Monday 26 May 2014

Travel: Disneyland, Paris

Last weekend me and my boyfriend took a long weekend break to Paris as part of my birthday celebrations. I chose Paris mainly because I wanted to sample Disneyland. Having done Disney in Florida last year, I knew that my expectations were already high, so was prepared!

On our first full day here we had breakfast in Annettes diner in Disney village before entering the park. I'd read reviews on this place when researching and it had pretty good reviews, however I thought our breakfast was a little disappointing. I then realised I didnt read any breakfast reviews, and that they were all based on main meals, so I didnt make too much of a judgement! The queues in the evening were huge so they can't be that bad!

For those that have never been to Disneyland in Paris, id advise you to go to Walt Disney Studios first as this park shuts a few hours earlier to Disneyland. The studios isnt huge, I think we completed what we wanted to go on within 4 - 5 hours. You can make a full day of this if you stop for lunch and watch a few shows etc, but being conscious of the time (we only had a day ticket) I wanted to head across to the other park as I knew this was bigger and would take us longer to get round.

Disney Studios is Hollywood Studios (FL) replica,  but on a smaller scale. They have the well loved rides here such as Areosmith's rock n roller coaster (one of my faves!), as well as The Tower of Terror (hate this but got dragged on it yet again!). They also had a few rides that FL hasn't got, such as RC Racer (which was a little scary for me!) and Armageddon.

Disneyland is probably twice, if not 3 times the size of Disney studios. This has a lot more of the gentler rides, with a few 'adult' ones mixed in there (Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain etc). We managed to experience a lot of rides that we otherwise wouldn't have bothered with unless we had children, but because we were almost 'time killing', I didnt want to waste our money and go home, so we went on the teacups, carousel and Peter Pans flight, like the big kids we are! Again, we didnt see any shows here, neither did we watch the disney parade, simply because id seen it in florida last year, so took this opportunity to go on more rides whilst others were pre occupied with that = less queue time! I remember spending half an hr or so getting lost in the labyrinth,  which again, is probably something we wouldnt have done otherwise.

Unfortunately my feet let me down towards the end of the day (my foot arches are ready to drop :-( ) so I couldn't hold out to see the fireworks. My pain and tiredness took over so all I cared about was getting back to the hotel to rest/sleep! Although I was a little disappointed,  knowing I'd seen all the displays in FL helped make it a little less painful!

Honestly? If you've never done Florida before, then you'll love the Paris version. However if you have, you'll see a massive difference. In Florida, every single aspect of the park has attention to detail like you would not believe, from the flower displays to the organization of the customers getting on and off rides, to litter being picked up within seconds, to stand-by cleaners in every toilet that you visited. There was such a nice flow to everything which is how i believe Disney want it to be for their customers. However I noticed quite a lot of flaws with Paris, which although didn't make it unpleasant for us, certainly made us aware of improvements that could be made. Lets not turn this into a Florida v Paris though!

Here are a few photos from our trip...

NB - For those that may have missed it, I have a giveaway open to win a bottle of bioderma (yes, the stuff beauty bloggers raved about!). Theres 2 bottles up for grabs so get entering!
Bioderma Giveaway




I'm well aware I have a strange concoction of colours going on right now... I wasn't expecting it to be so warm so had to do a last minute cardy change!

This castle is so small compared to Florida!





SHARE:

7 comments

  1. Love Disneyland Paris! I've never been to the one in the US so don't have anything to compare it to, I've always thought that as soon as you go to the huge US Parks, Paris is probably ruined for you because it must seem so tiny. Annettes is great for the evening but not been for breakfast before!

    Chloe x
    newgirlintoon.co.uk

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Definitely agree with you there! I knew I'd compare though, its so hard not to.. I was doing in subconsciously! Yeah - we probably made the mistake of going at breakfast to Annettes instead of tea - we were the only ones in there! The breakfast was 'cooked' within about 7 mins of us ordering it! The beans came out in a small plastic pot on our plate - it all bit cheaply done and the majority of the food tasted pretty cheap too. x

      Delete
  2. The photo of you in the teacup is my fave!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aww thanks, I like this one too, albeit my chubby face, haha. Damn you weight gain! x

      Delete
  3. I went to the Paris Disney with school 13 years ago. Oh wow, that makes me sound so old!

    Having just come back from Florida, I really want to go back to the Paris one for a cheaper experience. But I can see how things might not be as organised. They seem to have SO many staff in Florida. There are always loads in the smallest shops, the rides have people guiding people to their seats and when they get off.

    The castle.. I don't remember the Paris one at all but the Florida one is beautiful.

    If you've seen the Fireworks at the Magic Kingdom, you'll probably know that the Paris one's wont be able to even compete!

    Corinne x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with the staff thing in Florida - They were everywhere. Paris' castle isn't half as impressive - I thought it was a lot smaller and the pink just doesn't cut it with me, I think it makes it look cheap! And yeah, I saw the MK fireworks and knew that Paris wouldn't come close so although I missed them, I wasn't too disheartened! Any plans to go back to FL next year? x

      Delete
  4. The picture of you in the tea cup is awesome! We are planing a day in Disneyland Paris next month, hopefully everything works out and we can do it!

    Lovely post,
    Diana | Life in German,

    ReplyDelete

Comment away! I love reading them :-)

Blogger Template Created by pipdig