Day 5 of 31 days of Halloween: more adventures in Disneyland Paris!
For our full day in the park, we got up at 6.30am, struggled with the bath (the shower and bath are essentially a combo, and the bath drain took ages to want to unstick, so it was a bit of a hassle to shower and get the tub water out, we did leave a very friendly note for housekeeping alerting them to the situation). But we managed to get out on time to walk to the Disneyland Park. Had breakfast (as we opted out paying €19 per person for the breakfast buffet or a meal plan) that we brought and went off to the Disneyland Park for Extra Magic Hours. Which was nice, because there weren’t many people in the way for photo taking on Main Street USA.
Because it was so calm crowd wise and so few rides turned out to be open I decided to meet Max again,
as well as Stitch.
Plus take some more photos on Central Plaza.
In Discoveryland we rode Buzz Lightyear
and took more photos.
Outfit shots at Nautilus must happen once per trip!
We had more of a wander around, because we could. Sadly Rapunzel wasn’t meeting at the Princess Pavilion (we always go check for Bert, but we’ve not had any luck so far), so we walked around some more
before going into Frontierland by 10 to try and sort out meeting Jack Skellington. Jack Skellington is one of my fave characters to meet, because the interaction is usally awesome.
I’ve met him every year I’ve been to Disneyland Paris since he first came available in 2008.
Sadly, this year, DLP decided that they were going to force people to LineBerty. You can point blank refuse to install the app, and starting 9.45AM you can request a return time from a CM.
Sadly, they have to sort one out for you on LineBerty, which tends not to work on their tablets (coincidence, I think not).
So there you go, legally they can’t force you to deal with the app, but if you don’t get it, there’s a good chance you won’t meet the character. Bert didn’t care too much about it all, so he managed to get a return time pretty swiftly. At 9.45 it was already ticket nr 31 for an hour and 14 minutes later, so grab one the second you can!
The Molly Brown was going, so we decided to take a paddle steamer ride instead and go back afterwards.
Basically, because of LineBerty we lost a LOT of time, had no clue what was going on over half the time (which was the case with pretty much everyone we saw there) and it was just a foul shambles.
Frankly I don’t know why DLP insists on this, it just makes life harder for guests and CMs alike.
But the Jack meet and greet was awesome, very fun! So that was that. I’m not sure that it was worth all the LineBerty grief though!
Last year I had missed out on meeting the Cheshire Cat, because we had foolishly thought we would have been able to cram an entire Halloween season in one day, so this year, we wandered into Fantasyland to find his meet and greet spot. Which was in the same place as last year (the program lists opposite Mad Hatters Tea Cups, but that’s a centrally placed large size ride, so there’s a lot of opposites possible!).
We were there about 10 minutes before it would start, with only 4 people in the queue with us. So we just went into the queue. Doing so meant we waited maybe 3 minutes longer than the people with the first disability return ticket (had we waited by the side, we would have had their slot, because we were first). Being in the regular queue did mean that another disabled person was able to get a return ticket, so I have zero regrets about queueing (I always will if I am able to).
The day before the weather had been absolutely lovely, and whilst the grand deluge (storm from Hell) that had been predicted didn’t happen, it was quite dreary with intermittent drizzle and mild rainfall (I just wore my giant raincoat most of the morning) and Bert had gotten a little chilly, so I got him an instagrammable hot chocolate. Which was, of course, utterly overpriced for a water over chocolate powder solution with some whipped cream and chocolate Maleficent horns, but at least it got him warm.
I’m absolutely not opposed to themed snacks, I think they’re great. But when they’re just an excuse to replace the regular options at higher price, I’m not quite as ok with it. It’s pricy enough to get food and drink at a theme park as is.
The Cheshire Cat meet and greet had taken too long (as it started about 15 minutes too late) to make the start of another showing of Are you Brave Enough (the new Villains Show), let alone find a good spot to photograph it, so we instead just went down to have a look at what it was exactly. I immediately got what ED92 meant when they said it lacked story behind it.
Bert was pretty unimpressed too, but decided he wanted to shoot it at least once. He loves shooting parades the most, so we went and found a spot along Main Street with view on Central Plaza to shoot Mickey’s Halloween Celebration. We always sit down super early for it, just because it’s the only guarantee to have a really good space, and it takes Bert some time to test the light and sort his settings. I’m sure people passing us by must have thought I was some kind of influencer or something haha. But nope, just helping my husband with his settings and being serious about his hobby :).
In between shows we also saw the Tuesday guest star thing, which featured the aristokittens :). Sadly I only got a decent photo of Marie.
The spot we had been in at the first rendering of the cavalcade was fine for the floats and street shots, but it was utterly worthless for the show element of the cavalcade, but at least we had a good idea of where we wanted to go for the next showing. Which was a little harder, because it wasn’t clear at all where people would be allowed to stand, and whilst guest flow CMs did their best to answer questions and direct guests, they weren’t the best informed a lot of the time either, which didn’t help. But we found a spot, so that was that.
I had to do quite a bit of effort to manage street shots of the Phantom Manor ghosts (my faves) but phew, I managed. Normally I’m the last to be rabbit for a shot, but I am painting portraits in school and I had my heart set on painting these guys, so yeah.
Finding food was once again quite the feat. Bert had brought the last of the sandwiches into the park with them but after having sustained on them for a large part of two days, I wanted something else.
Sadly, not a whole lot was open (understatement of the century), so I ended up going to Casey’s (which I usually avoid like the plague, but Hyperion is even worse) to get a classic hot dog and a coke.
Annoyingly, the drinks are always half a liter (thankfully Bert was happy to drink a large part of it).
Much to my surprise, and delight, the service at Casey’s was competent and the food did NOT suck! HUZZAH!
The paper straw also held up well on the drink, but disintegrated faced with my lipstick. You might wonder what toxic waste I put on my lips, but the issue was just the fact that lipstick is much thicker (because the ingredients are all safe and decent).
I think its good that DLP is trying to be more ecological, however, the cups are not recyclable, they still have plastic lids, and the cutlery is still plastic, and a lot of places give you plastic sets in little plastic bags. I’m sure cutting out the straws does something, but I feel the effort can be expanded upon rather significally to make a REAL impact. (if you want to know more about this, read my friend Craig’s column in issue 39 and 40 of BCM or follow him on twitter).
Sorry no photo of the actual hotdog, but it was just a sausage in a bun kind of thing, so I’m sure you all know what that looks like.
Tummy full we wandered to find a spot for the Villains show, we were a little on the late side, but we still found good spots, so yay.
Sadly, this show is, in our opinion at least, a hot mess. Don’t get me wrong, I thought the choreography was fun, and Ursula is really well cast.
The live singing element is also pretty good, and the Are you Brave Enough song is cool (not as cool as the one from Mickey's Halloween Celebration though!).
It’s just, it lacks cohesion and a storyline. I get that they didn’t want to bring the so manieth variety of the villains show they’ve had for the last lord knows how many years, but it would have been better to incorporate Ursula in that.
Of course, I maintain that they should just bring over the Hocus Pocus Villain Spectacular from Disney World, but that’s probably just me and a small minority. Hopefully they’ll keep working on the show, and it’ll be much better next year. I would still check it out again, but this trip, we stuck to the just once.
We like walking around and taking photos, so we wandered back into Fantasyland where we found the Storybook Land area open. Bert hadn’t ridden the canal boats since I think 2009 (and it was super rainy that day) so we just walked on (it said 5 minutes, but it was essentially a walk on).
Casey Jr was also a walk on so we went on that afterwards :).
Peter Pan’s Flight was closed,
but Pirates wasn’t, and also a 5 minute wait. It was a slightly slower walk-on but still no wait to speak of at all!
My ghost bracelet in full glow in the dark action in the queue.
I was really thirsty, so against my better judgement (because historically these things are just not good) I spent €3 on a Halloween Fanta. I figured that as it was a combo of orange and blood orange it couldn’t be a total fail. As far as Halloween Fanta goes, this was definitely the best one yet, but it still wasn’t very good (the only Fanta I like is Cherry Fanta, preferably sans bulles). The displays were awesome though!
Walking into Frontierland, I gave meeting Mickey and Minnie a miss in favour of more picture taking
I am totally making my outfit count as day 5/31 days of Halloween.
Hat: vintage
Glasses: Theo
Top: Boxlunch (it's a Monsters Inc one that spells "Are you scared yet?" and of which I folded the sleeves)
Hip bag: Eastpak
Skirt: made it myself
Petticoat: Dear Celine
Socks: Angelic Pretty
Spats: made them myself
Boots: Kickers
Bracelet: Tokyo Disney
Bag: Shop Disney
Bag charms: Tokyo Disney
and hunting down an Ursula donut. Which I ended up finding. The Oogie Boogie popcorn bucket seemed to be a fail though. I liked the donut well enough. It was just a plain donut with a thick crunchy white chocolate layer on top. It’s not as good as the orange ones with bats they have some years, but definitely better than a lot of other donuts I’ve had, and better than a lot of desserts you can get in the parks.
By the time we came out of Frontierland to find a spot for the parade, we noticed that a lot of people were already sitting down on the curb for a good spot.
So Bert grabbed a spot he liked just off Central Plaza. I put up my seat and asked him to keep it, so I could go sort a photopass +.
I wish I had my seat with me though because it took FOREVER. But the CM transferring all the photos from the cards I had gotten from photographers onto the pass was super nice, and explained me what to do in case it malfunctioned. (Marie, you need to go to Town Square Photography to get yours sorted).
I did really consider getting it, because it was €59 (for the entire duration of my AP though, so a year), but after having calculated how much I have spent on character photos this year alone, Bert and I quickly realised it was a good deal). That was actually the only thing I had bought other than an AP and the poison apple stein and sustenance in two days, so it wasn’t so bad. I save up an entire year to have a frankly ridiculous Halloween budget (and I always have money left over so go me!) so I could afford it anyway.
Plus it means Bert can stop being annoyed at not having enough time to sort settings at meet and greets :). (He still needs to take Chewbacca photos though haha).
Even though it took quite a while, I still got to Bert back in time for the parade. The skies were turning proper omnious during the parade (sadly it turned out to be a rubbish spot on top of that)
and whilst we did hang out in Frontierland to wait for it getting dark, the weather just got more and more omnious and we looked at each other and said “sod this” and forewent night photography to go eat in Cheyenne again.
Random photo of the Disney Village stage I took on the way back to the hotel because the bat lay-out it currently has is cute :).
Which is too bad, but lucky we did, because right at the time I would have stood outside taking photos, there was a massive downpour! Meaning I wouldn’t have been able to take night photos anyway! But instead I was warm inside and not hungry, so yay :).
We did remember to pass by reception at Santa Fe and ask for Halloween buttons. As hotel guests, we were allowed to have one per person but we hadn’t been given them when we checked in, and we had forgotten about them at that time. The nice CM at the info desk gave us one each without question though (well he didn’t make anything of it that we didn’t have one yet!)
We just spent the rest of the evening hanging out in our hotel room. I had my trusty netbook with me, so we could backup our photos and see them on a larger screen, and watch some Netflix :).
Also go to bed on time for our last day in the parks!
Continue reading (onward to day 3!)
You can read about the first day of our trip here! :)
All of my Disneyland Paris photos from this trip are here.
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