Auditioning for Juggling Jobs?

Jimmy starting teaching Veronica how to juggle when she was 11-years-old. She really started getting the hang of it when we were in Greece in October. Now that she’s got the basics down, he figured it was time to teach her how to steal. And what better setting to learn this new skill than at Disney? Here they are at the small stage at Disney Village, which we walked through to get from our hotel to the parks.  

Many eyes were upon Veronica as she stood on Main Street while waiting for the parade to begin. She also practiced with Jimmy while waiting in line for rides. Our final ride of the trip was the Disney Railroad with over an hour wait. She provided a lot of entertainment for her fan club of six little French kids.

Eating at Disney...

We began each day with the breakfast buffet at the hotel, which was included in our package. The fruit salad was surprisingly fresh and yummy, but the scrambled eggs were the worst we’d ever had. We’re not sure what they injected into the eggs, but they were too fluffy and flavorless to be regular eggs. A few days we had sandwiches for either lunch or dinner, but we splurged on good meals more than we’d expected. We had one lunch and one dinner at the Blue Lagoon, the restaurant within the Pirates of the Caribbean ride; the girls had a blast trying to get folks in the boats to wave back. Ashlynn loved the tortellinis with the Mickey Mouse shaped plate. She was disgusted that I ate parrotfish after seeing them while diving in Bonaire, but it was delicious, as was the seafood and mango salad. Lunch came with dessert, but as dinner was a la carte, we shared a creme brulee, which was set aflame as you see above. We also ate at Agrabah Cafe twice, which was a fantastic Mediterranean buffet featuring a huge assortment of vegetarian dishes.

Disney-Style Entertainment...

 When we went to Disneyworld in 2005, we got into pin trading (you buy pins you don’t want and trade them with Disney employees to get pins you do want). So, we grabbed our old lanyards, bought a bunch of Minnie Mouse pins and traded pins for several days. My favorite is the Mickey peace symbol; Ashlynn’s is Stitch.

While both parks had a parade (it was funny hearing some of the characters speaking French), we were surprised that neither had a proper show with singing and dancing. Luckily there were a few other shows to entertain us. The Studio’s stunt show featuring cars and motorcycles was so fantastic that we went back to watch it a second time. We also watched an amazing movie twice that magically put actor Martin Short into actual footage of movies throughout the decades.

Favorite Rides...

We suspect that it was all those wild rides in the baby jogger that turned Ashlynn into such a fan of roller coasters. We really looked forward to taking her on the Rock ‘n’ Roller Roller Coaster and she loved it. We enjoyed it, but didn’t think it was quite as good as Florida’s version since it was in darkness rather than filled with neon signs. She also loved Space Mountain (this one went upside down). I preferred Big Thunder Mountain, which was extra exciting as it was on an island accessed by a tunnel under the lake. The ride that surprised me the most was the Tower of Terror. I expected to hate it, but loved it; the set-up to the ride was great with just enough creepiness but not too big of drops.

Fun Times at Disney...

To be honest, after everything I read about Disneyland Paris, I had fairly low expectations. Much to my pleasure, we had a great time. Yes, there are only two parks (Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios) and they are much smaller than their US counterparts, but then they were very easy to get around. The crowds were pretty manageable the first two days and we were able to plow through Disneyland on Tuesday and the Studios on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized that Thursday was a holiday when I booked the trip and the crowds for the last three days were insane. Strangely, we heard more Dutch than French so clearly a lot of Dutch schools were on holiday.

Just had to include this photo as this really cracked me and Veronica up. We set off in front of Ashlynn and Jimmy on the Autopia and saw them along the route a few times. Then we lost them, which is strange since the cars are on a track and there are no turnoffs. We thought maybe Ashlynn was just a really slow driver, but turns out that the car broke down and it took six cars behind them to push them into the station.

Disney at Night...

At least Disneyland was open later on Thursday and Friday when it was overflowing with crowds. There’s no fireworks or Main Street Electric Parade because the park closes at 10pm (we were happy guests can get in line for rides until 10pm) and it doesn’t get dark until almost 11pm. 

Surprise Trip to Disneyland Paris...

Back in January we decided to spoil the girls with a trip to Disneyland Paris after the Eurohash weekend. I did my usual ridiculous amount of research to decide where to stay and for how long. Disney was offering good packages at their hotels, so we opted to stay at the Hotel New York for five nights. It wasn’t until the week before we left that the girls finally really questioned what we were doing for the rest of the week of half term. Jimmy originally made up some story about a postlube hash event in Southern France, but they saw right through his weak tale. We eventually gave in and told them what we were up to and after years of asking to go to Walt Disney World (Ashlynn was four when we last went and has only vague memories), they were very happy to visit the European version instead. It was a long journey from the hash venue and we were happy to see our nice room when we finally arrived. On Tuesday, we got up early to start five days of hitting the two parks.