Just a Couple of Big Kids in Disneyland Paris (Short Film)

This is a little bit outside of my usual outdoor adventures, but my girlfriend loves everything Walt Disney, so while we are living in Europe, a trip there was a must. Her family made a trip to Disneyland Florida regularly while she was growing up. Now it was time to see how EuroDisney compares. She decided a December trip would be nice to enjoy the holiday theming and (hopefully) slightly smaller crowds since it isn’t exactly peak vacation season.

So we made our first trip to Paris the first weekend of December, and we had a great time! It’s hard not to let Disney bring out the inner kid inside you. The decorations, the lights, the characters, the songs, the rides, the pure excitement you see on the faces of children there – definitely a special place.

We spent the first part of the day at the Hollywood Studios park and hit most of the rides there. Some favorites were the Hollywood Terror Tower and Minion ride, and I also enjoyed the cinematic train tour experience (can’t remember what it was actually called). The only “ride” I think we were a bit disappointed in was the Armageddon experience. Ended up being a lot of waiting for not too much excitement.

We then headed over to the Disney side and hit up as much as we could there – Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Phantom Manor, Ratatouille, etc. Unfortunately, Thunder Mountain was closed, but otherwise it was good fun. Oh, but there was one other slight disappointment. I never thought I would go hungry at an amusement park, but we really struck out on food.

When we got hungry for dinner, we started checking out the restaurants but had no luck. Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant? Fully booked. The Frontier restaurant? Closed for a special event. Surely the BBQ joint would be willing to serve us? Nope. Closed for a special event as well. The only thing we could find that was open was the American baseball-themed hot dog shop. There were surely some other options but we were really hungry now, so we just had to go for it. It was interesting how much American-themed stuff there was here in France, but I guess Disney started in America after all.

Anyways, my advice to anyone visiting is to be sure to book reservations at the restaurants you want to eat at. Then you won’t get stuck eating hot dogs in the café when you wanted a romantic candlelight dinner in the pirates cove!

At the end of the day, it was time to wait for grand finale light and fireworks show at the castle. They make you wait over an hour after closing all of the rides for this, of course to give you time to check out the gift shops. But once again, all of the food places close! Just a bakery café with a mile-long line and a buffet style restaurant that (surprise!) was fully booked for the night. We were still in the mood to munch a bit more, but oh well, there were way worse things that happened in the world that day, so I’ll stop complaining now. We still had a great time!

And the castle show did not disappoint. It was pretty amazing how they could project so many colors, scenes, and moving characters onto the castle, everything from Bambi to Olaf. It was also fun for me to experiment with night photography on my camera to capture it in a time lapse sequence. A nice end to a somewhat challenging day of filming and photographing (carrying a bag of camera gear on rides that whip you around isn’t the best), but I wanted to make my girlfriend a nice short film to remember the experience. There was just one last thing I learned in the process – when your girlfriend says she is hungry, it’s not the best time to get out the camera to take some more photographs 😉

But I think we were both pleased with the memory that we took away from it: