Iceland, Fjords and AaD (Adventures AFTER Disney)

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Sorry to hear about your troubles in getting to Paris. I think that Eurostar might often double book seats. I have heard of this happening to others, and it happened to us as well. We were sitting in our seats and some people walked up to our seats looked at us strangely and sat in the row ahead. Then we heard them saying that we were in their seats, so my husband asked them and sure enough we were both assigned those seats. Our train wasn't full though and they stayed in the row ahead of us and we stayed where we were, no biggie in the end.

Too bad you decided not to climb the steps of Notre Dame, that was a highlight on our trip but the river cruise was pretty awesome too. Sounds like you had an adventure in Paris!
 

ChuckElias

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 14 -- Paris Sunny, 80º

We all slept in a little bit after such a long day and late night on Day 13. We got up and out of the hotel around 9:00 a.m. In "our" plaza, there was a Pomme de Pain and that's where we had breakfast: coffee and a couple pastries with very friendly and curious birds. Breakfast on the sidewalk of a plaza patisserie in Paris is a pretty good way to start your day.

Our mission for the day was to visit Versailles. Today's Adventure After Disney was the Metro system. We knew which train to take and followed the signs to the correct platform. But once we were there, we didn't understand how to read the schedule of which train was coming to the platform. So we boarded the train that stopped at our platform, but as we boarded, I noticed that the "map" of the train's stops was not the color of the train we were supposed to be on. So I said to my brother-in-law, "I don't think this train goes to Versailles" and a local turned to me and said in heavily-accented English, "This train is not going to Versailles -- for sure!" So we got off before the doors shut and waited for the next train, which was the correct color. And to be sure, I asked someone who verified that it was the correct train. We arrived at the Versailles train station around 11:00.

So my tip for anyone going to see the sites and museums of Paris is to get all your tickets (or a Paris Pass) ahead of time, if at all possible. The reason is that the lines at all the major attractions are 75+ minutes long to purchase tickets at the site. The good news is that at Versailles, there's a tour company located right across the street from the train station that sells tickets. You can buy regular tickets for the same price as at the museum, or for €8 more, you can buy "skip the line" tickets. So if you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you do have a good alternative before waiting in the museum line.

We had "skip the line" tickets, so we didn't feel rushed to get to the gate. So we got a quick snack and then walked 5 or 10 minutes tot he front gates of Versailles.







We toured the palace and the museum with a hand-held self-guiding device. It was really good, but I actually found myself wishing that it gave more information. There were so many statues and paintings that were not discussed, it was a little frustrating to me. But it definitely was better than just walking through and looking at "stuff". After completing the tour of the building, we got a quick snack in the cafe, but I would recommend avoiding it if possible. It was very cramped and there was not nearly enough seating.













A French Coke Zero from the cafe for @Disneyfalcon :)



After our snack, we went outside to tour the gardens. They are SOOOO big. It was already late in the afternoon, so there was no way we were going to be able to see everything. But we were there when they turned on all the fountains, and it was really cool. They pumped classical music through speakers around the grounds and turned on the fountains. We even saw the fountain that is featured in "Impressions de France" in the France Pavilion at Epcot.

Some pictures of the gardens.



















 

ChuckElias

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 14 -- Paris continued

The one thing that I didn't like about the gardens at Versailles was that they were using the gardens to display "masterworks" of Anish Kapoor. These are giant works that are just plopped in the middle of the grounds. They don't fit at all with the surroundings.

This giant metal disc was part of a 2-piece installation. The other part of the mirror was on the steps of the palace.



There was also a big whirlpool and a giant construction that looked like a cornucopia and they actually dug up the area around the cornucopia. It was ugly as sin. I didn't even take pictures of it. But overall, I loved wandering the gardens; they're really beautiful. It was well worth the effort and money to visit the grounds.

We also think that we saw Robert Pattinson of Harry Potter and Twilight fame in the gardens. My daughter was pretty sure that it was him, and when we looked online, it does seem that he was in Paris at the same time we were. Kind of fun.

They were having a special evening event in the gardens that required its own entrance fee and we didn't have tickets for that, so around 5:00, we left the palace and started walking back to the train. We took the Metro back to Champs Elysees and dinner at the Pizza Pino outside on the sidewalk. I had a chicken caesar salad, Molly had a pasta bolognese, and Kathryn had the chicken francaise. Mine was ok, Molly's was very good and Kath's chicken was excellent.



After dinner, we walked right across the street -- again, the Champs Elysees!! -- to the Disney store! It was very crowded. I didn't really like it all that much. There was a downstairs, which was essentially a bargain outlet with old or lousy merchandise. But we got to say that we saw it and it had some fun displays in the upstairs part.





After leaving the Disney store, we continued walking up the street and visited the Arc de Triumphe. After taking some pictures, we took a cab back to the hotel. (The cab ride was an Adventure After Disney in itself, as our driver had NO idea where our hotel was.)









We ended up back at the hotel around 10:30, and called it a night because we knew we were getting up early the next day.
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
We didn't care for the modern art sculptures at Versailles either, we didn't think they fit the gardens which were awesome. I would go back just to wander the gardens.
 

ChuckElias

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 15 -- Disneyland Paris!! Sunny, 75°; changing to clouds and showers, 60°

We got up fairly early for our Disneyland day. We decided not to try to get there for rope drop, but we did want to be there around 10:00 a.m. So we got up and out of the hotel around 8:30, hit the Pomme de Pain in the plaza and then walked to the Metro stop right at 9. The train to Disneyland is very easy. When purchasing train tickets from one of the automated kiosks, Disneyland is one of the choices displayed in the main menu, so you can't miss it. It was about 3€ per person and about 50 minutes from "our" Metro station. When we arrived at the Disneyland station, we decided to buy our return train tickets before going into the park, instead of fighting whatever crowds we might be fighting when we wanted to leave.

Again, purchasing your tickets ahead of time is a smart idea. You can buy 1-day, 2-park tickets from the Disneyland website for less than the price of a 1-day 1-park ticket at the gate. So definitely check out that option. If you haven't purchased your tickets ahead of time, many of the Paris hotels have promotional vouchers that allow you to buy adult tickets for the price of a child's ticket. (But even this is more expensive than buying them online.)

We only one day, so we decided to spend it in the Magic Kingdom, rather trying to run around to see everything in both parks. I know that I would've liked to ride Rock 'n' Roller Coaster and Tower and Terror in the Studios park, but I was happy to do the one park and experience everything at a decent pace.

On entering the Magic Kingdom, we took a long time wandering down Main St. There are a lot of similarities to WDW's Main St. In fact, on the "side street" off of Main Street, you can still hear music lessons being given in the upstairs apartment. The windows in the buildings serve as tributes to people who have been important in Disney history. Casey's Corner is there, too, although we never did eat there. One of the differences from WDW that I really liked a lot was that there was a covered walkway that ran parallel to Main St on the other side of the merchandise shops. So when it was raining, or if it was really hot, you had a bit of shelter while walking toward the castle.

Entering the park:









A couple pictures of Main St:















And a nod to my namesake:



The castle is the icon, obviously, and I thought it was amazing. Its design is recognizably Disney, but different from its American counterparts. The exterior sports a flying buttress and its interior has a second story that you can walk around in. You can still walk through the castle at any time. It doesn't close for shows, which is great.









The castle also has an "attraction", which is essentially a dark tunnel with a dragon in it:



A couple pictures of the upstairs inside the castle:





After making our way through the castle, we rode Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This was essentially the same as Snow White's Scary Adventure, which recently closed at WDW, and was probably our longest wait of the day.

 

ChuckElias

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 15, continued

After Snow White, I went to Star Tours to get FastPasses for everyone. Disneyland Paris still uses the classic paper FastPasses. However, they're only distributed when the stand-by line at the attraction gets to a certain wait time. So since it was only a 15 minute wait in the stand-by line when I arrived at Star Tours, they simply weren't giving out any FastPasses. So I walked over to Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast and got FastPasses there instead and walked back to meet my group at Toad Hall for lunch. I really liked Toad Hall. It's not an attraction like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, unfortunately; but it does have some great theming for a quick service restaurant. I got a sausage on a pretzel roll. Interestingly, it was served with a curry "ketchup" that I liked a lot. They also had fish and chips and (I think) a chicken sandwich. Some pictures of Toad Hall:















After lunch, we used the Buzz Lightyear FastPasses. The attraction is very similar to the Orlando version, although the laser gun can be removed from its base, so it's not quite as important to "steer" the ride vehicle to face the targets. Unfortunately, this attraction was in real need of a good cleaning. There were lots of places in the queue with peeling paint and there were cobwebs everywhere. (This is fine in the Haunted Mansion, obviously, but not in the Gamma Quadrant.)



After Buzz, we made our way to Phantom Manor, which is unusual because it's located in Frontierland. This version of the Haunted Mansion is located in the American Old West. The graveyard scene is very different because of the Old West theme. It was interesting, but I'm wouldn't say that I loved it.









We sailed on Pirates of the Caribbean and liked it very much. It felt like it was a longer ride and we liked the differences from the WDW version. I also really liked the theming of the exterior with the pirate ship facing the castle.







I have so many pictures that I think I'll just say that we were able to ride it's a small world, Big Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, Star Tours, and the Disneyland Railroad. I'll post more pictures of all these attractions tomorrow.

However, I'll say that we really liked Small World. The theming before you even enter the queue is really cute and fun, and reminded me of the attraction in Anaheim. But it's been 7 years since I've been to that park (and the attraction was closed for refurbishment when we were there), so I might not be remembering it exactly right. Big Thunder Mountain was pretty much the same as the WDW version, including the queue. The Indiana Jones attraction is an outdoor roller coaster, which includes a full 360° inversion. This was a very short ride, but I liked it a lot. It was the closest thing to a thrill ride in the Disneyland park. (Space Mountain is also located in the Magic Kingdom, but it was closed for refurbishment, so we didn't get to ride it.) The Railroad was pretty typical, but is a nice relaxing way to pass a half hour or so. And Star Tours is the "old" attraction from WDW, with Rex as your pilot. It was a lot of fun to see the classic version of the attraction, but the best part of the experience was that Rex spoke to the passengers in French, but everything else was in English. So Rex is telling us in French that it's his first time flying, but the Rebel Commander says his classic line, "Star Tours. What are you doing here? This is a combat zone!" in English. I'm guessing that this was because they would have had to re-shoot all the video to have the dialogue in French (dubbing French over the existing English would have looked terrible); whereas, with Rex, they could just re-record his lines without worrying about whether they matched how his lips were moving.

Small World:



Star Tours, with an X-wing outside the attraction instead of an Imperial Walker.



Inside the Railroad car. You can see that the seats face all four directions, not just forward.



Indiana Jones' Temple of Peril:



In the queue for Big Thunder Mountain:

 

ChuckElias

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 15 -- MORE Disneyland!

I'm sorry to use multiple posts for each day, but the software will only let me put 10 pictures in each post. So I apologize for spreading this report out through so many postings. I hope it doesn't make it hard to follow along.

So I've already talked about the attractions that we rode. There were a few that we passed on. We didn't ride Peter Pan because, like WDW, it's an insane wait time and nobody in our group felt very strongly about riding it. We didn't ride Autotopia and we didn't walk through Alice's Curious Labyrinth. As I mentioned, Space Mountain was closed, so we didn't get to ride that; and that was my biggest disappointment about our visit.

We did make sure to get a spot at the end of Main St., USA to watch Disney Magic on Parade! I'm not a huge fan of the parades normally, but I wanted to see Paris' version. Overall, I liked it. I thought the floats were generally fun and had a lot to look at. The soundtrack was ok, except that we heard it loop over and over about 15 times over the course of the parade and eventually I got pretty sick of it. So I liked it, but it was not as good as the new Festival of Fantasy parade in Orlando.

I love "Tangled", so I was happy to see this float.



We all agreed that this Alice float was just a little creepy for some reason:







We had dinner at another quick service restaurant, at Cafe Hyperion, which is located in a building that also serves as a venue for live performances. It was called Videopolis. I loved the theming for this building. From the outside, you see part of a huge dirigible; and the rest of it is inside the building. I just thought it looked so darn cool. It had a definite Jules Verne feel to it for me.











When we were there, the stage was being used for Jedi Training. It's always fun to see the kids on stage with Darth Vader, but it was weird because it was "taught" in both English and French.



But even more unusual was that the burgers joined in with the Star Wars theme of the show.



We stayed until the park closed and watched the evening show, "A Night Time Spectacular Show: Disney Dreams!" This was not really a fireworks show, although there were some fireworks involved. The show is projected on the castle and of course, there's plenty of Disney music. We all really liked the show very much, even though we didn't have great a great location to view it. I'm not good at all at nighttime photography, so this is the only picture of the castle that I have. I took it right before the show started.



And finally, I mentioned that there is a covered walkway that runs parallel to Main St, USA. The displays on the walls showcase progress made throughout the 20th century. So there are actual gas lamps on one end of the walkway and at the other end are electrical lights. There are posters from major cities that show inventions of different eras. It's fun to walk through.









That was pretty much the end of our day in the park. Just a couple of general observations about our experience. The one thing that we didn't like about Disneyland Paris was that there was no "Disney attitude" in the Cast Members. There weren't a lot of smiles on CM faces and no happy greetings at attractions or even at the entrance to the park. They were really just employees and didn't seem to think they were part of the show.

But one of things that we loved about the park is that Pixar is integrated more throughout the park than it is in WDW. The music from "Up" is part of the ambient music as you walk around. Russell and Mr. Fredrickson are hiking by the water in one section. Wall-E and Eve are found in Discoveryland. I just loved seeing and hearing Pixar themes in more than just one spot.





We headed out of the park at 11:20 p.m. and fought the crowds back to the Metro station. And we were very glad that we'd bought our return tickets when we arrived at the park that morning. The automated ticket machines were mobbed. But we just headed to the platform and got the next train. We got back into our hotel rooms at 12:15. It was a long and tiring day, but we really enjoyed it.
 

ChuckElias

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 16 -- Paris Sunny 75º

This was our last day! Boooooo! But Disneyland took so much out of us that we decided to sleep in, just a little bit. We were out of the hotel by 9 and had our traditional breakfast at the Pomme de Pain. We had an airport shuttle scheduled to pick us up at the hotel at 3:15 p.m., so we had about half the day remaining for a little more sightseeing. The two biggies that were still on the list were the Louvre Museum and the Eiffel Tower. I felt like it would be silly to try to do both, so Kathryn, Molly, Dawn (my sister) and I walked to the Louvre; while Steve and his son hopped in a cab to the Eiffel Tower. Molly's mission was to see the Mona Lisa, and Kathryn's was to see the Venus de Milo.

As we entered the outer courtyard of the Louvre Museum:







The famous glass pyramid in the main courtyard:



Let me stress once again the importance of getting venue tickets or a Paris Pass before you actually arrive in Paris. When we got to the Louvre at about 10 a.m., the line to purchase tickets was already 90 minutes long. At the Eiffel Tower, the line was 2 hours long. However, in the event that you arrive at the Louvre courtyard sans tickets, you do have an alternative. It's not exactly a "skip the line" option; it's more of a "find a shorter line" option. From the courtyard, you can walk one block to Rue de Rivoli to 99 Rivoli. It's the entrance to a large shopping complex and at the end of the complex is the Louvre's lobby and ticket sales. It will take 5-10 minutes to walk to the entrance of the shopping center, another 5 minutes to get to the lobby (you have to go through security, so it might take longer), and then however long it takes to stand in the ticket line. But it will definitely be quicker than waiting in the courtyard line. In either case, the tickets will cost 15€ each.

Here's the museum lobby where you can buy your tickets. It's under the pyramid in the main courtyard:



Once we got into the museum, we (along with about 5,000 other people) made a beeline for the Mona Lisa. The room in which the Mona Lisa is hung has many other works in it, as well. However, every person in the room was pushing his way to try to get as close as possible to the Mona Lisa. It was barely-controlled mayhem. Why they don't simply put up some barriers to form a queue is a mystery to me. Nobody can move in the room. If they made people go through a structured line, it would be so much easier for everybody. But we did get to see it (from a bit of a distance) and so Molly's mission was accomplished.

Proof that we saw the Mona Lisa (shot with my cell phone, forgive me!):



And the Venus de Milo:



The rest of our time there was phenomenal. There's obviously just too many things to see in one day, let alone the 4 hours that were available to us. Even if there was no art in the museum, the architecture of the building itself would be worth the visit. We absolutely loved the paintings and sculpture, but I admit that we got a little lost when it was finally time to find our way out.

Some random shots from our time there:















Is this the Louvre or Hogwarts??



We left the museum just after 2 p.m., giving ourselves a half hour to get back to the hotel and then another half hour to grab something quick for lunch before heading to the airport. Well, "quick" turned out to be a relative term, as our take-out from the little family-run pasta restaurant we stopped at took forever! But we eventually got our order, met up with Steve and Joe, who climbed to the first landing of the Eiffel Tower and got to hear about their journey. And we made it back in time to meet our shuttle. The only problem was:

Our last Adventure After Disney!

The shuttle company sent the wrong sized-van for us. With our bags, we were not all going to fit. Our driver called the office and they had no bigger vans available for us. So, Kath and I decided that we would take the Metro to the airport and meet up with the rest of our group at the Delta ticket counter. Thankfully, the ticket machine at the Metro stop had an option for "airports" right on the main screen, so it turned out to be mercifully easy to buy our tickets. We arrived at the platform and I checked the overhead screen to see when the right train would arrive, and I noticed that there were 2 airport trains for each non-airport train at that platform. I took that as a good sign and when the next airport train stopped, we boarded. I later realized that the reason that there were two airport trains, was that one of them was an express directly to the airport, and one was a local that stopped at each station along the way. Thankfully, and by sheer luck, Kath and I had boarded the express. So we arrived quickly and easily at De Gaulle airport and met our group, just as we'd planned.

The flight home was entirely uneventful and our shuttle picked us up and delivered us to our door without incident.

Thanks so much for following along throughout our trip. I'll post more pictures later.
 

ChuckElias

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Some additional pictures that didn't fit in the report:





Ship flew the Union Jack as we sailed into Dover:





Walking around Deck 4:





This is the door that opens and crew members stand on while the ship leaves Port Canaveral. You can usually see somebody on it on the Port Canaveral webcam:







 

Sans Souci

Well-Known Member
I got off the Magic on Saturday in Barcelona. I am laughing (in a positive way) at your photo at Claire. I think my husband had a little crush on her, because we always seemed to be in Keys when she was playing. (But it's OK, because we had Luis, hot Spanish dude, twice when we went to Palo.) I love Keys, so it was all good. She invokes too much Tori Amos for my tastes, but she has an adorable, quirky personality. She let people come up and sing with her. She played piano while this Italian man sang "O Sole Mio!" and it was amazing.
 
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