Normally, my birthday is in the summer months. It signals the first heatwave of summer, and is usually spent in my bathers splashing around in our lake. This year I'm having December in the cold, and my birthday followed the first snow of the season. Saturday therefore dawned cold and frosty. Properly rugged up in my jeans, coat, gloves and scarf, I hopped on the red RER C for the first time to take the trip out to Val-de-Marne - Chessy, Paris' Disney Central.
I was getting thoroughly excited as I walked from the RER station along with the crowds through to the main entrance of Disneyland. Smart move asking about student discounts - saved myself five euro and the ticket was valid for Walt Disney Studios Park as well. Didn't care. All I was interested in was Disneyland.
Main Street, USA. The first Land in the park. I've been to Disneyland before, mind you. Tokyo Disneyland, 2008, aged 15. That was different. Tokyo was newer, more geared towards the rides and big commercialised stuff. Disneyland Paris is more geared towards original Disney - the fairytales, Song of the South, that sorta stuff. I walked into Main Street USA and felt like I was at home. Fairy lights, snow everywhere - and not all of it was fake, either. Slippery white stuff. Weird.
The first thing I saw was Lancelot's Carousel. I love carousels. I jumped in line. See, in Tokyo, Kara and I decided to go on all the little-kiddy rides, cause they're so much fun. There was an added bonus - the lines were no more than 10 minutes long, cause everyone else was riding Buzz Lightyear and stuff over in TomorrowLand. We went on so many different rides because we never had to wait. Unfortunately my birthday this year fell on a Saturday, which, while it meant I was free to go to Disneyland, also meant everyone else was too. I was the lone over-10 in the Lancelot queue unaccompanied by an under-10, and we were all queuing for 40 minutes for a two-minute ride. Well. I was in for an interesting day.
I just went with the flow as best I could. Almost everything I wanted to see and do was in FantasyLand, which has all the traditional Disney from the movies - you know, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, the girly ones, I guess. I did the Mad Hatter's Tea Cups, It's A Small World, Sleeping Beauty's Castle (in passing), found my way by accident into The Fairy Tale Lands, traversed either by boat or by Casey Jr., the Dumbo Circus Train, and as evening approached I boarded the Disneyland Railway for a freezing cold sightseeing tour all around Disneyland.
I took a break after that and had a really bad burger and fries at Toad Hall, the British restaurant in Fantasyland that played Gilbert and Sullivan - the whole 'He is an En-glish-man, OH! He i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-s an Englishmannnn!' was both comforting and annoying (especially since the food wasn't anywhere near as good as the music). I then proceeded over to AdventureLand next door. There was a compulsory excursion involved. Swiss Family Robinson is actually nothing to do with Disney, but since there's a Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse in every Disneyland I've been to and I love the book, I feel the need to explore. As expected, I spent the excursion clinging to the stairs trying to overcome vertigo and criticising the lack of adherence to the book - too many rooms, they didn't lug a piano up the tree, how did they forget one of the four sons??
And while I was there, I proceeded to get lost in the pirates caves below the treehouse, find Davy Jones' Locker and end up ogling the (completely nautically inaccurate) sailing ship of Captain Hook. And on my way out of AdventureLand via Aladdin's Magical Passage I thought - why not? Let's go explore the Haunted Mansion! Keep in mind I am TOTALLY not good with horror here, guys.
The queue at Phantom Manor was actually moving pretty quickly, so the 30 or 40 minutes it took to get to the Manor doors passed almost before I noticed. The ride was kinda similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas at Tokyo Japan, just themed around a Wild West Haunted Manor rather than a Tim Burton movie. I didn't even freak out too much. And as we exited the house I heard another scream from the FrontierLand island and I though...why not? Let's have a go on your first ever rollercoaster!
Big Thunder Mountain, even at 8 o'clock at night, is hugely popular and has a huge queue. I stood in it for about 40 minutes or so as I got closer and closer to the front of the line and figured out how this thing works. See, Big Thunder Mountain Rollercoaster operates on the island in the middle of the lake in FrontierLand, but you board on the mainland. This then entails that you must somehow get from the mainland to the high-mountain island in the lake. The rollercoaster therefore starts with a death-defying drop into the tunnel under the lake to the island, and ends in the same fashion on the way back. There was a lot of screaming involved. I may have been responsible for some of it. It may have been a lot of wicked fun...totally wanna do that again!
By this time the cold was beginning to creep from my toes and fingers up into my arms and legs, and I'd seen about everything I wanted to see (plus footsie was feeling a little tired) so I decided to bail at last, making my way out to Sleeping Beauty's Castle in the centre of Disneyland. Everyone was standing around, clearly waiting for something exciting to happen, so I paused to pack up my bag and see if anyone knew what we were waiting for and when it would happen. No-one did, and I could live without the Sound and Light Parade at closing, so I turned to leave.
You know in the movies when the exciting thing happens as soon as the heroine turns her back? Well, I dunno what happened since I sure as hell ain't no heroine, but something definitely happened when I turned my back - dunno what, since my back was turned - but the castle was coming to life. Lights, water jets, you name it, the whole she-bang, culminating in a set of sparkly white roofs on all the castle's numerous turrets. With Sleeping Beauty now sleeping pretty, I stopped in Main Street for some birthday fairy floss (I may have been in America but I refuse to call it cotton candy) and visited the bookstore for a little souvenir work.
On my way home I rescued some confused tourists from the torture of the ticket machines, only to discover they were Australians, which gave me some company on the way home. They rode to Chatelet with me before heading to their apartment in Saint-Germain and I headed home to a nice warm apartment and a cup of tea before bed. On balance, definitely a good birthday.
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| Shameless Disneyland selfies |
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| Lancelot's carousel |
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| It's A Small World |
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| India - It's A Small World |
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| The Little Mermaid's ship and castle in the Fairytale Lands |
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| The courtyard in Belle's poor provincial town in France |
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| Belle and her sheep |
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| The city of Oz |
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| Casey Jr., the Dumbo Circus Train. I drove! |
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| The castle. Who knows which princess lives here |
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| Sleeping Beauty's castle by night |
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| The sound and light show |
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| Pink...yes, pink.... |
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| Sparkly turret roofs |
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| Disneyland and I share a birthday! |
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| And my present - she hasn't got a name yet! |
