Phase 3 On Our Own in Paris

 July 1 - Canada Day! A new month, and for us, another adventure to a new country! "Phase 3" of our trip, and we were about to find out if my months of researching tips and refreshing my French skills would be worth it. No more following someone else's instructions on where to be and when!

We had booked our Eurostar tickets months ago. There was (is?) exactly 1 train from London to Disneyland Paris that day. I knew that the train company would not even let us begin lining up more than 90 minutes before departure, so there was no point in arriving much earlier than that. However, we also were hoping to get just a bit more "touristy" stuff done, and see the actual King's Cross Station of Harry Potter fame. So, I made the family get up and pack in time to meet our pre-booked taxi at 7:30am.

As we stood outside waiting, just a minute before 7:30, the app notified us that there were no drivers available to pick us up. 🙄 This was the second time this had happened, so my advice to people now is to not bother pre-booking a ride. It's useless. I "canceled" the request, went to the main page, and requested an immediate pickup. We had a reply within 1 minute, and the car arrived about 5 minutes later, and off we went.

Once again the naming of streets and destinations in London almost had us taken to the wrong place (King's Cross station is on Euston Road, but there is also a Euston station which is nowhere near Euston Road...because sure, that makes total sense...and the app's display of names apparently is backwards to what my brain intuitively thinks it should be. I actually have no idea what went wrong. I could've bet a million dollars I picked "King's Cross Station" as the destination. The driver's app said otherwise.).  Luckily we had a chatty driver who understood where we REALLY wanted to go, and got us there with no issues. We just had to pay him the difference in fare between what the app charged and what we really needed to pay. I waited for him to punch in the amount on his card reader and watched him hit the "no" response to the question of whether I wanted to tip. I was a bit sad by that because we had no cash and I really DID want to tip him! I hope he got a bunch of generous passengers the rest of the day to make up for it. 

We arrived with enough time to visit the photo op and store in King's Cross:

From here, we walked across the street to St. Pancras (which Curt and I will always and forever pronounce as "pancreas") Station, and figured out the lay of the land there. We got our first "Pret" breakfast, and ate while we waited to be allowed to line up. Our train departure time was a few minutes later than scheduled, but we didn't wait terribly long. The line to get through security and customs/immigration was long and stressfully slow  (I think this was the only time I was completely stressed on this trip, because there was no "Plan B" if we missed this train). We first had to show our Covid vaccination cards, and then go through security bag scanners like at the airport. On the other side of that, we had our passports stamped for exiting the UK, and then another line to get stamped to enter France. It seemed like it took forever but in the end we made it on the train with time to spare.

We had another meal on the train, as we traveled at just under 200 mph (300 kph). Every time we went underground or through a tunnel, our ears popped like taking off in a plane. It was pretty awesome, if rather uncomfortable at those times!

We got off the train at the Disneyland stop, and followed the crowds out to the street exit. There were shuttle buses, but not free - and our hotel was less than a mile walk. So we took our suitcases through the park security and found our way through Disney Village to our hotel, Newport Bay Club.

Walkway to our hotel in the distance.

Hotel lobby and gift shop

We got to the room, dropped the bags off, and changed into "park clothes" (it was a good 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than London here!).

View from our balcony

And we headed off to Disneyland!

Disneyland Paris, Day 1

We had no plans for tonight, other than to try to dine at Annette's Diner (which does not take advanced reservations) and try to stay up late enough to see the fireworks at the castle (scheduled at 11pm). 

We took our time approaching the park. The entrance is actually a hotel (that is currently closed for renovations) surrounded by winding pathways, lovely gardens, fountains and of course the iconic Mickey Mouse garden. 

As soon as we entered, we took our special castle selfie of the day.

And then right around the corner, we caught a parade! 

We stood and watched that, and then proceeded directly to the family's #1 priority ride: Hyperspace Mountain!  This was their version of Space Mountain, but had a Star Wars overlay temporarily. It was a great ride, we all loved it, and it was the first coaster Curt's been on in at least 4 years. He survived! 

We got off this and decided to do Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast which was almost identical to SpaceRanger Spin in WDW. 

After this we were hungry and made our way out of the park, along with what felt like every other person in the place. I was very concerned that we were going to be fighting crowds for a table, but it turns out that most of them were leaving the park entirely. We made it to Annette's Diner, and had a lovely meal.

We went right back to the park after dinner, and explored Frontierland, through to Adventureland, making our way over to Pirates of the Caribbean. 

Pirates was amazing, and so much better than the one at WDW! We all loved it! We also explored the caves, the fort, made our way over to Fantasyland (mostly for the bathrooms) and then decided to live some nostalgia and ride Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - the Florida version of this closed 10 years ago and S has no memories of it. After this, we did a family ride on the carousel, because yes - me and carousels!!

Then the girls rode the Tea Cups.

Then we made our way to Big Thunder Mountain as our last ride of the night. (S fell in love and declares this now her favorite ride.) We made it from there up to the front of the castle to get a spot to watch the fireworks and drone show. 

Yes, this is 11 o'clock at night!

After the fireworks the parks were closed, so with nothing else to do, we headed back to the room to end our long, and totally amazing day.

More pictures: https://link.shutterfly.com/zkxv2ayA9rb