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DLP 25th Anniversary April 2017

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CF Legend
Patrick and I decided to take a relaxed weekend over the May bank holiday weekend to check out the new things at Disneyland Paris for the 25th anniversary. The resort was absolutely rammed over all 3 days so we didn't actually ride much but there were plenty of surprises throughout the trip.

Saturday 29th

The weather on the Saturday was fantastic, we entered the park to discover the awesome Main Street band playing some tunes.

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Tinkerbell can be found in various poses on top of all the Main Street gas lamps

We headed into Discoveryland to discover Space Mountain was in soft opening! For those not in the know, it has been closed for the last 6 months to make some changes for Hyperspace Mountain. Despite all the signage all interior effects and lights were off bar a few Mission 2 sound effects and a couple of star lights. However it meant we got to check out the shiny new trains!

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So, the new trains... Fairly comfortable, the restraints are really tight though, not much moving around now! Obviously without those chunky restraints though there is no headbanging so the whole ride felt really smooth, it also felt faster. However there are minor issues with these new trains. This is all about the leg room, in the front of each car half of your space is occupied with a wheel cover, we both had to sit with one of our legs at an uncomfortable angle. This also means it's more awkward if you have a bag which is not ideal when everyone is trying to load/unload as quick as poss. On top of this there is no longer a step incorporated into the seat design which means getting in and out is just a general mess (always was, but now it's worse).

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There is more good to come out of these new trains but I'll come back to that later on. For now, food was required so we headed over to Hakuna Matata in Adventureland for some tasty grub. Patrick tried a new menu item, a bread bowl with some things in it. It got a thumbs up. I had a tasty kebab, I really recommend this fast food restaurant, always tasty.

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To get an idea of how stupidly busy the park was I took a photo of the queue for the treehouse...

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That... That is a 20 minute queue for the bloomin' treehouse. There's never a queue for that. Seeing as there were gross queues we meandered around Adventureland for a bit.

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We then headed back over to Discoveryland for Star Tours II. So glad this version is now in Paris, I love it to bits. Slightly miffed everything is in French and not multi-lingual. Everything looks great though, the new Star Traders at the exit also looks fantastic.

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We then decided to go find a spot for the parade. We have never seen so many people waiting so long before the parade before. We're talking about 90 minutes beforehand. We managed to get a semi-decent spot but due to annoying people it wasn't perfect and it got insanely busy, we had safety concerns for those on the bridge, it was completely full of people, with kids hanging off the lamps.

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Have to commend the cast members though, they did their best at trying to control the crazy crowds everywhere, actually, that goes for the staff throughout the whole weekend. They were all incredible. We saw them enforce park rules (selfie sticks and smoking) as well as generally being happy and playful, it really added to our trip. The parade was ok, I love some of the kinetic pieces of the parade floats (the acrobatics on the Toy Story float is fab) and the dragon is fantastic in Paris, it feels really intimidating and it got a massive applause after it blew fire. The song is ok but rather forgettable compared to the last few songs the park has had. Photo time...

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After the parade we headed over to the Studios for a couple of quick rides. Ratatouille was running really well with the final kitchen scene pumping out some wonderful smells. Rock was great, lots of smoke and we got audio! We ended our time in the Studios with some Tower of Terror goodness where the staff were in a super playful mood, it was awesome.

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Back over to Disneyland for some night time fun at Phantom Manor before watching the new night show, Illuminations.

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So what did we think of Disney Illuminations? Not a lot of good things. It's very poor in comparison to the excellent Dreams. The combination of scenes is random, Mickey is sort of introduced and then totally forgotten about, the transitions between some of the later sequences are laughable and it's just a bit rubbish. I'm sure most people who don't have much to compare to will love it. However after a performance of Dreams there would be massive applause and people would sing during most of the songs. Illuminations ends with a distinct lack of emotion, a very audible "meh".

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peep

CF Legend
Sunday 30th

We opted to start our second day in the Studios where we found another band. Yay, love live music. They played a great range of film music too, from Ratatouille to the Star Wars Catina bar tune.

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We then proceeded to join another full performance of Mickey and the Magician. Still such an excellent show that everyone must see if they go to the Studios. The production quality is just nuts. We decided to pop over to Ratatouille which was misbehaving slightly as we were on ride. Great to see scene loops doing their job though.

It was then over to Disneyland, we grabbed some fastpasses for later and went to grab a spot for a new show for the anniversary... Happy birthday Disneyland Paris. It's a neat concept, a song and dance number representing each land of the park. It's a bit OTT and yet feels rather flat at the end, maybe they need to make more use of the song written for the anniversary?

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Still can't get over Paris doing the Tokyo thing of sitting on the floor for shows

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We then went for our reservation at the very expensive restaurant, Walts. Sitting above Main Street each room is themed to a different part of the park with the walls covered in concept art. It's a really fab restaurant but we've avoided it for some time because we didn't like the look of the more expensive and "fancy" menu. We finally caved in to check out the new menu. Food certainly looks fancy and it was a lot more filling than we were anticipating, lots of flavours going on too. Still prefer the older menu if I'm honest but I'm no longer against returning.

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We'd seen on Twitter that Space Mountain had re-opened for some more soft openings so we headed over. They were now using the inside queue (everyone was sent through the single rider line the day before) so we got to see the new Star Wars posters (nothing too exciting). This time we got audio though, Mission 2 soundtrack but OMG it sounded incredible through the new speaker system. Like, I could hear parts of the soundtrack I'd never heard before, it was bliss. We ran around quickly to sneak in for another go before it closed again.

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There was oddly no queue to meet Vader so we went to say hello and also get a nosey around the new meet and greet location. This is a much better use of the space compared to when it was the shop. Great move by the park.

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Continuing with the Star Wars love it was back on Star Tours II for us. We got my favourite ending this time, excellent reaction from everyone as always (hint: it takes place on Naboo). It started raining which was annoying so we headed up to Fantasyland for some Small World times. Thinking the rain might deter everyone else we joined the queue for Big Thunder Mountain. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea. 90 minutes later and we were on and for the first time we got to experience the new finale. It looks great but I can't help but feel it could do with some practical effects like some smoke.

We then ran jumped over to an empty Indiana Jones, always a great ride when the track is wet. We then went back down to Phantom Manor before deciding to leave due to the inclement weather, we'll get to see Illuminations again on another visit. Instead we went into the Disneyland Hotel for 25th anniversary themed cocktails.

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It was tasty and full of alcohol.
 

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CF Legend
Monday 1st May

Our third and final day began with a really early start to catch some Extra Magic Hours. They didn't open many of the attractions which led to those that were open to be a bit busy. Oh well, I still got on Orbitron for the first time (always seems to have a queue when I visit).

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We obviously took a couple of flights on Star Tours because it's the best. We then headed into Fantasyland where we took a ride on the Carousel and then had 2 goes on Casey Jr (I can't help but sing along to this soundtrack). We took another ride on the happiest cruise at it's a small world before heading back into Discoveryland for some more Star Tours.

Space Mountain was then soft-opened again! Still so good to hear that soundtrack so clearly, can't wait for a bit of Star Wars to be blasting through them.

We had lunch next at the Lucky Nugget saloon where all of the live entertainment was going on. It started with a pianist which was nice, then we got the story of Big Thunder via Mickey and friends in puppet form before something out of Avenue Q came out to sing a song to a gentleman who looked like he really didn't want to be on stage. Overall it was really nice and added a really great atmosphere. The food was ok, the 25th anniversary desert option was... interesting but tasty.

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We then ended our trip with... yep, more Discoveryland! Had some more great rides on Buzz Lightyear, Star Tours and Space Mountain (they even started testing fastpasses in the afternoon).

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It was a really nice, relaxed weekend considering how awful the crowds were. It was nice to see the staff seem genuinely happy and everything just looks great at the moment. Our only issue was the lack of decent merchandise and for some reason there were no pins (avid collector), really odd. Oh well, we'll be back in August for actual Hyperspace mountain and the refurbed Pirates of the Caribbean! (so excited)


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Full photo album - https://imageshack.com/a/lVnl/1


Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed my ramblings. :)
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
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Social Media Team
Sounds like a great trip! The quality of some of the rides really does look fantastic.
 

Pink Cadillac

Giga Poster
Nice report! I didn't know people had to take bags on space mountain. What if they have a huge rucksack! :p It's cool to see more pics of the trains
 
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