September 3, 2015

Another Disneyland park to check off of our list!  Disneyland Paris was cool, but I am coming to realize that nothing is going to come close to topping our good old Disney World in Orlando.  We had a great time and it was a nice break from museums, churches, etc and Hayden had some serious milestones.

We started the morning right at opening time in the Disneyland park.  Luckily, we found that they sold promotional tickets in the Disney Store here in Paris, so we were able to get hopper passes to go to both parks.  (There is also a Hollywood Studios type park).  The park was not crowded at all, so we got into most rides pretty quickly.  Hayden was a little disappointed that he wasn’t tall enough for Space Mountain Mission 2, but after going on it myself, I’m not sure he would have liked it anyway…it was crazy fast!

They had Star Tours, so you can probably guess where we went for our second ride.  The Star Tours here was the older version from DW, but it was fun because Hayden had never been on it.  He liked going through the Death Star.  🙂

Much like Hong Kong Disney, there was a Toy Story Land that was really neat.  I read somewhere that they are going to build this land in Florida, it really is awesome, so I hope that they do!

We made our way to Fantasyland where they have something different and really neat…you can go under the castle and there is a dragon down there!  It moves, roars and everything…it was pretty scary!

We took a mid-afternoon break to play on Pirate Island (kind of like Tom Sawyer Island at home).  They had a big, nice play ground and a pirate ship the kids could play on.  It was a nice place to take a little break from the lines and to get some energy out of Hayden.

In the afternoon, we switched parks and went to Hollywood Studios.  The thing that I liked most about Paris Disney was the Ratatouille section.  They had a really cute Ratatouille ride and the Chez Remy Restaurant.  We didn’t get to each in the restaurant (needed reservations, plus it was over our budget), but we looked inside and it was really neat.

The highlight of the day was Hayden’s super awesome braveness in going on his first upside down roller coaster.  This is  huge deal for him because he has always been afraid of roller coasters (it may be because we threw him on one with a huge drop when he was four and we traumatized him for life).  He started out really nervous (you can see him with his eyes closed in the picture), but he opened them a few seconds in and had a great time.  He can’t wait to go to FL and ride another one.

We had a great day and we’re pretty excited to have now visited our 4th Disney park!  I would say that we only have Japan left, but they are just about finished with a new park in Shanghai, so I guess we will have to make a trip back there for that in a few years as well.  🙂