Rush
Giga Poster
Just a prior warning to everyone, this trip report will be a BIG one, so persons with visual, back or neck problems, or those who have a short attention span should read at their own risk. Just to make it easier and less strenuous as well I’ll start with the Disneyland Park first and then do the Walt Disney Studios later. [Also, as I didn’t take many pictures whilst I was there I’m just going to include stock photos for those who only look at photos.]
We spent a total of four days at Disney, we were originally going to do three but we got rained out on one of the days so we went back for a fourth day. (My dad had gotten the extra day free.) The last time I had visited Disneyland was part of a school trip which we were only in the park for about five hours, on a crowded Saturday in October 2004 which meant I didn’t really experience the park properly. Therefore I was really looking forward to visiting despite the resort supposedly going downhill.
I personally thought that the Disneyland Park was beautiful, I can’t pinpoint why exactly, but I thought that the park looked nicer than its American counterparts. I also think that the castle looks the best out of all the resorts as well as the entrance underneath the hotel. Speaking of the castle, here’s a picture of the castle to wake you up.
Whilst I really enjoyed myself and personally thought the park was fantastic, what really peeved me off were the crowds. I guess it’s what should be expected going there on the last week of July and the first week of August but getting around was a complete bitch as the pathways were completely congested! Worst of all were the bloody prams and the people pushing them especially who think they have priority and go bulldozing their way through the crowds. No woman, I’m not going to step aside no matter how much you curse at me with your gibberish! I’m not meaning to sound racist here, but I found the French, Spanish and Italians could not control their children at all. (I lost count how many of them ricocheted off me.) Oddly enough, it was also these people who couldn’t understand the concept of queueing either! More on that in the Walt Disney Studios section.
I know rude and high volumes of guests aren’t the fault of the park themselves, but they don’t help things by making narrow pathways and confusing layouts. The worst area is by far Adventureland where to get from Indiana Jones to anywhere else you either have to battle your way through the crowds on stupidly narrow walkways (and on the first day half of these were blocked by construction fences) or by crossing over to Adventure Isle which also takes you along narrow pathways with the extra possibility of getting lost due to the stupidly confusing layout.
The queues themselves were reasonable for the summer holidays and I wasn’t too bothered as we had plenty of time to do everything and Fastpass was also incredibly handy meaning I never really had any horrible experiences queueing. Eating was a bit of a problem. You can either go to the extortionately priced all you can eat buffets and sit down restaurants, or you can still pay a huge amount of money for a crêpe or a cake. There was not really much of a middle option and I didn’t fancy trying their hot dogs much. This was a major problem in the Studios as there was pretty much nothing to eat there either and if you don’t plan your day well (like we didn’t) you end up hungry.
Right, you’ve probably all dropped off again due to my ramblings at the moment so here is a picture of me and my sisters by the park entrance.
Okay, it may seem like I’ve rambled on and on and complained but I’d just like to re-iterate that I really enjoyed my time in the park and that it is leagues ahead of many parks I’ve been to! I think the thing which I’m afraid takes the magic away from the park is the language barrier. As much as I realise that the park is in fact in France, I’d say a significant amount of guests don’t speak French nor do they have it as their second language, however many of the attractions (particularly the ones in Fantasyland) have been Frenchified so badly you haven’t got a clue what’s going on and it does affect the ride experience. However I do appreciate that the workers do talk to you in English and I actually found that the majority of them were very friendly and enthusiastic!
On the Monday we visited we got caught out in a thunderstorm. To my surprise, they actually still kept the rides very much ouvert (ironically, Tower of Terror was the only ride which was fermé) whereas in America every ride would have closed at even the slightest of rains. You’ve got to love the “shrug your shoulders “**** it”” attitude of the French.
Approximately 15 minutes reading from this point.
Right, I think that’s enough about the park overall, on to the attractions there are on offer.
Big Thunder Mountain
RCDB Stock Image
I’d say that this ride is the ride of my childhood. It was my first really major coaster and so it’s one which I have some nostalgia towards. We made the big mistake on the first day of getting a Fastpass (now referred to as FP for lazy people like me) for Space Mountain before queueing for Big Thunder Mountain. It was 10:40 when we entered the queueline and the line was already “40” minutes. The queue itself is well themed but horribly confined, furthermore it splits in two quite early on and you’d expect them both to be of a similar length right? Wrong. As we later found out, the two queues merge together closer to the station however if you choose to go on the right hand side you end up getting on about 10 minutes before. BTM has duelling stations so I presume that the queues used to lead to each side of the station. Now FP takes up one side of the station whilst the main queue uses the other side. Ridiculous? Yes it is rather. We ended up queueing an hour for it.
Anyway, on to the ride. I absolutely love the concept of diving underneath the lake to get to and from the Mountain in the middle and I think it’s what makes it stand out against its American siblings. My favourite part in particular is where it dives down back towards the station again in the darkness. It’s slow and sluggish in places but it’s incredibly fun in my opinion and probably my favourite coaster in the park, if not the whole resort.
We rode it twice more in later visits, FPing the hideous queue both times. Second time we got the back just as it was raining which I think made it faster, I recall even getting a pop of airtime in some sections. The final time we got on in the front which is quite a bit slower than elsewhere as you’re almost down the drops whilst the rest of the coaster catches up. I’d definitely recommend sitting as far back as possible for the best ride.
Solid, fun attraction. 8/10.
Moi avec Grand Montagne de Tonnerre.
Space Mountain: Mission 2
RCDB photo. Yay, more stock images.
Not an entirely new ride to me, I only rode it in its previous form and I don’t remember much from it. Due to BTM lying about its queue time, we had missed our FP time for Mission 2 but we gave it a go anyway. The FP dispatcher did notice we were 20 minutes late and my dad explained that we had lost our mum. The dispatcher replied “Ah but you are still late, but I don’t care, I let you go on anyway” and with a wink he took our tickets and let us through.
As there are 5 of us, I’m riding alone this time and soon we’re off into a small drop after the station and the stupid placement of the camera. Then some stuff happens in French and you get blasted off into the “mountain”. The actual launch is very weak and you can feel it decelerating as soon as you start moving. I’m not entirely sure what to think of Mission 2. The layout was very weird and I always felt like I was dropping even though the actual building isn’t very big. I didn’t think the effects were spectacular but I chose not to wear my glasses so I probably missed out on a lot of it. The ride was very bumpy and the restraints had a nasty habit of battering my neck. We rode it on the Friday evening and it was even bumpier than before.
I think I’d give it a 6/10 or a 6.5/10. I didn’t think it was awful but I thought it was highly overrated. Califonia’s Space Mountain gives by far a better experience.
It’s a Small World...
...of animatronic stereotypes. Not for the faint hearted. A dull and long boat ride made worse by a song which makes even the bravest want to tear off their own limb and beat their own brains out. iPods or other mp3 players are a necessity for this one. The only redeeming factor is that there wasn’t a queue for it.
As you can see below I clearly thought very highly of this attraction.
Pirates of the Caribbean
A personal favourite of mine and a classic Disney attraction. Sadly, it too has fallen victim to Frenchification as you can clearly notice the prominent “Yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me” has been turned down so it’s drowned out by a French pirate saying “Zut alors! Ze dog ‘as stolen ze key!” I don’t even recall there ever being any French pirates?
What amazed me most was how quickly the queueline for this ride moved. We pretty much queued about ¾ of the queueline and we were on in about 10 minutes, it just did not stop moving! Excellent job by the staff who were also actually taking their roles very seriously! Shame it was apparent that there were far too many boats on the course causing a pile up at the end! I think we ended up on this about five times as it was pretty much a walk on. The people in front kept pissing me off though as they were constantly taking photos, often pointing their cameras backwards to do stupid facebook-esque photos. Now I don’t suffer from epilepsy but I was very close to throwing a fit at them.
Good, well themed and enjoyable ride. 8/10.
Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril
Final RCDB photo, I promise!
One of the three rides I rode on my visit with school only back then it went backwards and I remember not being very keen on it at all. Riding it forwards was a new experience for me and upon (finally after getting lost on Adventure Isle) arriving at the area I was really surprised about how quiet it was. Actually, it was “fermé. When running though, the ride makes a really tremendous roar, definitely the best roar I’ve hear from a coaster. Suck on that Nemesis. After sending empty trains round for about 10 minutes we were finally let on and allowed in to the 40 minute queue. Oh... merde.
Luckily we’d come and got FPs which reduced our queueing time to about 5 minutes. Unluckily, the ride was merde. It was horribly uncomfortable, really, really rough and at one point it came to a stop on one of the brake runs very suddenly which winded me. Horrible, horrible ride.
4/10.
As you can see, the thumbs down clearly shows my disapproval of the ride. The thumbs up is for the French booty to the right of the picture.
Buzz Lightyear Shooty Ride Thingy
The Parisian version is new to me however I expected lots due to enjoying other versions and luckily I wasn’t disappointed. I actually liked that you could remove the blaster from its holder unlike the American versions making it much easier. As usual it was a very enjoyable ride, despite the fact I got a pretty poor score of around 50,000. To be honest it was more fun spinning myself round pointlessly.
7/10.
Phantom Manor was your standard “haunted house” attraction. Nothing really that special and another victim of Frenchification. Star Tours, again thanks to being Frenchified was merde. I didn't bother with the kiddy credit. I'm not a whore and the ride looked like merde.
I think that pretty much covers the main attractions. I’m not going to bore you silly for much longer but nevertheless I hope you “enjoyed” my Trip Report and if you haven’t... don’t say I didn’t warn you. :wink: I'll try and get the next part up tomorrow or Wednesday and it will be the Studios Park meaning: Aerosmith, Stuntcars and The Twil.... sorry... I mean... LE QUATRIÉME DIMENSION!
We spent a total of four days at Disney, we were originally going to do three but we got rained out on one of the days so we went back for a fourth day. (My dad had gotten the extra day free.) The last time I had visited Disneyland was part of a school trip which we were only in the park for about five hours, on a crowded Saturday in October 2004 which meant I didn’t really experience the park properly. Therefore I was really looking forward to visiting despite the resort supposedly going downhill.
I personally thought that the Disneyland Park was beautiful, I can’t pinpoint why exactly, but I thought that the park looked nicer than its American counterparts. I also think that the castle looks the best out of all the resorts as well as the entrance underneath the hotel. Speaking of the castle, here’s a picture of the castle to wake you up.
Whilst I really enjoyed myself and personally thought the park was fantastic, what really peeved me off were the crowds. I guess it’s what should be expected going there on the last week of July and the first week of August but getting around was a complete bitch as the pathways were completely congested! Worst of all were the bloody prams and the people pushing them especially who think they have priority and go bulldozing their way through the crowds. No woman, I’m not going to step aside no matter how much you curse at me with your gibberish! I’m not meaning to sound racist here, but I found the French, Spanish and Italians could not control their children at all. (I lost count how many of them ricocheted off me.) Oddly enough, it was also these people who couldn’t understand the concept of queueing either! More on that in the Walt Disney Studios section.
I know rude and high volumes of guests aren’t the fault of the park themselves, but they don’t help things by making narrow pathways and confusing layouts. The worst area is by far Adventureland where to get from Indiana Jones to anywhere else you either have to battle your way through the crowds on stupidly narrow walkways (and on the first day half of these were blocked by construction fences) or by crossing over to Adventure Isle which also takes you along narrow pathways with the extra possibility of getting lost due to the stupidly confusing layout.
The queues themselves were reasonable for the summer holidays and I wasn’t too bothered as we had plenty of time to do everything and Fastpass was also incredibly handy meaning I never really had any horrible experiences queueing. Eating was a bit of a problem. You can either go to the extortionately priced all you can eat buffets and sit down restaurants, or you can still pay a huge amount of money for a crêpe or a cake. There was not really much of a middle option and I didn’t fancy trying their hot dogs much. This was a major problem in the Studios as there was pretty much nothing to eat there either and if you don’t plan your day well (like we didn’t) you end up hungry.
Right, you’ve probably all dropped off again due to my ramblings at the moment so here is a picture of me and my sisters by the park entrance.
Okay, it may seem like I’ve rambled on and on and complained but I’d just like to re-iterate that I really enjoyed my time in the park and that it is leagues ahead of many parks I’ve been to! I think the thing which I’m afraid takes the magic away from the park is the language barrier. As much as I realise that the park is in fact in France, I’d say a significant amount of guests don’t speak French nor do they have it as their second language, however many of the attractions (particularly the ones in Fantasyland) have been Frenchified so badly you haven’t got a clue what’s going on and it does affect the ride experience. However I do appreciate that the workers do talk to you in English and I actually found that the majority of them were very friendly and enthusiastic!
On the Monday we visited we got caught out in a thunderstorm. To my surprise, they actually still kept the rides very much ouvert (ironically, Tower of Terror was the only ride which was fermé) whereas in America every ride would have closed at even the slightest of rains. You’ve got to love the “shrug your shoulders “**** it”” attitude of the French.
Approximately 15 minutes reading from this point.
Right, I think that’s enough about the park overall, on to the attractions there are on offer.
Big Thunder Mountain
RCDB Stock Image
I’d say that this ride is the ride of my childhood. It was my first really major coaster and so it’s one which I have some nostalgia towards. We made the big mistake on the first day of getting a Fastpass (now referred to as FP for lazy people like me) for Space Mountain before queueing for Big Thunder Mountain. It was 10:40 when we entered the queueline and the line was already “40” minutes. The queue itself is well themed but horribly confined, furthermore it splits in two quite early on and you’d expect them both to be of a similar length right? Wrong. As we later found out, the two queues merge together closer to the station however if you choose to go on the right hand side you end up getting on about 10 minutes before. BTM has duelling stations so I presume that the queues used to lead to each side of the station. Now FP takes up one side of the station whilst the main queue uses the other side. Ridiculous? Yes it is rather. We ended up queueing an hour for it.
Anyway, on to the ride. I absolutely love the concept of diving underneath the lake to get to and from the Mountain in the middle and I think it’s what makes it stand out against its American siblings. My favourite part in particular is where it dives down back towards the station again in the darkness. It’s slow and sluggish in places but it’s incredibly fun in my opinion and probably my favourite coaster in the park, if not the whole resort.
We rode it twice more in later visits, FPing the hideous queue both times. Second time we got the back just as it was raining which I think made it faster, I recall even getting a pop of airtime in some sections. The final time we got on in the front which is quite a bit slower than elsewhere as you’re almost down the drops whilst the rest of the coaster catches up. I’d definitely recommend sitting as far back as possible for the best ride.
Solid, fun attraction. 8/10.
Moi avec Grand Montagne de Tonnerre.
Space Mountain: Mission 2
RCDB photo. Yay, more stock images.
Not an entirely new ride to me, I only rode it in its previous form and I don’t remember much from it. Due to BTM lying about its queue time, we had missed our FP time for Mission 2 but we gave it a go anyway. The FP dispatcher did notice we were 20 minutes late and my dad explained that we had lost our mum. The dispatcher replied “Ah but you are still late, but I don’t care, I let you go on anyway” and with a wink he took our tickets and let us through.
As there are 5 of us, I’m riding alone this time and soon we’re off into a small drop after the station and the stupid placement of the camera. Then some stuff happens in French and you get blasted off into the “mountain”. The actual launch is very weak and you can feel it decelerating as soon as you start moving. I’m not entirely sure what to think of Mission 2. The layout was very weird and I always felt like I was dropping even though the actual building isn’t very big. I didn’t think the effects were spectacular but I chose not to wear my glasses so I probably missed out on a lot of it. The ride was very bumpy and the restraints had a nasty habit of battering my neck. We rode it on the Friday evening and it was even bumpier than before.
I think I’d give it a 6/10 or a 6.5/10. I didn’t think it was awful but I thought it was highly overrated. Califonia’s Space Mountain gives by far a better experience.
It’s a Small World...
...of animatronic stereotypes. Not for the faint hearted. A dull and long boat ride made worse by a song which makes even the bravest want to tear off their own limb and beat their own brains out. iPods or other mp3 players are a necessity for this one. The only redeeming factor is that there wasn’t a queue for it.
As you can see below I clearly thought very highly of this attraction.
Pirates of the Caribbean
A personal favourite of mine and a classic Disney attraction. Sadly, it too has fallen victim to Frenchification as you can clearly notice the prominent “Yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me” has been turned down so it’s drowned out by a French pirate saying “Zut alors! Ze dog ‘as stolen ze key!” I don’t even recall there ever being any French pirates?
What amazed me most was how quickly the queueline for this ride moved. We pretty much queued about ¾ of the queueline and we were on in about 10 minutes, it just did not stop moving! Excellent job by the staff who were also actually taking their roles very seriously! Shame it was apparent that there were far too many boats on the course causing a pile up at the end! I think we ended up on this about five times as it was pretty much a walk on. The people in front kept pissing me off though as they were constantly taking photos, often pointing their cameras backwards to do stupid facebook-esque photos. Now I don’t suffer from epilepsy but I was very close to throwing a fit at them.
Good, well themed and enjoyable ride. 8/10.
Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril
Final RCDB photo, I promise!
One of the three rides I rode on my visit with school only back then it went backwards and I remember not being very keen on it at all. Riding it forwards was a new experience for me and upon (finally after getting lost on Adventure Isle) arriving at the area I was really surprised about how quiet it was. Actually, it was “fermé. When running though, the ride makes a really tremendous roar, definitely the best roar I’ve hear from a coaster. Suck on that Nemesis. After sending empty trains round for about 10 minutes we were finally let on and allowed in to the 40 minute queue. Oh... merde.
Luckily we’d come and got FPs which reduced our queueing time to about 5 minutes. Unluckily, the ride was merde. It was horribly uncomfortable, really, really rough and at one point it came to a stop on one of the brake runs very suddenly which winded me. Horrible, horrible ride.
4/10.
As you can see, the thumbs down clearly shows my disapproval of the ride. The thumbs up is for the French booty to the right of the picture.
Buzz Lightyear Shooty Ride Thingy
The Parisian version is new to me however I expected lots due to enjoying other versions and luckily I wasn’t disappointed. I actually liked that you could remove the blaster from its holder unlike the American versions making it much easier. As usual it was a very enjoyable ride, despite the fact I got a pretty poor score of around 50,000. To be honest it was more fun spinning myself round pointlessly.
7/10.
Phantom Manor was your standard “haunted house” attraction. Nothing really that special and another victim of Frenchification. Star Tours, again thanks to being Frenchified was merde. I didn't bother with the kiddy credit. I'm not a whore and the ride looked like merde.
I think that pretty much covers the main attractions. I’m not going to bore you silly for much longer but nevertheless I hope you “enjoyed” my Trip Report and if you haven’t... don’t say I didn’t warn you. :wink: I'll try and get the next part up tomorrow or Wednesday and it will be the Studios Park meaning: Aerosmith, Stuntcars and The Twil.... sorry... I mean... LE QUATRIÉME DIMENSION!