Paris - Part EURODISNEY

So on our Monday in Paris, Mark and I dismissed the judgement of others and hopped on a train to eurodisney, no wait, ahem, Disneyland Paris. After a little train and a big train, we pulled up to the station conveniently located in the middle of the Disney parks. There are two parks there, the Disneyland one and a, um, movie studio one. There's also an entertainment area with no admission charge featuring a movie theater and several restaurants. But we were like, whatever alternative entertainment venues and made a beeline for Disneyland. After an extended period of time spent buying or tickets, delayed by me initially getting an excellent student deal and then Mark getting his ticket changed to reflect his own student-ness, we headed into the park.

The thing I found most intriguing about eurodisney was that it had a very confused sense of identity. It was torn between being French and American, and most of the time it seemed to be quite American. 'Thunder mountain railroad' and 'pirates of the caribbean' have a certain English language ring to them. When you walk in, you are on 'main street USA', where we got chocolate brioches shaped like Mickey Mouse's head for breakfast. No Mickey pancake, but better than a stick in the eye.

I'll cut straight to the chase instead of dwelling on details. Most everything there was very similar to regular Disneyland. There was an Adventureland, Frontier land, Fantasy land, and something to do with the future. There was no New Orleans thing, and the haunted house was renamed 'Phantom Manor'. There was no Splash Mountain, no Matterhorn (despite being the country where the actual mountain is!), no Jungle Cruise, no Tiki Room (although that's no loss, really). The haunted house was the same, Indiana Jones was horribly painful and transformed into an upside down roller coaster, as was space mountain. Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't quite right. Thunder mountain railroad was by far the best ride, and as a reflection of this status we went on it 3 times. We had lunch at a Mexican place, having 'taco' salads which were not really taco salads but in one of those taco shell bowls.

In our spare time between rides, we frequented those lovely little themed shops and consumed liquids. For months Mark had been going on about his obsession with getting a goofy hat. It was fine by me, but alas, it was not on Disneyland's mine to outfit him with such. All day we searched for a goofy hat, in all kinds of stores in all kinds of lands. Finally near the end of the afternoon, before our last whirl on thunder mountain, we found a giant leprechaun style goofy hat. However, the initial excitement ended abruptly when we discovered the hat didn't fit Mark's head. Our later discovery of a headband with little goofy ears didn't quite fit the bill. Alas, Mark left the park goofy hatless. And sadly, without minnie mouse ears.

As part of our extra special student tickets, we had access to both parks. So when we were Disneylanded out we headed over to the other park basically just to go on their highly advertised new ride, the Tower of Terror (as found in California adventure and at Disney World). Again slightly torn between being French and American, but I guess there's only so much you can do. We quite enjoyed the ride, but that certainly didn't mean we were going to go on it again. You really do end up going quite high! Anyways, we quickly walked around the rest of the park but the only ride we seriously considered going on had a 40 minute wait, which we deemed 'not quite worth it', and opted to head back into town.

Being the cool locals that we were, we headed back to the uber fancy grocery store where we purchased additional meats and cheeses on which we dined. This was followed by more viewing of the same random MTV channel and continued confusion over what exactly French people see in French music. Off to bed at an early hour, we had to be up bright and early for the big trip to Versailles!