seen! Eventually I went into McDonald’s and asked there- after some confusion with the language barrier that I wanted to pay with cash, a nice member of staff finally pointed me in the right direction and I found it. Not really at McDonald’s at all! Oh well. Cash in hand I started to dash back to the station. It had been nearly 30 minutes now so Alisa had turned her phone on as she was worried. Just to add the last layer of annoyance when I got back to the luggage station, to get in there was a metal detector/X-ray for the luggage and a family of about ten were in front of me being very loud and arguing and had stuffed so much luggage in the X-ray if had stopped! I only had my purse to go through!

Fiiiiinally though I got through and regaled my tale to Alisa!

Bags at last stored and on our way to the parks, we checked the time and it was just gone 9am. Ohhh well, we still had until 10am of extra magic hours. It was just funny as we’d booked onsite to get in early! It all turned out ok in the end though as we had more than enough time to do what we wanted.

So, onwards to the parks! And security take 2!

Making our way in! In DLP you enter the park underneath the Disneyland Hotel. It was strange using a print at home piece of paper as our ticket to get in and then to get fastpasses in the park!

And we’re in! Town Square feels so small and different even though it’s sort of the same.

And finally... there’s Main Street & the castle! It really did feel strange as I’m so used to MK & Cinderella’s castle now- especially being with Alisa, but not in MK! It was only 2 months prior to this we had our twin day morning in MK! Writing that does make me feel so lucky and kind of amazed how our friendship has grown the last two years and how crazy it is we had been to two Disney parks in 2 countries in 2 months! ❤

Ariel1986 · Jan 21, 2020

We continued on up Mainstreet and into the hub before taking a right to Tomorrow-nope! In DLP it’s called Discoveryland. Space Mountain was first on the list! Crowds were pretty light still.

We passed DLP’s Astro Orbitor, but we didn’t fancy spinning in this weather & it didn’t look as high or exciting as WDW.

Wait time was only 10 minutes- perfect! It’s still Hyperspace Mountain so with the Star Wars layover, but we didn’t mind.

Back row of course!

It was brilliant! A smooth and fast right, not too dark as so you can’t see what’s going on. I’ve been in on it years ago without the overlay, but the added Star Wars didn’t take anything away for me. I really wish WDW would update their track! This and Disneyland in California’s version are so much better.

Unfortunately we seemed to pass the stand where they show your ride photos without realising- either that or there weren’t any (although we both remember the flash) so I don’t have our ride pic!

From here we made our way back to the hub, we didn’t fancy riding Star Tours since it’s the same as everywhere, and that was pretty much it for Discoveryland!

We decided to walk through and then upstairs in the castle. It is cool that you can do that here.

We also then went underneath the castle to say hello to the dragon! Not the best photo but you can kind of see her!

Ariel1986 · Jan 21, 2020

We continued into Fantasyland from the castle. I always get a little turned around here as everything’s in the wrong place! Dumbo is in the centre behind the carousel, Small World is over on the other side of Fantasyland where Dumbo would be in MK... Peter Pan is at the back and there’s a giant Alice & Wonderland maze in between it all!

Lines were starting to pick up now, but Small World was on ten minutes so on we went! This facade is kinda cool compared to MK.

This a freezeframe of an instastories video where we were singing along! I’ll spare you that video

As you can see here though with our scarfs, it was FREEZING.

We were so cold, and a little hungry. We were trying to find coffee & food, but all the QS weren’t open and all the snack carts/windows were only selling cold drinks... and ice cream!! Like every one. That’s like MK only selling hot soup everywhere in the Florida heat! We hoped we’d eventually find a stall that was different or a QS would open soon.

As we were into the regular hours now, wait times were becoming normal. We considered waiting 45 minutes for Peter Pan or the still in DLP Snow White’s Scary Adventures, but decided to continue on around to Adventureland for Pirates!

I didn’t seem to take a picture of the area, but I do love the Pirate Ship & Skull here! So here’s another photo from google.

Has anyone ever seen the Piratae of the Caraboon clip that was going around the interwebs a little while ago? Alisa showed me whilst we were in the queue and we were laughing whilst repeating it on our way to the ride. It was only a ten minute queue still for Pirates so we were happy with that. I didn’t take any photos as it was too dark, but we both enjoyed it. It feels/it is longer than MK’s, but a lot of parts felt very dark with not much going on- which is different to what I remember.

Pirates ticked off the list it was on to the next land to tick off two more attractions! And hopefully find some breakfast that wasn’t ice cream?!

We decided to go see if we could ride the Indiana Jones rollercoaster. Unfortunately this was down, but on our way back from the area and on to Frontierland, we spotted a stall that was selling something savoury! Hooray! Fitting for Adventureland... Croque Pride Rock

It was a grilled ham and cheese. It wasn’t the best tasting, but it hit the spot- and warmed us up! They also had these at the stand which I thought were cool. Although a little random to be selling Tower of Terror items in the wrong park.

Onwards! Hello Frontierland!

Big Thunder had an hour queue- but we noticed the fastpasses being handed out started in 35 minutes! So we grabbed two and started to make our way to ride Haunted Mansion.

Trip Report DVC, Dinosaurs, Buckets & Booze! Now with added London & Paris! COMPLETE!

Ariel1986

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Oh bother!

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