Celebrating my 30th Disney style Day 1

…And a Boat ride away.

“The skies awake so I’m awake” I was up at 04:30! had a cup of tea and a nice hot shower. I then sent everyone a text to remind them to meet in the foyer at 05:40 and got DH up. In hindsight I didn’t need to get up quite so early but I was excited!!

We got in the car and drove the very short distance to the Ferry port and checked in which was fairly painless and we were on the ferry in no time at all and headed up for breakfast. The boys had a big breakfast which was around £10.00 mum had a smaller version and I had a pain au raisin and Granola with Yoghurt.

The crossing takes about 90 mins. We used this time to have a wander around the ship and get some fresh air as we knew we would be in the car for a while. DH bought himself some whiskey

Bye England

We were back at the car at 08:00 UK time. At this point I think it’ll be best to switch to France time so 09:00. We put the beam deflectors on the headlights to set us up for driving on the wrong side of the road and set up appropriate CDs for the next leg of the drive

We were off the ferry by 09:15

I love the drive from Calais to Paris. I know it’s just more motorways but it feels more picturesque – probably just because it’s different from the roads I always drive.

The tolls cost €21.70 and it was an uneventful drive and we arrived at hotel Cheyenne just before midday

After 660 days we were finally back on Disney property. Sorry - i didn't take hotel pics until later in the week and haven't uploaded them yet.

Do you remember the bottle of whiskey DH bought himself on the ferry? Well, without thinking I put everything in the boot when we were getting off. When we arrived at the entrance to the parking I obviously had to get our documents out. I opened the boot and SMASH! Uh oh! Luckily the bottle was in a box which retained the Whiskey and I had a bottle of squash which we emptied and put the whiskey in. But ¼ of it was lost. Sorry DH!! (thankfully he wasn't angry so didn't put a dampener on the start of our hol but I am hanging my head in shame!)

Officially check in is at 3 but I have learnt it is ALWAYS worth checking if you arrive early as sometimes you can! In this case I knew that if we couldn't check in we could, at least, pick up our park tickets.

Well we were able to check in and they upgraded us to the Wyatt Earp building which is right next to the main building. We dumped our stuff and headed straight to the Magic. For reference mum and dad got the bus and me DH and DB walked – walking only took about 10 mins max and we were there a long while before them.

Now something I had been looking forward to for a long time…

Look at this happy bunch (happy to be out of the car I think)

Carl and Luke decided to start their holiday with the beast that is Annette’s Maxi Incredible Burger – “600 g burger, cheese, bacon and Annette's sauce Finish your Annette's Maxi Incredible Burger and we will give you an Annette's Shakes or Smoothie Shake”

I can tell you now those little piggies did both finish it!! Everyone except mum had a beer with our lunch, mum a diet coke, Dad had the Mega 50/50, mum the Euro Chick and I had the Rock n Roll burger. The menu can be found here - http://www.dlpguide.com/planning/dining/restaurant-menus/annettes-diner/. Sorry I thought I had taken pictures but I did run out of room on my memory card half way through the week so may have deleted them. But here is a picture of our waitresses footwear.

Overall we loved our first Disney meal (this is something that continued throughout the week thankfully) The service was good and quick, the burgers were delicious and the fries were seasoned perfectly!

Flynn – "Wow! I could get used to a view like this. Hold on… Yup! I’m used to it. Guys I want my own castle."

I love that you have to walk under the Disneyland Hotel to get into the park – one day I will stay here!!!

And FINALLY we were back in a Disney Park!!! It was 660 days since we’d last been on Disney Property but 983 since we’d last been in a Disney Park

My fave spot to take a group pic with the castle –​

The Swing into Spring decorations were beautiful! I did take more pics later in the trip but I took these on the way to our first port of call

We headed clockwise to start at Phantom manor. There was only a 5 min wait so a walk on really

My first experience of Disney Parks growing up was watching Sing along songs Disneyland Paris on VHS with my bro and sis. So to me this is the perfect Haunted house and the one in Florida didn’t quite match up.

After PM we headed over to Thunder Mountain – This is one of my most favourite rides and I think the Paris version is my actual favourite!! It is so much longer than it looks and I love the tunnels etc.

Alas the queue was over an hour so we picked up Fast passes with a return time of 18:30 – 19:00

Since we had a fair old wait we carried on walking and found ourselves at Indiana Jones. Dad doesn’t do rollercoasters so we left him with the bags and cameras (sorry no photo) and went on. The queue was posted as being 25 minutes but it was less than that.

Then we decided to check out POTC – I love the theming of this area!

Unfortunately this was our first disappointment – it was down . This happened a few times whilst we were there and was one of the only real downers. Instead we headed off to find a dragon

Something I discovered recently, and found very interesting, is that contrary to belief the dragon is NOT Maleficent! It is supposed to be either a friend of or a pet of Merlin who also lives at the castle!​

Naturally after the Dragon Dungeon the only way is up

I had never noticed the Sword in the Stone links before (other than the actual sword in the stone) And here is Archimedes plain as day!

At this point the group broke, with about 60 minutes before Thunder Mountain Carl, Luke and Myself decided to head over to Disney Studios. Luke had never been before and fancied checking it out. We left mum and dad to their own devices…

The idea was just to look around as Luke had never been before and we only had an hour to spare until our fastpass. However, ToT only had a 15 min wait so we just HAD to go on!

I think PhotoPass+ is fantastic value for money €49.99 gets you all of your ride photos etc and you have 1 yr to download them. We got 28 photos from rides – unfortunately we didn’t queue for any meet and greets to get more. If Space Mountain had been open we would have definitely gotten more. The ONLY downside is there aren’t any roaming photographers Like you get in the states! I would have loved a couple group pictures that way. But this is fairly new so hopefully it’s something in the works.​

Ok so that was the price in 2015. As of our trip in 2019 the price is now €74.99

By the time we had finished on ToT it was time to head back to Disneyland for our FP. There were tons of people queuing at the fastpass entrance and this is one thing I found quite annoying – most of them were not at their return time yet!! It would be so much better for everyone turned up at their allotted time rather than making those that have wait in a queue Anyway, grumble over!

I LOVE that ride and it got even better as there is a little pixie dust to come…. We then headed over to POTC to see if it was open – after hearing the song on the way down I couldn’t wait to ride it. Well it was still down! We decided to have a look in the shop where mum took her time buying herself some goodies for a Pirate day coming up at her work. We were glad she did because while we were waiting it opened and we walked straight on –

It might have been worth waiting to check it out first though… ​

One of the pirates heads was hanging off!!!!​

are they setting up for Halloween already !?! made us all chuckle though.

By now it was just after 7 and with the early start we were all starting to flag a little. Since we had a long day planned the next day we decided to meander out of the park and head to Disney Village to look in the shops and have a drink.

I love those arcades that run behind the Main Street shops – fantastic crowd control idea they could do with in other parks! And then out we go. We had a look around the shops then decided to head to the sports bar for a couple drinks. As I am almost at my 20 pic limit I will leave you with my cocktails (the others had beer/similar cocktails) we stayed at the sports bar for a little while just chilling out enjoying our drinks. I had my first Glowtini

I had another one later in the trip and this one was far superior than the other. The second was much sweeter. And a fragol rock (I think that’s how it was spelt on the menu) which was basically a mojito with beer it sound wrong but it was delicious and is now my favourite drink

Feeling a little peckish we decided to pick up Earl of Sandwich sandwiches to munch on the way back to the hotel. When we got back we went to the Red Garter Saloon but I was so tired I decided to just head back to the room and get ready for bed – with 3 adults sharing we had to take in turns getting ready/changed/used bathroom etc, the others weren’t far behind.

And that concludes Day one.

Part 3