DLP PTR 1st-3rd April 2011

[peep]

Friday 1st April

I met up with Patrick outside the currency exchange in St Pancras Station. He had just faffed to grab our tickets as apparently the Eurostar ticket machines fail at life. We had quite some time before we had to check in so I grabbed a crepe from Crepeaffaire, it was rather nom.

Soon enough we were through check-in and passport control and on the train to Disney. The train journey was rather annoying due to sitting near us was the most vile women ever. They caused havoc and confusion with the staff and basically ended up pissing off everyone around them. One of them even insisted before we left that I was sitting in her seat even though the rather frustrated Eurostar lady kept telling her she was looking at the wrong ticket. Urgh, she was such a fail whale. Apart from that the journey was ok, was odd though as we stopped at both Ebbsfleet and Ashford on the way, never done that before.

Once we arrived at Disney we hopped onto a RER train to the hotel in Val D'Europe. We were staying in the Ibis instead of the Etap this time. There isn't much of a difference apart from the awesome food they have out for breakfast More of that to come later.

After checking in at the hotel, dropping our stuff off in our room and generally sorting ourselves out we made our way to the park by foot. It's a really nice relaxing journey and gives an interesting angle of the Studios park. By the time we reached the Resort we were rather hungry so opted to go into the Village to grab some food. We ended up going to the Sandwich place. Surprisingly the food was really filling and rather nom.

We then made our way to the park. Patrick had to update his pass so we sorted out that first. It didn't too long as they already had all his details. First things we noticed in the park:
1- It was very BUSY
2- Due to it being press weekend there were random things all over Central Plaza and on the stage in front of the castle.
3- I like the covered scaffolding for the castle refurb

Despite the look of the above photo it was rather warm.

We spent quite some time walking around Fantasyland going "Oh it has a queue, lets move on". This has definitely become a big problem when we both go, we've done all the attractions so many times that when we see a queue we just walk in the opposite direction. Anyway on our travels we found a temporary celebrity photo boards thing next to the Fantasyland station. It was in aid of a few charities and didn't really make much sense but it was funny having Pixee Lott as one of the UK 'celeb' boards. She was also on the main board...

We continued through to Adventureland, spotting all of the new magic moment areas. Some of them look quite cool, shame the characters weren't out when we walked past.

I really loved the Aladdin one with the smoking lamp, I wanted my photo by it but this family were faffing by it and by the time I was gonna go over all these kids appeared from nowhere, urgh. Oh well.

It was nearly time for the Once Upon a Dream Parade so we went over to Central Plaza to see the epically cut down (and rather laughable) version of the parade.

I know I like to listen to songs on repeat but there are only so many times you can listen to 'Just like we dreamed it' in one go. After the parade we were going to ride Phantom Manor but there was an epic queue for it, like I've already said, the park was very busy. We decided to go check out Space Mountain. Hurrah no queue!

Until we got inside that is. Inside queue is not wanted on any day of the year as it gets very hot. The ride itself was running extremely well and we could even hear the music!

I think this is when we went to ride Star Tours and then saw the inside queue and ran away. I'm not 100% sure what we did next but I know we ended up going to one of the new-ish smoking areas near Frontierland.

We then made our way over to Phantom Manor as it now had a nice short queue. The spirits were being very playful apparently during our ride, lol, I've never known it to stop and start again so many times. At first it was amusing but by the end it was a little frustrating, especially as it didn't have the decency to stop in my favourite part

We then wandered round Frontierland, visiting the grave area, looking over at the rather decaying geyser area and finishing off at the train station. We also grabbed some drinks on the way. Patrick just loves Spite...

The train that pulled up was 'out of service', had come to an end for the day and we would have had to wait another 15 mins for the next one so we decided to continue walking until we found ourselves at Indianna Jones and the temple of Peril coaster.

We then queued up and due to some great batching by the staff despite not all the trains being on the track we got on in quite a short period of time.

It's a rather rough coaster but I love it, some cool air time and some really intense moments, good fun.

Continuing on our adventure we roamed the Robinsons tree house. It makes me laugh how worried I was about falling the first time I went up there.

The view of Adventureland is pretty

The park was now closing so we headed back over to the Village for some dinner. As we only had a certain amount of time we decided queuing for Rainforest cafe would be a bad idea so we ended up at Ludwigs.

I really like the food at ludwigs, maybe a little too pricey but I'm not too fussed about that oh and the theming is win. A restaurant that actually has a story behind the theme is awesome in my books.

After food we headed over to the train station to meet Kristof (the guy that runs Photosmagique). As we were waiting for him Davy (his partner) turned up. Was cool to see him again, although it was very brief as Kristof ran off his train, gave a camcorder to Davy who then ran into the park to watch the staff run-through of the press show.

Patrick, Kristof and I then went to the top of the car park next to the Studios so we could watch the fireworks. They were quite spectacular fireworks, shame guests never get to see displays like this. Good thing for you that I filmed them I know the video is wonky but I rested it on the edge of the building and for some reason it made it come out wonky lol.

Oh and it looks fab in HD

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c10swwt_LxA[/youtube]
HD Link


Afterwards we met back up with Davy and went to the Hotel New York bar for a drink. It was really nice and they had two singers performing some jazz tunes. I ordered a Tequila Sunrise, it was a lot stronger than I was expecting but still rather nice.

After a while we decided to call it a night but before we went back to our hotel Kristof and Davy wanted to show us their Hotel New York room. I kept my eye out for evil kids on little red tricycles...

Their room was huge and the view outside the window overlooked the Village and lake, was really nice. Davy and Kristof then insisted they gave us a lift back to our hotel. We were so shattered so went straight to sleep.



Thanks for reading, I'll write up day two very soon!

 

[peep]

Saturday 2nd April

We planned to have more of a cultural day so we went to visit the Palace and gardens of Versailles. So we got up nice and early, had breakfast at the hotel and got on several RER trains till we were at Versailles. Finding the place was easy as there was a stupidly huge amount of other tourists going there too so it was a simple "follow the crowd" job. Well that coupled with the several staff along the route telling everyone the right direction to the palace. I thought that was rather cool.

After the 5-10 minute walk we were at the palace, blimey the walk up to the entrance area was a task in itself lol, so much effort. Anyway we are both under 26 so we spited the epic queue to buy tickets and walked straight in via security. This is the first thing you basically see once you enter the entrance area.

Look at all the GOLD. Patrick told me they had recently refurbished the exterior and you could really tell, it was rather beautiful.

Oh yeah, little warning, this day of the trip contains LOTs of photos

So the first room we came across was one we couldn't enter but over the other mass of tourists you could look into. It was the chapels and had some amazing architecture and probably the biggest organ I've ever seen.

We then headed upstairs and into an impressive room. I loved the decoration on the ceilings.

There was also another doorway we could look into the chapels

Everywhere you looked there was just more statues or art (and I mean proper art, huge impressive paintings that could sometimes be mistaken for a photo) and just the general decor was astounding. I liked the Lion on this statue...

RAH

Basically we walked through lots of rooms all decorated in the most extravagant and amazing ways. I think most rooms had some sort of painting on the ceiling too which I found fascinating.

We came across Tourist back-log of doom lol

It took forever to get through as the walkways were very narrow. I believe at the end of this corridor lays the biggest and probably most impressive room. More insane decor preceded it though.

Then we reached it, the Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors). Can you count how many chandeliers are in this one room?

For some reason I didn't really take many pictures in that room even though it is visually impressive. The next few rooms were the Kings bedroom and the Queens bedroom, things like that. The beds were massive.

There was one more massive room which had some really impressive artwork.

Amongst it all were several corridors on the ground floor of lots and lots of statues and they were really long corridors too. We then tried to find some food but the restaurant looked very pricey so we opted to see if the gardens had anything. We had to pay to get into the gardens but it was worth it. I think I paid like €8 or something, Patrick paid a little less because he is a student. First impressions were "OMFG its huge" and "it's really hot outside now, I need water" Oh and there was loud classical music from 17th Century, it was beautiful and so relaxing.

We went to the little hidden food place after taking in the stunning view. I got myself a panini which was rather nom and the biggest bottle of water they sold We then found another random seating area to eat, the seats in the sun were already taken so we sat in the shade and then sat there for some time. We kept hearing this sort of random banging noise, I thought there must have been some sort of show going on. After a while we decided to go and investigate. It turns out to be a little water show set to some music which had random loud drum noise at times. It was very peaceful and relaxing and everyone was sitting on the grass appreciating the lovely display while sunbathing.

We then continued to roam and the next garden that we spent some time in was this coliseum-like area. Under each arch (apart from the two entrances) were fountains but when we arrived they were not on. An announcement was made shortly after letting everyone know that in 10 minutes all the fountains would be turned on. So we opted to stay in the area, enjoy the atmosphere until the fountains were turned on. I can't describe how relaxing this place is, just really nice atmosphere. Then the fountains turned on and it became really tranquil, this is also when I decided that Amanda Thompson would absolutely love it and a fountain count shall be had. The show may have had quite a few but I think we'll keep it to area of fountains to make it easier to count so....Fountain count: 1

Fountain count: 2

We had pretty much wandered around the entirety of the left side of the gardens and we found ourselves at the large fountain of epicness.

Fountain count: 3

We considered checking out Marie Antoinette's house but due to time we decided to have ice cream lol. Ice cream wins over everything in my book It was also uber hot and ice cream is needed for those times to help cool down. We then continued our tour by checking out the areas hidden amongst the right side garden. Guess what we found? MORE FOUNTAINS!!

Fountain count: 4

We really liked this one because it was like some sort of God erupting from rocks, we thought that was rather cool. The surrounding trellis work was cool too with some nice seating areas.

Fountain count: 5

Fountain count: 6

The next one I loved, the whole layered effect was cool but the steps that had melted into an evil slope of doom was not appreciated

Fountain count: 7

Then we found; THE SLOPE. We were exhausted and hot by this point and the slope felt unnecessary and evil. However it did have more FOUNTAINS!

Fountain count: 8

We then found the giant fountain which is a show but it started at 5pm and we needed to leave early so we missed out on what looked like epic based fountainess.

I didn't really take a photo of the whole thing but it's a rather wide pond

We were nearly back at the palace but not before more FOUNTAINS!

Fountain count: 9

Fountain count: 10

Just look at that view
Fountain count: 11

We then made our way back to the train station in the sweltering heat (anyone who has been to Paris will understand, sun in Paris = HUMIDITY!) so when we saw lots of people trying to cram on to a train we were like "maybe not" and got on the next one and made sure we had a window that actually opened (most windows on RERs do not have this simple capability). However we did kinda fail as we sat on the side in which the sun was coming in through the window Anyway, we were now back on our way to Disney.

When we got to Disney it was like "OMG, lots of PEEPS!". This was kind of expected though as it was press day and the day before had been fairly busy. We just about caught the new show from the beginning. It was a bit meh and the majority of it was in French which is unlike their main shows. During the show we did manage to spot the DLP CEO which was cool and spotted Kristof taking photos from the press stand in front of the stage.

Once the show finished we waited for the crowds dispersed a bit before making our way into Adventureland for Pirates of the Caribbean. The queue was rather minimal (just after you exit the 'fort'). Pirates is still one of the my favourite attractions <3

I think we wandered around for a bit before leaving the park as it was closing. The Village was rammed with peeps so we took forever in choosing somewhere to have dinner. In the end we chose the restaurant in the Sequoia Lodge hotel. We had to wait like an hour and something until there was a table free so we went and admired the lake. It was quite windy and the balloon was all over the place, was quite hilarious yet scary to watch. At one point the winds were so high it must have taken a good 8 minutes to get them back down into the dock (would you call it a dock?) properly, it was just swaying all over the place, several times it looked like it was going to crash into a few things which was scary and it sounded like screams of horror coming from the actual ride, I'm not surprised that would have been one horrifying yet cool experience. Once they got back down to safety everyone cheered. oddly enough it was back up in the air about 10 mins later lol. Annoyingly I didn't film it.

We then went to have our food. It's rather random you have a buffet for your starter and dessert courses but you order your main course. The food selection was very mediocre and could have done with a bit more out for the starter buffet. The food itself was ok but it certainly wasn't the best place we've eaten at in the resort.

We then walked back to the hotel after a very tiring day. We planned to get up for Extra Magic Hours, I'll let you all know soon if we ever made it in time.

Was a different day for us, doing something not Disney and it was relaxing yet also exhausting but I'm very glad we went there was a very interesting place. Oh and ELEVEN fountain creds!

Thanks for reading!

 

[Martyn B]

Nice pics and report.

We tried Ludwigs for the first time this year as we were turned away from Rainforest, and I was really impressed with it. The medieval theme isn't my cup of tea, but the restaurant is very smart, and I liked the very different choice of food on offer.

 

[peep]

Sunday 3rd April

Due to how busy the resort was we decided that an early start to make the most of the day was in order. However we both failed at life and got up really late Once up, packed our bags and had breakfast we made our way to the parks. We dropped our bags of at the park concierge before heading into the Studios park. The weather was a lot more cloudy yet there was still quite a warmth in the air.

I really wanted to do RC Racer as it's my fav attraction in the new Toy Story Playland area. We walked straight in the queue and were on in just a few minutes <3

RC Racer is still fantastic, such a fantastic addition to the park. I would like a longer cycle on it but due to it being a short cycle you are left for an urge to go on it again and again. We then went for the second best attraction in the area, the parachute drop. It had a fairly long queue so we opted for the single rider queue which although it looked long would disappear once the next batch were loaded. However once joining the queue and seeing one ride cycle it then broke down. There were no announcements but it took them about 10 minutes to finish fixing the issue and finish testing the ride several times. We were then on the first ride, good times.

For a ride that is completely dwarfed by the bigger drop tower, Hollywood Tower of Terror, it sure gives you plenty of fun air time and has a decent cycle too. However one of the things I loved about it back in October was the lighting and sound effects in sync with the ride. Since then due to H&S issues (I think that's the reason anyway) they have had to put in a new floor which basically cover up the awesome lighting in the flooring

We then walked around the back of ToT to Rock 'n' Rollercoaster where we queued for about 20-30 minutes. It feels like they have added LOTs of lights (or fixed, whatever way you want to look at it ) and it had some smoke which is a fantastic improvement, still not as good as it should be but it's improving. I really like the ride though and we could really hear the music, just a shame it wasn't one of the good tracks like 'Love in an elevator'.

I think this is when we met up with Kristof. We went back to Toy Story Playland to ride RC Racer but it had broken down so after a little wander we ended back up in the Disneyland Parc. I think this is when we caught the new Disney Dance express parade/show. Davy came and met up with us too and filmed it for their site. I also filmed it but youtube hates me and won't let me upload the video /spite. So have Davy's version...

[youtube]http://youtu.be/adHvmQCwUAs[/youtube]

We then wandered for a bit and split as Kristof was going for food and was going to use his press pass to take more photos for their site. We decided that food would be a good idea too so we went into Adventureland's Agrabah cafe.

It's a buffet restaurant which we both love, annoyingly they don't play the instrumental version of the Aladdin soundtrack but it still has a really nice atmosphere. I also love the variety of food on offer, means I can try foods I've never had the opportunity to try before. It also felt like everyone bar us had press weekend passes

I think we wandered for a bit going 'everything has a long queue'. We then settled on Space Mountain: Mission 2 which we used our special tickets to get inside, this is when we found the massive queue, I hate queuing on staircases, especially the ones in this queue, oh well, still an awesome ride.

We then used our special ticket to get through fastpass for Buzz Lightyear: Laser Blast. It's rare that I do this ride despite my love of shooty rides.

I never seem to do that well but I managed to do ok this time round

On our travels to Fantasyland we spotted a random mass of characters, we managed to get photos with a few despite the tiny child of evil who kept going up to the character as I was getting a picture taken with the characters.

Did I mention she has GINGER hair?

We then went to the back of Fantasyland for the storybook ride. It stopped randomly a few times which was slightly amusing. It's a very nice gentle ride with some epic bits of theming.

We then fastpassed Peter Pan's flight which is cool. Tight corners and sudden stops hurt though lol, apart from that it's really cool, then again I have a soft spot for anything Peter Pan themed, especially if it includes Hook.

We then continued our random walk around the park and happened to catch a couple of the 'happenings' going on, we also spotted a particular photographer taking special pics at the Aladdin one

We then ended up in Frontierland and we spotted the newly refurbed Molly Brown so hoping we would get a chance to get on we queued up for it. Turns out they were just sending it around empty but it meant we got a nice close up of the awesome job they've done on the refurb (read as: completely tore apart and built from scratch).

We finally got on the deteriorating Mark Twain. The boat was being followed by a mass of birds which was quite amusing, every now and then one would fly really close to where we were standing.

Due to how busy the park was and our eagerness to get on ToT we went back to the Studios to ride ToT.

It's still such an awesome ride, even if not all the bell hops get into their role as much as they used to.

And that would also be our last ride of the trip which is a shame but that's what happens when you go on a very busy weekend. We picked up our bags and went to get the TGV to Lille to catch our Eurostar train. We had like 45 mins in Lille so we decided to walk around a bit and grab some food. It's a really nice place and we're considering stopping off there for longer on a future trip. The buildings are absolutely awesome.

We ended up having a McDonalds just because it was cheap and quick (and everything else looked quite the opposite apart from the Quick which we didn't see till afterwards). They had some really odd things on the menu, the thing that really confused me was KIWI ON A STICK! Annoyingly I didn't buy one or take a photo of the poster but yeah, randoms. Have a pic of my big burger of nom.

It was called a Chicken Mythic and was actually really nice. We annoyingly had to eat our food really quick as we were pushing getting the train but we made it in good time so all is good in the world. And that was the end of yet another interesting trip to Disney, thanks for reading and all comments are appreciated etc.

 

[alexr]

Cool Report, I love DLP partly because was my first ever theme park (Minus Blackpool)

You went at quite a quiet time of year