Disneyland Paris 2016 // Day 2, Part 1

Looking back, I think day 2 of our trip was my favourite day. There was so much good despite two very, very bad things...that you will find out further on in this post haha. To me, the best days at Disneyland are jam-packed with as much as you can fit in as possible, an early start, a variety of activities and being there until the end!
Today was our first full day and we got up, had breakfast in Beaver Creek then headed out to meet Kerri and Kris to head over to the Disneyland Park for EMH. As we got in I spotted Donald! Seeing as our first day had no character meets at all I was itching to say Hi to some of my buddies so we queued, taking photos of the square as the stunning sun rose and got some nice snaps with The Duck in his snazzy Xmas outfit.
After that we had a quick peek in a couple stores at this end of Main Street before heading over to the Walt Disney Studios Park as it opened.

The Les Légendes d'Hollywood draws me in whenever I pass and so we spent a little time shopping in there before heading over to queue for Crush's Coaster. This, for me (I know I'm in the minority here), is the worst ride ever. I hated it. Mam and I also wasted our time queueing for it in 2014 too but left when we saw the warnings about back problems. However, we'd decided 'what the hey' this year and oh how we regretted that lol.
With considerably sore throats and wobbly legs, it was off to some better rides lol - Les Tapis Volants (Flying Carpets Over Agrabah) and Cars Quatre Roues Rallye (Cars Race Rally) which always makes me laugh so much. We timed it so that as we got off Cars it would be time to wait for Mickey and the Magician and while in the 'holding pen' ate our bread dinner. This was obviously my first time seeing the show and as much as I'll always miss Animagique, it really was beautiful. I was blown away at the Lion King bit after having seen the stage show the year before and shed plenty of tears at that.
As we had something booked for the afternoon there was time for one more ride. Something I'd planned to try since my visit in 2010, the Tower of Terror, and as you'll probably guess from my face in the photo, it was the other worst moment of the day haha. I detested it and have no idea how people find that fun...but I guess I can at least say we did it eh?

I'm gonna leave this part here as we then walked through Studio 1 to our appointment, stopping only to enjoy the band as I always do!

Check out previous posts from this trip here -
Disneyland Paris 2016 // Christmas Decor
Day 1, Part 1
Day 1, Part 2
What I Bought
Sequoia Lodge Hotel Review

Disneyland Paris 2016 // Day 1, Part 2

Following on from part 1 (give it a read before you carry on, here), after we left Frontierland, we had a dawdle over to Fantasyland to grab some lunch. This was the only day we planned to do this as, like always, we had our half board meal plan and would fill up at breakfast to last us until dinner in the evening. Obviously today we were running on very little sleep and had not eaten since the dreadful McDonalds escapade the night before - literally only chips and ice cream too - so splashed some of the spending money cash on food. I hate spending money on food.
Like everything else, where we went to eat wasn't just randomly chosen by chance but had been picked beforehand to make sure there were options for us. Mam and I had pizza. Oh, it was at Pizzeria Bella Notte by the way and I will have a separate, more in-depth review post of it at some point this year.
From there we hit up It's A Small World, for my first ride since 2010(!!) as it was closed for refurb on our previous visit. That refurb evidentially made a big difference and it was absolutely stunning!! There was no wait whatsoever and we got to walk right on, which is always awesome! I took a lot of photos too, enough probably to do a whole post just on them, so had to narrow it down significantly to share here.

I'm sure as we came out of It's a Small World, a parade had just started so we popped over to dance and cry at that (well maybe that was just me), before heading over to queue for the ever-awesome Peter Pan's Flight. Again, this has recently been refurbished and looked fantastic!! 5 days really isn't long enough for a DLP holiday as both of these we'd hoped to do again later in our trip but didn't get the chance to - hence having no photos or footage from them, boo.
Anyway, because it was winter and the sun goes to bed early, it ended up being pretty much dark when we got out of our last ride. We'd planned to head up Main Street, watch the lighting of the Christmas Tree and then get to Cape Cod restaurant at Newport Bay for our dinner reservation...which is exactly what we did. It was okay but overall I don't find the Christmas additions at Disneyland anything to write home about. The best bit was probably that my favourite song of all time was played!
Cape Cod wasn't our first choice either, however, the place we had hoped to eat ended up having earlier closing hours and as Kerri and Kris had been upgraded to NBC hotel we thought we'd give it a go. You'd think by its name it would be primarily fish but luckily there was plenty to eat and after we'd had our fill, we headed around the lake back to our hotel to retire for the night.

And that was day 1! Remember to check out the first part of this day by clicking here, feel free to follow so you don't miss the rest of my DLP 2016 posts by clicking here and tell me your go-to ride that you must do when you first get to Disneyland Paris, in the comments!

Disneyland Paris 2016 // Day 1, Part 1

Well, I suppose it's about time I get started on our days at Disneyland. It took me long enough to even look through the album, let alone edit and then write this post. As you can see from the image above our first day was Tuesday the 29th of November and we arrived at about midday, however...our trip started a while before!! Being from the border of England and Scotland, we had a 4 and a bit hour train journey all the way down to London on the Monday night - arriving into Kings Cross about midnight. As our Eurostar was just before 7am and check-in obviously an hour or two before, we decided it wouldn't be worth getting a hotel only for 4/5 hours. How wrong we were.
We headed to St Pancras and set up camp on a bench beside the Eurostar check-in keeping everything close because London is not nice and there were many 'not nice' people going around. It was freezing and scary so I thought popping over to McDonalds just across the square would kill an hour or so and warm us up but that was another bad idea. They have security on the door you know?! If that isn't a bad sign, all the drug addicts and strange scary people eyeing up our bags definitely were. Of course, that meant leaving with haste and pretty much running back to our bench in St Pancras with my freezing caramel sundae in hand. The hours dragged on but finally check-in opened and we herded through like everyone else around 5.45am where I collapsed on a slightly softer seat, in a warmish hall to have 40 winks.

No our bad fortune did not stop after boarding the train! Did you think we were in the safe zone? ha! Not with our luck. Before even getting near the Eurotunnel the train stopped and we were informed of an issue on the line. Now I know delays are gonna happen and I was fine with waiting 20mins or so but we had a connection to get at Lille where we were meeting Kerri and Kris. We should have had 1hr 45mins to wait at Lille until our next train but by the time we got there we had to jump off the train, literally not even get to say hello to Kerri and Kris and sprint towards our other train, bags in tow. We made it. Just. But man was all that stressful and I was all levels of sweaty - blurgh.

Thankfully when we arrived at Marne la Vallee, stepped out into the fresh air and saw all the security (it was very welcome since there had supposedly been a planned terror attack for December 1st) it was all over and almost straight forward from there on out. We walked to our hotel, checked in and got into the room early which was fab as I got to have a freshen up and change my sweated-through jumper then headed back to sit by the lake and wait on Kerri and Kris. Due to bad luck coming in threes, of course, I'd decided I didn't need the luggage service thing that we'd paid for and so after checking in, the receptionist told us our park passes etc were back at the Disney kiosk at Marne la Vallee station haha and so that was our next port of call once Kerri and Kris arrived.

And then it was into the park we go...

(I know that was a long-winded intro and a lot to read but for my own future reference and stuff, ya know?)

This was the most weird, surreal walk into the park ever for me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it was because we were with other people or something, but I just didn't feel like I was actually there. First port of call was City Hall to make our dinner reservations and then across the road to Town Square Photography to buy our PhotoPass! Yay! The guy in there was awesome. I adore the cast members at Disneyland as they always (as they're meant to be) absolutely brilliant, but you know, some are more memorable and go the extra mile to make you smile.
Then we headed down Main Street, whipped out the PhotoPass for its first use in front of the Castle and proceeded to my traditional first ride; Phantom Manor!! I have to admit to being a tiny bit gutted that the Boot Hill Cemetary was closed off as it's always a nice wander around and great for photo taking, especially when there isn't renovations going on on the Rivers of the Far West. I enjoyed getting a peek at what was going on behind those boards and am even more over the moon to hear that the legendary geysers have indeed been brought back to life!!! I haven't seen them in action since my 1996 Birthday visit as a child and can't wait to see them again (ROTFW & Big Thunder didn't re-open until the week after we visited), which will probably be for my 30th Birthday now.  Let's hope they don't break down again by then ;)

So I'm going to leave it there for today so as not to overload the blog with too much to read and too many photos to look at. The 2nd part of our day will be in my next DLP16 post on the 3rd of February so make sure to follow and not miss out ;)