Disneyland - Paris

The traffic outside Disneyland. You can see the 'D' at a distance

Every kid’s dream-come-true – a trip to Disneyland. We are not kids anymore, I know, but the inner child is still alive and that child was up and kicking today!

We reached Disney around 10 AM and were stuck outside for about 15 minutes because of the traffic. It was a very busy Saturday at Disneyland. 

Disneyland Paris is the largest theme park in Europe. It has five “lands” – The Main Street USA, Frontier Land, Adventure Land, Fantasy Land and Discovery Land and trains going around from one land to another.

Mickey says Namaste

We entered and stared like kids and took the first railroad station at the entrance. The queues started right from there. The wait at the railway station was the shortest wait of the day – 15 minutes. The attenders were smartly dressed and one guy rattled off the welcome message in about five languages at least, I could recognize only English and Japanese (surprise surprise!). We got off at Fantasyland and I ran straight off to meet Mickey. After a half an hour wait during which we were watching Disney cartoons on a giant screen, we finally met Mickey!! I was a kid again and I am proudly going to show off the pictures to my niece who absolutely adores Mickey and Minnie. 

Look at the cutie on the right, staring at the screen

The wait to meet Mickey was more fun than the actual meeting – kids and adults alike absolutely absorbed in the cartoons on screen, kids from across the world dressed like Disney princesses and sitting atop their dad’s shoulders (I even found a Buzz Lightyear!), it was cuteness at its best.

We grabbed some crisps and went off to join the next 30-minute queue to “Peter Pan’s Flying Flight”. In Disneyland, you can take a “Fast Pass” that lets you skip the queues but since we were poor tourists without the pass, we had to wait in the long lines for every attraction (a consolation is, the fast pass is available only for six attractions).

The husband was determined to visit Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean before we step out, so we walked past to Adventure Land and joined the queue (60 minutes) to POTC next. The ride was AMAZING. It was the longest ride that we went to and it was as if we time lapsed into the ol’ pirate world. 

 We then hung around in an area called Adventure Isle, which had a pirate ship, a tree house, caves and hanging bridges. My legs were begging me to sit down and rest for a while, thanks to yesterday’s adventure, and we sat down for a while.

 We roamed around Aladdin’s Baghdad for a while and got ice-creams before joining the Indiana Jones queue which was a little over an hour. We bought chips but we realized they were non-vegetarian only after we joined the queue. Cheena tried eating some, but he couldn't so the chips were thrown away. As if that wasn’t enough, we unfortunately had to stand behind an overtly obsessive couple that couldn’t keep their hands of each other. Cheena vowed to come back to Paris without me and find a girl like this for himself (Ha! I would like to see him try!).  But after the painful one-hour wait, the ride was a disappointment. It was just a usual roller coaster ride, which meant that I had my eyes shut and screamed my lungs off as usual throughout the ride. Ada pongappa.

Non-vegetarian Lay's

We grabbed lunch (a sad salad and fries because that was the only vegetarian option available) and stared at the crowd for a while. We then hiked(?!) all the way back to Fantasy Land to click selfies outside the fabled Disney castle.  We saw people lining up the sides of the roads to watch the parade, but we walked past anyway. I wanted to buy the Minnie bows that many people had on, but at €19.99, it really wasn’t something that we could buy, so we stuck to our standard fridge magnet souvenirs (But I just tried it on once for a picture…hee hee).

Disney Parade

We were both drained of energy by this time, and we walked to Discovery Land and went into Captain Nemo’s submarine. That was the last ride we took. We just walked around and took the train back to the main station and what do we see! The Disney Parade!!  Mickey waving from a tower and Tinkerbell sitting behind him, the Disney princesses dancing and Goofy with his antics, it was the Disney parade in all its glory but all we could see was heads. The entire crowd had stopped by to watch the parade and we had to consider ourselves lucky to get a glimpse of it even though we hadn’t waited for it.

With memories and aching legs, we walked back to the coach. Bye bye Disneyland! We were a little over 15 years late to visit you, but we will come back again someday with kids of our own, and when we do, we will make sure our legs are ready for the ride!!

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