Our Sunday at the Parks

It's Disneyland Paris! This is a view of the castle from the side after viewing the grisly (but not too scary) dragon underneath. Josh and I just saw the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" on Tuesday in Version Originale (English with French subtitles) so we know that dragons are our friends!

Beautifully themed ticket booth & Gallery alongside/ behind Main Street. They have one of these behind the shops on either side of Main Street. This was heading toward the entrance when a parade was going on - so nice to have a clear exit! We saw glimpses of a parade as well as a stage show and both looked excellent, we'll be back again another day just for those.

Front of le Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant, taken from Main Street, USA. Wouldn't be Disneyland without a choo-choo, right? I thought these candied apples would have been fitting next to the Snow White attraction, but these are in the heart of Discoveryland. In general Disneyland is themed to America, so I wondered if the candied apples were something thought of as a typical American snack, but I saw a bunch of them at Auchan (that hypermarket I mentioned a couple posts ago) so they must be the usual around here? We didn't get one (I'm allergic to apples!) but noticed several people having a hard time biting through the candy shell.

Loved the style and colors of these attraction posters. The lights reflected in the glass are from the main entrance turnstiles. 

More posters, thought that the steam coming out of the coffee cup was a nice touch.

And, more posters! These were in that gallery behind the Main Street shops.

The Nautilus was a walk through attraction and was one of my favorites. You walk down a stairway into a dark hallway and have no idea what is coming, whether it's a ride or if there's a big octopus waiting down there for you! To my delight it was a tour of sorts of the watercraft. Filled with treasure, furniture, books, luxurious rugs and musical instruments. about half way through there is a large round window where you can see an octopus is about to attack, or is it? Maybe they're our friends like those dragons ;).

I didn't know what I was looking at in the second photo since I'm used to our bright white mountain in Florida! Space Mountain is an explosion of color & I can't wait to ride it! It looks like you start out shooting through that tube on the right which can be seen in both photos.

The wonderful exterior of Videopolis makes way for a lunch spot! I didn't know what to expect inside, but it's where we took a break for a Fanta, which for the record tasted more like OJ and less like pop as it does in the US. The crazy thing about this place was that it was SO quiet! There were a ton of people in there enjoying their food with their eyes glued to the giant movie screen! We joined them and enjoyed the quiet. They have those old cartoons playing at a couple locations in Disney World, but I've never actually watched one all the way through. We sat through two here, and they were highly enjoyable!

Big Thunder Mountain was on its own island! You board the trains in Frontierland and then you speed down through the cold darkness and zoom up into the light and you're on the mountain! Somehow it felt like it lasted longer than the ride in Florida, probably because we didn't know what was coming next! Josh and I agreed that our favorite part was getting to and from the mountain.

Pirate's Beach, a playground for the kiddos with Skull Rock as a backdrop. Star Tours, oddly located in Disneyland Park with a very different, but awesome facade, was the exact same ride as in FL. We almost tricked ourselves into thinking we were home and had imagined our whole trip. Then the little robot said everything in French, so that was cleared up pretty quickly! Then Spooky Phantom Manor! A very grand entrance... how much should I tell?? Can I say that the stretching room might actually be stretching?!

Another piece of photographic evidence of Josh's great aiming skills, and p.s. we were really there!

We got over to Walt Disney Studios Park at the end of the day and it felt like everything was closing. We'll have to start out there next trip. There was a five minute wait for Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, so I hopped in line and had a thrill! We also did the Armageddon attraction, which except for a spiel by Michael Clarke Duncan was all in French. It really could have been Armageddon for all we knew, and we would have just giggled along with anything that happened.

We've only just scratched the surface, so I'm sure there will be more Disney posts to come! Let us know if you have any specific questions about the parks for us to find out or if there's anything you want a picture of :)

I'm off to do the oh-so-French task of finishing our laundry and then I might go get a haircut, after brushing up on hair salon vocab, of course!