Mum's 60th in the magic TR

loladelorean

DIS Veteran
Joined
Mar 9, 2010
We returned home last night from our amazing trip to celebrate mum’s 60th birthday!

The whole trip (by train from Glasgow to Venice and back via Disneyland Paris) was a total success – everything went to plan, and we had an incredible time throughout. I’ll summarise the highs and lows of the Disney part of our trip below then write a brief trip report.


Highs

Weather – on Thursday it was an unexpected scorcher! Friday was cloudy but dry and it brightened throughout the day. Torrential rain on Saturday morning made us feel very lucky as we were leaving…

Shows – first time seeing the Frozen singalong and Mickey and the Magician and we loved both! I was picked out by a cast member to belt out a portion of Let It Go into a mic, luckily I didn’t embarrass myself.

Parks looking amazing – I’m so impressed with the refurb to BTM and other rides, and with the way colours are popping around the parks. Lots of things are in place for the 25th anniversary and it really feels like the effort has been stepped up to a gear I haven’t seen before

Getting loads done – We had a super productive day on Friday and despite having a relatively small amount of time at the parks we did everything we wanted to and more

Inventions – Great service, food and character interaction, with a view of Dreams from the window, made this the perfect end to the holiday


Lows (none of them too important!)


Room location – literally the further point possible from the reception at Newport Bay, room 3393. This walk was crazy and to be honest it would put me off ever staying at the Newport Bay again, even though the hotel and the room itself were fab

Busier than expected – Turns out St Patricks is really busy! We did a good job of navigating crowds, but wait times and general crowd levels were a bit of a surprise. And we couldn’t get into Billy Bobs on Friday night! What an outrage ;)

Didn’t see Dreams Thursday night – kind of our fault, we were just too exhausted, having come straight off the sleeper train and into the parks, to head back in after our dinner. We all agreed we would just wimp out and go to bed!

Rides down – even though we knew they wouldn’t be running, we really missed Pirates, Space Mountain and Star Tours – and it felt like the main park was short of attractions

Quite a lot of rides going down too
 
Thursday 16 March

Our sleeper train from Venice arrived on schedule into Gare Du Lyon at 10am, and we jumped on an RER to Marne La Vallee. We all slept pretty well on the sleeper train but we were feeling shoogly (good Scottish word there) after 14 hours on a swaying train.

When we got out at Disney Village we could not believe the weather. A beautiful blue sky, and real heat from the sun! It would stay like this all day.


After checking into Newport Bay (room not ready yet) and storing our luggage, we were in the park by 12 oclock. We were all really excited to be back, and to see the beautiful 25th anniversary décor already in place.

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First things first – fastpasses for BTM later that day – then we were all starving so grabbed lunch sitting in the sun at Fuente Del Oro. I’ve never eaten here before, largely because it’s often closed, and we were all really pleasantly surprised. The vegetarian taquitos I had were great and my sister loved the chicken fajitas, freshly made to order. Mum enjoyed the taco bowl too and we all shared yummy churros. Unanimous vote that this our new favourite quick service restaurant!


We knew we wanted to go to the Frozen singalong, but had about an hour to spare. My mum’s favourite ride is It’s A Small World so we went to do this – I always feel like we’re really in the magic when I’ve been on that ride! It was looking and sounding fantastic after its recent refurb. With Pirates closed, we just enjoyed wandering around Fantasyland and Adventureland in the sunshine.





Time for Frozen! We joined throngs of excited kids to file in. We hadn’t seen the show before and we loved it. A cast member with a roving microphone chose me to sing a verse of Let it Go (probably because I was belting it out in great excitement). This might be some people’s idea of hell but I loved it – felt like I was Elsa for a minute!


After a bit of shopping on Main St we headed into the Studios. We walked straight onto Ratatouille in the single rider line, then rode Tower of Terror which had an inexplicably short wait. Afterwards we watched the Star Wars storm trooper thing and the wee show – really good to see all of this happening in the Studios, it fits well and makes the park feel more alive somehow.

We rode the Magic Carpets, then it was time to go back through to the main park for the Parade and our BTM fastpasses.


We got a bench by the side of the castle to wait for the parade in the last rays of sun, then enjoyed one of the last of this iteration of the parade. Indie was showing a 10 min wait on my app so we squeezed that in before our BTM fastpass time. Then – boo – BTM was down. The cast members told us to keep our fastpasses and try later. We decided to go for dinner at Annette’s, then head back in and hopefully ride BTM before Dreams.


We got seated at Annette’s fairly quickly, and as soon as we sat down it was as if the day caught up with us all at once. We felt tired and achey having had such a full day straight off the sleeper train, and our lovely food filled us up but didn’t wake us up! Mum guiltily said she didn’t think she could go back in for Dreams, she’d rather just go check in to the room and get a shower – and my sister and I both quickly said that’s what we would rather do as well!


We wearily trailed back to the Newport Bay, excited to see our room and to finally clean up and relax. Check in was quick and easy, getting to our room wasn’t! I knew this hotel was big but woah. Turned out that our room was literally the furthest one away from the reception, and it took over 15 minutes to walk there. We were already so exhausted that walking this with our luggage felt like torture.

Luckily the room itself was beautiful. Mum collapsed on the bed for a quick nap and we all freshened up and rested for an hour or so. Then we decided to end the night with a cocktail in the hotel bar – delicious cocktails, and we loved the view over the lake. An early night in a real bed, to prepare us for packing in as much as possible the next day.

 
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Friday 17th March


Happy St Patrick’s Day!

We went to breakfast at 7.30 and were seated in the gorgeous Yacht Club. Delicious breakfast – I hadn’t realized there were hot options, this was a nice surprise.

The weather wasn’t so nice today, cloudy and overcast, but it was dry. Walking through the Village at 8am it quickly became clear that there would be a lot more people around than the previous day!

We made the most of EMH, riding Buzz, the Carousel, Peter Pan, the Teacups and Dumbo.



Then, having missed out the day before, we decided to try for BTM at rope drop. We waited from 9.40 and though the crowds grew huge behind us, we were rewarded by getting on the ride at 10.15. Pleased to see that cast members are taking more control of rope drop than they used to, and not letting people run anymore.

BTM is looking so fantastic! We loved all the new effects, the fixes and the sprucing up. Still my favourite ride.

I noticed on the app that the Mickey and Magician show was showing up with times for that day – this greatly excited me as I’d never seen the show, but it wasn’t actually supposed to start until the next day, Saturday 18th. We decided to go to the Studios and see if it was for real.

The cast member outside Animagique told us that the show would be on later and to come back 15 minutes before. We rode Rock n Roller coaster and Ratatouille then it was time for the show!

I had no idea what to expect, other than hearing reports from other Disers that the show was good. We were all blown away! DLP finally has a proper stage show! The Lion King number was especially impressive. I can’t tell you how excited I was that we got to see the show after all, and it was pretty much the highlight of my trip.

We popped into Art of Animation to see what Belle’s queue was like – it was enormous so we didn’t wait, but we hung around for ten mins to see Belle interacting with the other guests. Suddenly a guy meeting Belle with his gf got down on one knee and proposed! The whole room erupted with cheers, it was so exciting. Cast members swooped in to ensure the couple got free official photos, and seemed to give them a voucher to spend in the shops too. They were instantly treated like VIPs which was lovely to see.


Mum had said she wanted to relax in the hotel in the afternoon, and take a swim, so we all went for lunch at Earl of Sandwich before she did this. Oh, on the way out of the studios there were a load of characters around without big queues, so we met Stitch, Gepetto and the Queen of Hearts.




Fuelled up from Earl of Sandwich, my sister and I went back to the main park with hopes of picking up BTM fastpasses for the evening. Sadly they were all gone. We rode Phantom Manor, then spent a while in the psychedelic, freshly painted Labyrinth and bought some decorations in the Christmas shop.




Another park hop (yeah we do this a lot) to make an attempt to ride Crush. We jumped straight onto Parachutes in the single rider line, and rode Cars, continually checking Crush wait times. When we came off Cars, the Crush single rider wait was only 35 minutes so in we went! Really chuffed with this on a busy day: not sure why it happened, but the single rider queue was never below an hour the rest of the day, and the main queue was always at least 75 mins. We got on in less than half an hour, in two shells next to each other.

Feeling cocky, we wanted to ride RnRC and ToT again before meeting mum at the arranged time of 7pm but both of them were down! It was only 6pm….so we did the Scottish thing and decided to hit happy hour at King Ludwigs. No visit to Disneyland would be complete without this, at least for us!

St Patrick’s was in full swing at King Ludwigs!







We met mum on her way back to the parks, and we all agreed that we would chance it with BTM even though we didn’t have fastpasses. It was showing an hour, which was too long. We loved wandering around as it got dark and all the lights came on, and we rode It’s A Small World on one of the last boats before they closed Fantasyland. BTM was showing as being down again but Indie had a 10 min wait so we headed for that. On the way there, I kept refreshing the app and suddenly BTM came back online. We were close to the Frontierland path out of Adventureland so we power walked there and we got on with only around a 15 minute wait! Absolutely love this ride in the dark and couldn’t believe we’d managed to get back on.


It was 8.10 when we got off – perfect timing to stroll down Main St and get to Inventions for our 8.30 booking.

We were seated at a lovely table in Inventions, in the dining room off to the right, with a view out that let us see most of the fireworks and the top of the castle while Dreams was happening. Our waiter Giacomo was sensational – he made us feel like absolute VIPs the whole evening and had a wonderful manner with everyone. We got tons of character interaction including some dancing with Tigger, and enjoyed delicious food and wine.




We wanted to see the Irish band at Billy Bobs on the way back, but there was a queue round the corner!! It was completely rammed with St Paddys revelers. Great atmosphere in the village though, and we settled for a cocktail at the Sports Bar before bed. My fitbit told me I’d done over 31,000 steps that day, over 22.5km! (a few thousand of those were probably the corridors of the Newport Bay……..) At least I could go to sleep knowing I’d made the most of the day J


Throughout our time in the parks, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much my two nephews (my fiance’s brother’s sons - aged 9 and 5) would love the parks. They’ve never visited. I messaged their mum with photos of the star wars stuff and us meeting Stitch, dropping heavy hints about joining them for a trip with the boys. So, if I can twist their arm, hopefully this will be on the cards soon! If not though, my next visit will be unlike any other when we return for my hen do next April……suppose I should focus on planning my wedding now, rather than another Disney trip.


P.s. very excited by the fountains outside DLH which were being worked on while we were there and looked like this by the time we left:



 
Wow, you're back already! It looks like you got so lucky with the app weather and got loads done.

Shame about you're hotel, one of the reasons I've been put off to be honest.

Your sister is the image of your mum!

Photos look great and so good you managed to get a couple of goes on BTM.

Thanks for posting :goodvibes
 



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