Disney memories from last November | Day 3

We had a long lay in bed after our second day and only got to the park for the Merry Stitchmas show at Castle Stage. Stitch appeared on stage from the turning crown on the right side of the stage wearing multiple costumes not understanding what Mickey meant by Christmas.

Straight after our first show of the day, we headed down to the far end of Frontierland to watch Frozen Sing-Along. As soon as we got inside, it started snowing outside and we had to miss the magic of real snow in Disney. I didn't feel comfortable taking photos inside the theatre, so the only photos of the show are from the end when the characters were saying goodbye.

We had time to go on Space Mountain before it was time to see Mickey's Christmas Big Band close up from the seating in front of the stage and finally get some good photos of the dancers.

 Mickey Mouse playing the drums was the definite highlight of the entire trip and worth getting up close to the stage for a good photo.

As we had planned the night before, we left the park early. The Hollywood Tower Hotel had snow projected on top of it every night. We got a picture of that it as we were leaving the parks for the last time.

We tried going into Planet Hollywood to get dinner, but the atmosphere in the restaurant felt wrong with the DJ trying to get diners to sing to his songs when he muted the music, so we walked over to Rainforest Cafe instead. We were given a piece of paper with a time on it to come back to queue. We shopped around for Christmas ornaments around Disney Village while waiting. After the wait was over we had to wait even more in the queue which felt like it wasn't moving at all.

At first we were given a bad table in a corner where we could not see anything from, but we asked to change to the free table we saw nearby. We got that table and were sat one table away from this guy. He kept hitting himself in the abdomen where you can clearly seen his fur has taken some damage.

 

We got different meals each + a fried food platter to share. The platter came to our table cold and was missing one of the food items, but the staff replaced it with a fresh one when we complained. The food was absolutely delicious which caused us to eat more than we ever should have. There was so much food that we could not finish it all.

The platter

Eating at the Rainforest Cafe was definitely an experience. There was lightning and the animals moved their heads and arms occasionally, sometimes even scaring me. It's a must visit in Disney Village!

That concludes our adventures in Disney for now. Hopefully we will be able to go back to Disneyland soon, or go even further and completely destroy our feet in Walt Disney World.

Disney memories from last November | Day 2

On the 29th of November 2017, we woke up in our questionable hotel room and had some quick breakfast before starting our second day of Disney Christmas magic in the Studios.

We arrived at the gates before opening time to avoid queues on Crushes Coaster. After enjoying a few other rides, we stopped for lunch in the Studio 1 building. 

As I munched on my chicken burger with salad, we got to take in the Christmas lights inside the studio better than we had while rushing through the day before.

After lunch, it was time see the first show of the day. It was a sing-along, but nobody was singing any of the songs. Most of the songs sounded like they were written for the show, so they would have been quite difficult to sing-along to.

Right after the show, we hurried out of Disney Studios and into the main Disneyland Park to get a good spot in the queue to meet Jack Skellington in Frontierland. I managed to take a few pictures of the Christmas decorations around the entrance as we marched by them.

The wait to meet Jack was less than 30 minutes as we had arrived at the queue early. We were very lucky to be where we were in the queue, because we were the last people to meet Jack before his short break in the middle of the Meet 'n' Greet.

Our interaction with Jack was amazing. He was saddened when I had to leave, because he was led to believe that I was Sally in disguise. We were able to continue talking to him for a while after we had left him, since he started walking in the same direction after us to go on his break.

We had plenty of time to spare before the next show we wanted to see, so we browsed through the stores inside the castle and around Fantasyland until we got hungry. We may have gone on some rides in Fantasyland, but I didn't take any pictures of the rides, so I cannot fully remember.

We had never been to Toad Hall before and I really wanted to taste their Fish & Chips, so it was the only real dinner option for us. The inside of the restaurant was beautifully decorated and there were several different dining areas each with different styles.

The fish was perfectly cooked and the batter was exactly to my taste. Although I loved the fish from Toad Hall, the Roasted Chicken I had on our previous trip in Au Chalet de la Marionette still remains my favourite.

Walking through Frontierland later in the day, we happened to catch a mariachi band leaving Fuente del Oro Restaurante while still playing as they walked towards the cast quarters. The movie Coco had just been released, so the restaurant had extra decorations in place for the fans to see.

Mickey's Magical Christmas Light was next on our list of shows to catch. It was still bright outside close to the start of the show, but the sun went down just before it was time to start lighting up the lights on the tree, and we got to fully enjoy the sight of Christmas lights against the night sky.

As last year was the 25th anniversary of Disneyland Paris, the Disney Illuminations was mostly the same as it had been all year. I felt it lacked much needed Christmas magic, and I did not record or take any pictures during the show as I had seen it before.

Even though we had been out at the parks since opening time, we didn't want to end our day quite yet and had a little walk around Disney Village.

We didn't have a lot of time to shop before the last train, but since we had seen all the late night shows already we planned to leave the parks much earlier on our last day to spend a good while shopping for Christmas decorations. Our full plan and adventures on the last day of our trip can be read about on the post scheduled for tomorrow!

Disney memories from last November | Day 1

One year ago today, we arrived in France to experience the holiday season in Disneyland Paris. I intended to write about it here right after the trip, but I never got to it, because I had over 700 photographs to go through from the 3-day vacation. Earlier this week, I finally found the energy to narrow down the photos, but the number of them was still so big that I decided to divide them into three posts, one for each day of the trip. This wasn't our first trip to Disneyland, so I did not take many photos of the attractions, but focused more on the many shows.

On our first day we were met with a hotel room, which was not quite what we had expected. The bed sheets had blood stains on them, the bathroom had splatters on the wall next to the toilet, and the fence between the joined balcony with the room next door was broken down.

After reluctantly leaving our luggage in the room, we headed to the Disneyland Park. I didn't bring my camera to the park on the first day, because we hadn't made any plans on what we would like to do or which shows to see yet.

Disney's Christmas Parade happened to be just starting as we walked into the main park, so we stayed close to the entrance to watch it.

After the parade, we quickly headed to It's a Small World to avoid the usual long queues. We generally try to avoid reading anything about the rides or watching any videos on them, so we were surprised to see that the ride had been dressed up for the Christmas season, and the theme song of the ride was mixed with a Christmas song.

After getting on a few more rides, we started to feel very hungry and noticed that there was going to be a show at Cafe Hyperion, so we headed to Discoveryland for fast food and entertainment. I got the Jedi burger and Yoda cupcake meal. I was a bit scared the green on the cupcake would taste like mint. Luckily there was no mint in the cupcake at all, and it had a very rich chocolate flavour.

We were sitting quite far from the stage since we were up at the tables eating, so I could not get good pictures of the show. We went back to see Mickey's Christmas Big Band again on our third day, so better photos from the show will be in the post going up on Friday.

We hadn't looked up any show schedules before the trip, so we planned the following two days during our lunch break. We continued our relaxed first day by going on any rides we wanted to go on.

At the end of the day we left the main park to see Goofy's Incredible Christmas show in Disney Studios. There were projections all around the Production Courtyard walls, not only on The Hollywood Tower Hotel.

As we were leaving the park to go back to the hotel, I took some photos in appreciation of the Christmas decorations inside the Studio 1 building and between the gates and the building.

After our first day of figuring out what to do as we went along, the second day was much busier with three more shows to see and Meet 'n' Greet with Jack Skellington. A post about the second day is scheduled to go up tomorrow.