"I Know What You're Going To Say" - France Sept 2019 - Update 1/5 Disneyland Paris, Dinner & Home

Yay!!! I’m there 8-13! First three nights at AKV, then the next two at BWV! Hope to see you there! I’m doing dopey too! Are you going to run at any races?

Not running this time or at Star Wars this year. May do the 5K or 10k at Wine & Dine.
 
It’s always fun to see the parks in other countries. It’s a bummer the food hasn’t been great there so far. I’m hoping it gets better for you!
When are you going in April? We will be at AKL the last week of April.
 
Finally caught up on your TR! It's crazy for me to think about a RunDisney event happening during park hours and even being able to watch the nighttime show afterwards! And I loved that security bubble for DLP!
 
The County Bears aren't from a movie but rather an attraction that was originally intended for a ski resort Walt Disney was going to do but never came to be. Instead it was an opening day attraction for Walt Disney World and then opened in Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland. I can see why Disneyland Paris doesn't know them though!

Really? I thought they were in some movie... Also not in any of the shorts?
You learn something new every day :)
 


It’s always fun to see the parks in other countries. It’s a bummer the food hasn’t been great there so far. I’m hoping it gets better for you!
When are you going in April? We will be at AKL the last week of April.

Food was hit and miss here but we knew based off reviews that was going to be the case. Glad we splurged earlier in the trip!

We are going for Star Wars Run Disney Weekend so April 16th to 19th.

Finally caught up on your TR! It's crazy for me to think about a RunDisney event happening during park hours and even being able to watch the nighttime show afterwards! And I loved that security bubble for DLP!

It was very much a different type of park event! I'm glad I was able to make it to Illuminations to watch because if I was in one of the later waves,I probably wouldn't have made it as I know it took a while to get everyone started.

I did like that security bubble too! The layout really works well for that setup. I guess we kinda have that at Disneyland now too with the Downtown Disney & the parks which was nice but it would have been better if I didn't have to go through security every time leaving the hotel.

Really? I thought they were in some movie... Also not in any of the shorts?
You learn something new every day :)

They are not in any shorts I know of. You can probably find the show or the special versions like Summer Vacation or Christmas Vacation on youtube though!
 
RunDisney 10K

And less than 11 hours, I was at the same place I just was for the start of the 5K.

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My husband was in a different corral than I was as RunDisney Paris doesn’t make sense with their corral system anyway as the 5K & 10K are considered family fun runs. I had warned my husband of this to prevent frustrations when he was running.

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Start Line

I was in the second wave of Corral A and it wasn’t long before I was off and passing the 1st kilometer. There were a lot fewer people cheering this morning than there were during the 5K but that is ok.

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1K

And soon I was run/walking during Main Street, seeing the castle & Belle.

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As we turned into Discoveryland, it was the 2nd kilometer!

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2k

There were some back stage time before we hit the 3rd kilometer.

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3k

They had Rapunzel up above.

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Rapunzel

Between the 3rd and 4th kilometer, my husband passed by and said hello. He was shocked it was later in the course than he originally thought it would be given our pace differences so I was doing better than he thought but he did say he was tired of dodging people as way too many people were walking everywhere along the path. In the states, walkers stay to the edges. He ran off and I made it 4K.

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4K

Moana was out by Thunder Mountain & Ariel was out in Adventureland.

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Moana

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Ariel

And then I was halfway done!

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5K

Not much going on between the 5th and 6th kilometer.

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6k

But we were backstage in Walt Disney Studios and the support facilities for the parks and they had various props out in those streets.

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Wall-E

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7K

And we entered Walt Disney Studios!
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Tower Hotel

And then the 8th kilometer was done!

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8k

Merida was out near some trees.

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Merida

And before long I was at the 9th kilometer and running through the Backstage Tour again. I can live without seeing anything from Dinotopia ever again.

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9K

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Backstage Tour

And then it was over and we had Daisy & Minnie at the finish line!

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Daisy & Minnie

Same iffy food box as the night before but no apple juice this time so that made me sad.

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Food Box
 
I’m laughing at your reaction to the Studios backstage tour of because I did the same thing- went on the ride first and was disappointed, then ran through it for the 5k and 10k AND the half. If that’s not bad enough , I think we ran through that damn thing at the beginning AND the end of the half.😳
 


I’m laughing at your reaction to the Studios backstage tour of because I did the same thing- went on the ride first and was disappointed, then ran through it for the 5k and 10k AND the half. If that’s not bad enough , I think we ran through that damn thing at the beginning AND the end of the half.😳
The routes were so dull for those who ran the challenge. I got so tired of the Backstage Tour.
 
I’m laughing at your reaction to the Studios backstage tour of because I did the same thing- went on the ride first and was disappointed, then ran through it for the 5k and 10k AND the half. If that’s not bad enough , I think we ran through that damn thing at the beginning AND the end of the half.😳

Oh I think you did too for the half as my husband grumbled about it as well. If I ever see something related to Dinotopia again, I may scream. My husband was happy to have skipped the 5K when I told him about that. Glad others felt that way!

The routes were so dull for those who ran the challenge. I got so tired of the Backstage Tour.

Yeah - I'll get to my husband's opinions with my update this weekend or early next week. He did not like the half route at all and really was tired of the Backstage Tour as well.
 
Walt Disney Studios & The Steakhouse

My husband was already showered and relaxing by the time I got back from the 10K so I got cleaned up before we headed into Walt Disney Studios. There were still people leaving the race finish area but it wasn’t too bad.

We saw what the waits were for the main attractions that were open and headed to the Flying Carpets as waiting over an hour for a ride wasn’t in our plan today.

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Slinky Dog only had a 15 minute wait so that was our next stop.

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At this point, our stomachs were hungry and they had their food festival going on so we decided to partake!

Our first stop was Region Alsace where we got a plain pretzel, onion tart, riesling and gewurztraminer. The pretzel was kinda stale but I enjoyed the onion tart although it needed some salt. The wines were eh.

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We attempted to get to the showing of Mickey & the Magician but the theater was full, so we decided to get more! We went to Italia where we got the mozzarella and prosecco. This was a better choice than Alsace. We like cheese.

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Our next stop was Belgium where we got the prawn & cheese croquettes (one croquette was cheese and one was the prawns), waffle with salted caramel and the beer we didn’t get yesterday. This stop was a winner! We were super happy with it.

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And because I didn’t have enough to eat - I picked up a Groot Salted Caramel Shortbread Cookie as it was adorable.

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We then got in line for the Mickey & the Magician show so we would be able to see it. I liked how the show was half in French and English so it was easy to follow along.

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We then did another run on Ratatouille before heading to Stitch Live! I wish they had that here in the states.

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When Stitch Live was over, we were both feeling dead to the world. We headed back to the room and both ended up taking a nap.

At 4:30pm, we woke up to get ready and head to The Steakhouse in Disney Village. We arrived right at our ADR time and were quickly seated. My husband didn’t want to drink but luckily they had a decent selection of wines offered in half bottles.

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375mL of Cotes du Rhone

We both got the caesar to start with. It was really good once we mixed it up. It was odd to get chicken on an appetizer portion of a caesar salad but meh. We both finished them off easily!

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Steakhouse Caesar Salad - Romaine lettuce, caesar dressing, grilled chicken, croutons and parmesan shavings

I went with the roast chicken breasts with mustard sauce. The sauce used was really good here and the chicken was well cooked. I just felt bad I couldn’t finish it as the salad filled me up more than I thought.

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Double Breast of Roast Chicken w/ Mustard Sauce, Baked Potato & Creamy Herb Sauce

My husband went with red meat and potatoes as that's one of his standard pre-half marathon meals. He was happy with it.

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Steak with Chips

He was really happy with his dessert as he likes ice cream a lot. I did not eat any of it as he wouldn’t share.

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Sundae

And then it was off to the room to relax and go to bed early as my husband had a half marathon to run in the morning and I was going to finally get a chance to ride Crush’s Coaster during EMH at Walt Disney Studios without a 100 minute wait hopefully!
 
Extra Magic Hours vs Half Marathon

Extra Magic Hour at Walt Disney Studios while Shaun Ran A Half Marathon

My husband was up at 5:45AM to get ready for the races. He left the room a little after 6AM to head to the corrals and I slowly woke up and got moving.

My goal was to get on Crush’s Coaster when Walt Disney Studios opened for extra magic hours. As the park opened at 8:30AM - I got there around 8AM to make sure I was in the first big push and I made it with a very short wait!

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I enjoyed the roller coaster but I wouldn’t wait 100 minutes for it. Then again, most things I wouldn’t wait that long for either.

I also hadn’t done Tower of Terror yet this trip and I hadn't had breakfast yet so I figured it was a good chance to do that ride too. We had a slight traffic situation to work through first as the path to the ride crossed the race course.

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But soon I had a very short wait to get on the ride. So Disneyland Paris had announced that starting September 28th, 3 new story lines were coming to Tower of Terror. Well, they actually started this day instead. I got The Malevolent Machine: The little ghost girl haunts this elevator. But she is the least of your worries. Because as soon as you take your seat, this malevolent machine only has one thing in mind – to trap you, and clank and screech with glee as it catapults you up and plummets you down at its wicked will without warning. The only thing you can do is hold tight and scream! Will you be able to free yourself from its grip?

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It was cool seeing a new storyline as you got on the elevator. I didn’t want to ride again though as I can only take so much Tower of Terror as I've gotten older. What was the best ;) was that this was my post ride photo I received even after I had made sure it was ok when I got it on my photopass card…

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Those two rides done, I headed out to get something for breakfast.

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Not much as I just needed to kill off the hunger and for all of 1 Euro - I got bread with butter. It did its job and I headed back to the room to wait for my husband to return from the race.

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So while I was doing the park, my husband was running. Here’s some photographic proof…

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I knew he was undertrained and had eaten lots of food for the past two and a half weeks of our trip. I figured he would be done in like 2:15 and should be back to the room by 10AM at the latest. When it was 10:30 & he wasn’t back, I started to get worried. About 15 minutes later, he returned and in a bad mood. He didn’t realize that after he finished his race, he had to walk all the way back to the race expo to get his challenge medals. It wasn’t a close walk and after running a half marathon, you really don’t want to walk an additional two miles for medals as at the US races - they always had them there for you at the finish line going through a special tent. He enjoyed the course as it was different except for the multiple times through the backstage studio tour.

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I am here, and half caught up! But dropping in to say hi! Love reading about other people experiencing DLP we loved it this year!
 
I am here, and half caught up! But dropping in to say hi! Love reading about other people experiencing DLP we loved it this year!

Welcome! I remember reading your report (probably failed at posting on it as I've failed doing that a lot lately) I'm glad we did DLP as a part of this trip.
 
Disneyland Paris

After my husband was rested and cleaned up from the half marathon, we headed into Disneyland Paris to finish some things we hadn’t done yet and revisit a favorite or two.

The first one our list was Pirates of the Carribean.

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We got in line and after a few minutes the guest behind me kept invading my space. I got repeated elbowed in the back in line at Pirates to the point, I kept moving to avoid it but he kept adjusting to continue it. It was probably the only instance in our trip where us not speaking French hindered us in communication and my husband did sternly comment to the guy but the confused looks occurred and my back still got hit. After 20 minutes in line, the ride shut down and the line was evacuated.

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So we headed to Aladdin to do the walk through.

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And then it was off to do Phantom Manor again!

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We explored the graveyard this time and enjoyed the sayings on them and the un-pc jokes.

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I was hungry at this point. We had time to kill before our Thunder Mountain Fastpass and Pirates wasn’t running yet so we stopped by a quick service to get a snack and Coke Zero. I got the nachos. They were the grossest nachos I’ve ever had. The chips were stale nacho cheese doritos.

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After our snack, we went on Thunder Mountain finally and really enjoyed it!

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Pirates wasn’t running yet so we headed to the Chateau to do both of those walk throughs and see the dragon.

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We headed towards Discoveryland to do Philharmagic

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It was misting out but pirates was finally up and running so we rushed that way. We finally got to get on the ride!

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Finally Pirates

The rain was getting a bit harder so we called it and headed back to the room as we had finished all the attractions that were on our must do list for the parks.​
 
Our final meal….Planet Hollywood

After our afternoon nap, we knew we should get something to eat for the night. We didn’t want to spend too much money and we didn’t want to travel too far as it was raining so we ended up at Planet Hollywood.

Going into Planet Hollywood was like stepping back in time to the 90s with the decorations.

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But at least the cocktail menu was better updated and we enjoyed what we selected from them too!

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We both started with Onion Soup as it was cooler and we wanted to warm ourselves up from the wet weather.

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My husband had the club sandwich

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I had the chicken fingers.

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The food was basic for both of us. We were happy with them as we were ready to get home at this point. We realized that this vacation might have actually been too long for us to be away from home as we missed our dogs and were ready to be back on a normal schedule.

We had some extra Euros to use so I got dessert on the walk back to the room.

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Back at the room, we packed everything up including using the luggage scale to ensure neither of our suitcases were over the 23kg limit We also wanted to make sure my husband’s luggage wasn’t over 50lb since he would have a domestic flight home after his business in Kentucky was done. It took a few times of rearranging to meet that but we got it to work.

And then it was time for bed!​
 
Travels Home

My husband was up by 4AM as he was heading to the airport on his own. We had to change his flight before the trip as he needed to go to Kentucky for his job. It was too early for him to consider using the Disneyland Shuttle service so we arranged for a private car to take him around 5AM.

I spent the rest of the morning being lazy for an hour or so. I ended up deciding to take the earlier Disneyland Paris Shuttle than the one I was originally planning to as if I was just sitting around doing nothing, might as well do it at the airport to go shop and such so I got my belongings and headed to the main lobby to wait.

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I got to chat with some other RunDisney Race participants who were on their way home as we waited for the bus to arrive. The Disneyland Hotel is the first stop for the shuttle so it was nice to get settled in as it went around to all the hotels. The bus was full by the time we were leaving the property!

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There was traffic so it took a bit longer to get to where we needed to be and some people on the bus were worried about missing their flights. I’m glad I was early so I didn’t have to worry about that. I found where I needed to check my luggage and when I weighed it and found out I had like 3 more kg to play with - I stuffed more things inside my suitcase.

Afterwards, I picked up some macarons from the shop in the terminal before heading through security. Inside security, I got some champagne at the Oyster bar in the terminal as I killed time and played on my cell phone. I also got food at one of the stores.

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A few hours later, my flight was boarding and I was interested in seeing who would be sat next to me since I was in the duo seats. The lady apologized and said “I’m going to be the worst person to sit next too as I can’t move well.” Poor lady had boots on both of her feet from surgery and was flying alone! I felt bad for her. And she wasn’t an issue anyway as she slept through the flight. My only issue was when she did need to use the restroom - the flight attendants weren’t very helpful as she pressed the call button and was ignored so I went to find them (and stretch my legs) and got attitude. Eventually she got her braces so she could go to the restroom and I was happy to be up and moving for 30 minutes in that adventure.

The food was terrible again for lunch and dinner. I mean just look at the pictures...yum!

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We landed and coming through passport control was a slow slow process in Miami. Then it took forever for the luggage to come out as well and then when I was randomly selected for the Customs X-Ray Agricultural Screening, I cried as I just wanted to get home and still had a 2 hour drive across the state. I think the guy thought I was mental. I was tired and hungry and wanted a shower! Passed the inspection (of course) and began my long drive home. I’m glad my mother ended up calling me as talking helped keep me awake on the drive.

Once home, I got energy again and fully unpacked my stuff. I got the laundry set so that I could move the load over when I woke up before work. It was really weird being home alone with no husband and no dogs at night. The dogs came home the next day and my husband the day after. This concludes our French adventures!​
 
What an adventure! Thanks for sharing it. I admire your ability to complete a trip report. I was never good at that.

To be honest, I’m a little underwhelmed by what I am seeing about DLP (here and other trip reports). Curious on your concluding thoughts and whether you would return. We are going to Paris in June and will have to make a DLP stop but I am not particularly excited.
 
Thanks for sharing your trip! happy i was able to catch it before you wrapped it up!

So we headed to Aladdin to do the walk through.

Great pics! We missed this walk through, but i have to say i love that they have so many cute walk thoughts in DLP!


They were the grossest nachos I’ve ever had. The chips were stale nacho cheese doritos.

Yeah this and your flight food don't look to good!

But overall looks like a great trip!
 
Wow! What an epic adventure! I’m sure you were so glad to be home despite a wonderful trip!!!
 

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