So, I went to Disneyland Paris in April! I still can't believe i can say that. It definitely hasn't sunk in quite what is was like (incredible) but I just have to talk about it. I don't just want to review the park but also give a little round up of the travel to and from the park as advice for anyone visiting soon :)
I live relatively near London, so woke up at 6am for a 7am train into St Pancras. We arrived the suggested 2 hours before our train and spent all that time in queues and security lines before finally getting on our train into France. The journey was about 3 hours plus the hour time zone difference, so along with dropping our bags to the check-in so they could be sent to our hotel, we got into studios for 2.45 France time. This was definitely my favourite day of the trip as doing some of these world famous attractions for the first time is a once-in-a-lifetime experience (even if some were slightly disappointing). We rode Tower of Terror, Ratatouille, Cars Road Trip and Slinky Zigzag spin before heading into the main park. we headed to our hotel on a free shuttle at about 20 30pm to avoid fireworks crowds. We then had 2 full parks day with consisting of daytime rides and watching the illuminations and fireworks, and the other being day rides and some night rides, mostly on Big Thunder. Our last park day wad mostly spent in studios, buying last pieces of merch and getting our final re-rides. Now that's all explained, lets get into some ride reviews.
Walt Disney Studios
Dark Rides - Let me just preface by saying, almost every ride in these parks is a world class attraction. However, comparing them to each other, you can see the flaws in each attraction. The best Studios dark ride is by far Tower of Terror. Every ride sequence, every video combination and every queue walkthrough is just impeccable. I don't think i could pick out a specific flaw anywhere in this ride. Every detail in the queue, every set piece in the pre-show room, even down to the moving elevator floor scale outside the door to the ride shaft. Just perfection in a ride.
Not so good was Ratatouille. Not to be controversial, but it just isn't world class and Sesame Street Street Mission is better 😳. The queue was pretty, the ride vehicles were so cute and the whole rides storytelling was very deep and immersing. However, the 3d videos weren't very good quality and got blurry a lot and also would also reset to the beginning of the video before the last vehicle left the scene so you would see it pause. It even broke completely on our second ride with the second to last scene (where the camera pans through Remy's kitchen showing all the rats cooking) was glitched with half the screen paused on the beginning still and the other half playing over the top of the paused. It was very entertaining.
Roller Coasters - RC Racer was surprisingly fun! It was one of the only rides without on-ride bag storage so the operations weren't great in comparison to the rest of the park but to be honest, compared to the UK it was pretty good! The theming is cute and the ride sequence was interesting so overall a great ride. Crush's coaster was a bit of a let down. The queue was always 2 hours+, the actual ride portion had very little theming and the queue was a bit boring. However, the short single rider queue was worth the wait to see the pretty station and ride vehicles.
Flat Rides - Both flat rides in Toy Story Playland had good throughputs, short (ish) queues and elaborate theming and storytelling. Cars Road Trip was a really fun backlot tour with well designed set pieces, lots of jokes funny for all and a great effect sequence near the end. A great ride for cars fans and other little children. The combination of French & English was very effective and meant most of the guests could understand most of the story being explained by the tour guide cars.
So, that was Studios! It's definitely a small park (only really half a day, even with re-rides) but nevertheless stunning and beautifully themed. The newer lands are possibly some of the best themed areas I've ever seen! I am so excited for the new avengers campus, star wars land and frozen area to open and just generally see the expansion of this park. I just keep imagining a trip to Disney in January in the snow walking round Frozen land for the first time, I mean how cute!
Disneyland Park
Discovery Land - Space mountain was a great coaster with an incredible industrial building facade. However, the star war theming was incredibly lacklustre and felt very unnecessary. The coaster layout itself, onride audio and original theming would have been a great combo but the few star wars banners and bad quality videos mid coaster don't add much. It's by no means a bad ride, just feels a little ruined by the star wars overlay.
Buzz Lightyear laser blast was a fun dark ride. The shooting element was fun and it also actually worked (unlike most shooter rides, looking at you laser raiders 😠) . THe way the vehicles could be controlled to where you face is a really cool feature that certainly makes this ride specifically stand out from the crowd.
The last, and probably best ride in this area is Star Tours. I knew very little going into this and was blown away. I don't think I saw this ride with more than a 20 minute queue on any of the 4 days we spent in this park. I did star tours 3 times, and each go consisted of a different video combination. Star Tours is made of 4 main parts in terms of the ride combination: the first language spoken by C-3PO, the character that interrupts mid-journey and the langauge spoken by them, and then the 2 halves of the video. The storytelling was great, the staff were lovely and so sweet! Top Tip - If you're on park on a non busy day, ask the staff to run you're ride in english! Generally it is random/selected based on how many people in your group are french/english/spanish but when you're the only group riding/there aren't too many people, they're happy to do this. My only complaint is the complete inability for the public to co-operate with the instructions given to them. On one ride, too many riders joined a line for a row, and we ended up kicked off the row and sent to rewatch the preshow.
This ride has made me appreciate simulators.
Frontierland - In frontier land the major rides are Big Thunder Mountain and Phantom Manor. Both were incredible but I think Big Thunder Mountain was kind of better. We never ended up actually doing btm in the daytime, we just had three night rides but all three of them were just SO good. I don't know what it is about Big Thunder Mountain because I never really like mine trains but Vekoma mine trains are in another league. The queue line is probably my favourite part and that's saying something considering we spent 50 minutes in it all 3 times. Speaking of, this is the only ride I almost spent more than an hour queuing for which I didn't really expect from a Disney park because everyone says the queues are really long and seeing as I went in Easter it's not just because "it wasn't peak season" , because it was. Anyway it was worth the queue. Night riding this just felt so special because you could see the Fireworks and just feel the atmosphere.
Phantom Manor had very good operations and a really cool queue and pre-show. these help backup the good storytelling in the actual ride. I loved all the animatronics, wall artwork and other theming pieces. The best part of the whole experience was by far the pre show for its immersive storytelling and exciting movement. The ride layout itself was quite basic but I think that lended itself well to each of the scenes (the best scene was definitely the ballroom) I think my only criticisms of this ride are the slightly irritating soundtrack and audio clips for when the ride breaks down and the slightly out of sync projections to the audio being played.
Adventureland - Indiana Jones as a coaster was painful disgusting and gross, came off every ride with a Headache. However, this coaster had the prettiest queue I've ever seen and all of the theming was just immaculate and felt so... real? However, because of how rough it was I only managed it about 3 times across the whole trip even considering the tiny queues.
Aside from that, Pirates of the Caribbean was incredible! The way it interacted with the restaurant and the absolutely minimal queues of only 10 minutes just added to the ride experience itself which was surprisingly modern for when it was built. Obviously some of the animatronics were quite temperamental but the newer ones were much better especially the Jack Sparrow one near the end and (probably the best animatronic I've ever seen for many reasons.)
Fantasyland - So, seeing as this review is already so long and all the dark rides in this area are very similar so i will just review them all at once. All all 3 dark rides had great storytelling, cute theming and mediocre operations because of the small trains. Obviously the technology behind these rides is much simpler than any current dark ride but this still managed to break on almost every ride I had on any of these three. Casey Jr and Le Pays de Conte De Fees were amazing too! Such a cute little area.
I think that's everything? Anyway, this park was incredible in terms of its rides. The food was incredible too! I'll go through my favourite things.
Italian Restaurant Pizza meal with garlic bread and ice cream - 17 euros? For Disney was pretty good.
Baby Yoda ice cream - 3 euros 50 ish.
The shows were all incredible - Disney standard as expected. Overall, Disneyland Paris was incredible and made such a good trip in Easter, it was so warm! There was something unbelievably magical about those days, even being 14 years old, Disney is magical. Have you been to Disneyland Paris? How was your trip? Thank you so much for reading, I'll see you next time!
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