So I'm not going to delve into the whole trip but I'll write up about the actual Halloween party and then some other notable things that happened over the next two days.
Saturday 31st October
After arriving in the afternoon via Eurostar with Patrick, we popped into the Studios and then checked into our hotel in Val d'Europe (Residhome - it's fab). After sorting ourselves out and getting into costume (explorers/Jungle cruise skippers) we ventured back on to the RER and over to the park.
Getting into the parks was fun, just crazy crowds trying to get through the army of staff checking tickets were valid for the event (usually ignore this hassle by getting in the park in the afternoon). Once through it was all good though. It was then a case of trying to navigate to a safe area to maybe do a ride or two before the party began at 8pm. Turns out the regular crowd were waiting for Dreams to begin so everyone was diverted off into Discoveryland. As you can imagine the queues in this area were silly so we followed the path round to Fantasyland. This is when we realised we'd get a rather unique view of Disney Dreams. Cue us trying to figure out which scene it was on. Some pics...
Special guide for the evening
We never did get a chance to see who was inside
It was very entertaining watching it from the back of Fantasyland and utterly surreal. Even the staff were singing along etc. After some initial faffing about we ended up in Toad Hall for a spot of dinner. The food has been totally upgraded in here. I had a very tasty chicken burger (the bun was an English muffin!) and the chips were really nice!
Some faff then ensued as we tried to work out if anything was actually open or any meet and greets were going on. We eventually ended up in the Aladdin walk-through which was being used as a unique queueline for an Aladdin meet and greet. Seeing as it started in 5 minutes we thought we'd join the queue as we were hoping most of the Aladdin characters would be out like the previous year. If I could go back in time we would have totally avoided this like the plague. 30 minutes had gone by and I think we had only moved from the first scene to the second (those who have been through will realise this is not a big distance). Everyone was already getting a bit tetchy and most of the time we only moved because loads of people were giving up. Were the characters even out yet? No one knew anything, instead everyone patiently just stood waiting with the same 20 second music loop going round and round. In the end we had ended up waiting NINETY MINUTES!!! We were fuming, as was pretty much everyone else in the queue. We'd all paid to get into this special party, what the hell could have kept the queue from moving 90% of the time? Have some photos from the queue...
The lovely cast member handing out Haribo for the meet and greet (it's the sponsor for their Halloween, they hand it out at the end of shows etc) came over and was pretty apologetic about the whole thing. When we asked how it was moving so slowly her only response was that it was due to a special 'timed' card for disabled guests. Right, now obviously we've all seen this sort of thing on rides etc but I have never seen a queue move so slowly before. I mean, standing on the spot for 5-10 minutes at a time. It's almost like they messed up with these timed cards and sent everyone to the same place at the same time and they were struggling to - theoretically - merge the queues to make it a bit more fair. We later wrote a compliment card for the fab cast member Emilie but I will be writing a formal complaint because I've never seen such a poorly run meet and greet.
It was slightly salvaged by an epic Jafar going before us from the "second queue" (nicely dubbed by the peeps next to us) and an adorable Ewok (OMFG I think people were crying from the cuteness overload) who was nearly kidnapped by Jasmine. We were slightly disappointed the Sultan/Jafar/Abu weren't out, seemed like a step back after last year.
So after that initial disaster we needed a sort of plan to see and do as much as possible. We started by catching the first performance of Minnie's pirate academy. This is the second year of this show and it's just fab from start to finish. It simply puts a smile on my face, from the ridiculous song list to the mass of people actually joining in, to the epic pirates and the amazing pirate ship float to the fireworks. Just a joy. Oh and it has ghost-theme balloons thrown about, what's not to love about that?
Castle had special projection mapping all night
We saw Thumper and Miss Bunny posing for photos outside Plaza Gardens. Miss Bunny was being very mischievous which was good fun to watch for 5 minutes.
It was then time to get a spot for the evening performance of the Halloween parade, Mickey's Halloween Celebration. It's a great little parade with a brilliant song. If anything it could do with being a bit longer. Photos...
Hehe, the dancers that are plants always amuse me
We were going to avoid Frontierland because it didn't feel like anything special (apart from a Princess Tiana meet and greet) was happening. Then Patrick saw on Twitter that apparently Phantom Manor was getting some special projections. Excited we rushed over there. Turns out it was just the yearly Jack Skellington projection. Then we noticed something happening at the bottom of the queue area. So glad we went over there, the area was covered in smoke and UV lighting and they had 'spirits' roaming the area, it was super creepy and cool.
We then came across one of the park bands. They were playing tracks from the Princess and the Frog soundtrack which was quite nice. As always they were fantastic and the banjo player was hilarious, at one point he got 'freaked out' and started running and screaming around the area, passers by had absolutely no idea what was happening - it was amazing.
We then ventured into Adventureland. We were going to do Indy but it had a consistent 45 minute queue all night!
We came across Donald and Daisy in safari outfits - well this was a photo op not to miss and the queue wasn't too long - about 15 minutes. Behind us in the queue was a British lady (who was a bit of a Disney goon, several times to Paris, 7 to Orlando and got married at Walt Disney World) who we had a nice chat with. She was with a bunch of friends (also goons) but they were queuing for other characters. Always nice to have random conversations with new people in parks.
After grabbing the pic we walk along and find Mickey and Minnie also in safari outfits. However they didn't have a queue, more of a crazy mob so we continued onwards. We just missed the fire peeps on the beach outside Pirates which was annoying but the lighting in the area was fab.
We had noticed that Casey Jr was open till midnight so we headed over there (was about 11:45). It was open and had no queue (also running both trains which was odd) so we headed straight on. The cast member told us we were in the wrong area - we should be in Adventureland! Ha, I loved that people got our basic costumes and thought they were awesome (Sid the snake got a lot of love too). So yeah, at midnight we got several goes on Casey Jr. With lots of fans, singing the song and ride op going mental for re-rides. It was a rather surreal moment and my highlight of the weekend.
After watching Minnie's pirate dance party again we headed into Discoveryland to check out the - and this is what it was called in the guide - "Halloween Disco - Very dance party" We were highly amused of this title and kept doing doge memes.
The dance party was quite an unusual experience. An outdoor nightclub in Discoveryland and Buzz Lightyear is the DJ. Lots of people in tight costumes dancing on podiums, lots of smoke machines and fire. It was pretty awesome. Lots of people were really getting in the party mood too.
So, what did we learn? That Disney know how to throw a party and they need to do it more often.
We then went back over to the castle stage to end the night (at 00:40) for one more pirate dance party! This time we decided to get close to the front and join in. Felt like a tool but it was also hilarious and turning round to notice EVERYONE doing the silly dance moves was a joy to behold.
What a way to end the day! I just found a decent video on youtube too if you're interested...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2VZ2akHj-c[/youtube]
We then left the park, utterly exhausted after a long day and walked back to the hotel. It was a shame the start of our evening was ruined but it got so much better as the night went on and the parties and the midnight rides on Casey Jr were awesome highlights. I should also note that so many people dressed up this year, it's becoming such a big thing now. We saw an epic trio, two were fairies from Sleeping Beauty and the other was Sleeping Beauty but half her dress was pink and the other half was blue. Genius. The sheer effort going into costumes is insane. Hopefully we'll be back next year and put more effort into our costumes!
Other highlights of this trip included many re-rides on Rock 'n' Rollercoaster, sometimes we had no sound, then we had sound but it cracked when the train moved and a perfect audio but the mix we don't like! We saw Push, the talking trashcan!!!! Like, for Disney fans seeing Push is a big highlight as it's so rare to see him out and about. Generally able to see and do everything we wanted bar Agrabah cafe. Walts was amazing as always and the service has really sped up which is fantastic, it's not as much of a time warp as it used to be. Anyway, enough babble, more pictures...
Main Street railway station going under massive refurb
Not sure about the new colour scheme
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Soooo cool
New colour scheme is very colourful
Big Thunder Mountain also went down for it's MASSIVE 13 month refurbishment on the Monday so Sunday we grabbed one last ride. They've also built a huge bridge to get over to the island. It's going to be a weird year without BTM soaking up the crowds.
Anyway, thanks for reading/looking at my abundance of photos.
Saturday 31st October
After arriving in the afternoon via Eurostar with Patrick, we popped into the Studios and then checked into our hotel in Val d'Europe (Residhome - it's fab). After sorting ourselves out and getting into costume (explorers/Jungle cruise skippers) we ventured back on to the RER and over to the park.
Getting into the parks was fun, just crazy crowds trying to get through the army of staff checking tickets were valid for the event (usually ignore this hassle by getting in the park in the afternoon). Once through it was all good though. It was then a case of trying to navigate to a safe area to maybe do a ride or two before the party began at 8pm. Turns out the regular crowd were waiting for Dreams to begin so everyone was diverted off into Discoveryland. As you can imagine the queues in this area were silly so we followed the path round to Fantasyland. This is when we realised we'd get a rather unique view of Disney Dreams. Cue us trying to figure out which scene it was on. Some pics...
Special guide for the evening
We never did get a chance to see who was inside
It was very entertaining watching it from the back of Fantasyland and utterly surreal. Even the staff were singing along etc. After some initial faffing about we ended up in Toad Hall for a spot of dinner. The food has been totally upgraded in here. I had a very tasty chicken burger (the bun was an English muffin!) and the chips were really nice!
Some faff then ensued as we tried to work out if anything was actually open or any meet and greets were going on. We eventually ended up in the Aladdin walk-through which was being used as a unique queueline for an Aladdin meet and greet. Seeing as it started in 5 minutes we thought we'd join the queue as we were hoping most of the Aladdin characters would be out like the previous year. If I could go back in time we would have totally avoided this like the plague. 30 minutes had gone by and I think we had only moved from the first scene to the second (those who have been through will realise this is not a big distance). Everyone was already getting a bit tetchy and most of the time we only moved because loads of people were giving up. Were the characters even out yet? No one knew anything, instead everyone patiently just stood waiting with the same 20 second music loop going round and round. In the end we had ended up waiting NINETY MINUTES!!! We were fuming, as was pretty much everyone else in the queue. We'd all paid to get into this special party, what the hell could have kept the queue from moving 90% of the time? Have some photos from the queue...
The lovely cast member handing out Haribo for the meet and greet (it's the sponsor for their Halloween, they hand it out at the end of shows etc) came over and was pretty apologetic about the whole thing. When we asked how it was moving so slowly her only response was that it was due to a special 'timed' card for disabled guests. Right, now obviously we've all seen this sort of thing on rides etc but I have never seen a queue move so slowly before. I mean, standing on the spot for 5-10 minutes at a time. It's almost like they messed up with these timed cards and sent everyone to the same place at the same time and they were struggling to - theoretically - merge the queues to make it a bit more fair. We later wrote a compliment card for the fab cast member Emilie but I will be writing a formal complaint because I've never seen such a poorly run meet and greet.
It was slightly salvaged by an epic Jafar going before us from the "second queue" (nicely dubbed by the peeps next to us) and an adorable Ewok (OMFG I think people were crying from the cuteness overload) who was nearly kidnapped by Jasmine. We were slightly disappointed the Sultan/Jafar/Abu weren't out, seemed like a step back after last year.
So after that initial disaster we needed a sort of plan to see and do as much as possible. We started by catching the first performance of Minnie's pirate academy. This is the second year of this show and it's just fab from start to finish. It simply puts a smile on my face, from the ridiculous song list to the mass of people actually joining in, to the epic pirates and the amazing pirate ship float to the fireworks. Just a joy. Oh and it has ghost-theme balloons thrown about, what's not to love about that?
Castle had special projection mapping all night
We saw Thumper and Miss Bunny posing for photos outside Plaza Gardens. Miss Bunny was being very mischievous which was good fun to watch for 5 minutes.
It was then time to get a spot for the evening performance of the Halloween parade, Mickey's Halloween Celebration. It's a great little parade with a brilliant song. If anything it could do with being a bit longer. Photos...
Hehe, the dancers that are plants always amuse me
We were going to avoid Frontierland because it didn't feel like anything special (apart from a Princess Tiana meet and greet) was happening. Then Patrick saw on Twitter that apparently Phantom Manor was getting some special projections. Excited we rushed over there. Turns out it was just the yearly Jack Skellington projection. Then we noticed something happening at the bottom of the queue area. So glad we went over there, the area was covered in smoke and UV lighting and they had 'spirits' roaming the area, it was super creepy and cool.
We then came across one of the park bands. They were playing tracks from the Princess and the Frog soundtrack which was quite nice. As always they were fantastic and the banjo player was hilarious, at one point he got 'freaked out' and started running and screaming around the area, passers by had absolutely no idea what was happening - it was amazing.
We then ventured into Adventureland. We were going to do Indy but it had a consistent 45 minute queue all night!
We came across Donald and Daisy in safari outfits - well this was a photo op not to miss and the queue wasn't too long - about 15 minutes. Behind us in the queue was a British lady (who was a bit of a Disney goon, several times to Paris, 7 to Orlando and got married at Walt Disney World) who we had a nice chat with. She was with a bunch of friends (also goons) but they were queuing for other characters. Always nice to have random conversations with new people in parks.
After grabbing the pic we walk along and find Mickey and Minnie also in safari outfits. However they didn't have a queue, more of a crazy mob so we continued onwards. We just missed the fire peeps on the beach outside Pirates which was annoying but the lighting in the area was fab.
We had noticed that Casey Jr was open till midnight so we headed over there (was about 11:45). It was open and had no queue (also running both trains which was odd) so we headed straight on. The cast member told us we were in the wrong area - we should be in Adventureland! Ha, I loved that people got our basic costumes and thought they were awesome (Sid the snake got a lot of love too). So yeah, at midnight we got several goes on Casey Jr. With lots of fans, singing the song and ride op going mental for re-rides. It was a rather surreal moment and my highlight of the weekend.
After watching Minnie's pirate dance party again we headed into Discoveryland to check out the - and this is what it was called in the guide - "Halloween Disco - Very dance party" We were highly amused of this title and kept doing doge memes.
The dance party was quite an unusual experience. An outdoor nightclub in Discoveryland and Buzz Lightyear is the DJ. Lots of people in tight costumes dancing on podiums, lots of smoke machines and fire. It was pretty awesome. Lots of people were really getting in the party mood too.
So, what did we learn? That Disney know how to throw a party and they need to do it more often.
We then went back over to the castle stage to end the night (at 00:40) for one more pirate dance party! This time we decided to get close to the front and join in. Felt like a tool but it was also hilarious and turning round to notice EVERYONE doing the silly dance moves was a joy to behold.
What a way to end the day! I just found a decent video on youtube too if you're interested...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2VZ2akHj-c[/youtube]
We then left the park, utterly exhausted after a long day and walked back to the hotel. It was a shame the start of our evening was ruined but it got so much better as the night went on and the parties and the midnight rides on Casey Jr were awesome highlights. I should also note that so many people dressed up this year, it's becoming such a big thing now. We saw an epic trio, two were fairies from Sleeping Beauty and the other was Sleeping Beauty but half her dress was pink and the other half was blue. Genius. The sheer effort going into costumes is insane. Hopefully we'll be back next year and put more effort into our costumes!
Other highlights of this trip included many re-rides on Rock 'n' Rollercoaster, sometimes we had no sound, then we had sound but it cracked when the train moved and a perfect audio but the mix we don't like! We saw Push, the talking trashcan!!!! Like, for Disney fans seeing Push is a big highlight as it's so rare to see him out and about. Generally able to see and do everything we wanted bar Agrabah cafe. Walts was amazing as always and the service has really sped up which is fantastic, it's not as much of a time warp as it used to be. Anyway, enough babble, more pictures...
Main Street railway station going under massive refurb
Not sure about the new colour scheme
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Soooo cool
New colour scheme is very colourful
Big Thunder Mountain also went down for it's MASSIVE 13 month refurbishment on the Monday so Sunday we grabbed one last ride. They've also built a huge bridge to get over to the island. It's going to be a weird year without BTM soaking up the crowds.
Anyway, thanks for reading/looking at my abundance of photos.
