Since it was our last day, got up early, went to breakfast,
and then took advantage of Extra Magic Hours for resort guests. We went into Walt Disney Studios and rode
Ratatouille twice with no wait! The last
thing we did in that park was finally ride Tower of Terror, which was great!
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| Another great view for breakfast this morning! |
We went back to the hotel to check out and store our bags
for a little while at Bell Services so we could spend our last little chunk of
time at Disneyland. We took a lot of
photos and rode Hyperspace Mountain and generally wandered around the park and
tried to soak up as much of the atmosphere as possible to tide us over until
our next trip!
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| I want this button on my remote control at home! |
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| I love Pluto! He was so cute peeking around the corner at me! |
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| I love, LOVE, LOVE this castle! |
At noon, we picked up our luggage and walked over to the
train station. We took a train back to
the airport, which took about ten minutes.
At the airport, we grabbed some lunch, and when we went to check in for
our flight, a very nice gentleman saw that we had no bags to check and waved us
through to the front of the line, which saved us a very lengthy wait! We went through security without any
difficulty; actually the security agent made quite a fuss over my laptop
because it looks like a composition book and asked me several questions about
it in French, which I am proud to say I completely understood! Despite taking French class for almost my
entire elementary, middle, and high school years, I have lived in the U.S. for
22 years now and I never ever speak it, so I am extremely rusty. After a few days being surrounded by the
language, it all began to come back to me…ahhhh, imagine how fluent I could be if I
lived in France for any length of time!
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| One last look back at the Disneyland Hotel as we walked to the train station! |
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| This is a charging station for your electronics - but you have to pedal to get power! |
We were at the gate about 90 minutes before our flight and I
went to the convenience store to buy two bottles of water. The cashier told me that she needed to see my
boarding pass, which C had back at our seats.
I told her I didn't have it on me and she said that I couldn't buy the
water. What?!? Apparently they track everything everyone
purchases! Bizarre! On another note, there was a piano in the
waiting area for anyone to play, and a guy decided to go over to it and
entertain all of us – he was SO good and got a loud and enthusiastic round of
applause from the several hundred people in the gate area! I love unexpected things like that!
The plane took forever to load – Norwegian is not
particularly efficient with this and then we sat on the plane for more than an
hour while multiple people were apparently having trouble getting through
security. Then the flight actually took
forty minutes longer than scheduled, so in all, we were on the plane for about
nine hours. It felt much longer because
it was a full flight, so we had someone sitting between us, but fortunately, I
slept for almost the entire flight. As
with other Norwegian flights we've been on, there are colored lights in the
cabin during the descent, so I enjoyed that as usual!
We landed just before 9:00, but it took quite a while to get
to the gate between taxiing forever and then getting towed into the gate
because it was a "tight space."
When we finally got off the plane, we took the AirTrain to the parking
lot, and were on the road before 9:45.
We got home at about 2:15 am and so happy to see two wagging tails upon
our arrival!
As always, there are no words to express how grateful we are
that my mom watched Maddy and Ginny for us.
She is the best Fairy Dogmother ever!
While we appreciate each and every time she watches them for us while we
travel, this time was a lot of work for her because Maddy is sick (that is a
forthcoming blog post…) and we know there is nowhere else we would want Maddy
to be than in my mom's care. We are so
very lucky!!!
A few final thoughts about Disneyland Paris…
- Even though there are only two theme parks - and Walt Disney Studios is relatively small - we still walked 36.4 miles over the six days!
- There are definitely cultural differences between America and France – at least that’s what I'm choosing to believe instead of that people were just being rude by cutting in line, taking up the entire walkway, etc.
- Smoking
is everywhere – EVERYWHERE – and I'm really not trying to offend anyone, but I have
little tolerance for inconsiderate smokers. My mom has a terrible degenerative lung
disease and has never been a smoker in her entire life and it just angers me
when I have to breathe in toxic air against my will. So to stand in line for
rides and wait in crowds for shows and walk through the parks and have to
inhale smoke because no cast member enforces the no smoking "rules"
is nothing short of disgusting and infuriating as far as I'm concerned!
- In
general, the cast members we encountered were, at best, indifferent – this is
the same experience we had on our last visit to DLP in January 2016 – and many
of them were downright rude. I'd like to think this is once again a cultural
difference, but even if it is, it's pretty disheartening
- There's
a lot behavior that is overlooked that would not be tolerated elsewhere –
guests climbing up on things, sitting on top of ledges and trash cans, and the
like.
- We
had a very unpleasant experience during a period of heavy, cold rain! We bought
some popcorn and went in to a very large eating establishment to find a seat
and escape the weather, and a cast member told us we could not sit down
because we had not purchased food there! Those of you familiar with Cosmic
Ray's or Pecos Bill, can you imagine a cast member rudely telling a guest such a thing?!?
- Various restaurants, attractions, and areas of the parks closed at odd times – I'm not sure
if this would be true during high season, but this seemed weird to us!
- There
was a decided lack of merchandise that is particular to DLP – which is good for
my wallet, I guess – but I feel like the merchandise is becoming more and more
generic across all of the parks because I also noticed this when we went to Tokyo Disneyland earlier this year.
- The
Disneyland Hotel is amazing – although we only briefly visited a few of the
other Disney resorts there, they don't hold a candle to the Disneyland Hotel!
- Le
Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant is so incredibly pretty – whenever we
finally make it to Hong Kong and Shanghai, I will be interested to see if
either of those two castles can top this one!
Despite a few things being less than perfect, we had a
really great trip! We will definitely be returning in the future!
Happy Tails to you!
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