07-09 Ah, Paris - Disneyland Paris that is!

We are flying to Paris this morning. Up early; it's a very short walk to the small airport that’s actually bigger that I thought.

We landed at 9am, picked up our checked bags and found the Disney Magical Express, although not easily (we should have located this before we got here, without luggage).

We left the airport an hour later on the Disney Magical Express bus and arrived at the Sequoia Lodge shortly after 11am after dropping people off at 4 other hotels.

We were in our room by 11:30. These rooms look really tired and could use an update. Dropped things off and back out of the room in 25 minutes.

We stopped at the Disney Village on our way to the Park and had lunch at the Earl of Sandwich.

In Disneyland Paris at 12:35.

Taking pictures the whole way, we arrived at our first ride, Phantom Manor, their version of the Haunted Mansion at 1pm. The ride scenes are very similar to the other Mansions with the exception of the Attic being replaced with the Bride's Bedroom.

More pictures around the park and then we had some ice cream. This picture of their Castle never gets old.

Next was our Fast Pass for Hyperspace Mountain, this version just came to Paris for their 25th Anniversary Celebration.

Next it was on to Star Traders for some shopping and to get FastPasses (6:10pm) for Star Tours, which has been just changed to “Star Tours, the Adventure Continues”, like at Disneyland, for the 25th Anniversary

There’s a nice shortcut walkway to get from Discoveryland to Fantasyland, where we ride "it’s a small world". This “world” is so much more colorful than the others we’ve been on. Bright, vibrant colors instead of the muted pastels of Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom.

Pinocchio and Snow White are SO much more popular over here in Europe. The lines are usually 25 – 30 minutes long (hot and sweaty queue lines with no air movement in summer) instead of the normal 5 – 10 minute lines we are used to.

People eat dinner around here after 7pm which works out great for us, since we like to eat around 5pm. No one is at Colonel Hatti’s Pizza Outpost when we order our lasagna and pasta.

Their Canal Boat ride loads like a river raft ride so the line moves pretty fast. Also unusual about this ride is the Wizard of Oz scene at the end. Very strange.

We headed back over to Star Tours and we use our FastPass and we are in and out in 15 minutes.

It takes us almost an hour to get through the queue line of Buzz Lightyear. It’s a fun ride, the same as in all of the other parks. Two of you ride in a pod shooting targets and trying to get a high score while the evil Emperor Zurg yells at you that you can’t shoot worth beans.

We shopped on our way back to the park entrance looking at all the merchandise with the cool 25th Anniversary logos and finally left at around 9:30pm.