I know this report is getting long, and I figure everyone has a good feel for what the parks are like by now, so I will just concentrate on those attractions (and mention that on Thursday night we closed down Buzz Lightyear. Like any "video game" it is a little bit addicting and you can increase your score by playing more and getting practice. At the end of the night there was no line at all and we were able to ride 6 times in a row with no wait, just having to get off and walk around through the queue and get back on. The staff were great and even encouraged us to run so we could get one last ride in, when we thought we were done. We were literally the only people on the whole ride then--which was kind of fun. AND we still walked out just as Dreams was starting and were able to sit on open benches slightly to the side, which was pretty much perfect in our opinion.
At The Studios, we went to the Animation Tour. The spiel is identical to that in Florida, but in French, with headphones and recordings in English, Spanish, Dutch, German and possibly a few others. What we did enjoy, were the excellent early animation exhibits in the waiting area. Too bad you can't just go visit those.
We also caught an English showing of Stitch live, which is basically the same thing as Turtle Talk with Crush. For those who have not been, this is fascinating technology in which the animated character speaks live with the audience, interacting with children by name, etc. We had a hard time understanding Stitch's accent and many audience members came even though they, or at least their kids, did not speak English, which made it a bit awkward (there were several showing per day in French, English, Spanish, German and Dutch while we were there).
We also fit in the Toy Story Paratrooper ride. The line was never less than about 45 minutes, but the singles line was very short and moved fast--this ride seats 3 to a bench and the odd number opens up a lot of single rider space. We were happy to sit separately to avoid a long wait and ended up different benches but the same ride time with less than a 5 minute wait. We were impressed with the ride. It drops swiftly enough to have a bit of a thrill even while being mostly kid friendly--and you have several drops (I think there were four). There is a cute photo op too!
All in all we did every open ride and attraction (not counting character visits) at The Studios offers other than the Cars Rally ride (much like tea cups with cars, we did it last time), the parade and Disney Junior Live on Stage.
Back at Disneyland Park, there were even more excellent walk throughs and play areas to explore. Adventure Island is a wonderful play ground like area full of tunnels, bridges and even a pirate ship to explore. For those familiar with the American parks, it is like Tom Sawyer' island with more of a pirate theme, bigger, better and none of the tunnels smell of urine (oh, and there is no long wait for a boat to take you over; it is accessible directly from the park via a number of walkways and bridges). This section also has the Swiss Family Treehouse attraction within it. This attraction is larger and more interesting in Paris:
We took another spin on It's a Small World, which is pretty similar to the US counterparts, but with a much bigger section dedicated to the Americas. I took several shots of the US section, but missed Mexico and Canada in so doing (sorry):
We went for a spin on the river boat, called the Molly Brown. I really like that the entire ride goes through well themed areas with a lot of nice views of Phantom Manor, and Big Thunder Mountain:
We even took a ride on Autotopia and on the Casey Junior train (which goes faster than a typical child's train; it was fun):
There is also a smaller, but still cute and fun play area at the main entrance to Frontierland that we explored. It is a fort with some displays, and little things to play around on:
One final walk through attraction, is the Aladdin themed building at the entrance to Adventureland. This is different and cute and probably would never take more than 5 minutes to complete:
Here is a bit more of the atmosphere in that section of Adventureland:
Other than character meets, we went to every open attraction (including shows) at Disneyland Park. At both parks we repeated favourite attractions, sometimes many times over.
It was a lot of fun, and I feel like we got a good feel for what the parks have to offer.
I will post one more "summary" post about DLP soon, and then I promise to move on to talking about new adventures or rambling about other things which interest me (like the current World Cup fever here in Germany).
--Hadley
