The Travis Family Blog: Disneyland Paris

First I want to say thanks to my sister-in-law Abi for giving me a swift kick in the pants to get back in to the blogging world. Summer is now gone in a flash and there is much that has happened between now and the Europe Trip of '11 but I want to pick up where I left off and continue blogging about our trip.

We spent the last 2 days we were in France at Disney with our good friends Josh and Gina and their two kiddos. It was one of my favorite visits to Disney. I enjoyed visiting Disney with Phil but also the Boyds know how to do Disney. They have been to every Disney park in the world and have secrets of how to make the most of your time at the parks. Because we are lucky to call them friends they were willing to let us tag along and learn some of their secrets.

Now I would consider myself a seasoned Disney visitor. I have been to Disney World at least 6 times if not more in my life and I have ventured to Disneyland in California. I have a list of

favorite rides, must sees and things I can pass on. There are things that are just Disney and you deal with them. I would consider the wait in line for Peter Pan one of those. Peter Pan is by far one of the best rides at Disney because of the detail that is put in to telling the story. On all my trips to Disney I have never once waited less than an hour to ride Peter Pan but with the Boyds this sort of a wait is unheard of. We never waited longer than 30 minutes to ride anything and we rode almost every single ride in the park, some twice. I am still not 100% sure how we accomplished this but we did and it was fabulous.

Enough

talk about Disney, here are some pictures from our time spent in the park.

The first picture is of a ride that I have never experienced before. They do not have this ride at DisneyWorld and I don't think we rode it at DisneyLand. It is the Pinnochio ride. Fitting since we were in Europe where the movie is based.

The next picture is a picture of me in front of Aurora's Castle. It isn't nearly as large and regal as Cinderella but I love the way it sits up on a mountain. Also, there is a cave underneath that you can go in where Malificent the fire breathing dragon lives. They actually have a mechanical dragon who breaths fire. It is pretty neat.

After visiting the main park, most similar to Magic Kingdom, we went over to the Disney Studios Park, similar to what used to be MGM in Florida. This is where you will find the most difference between the USA parks and Paris. There are several rides here that they don't have in the USA. This is also where you will find most of the "thrill" rides. We were able to utilize the fast pass option to ride Kinley's favorite ride the Tower of Terror twice. Knox insisted he wanted to join us the first time so we let him but decided against it for the second round. Here is a picture of all of us on the ride. I think I look more scared than Knox in this picture. We are all in the front row.

I took the following picture for my sister. It encompasses two of her favorite Disney things in one....Fantasia and Peter Pan. It is pretty neat.

Knox was excited to be able to ride in Lightening McQueen on the Cars ride. In this picture Kinley drives her parents around the track. I was in the back seat of Knox's car because Mr. Phil needed to sit up front in case Knox wasn't a very good driver. The boys had fun hanging out with eath other as you can see in the pictures following this one.

Knox and Phil spent a few minutes sword fighting throughout the park on our way to ride the Haunted Mansion.

One of my favorite parts of Disney Studios was Toy Story Land. It was pretty neat. I loved all the decorations. They had several pretty cool rides as well.