Greetings from Disneyland Paris! On this third trip to Paris, I managed to sacrifice some time away from the other sights to hit Baxter’s baby. It is my first time here.
I entered the park at 6pm (for an 11 closing). That’s right, I paid a full days price for only five hours in the park. It turned out to be good and bad. Good in that today was blazingly hot, and even when I was entering it was clear people had had enough and were leaving. But the later temperatures made things more bearable and people leaving opened up space beautifully. Most things were a walk on. The bad is that I guess park operations decided to follow suit? The railroad was closed. As was the river boats. I saw no characters. Kiosks and stands were empty. Shops seemed to be left to their own devices. And I couldn’t get a decent meal anywhere, so many things were closed. I couldn’t even go inside to look at these eateries’ nice theming. And I was willing to shell out for something nice. It was so weird that my partner turned to me and said, “it looks like workers abandoned the park.”
Disneyland Paris is not a full day park. There, I said it. Despite going in at 6, we were struggling to find another e-ticket we hadn’t already hit by 8:30. And I took my time: walking through all the walkthrough’s (and they’re awesome), taking copious pictures, waiting in a long line for ice cream, chilling in that playground next to the river (the only way i could see it, since the boats were closed).
It’s a beautiful park. And the scale - long my number one factor in making a successful themed environment - is letter-perfect. I don’t know how they did it to make sure everything pops from a dimensions and measurements perspective. Compositions are very strong. I like the commitment to winding pathways, a very, very Baxter-esque quality that he ramped up to beautiful effect here.
As the night came, the population grew to an unexpectedly large size. Where did all these people come from? Operations struggled to get them all fed and watered. The night shows above the castle were very nice, although the late Parisian sunset forced them into hilariously late showtimes that would scandalize us US folk.
The park is let down by its operations. There’s no other way around it. I can’t believe I was willing to throw money at them and they were not willing to take it. That’s the most un-Disney like thing imaginable.
Characters are pretty much done before main parade time (well what was, believe that parade is earlier now, so who knows when the characters will disappear at the moment 
