On the road (2) - beaches, chateaux and castles COMPLETED About This Page:

[KMB733]

Sorry you had so much trouble at the Studios. What a great vantage point for the parade. You captured some great pictures!

[chezp]

Thursday 10 June – part seven: these Cast Members do not know what they’re doing

As soon as it finished, we headed to board the next railroad train, which I’d been keen to do. However, this was disorganised chaos and the Cast Members really did not have a clue what they were doing. It took forever to get everyone loaded up on the train. There was one girl, working hard to fit as many people on board as she reasonably could, with three colleagues just chatting away and showing no interest.



Finally, we were off and straight through the Primeval World diaroma, but I stood no chance of getting any decent photos of it without flash.

We headed through to Frontierland next....



Then it was into Adventureland and another stop at the Fantasyland station....



The final land we passed through was Discoveryland with another stop – you forget how many stops there are for the railroad at this park.



Eventually, we made it back to the Main Street USA station and got off. It had been raining on and off as we’d done the circuit and the rain was back on as we arrived back, so we decided to abandon the idea of going to the Emporium today and instead headed back to the hotel, where we had an hour to relax in the room before dinner.



We headed down just before 7.00 and immediately we saw that it was a lot quieter at the restaurants tonight than last night, which fitted in with comments that had been made to us when we checked in, when we were told that Inventions last night would be very busy. It was certainly much quieter this evening.

Next: one of the best character meals – ever!

[Colexis Mom]

More great updates! Love the pics of the parade!

[Kenny]

Whew! Caught up! I finally made it over here.
I'm loving DLP through your eyes again, Cheryl. The parades look really fun!
Congrats on beating Mark at BL... even if it was "sort of cheating", shooting at the same target over and over! (hehehe)

[KMB733]

Great pictures from the train!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Kenny

Whew! Caught up! I finally made it over here.
I'm loving DLP through your eyes again, Cheryl. The parades look really fun!
Congrats on beating Mark at BL... even if it was "sort of cheating", shooting at the same target over and over! (hehehe)

Sorry, are you calling ME a cheat? I won fair and square!

[mommapants]

Awesome photos of the parade and from the train. Keep 'em coming.

[chezp]

Thursday 10 June – part eight: one of the best character meals – ever!

As we walked in, I said to Mark that it was like experiencing sensory overload. The first thing we saw was the buffet on the right and it was absolutely amazing. I have honestly never seen a selection of food like that on a Disney buffet anywhere in the world before. The quality matched the selection as well, as it was absolutely superb. Look at the seafood and the desserts in particular – that was what immediately caught my eye!



We were seated once again right by the window, and ironically this table had a much better view of the Disneyland Park than the one we’d had in the California Grill last night. We could not only see the castle, but also the Main Street USA sign and also Space Mountain behind.



As well as taking that, and the food in, we also had the characters to take into account and they started to arrive almost as soon as we sat down in our seats. The first we saw was the main mouse himself, Mickey. Ironically, we’d only been saying earlier that we hadn’t seen him out and about much. I guess he must’ve heard us...



Pluto came next and he was a really good doggie, asking the table next to us to scratch his tummy and begging for attention. A word here about that family – we got chatting away to them and discovered that they were Dutch. It was a girl, probably aged about 20 and her parents and they were lovely, taking photos of both of us and also when Mark was up at the buffet and Minnie arrived.



As well as Minnie and Pluto, we also saw Chip and Dale and Donald in quick succession.


Someone was hungry and attacked the bread!


In between, we managed to get up to the buffet and I think it’s fair to say that I sampled most of the dishes that I could. It was all excellent, but some of the stand-out dishes for me were the sea scallop terrine (wonderfully unusual), the prawns, (of a size that we don’t usually see on this side of the pond), the vegetarian lasagne (unbelievably light) and the Bavarian exotics (a dessert that had a lovely texture to it and consisted of exotic fruits, hence the name, I guess?).



More characters were still to come, including the cat from Pinocchio – can anyone out there remember his name, because we couldn’t! :



But, best of all, I got more donkey action, as Eeyore finally emerged, after we saw him heading in for a thistle break a bit earlier. As Mark said, I wasn’t going anywhere until I saw my donkey boy! Twice in one day – heck, Disneyland Paris can’t be all bad!



This meal was not cheap, coming in at €51 each ($61.20), with the total bill, including a bottle of water, a glass of wine for me and a beer for Mark came to €124 ($148.80). Sure, that’s expensive, but my goodness, you got so much for your money, both in terms of numbers of characters, the selection of food, the quality of the food and the view outside. I’d love to see some of the Walt Disney World buffets being this high quality and would happily pay a bit more money for that. I tell you something, I’m never complaining again about the price of meals at WDW, as they are a lot cheaper than over here.

Inventions:

Appetiser 9½ 9
Main course 9½ 10
Dessert 9½ 8
Service 8½ 8½
Atmosphere 10 10
Value for money 9½ 10

Average score: 9.33

From there, we headed down to the car, as Mark had finished the book he’d bought with him and wanted to get the book he’d bought about D-Day out of the car, so he had something to read. We got some photos of reception on our way out.



Then we grabbed some photos of the hotel in the setting sun.



We headed back to the room and off to bed.

Today we drove 0 miles.
The weather today was a real mixture. It was still warm and in the mid 70s, but rain in the morning, then sunshine at lunchtime, cloudy later, then rain and finally sun.
The best thing today was seeing both parades very unexpectedly.
The worst thing today was how tired I felt.
Today we tried dinner at Inventions
And the result was it’s one of the best buffets we’ve had at any Disney park.
The most magical moment today was meeting my donkey TWICE today!

Next: busier, but sunnier!

[Colexis Mom]

Sounds like a great dinner!

[Kenny]

A great end to a great day! That buffet looks, and sounds like it might rival my beloved Palo Brunch!

[honeybee723]

Originally Posted by chezp

WOW!!! The only time I've seen prawns that big was on our honeymoon in Tahiti! And yes, I do agree that it gives the Palo brunch a run for it's money.

[KMB733]

Originally Posted by chezp

I would have headed right for that chocolate cake

Sounds like a wonderful character meal!!

[pamcarey]

Wow! Sounds like a wonderful character buffet! I think the cat's name is Gideon.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by pamcarey

Wow! Sounds like a wonderful character buffet! I think the cat's name is Gideon.

That's the one!

[chezp]

Friday 11 June – part one: busier, but sunnier!

We slept exceptionally well last night, which was a pleasant surprise for me, given that I was still struggling to breathe at night with my cold. We didn’t surface until 7.15, having gone to bed at 10.00 the night before, which I guess shows just how much we needed the sleep. We had done a lot yesterday.

Sadly, today we had to pack everything up for the last time, as we were heading home. I must admit that, much as I’ve loved road tripping on this trip and going down to Switzerland, it was a very nice treat to actually stay in the same place for more than one night. It had been such a pleasure not to have to pack everything up yesterday and to be able to go into the parks without bags.

We headed down for breakfast and this time, we were in the Inventions side, where we had dined last night. It’s a much better place to do a buffet, as that’s what it’s geared up to do in the evenings anyway. I had a lot of similar things to yesterday, although I did have some pineapple as well, along with some kiwi fruit yoghurt, which was very different and very nice.

Once we’d finished eating, we headed back to the room, as there was only one character to be seen this morning, Scrooge McDuck, a lot less than yesterday. When we got back to the room, we realised that we had already taken so much stuff to the car that we could do the rest in just one journey, so that’s what we did. I didn’t want to wait for bell services. I had no idea how long they’d be, but after some bad experiences with them in Walt Disney World (10 – 15 minute wait), I didn’t want to risk it.

Once the car was all loaded up, we headed into the Disneyland Park. Good grief, you could tell the difference today. I knew that the parks were a lot busier at weekends and even here, we had to line up for the Extra Magic Hours to have our ID checked. Yesterday, we had just walked straight in.

We wandered up Main Street USA, taking lots of photos, including some using the tripod.







At the top of Main Street, we saw some filming going on with a princess:



We then headed up towards the castle, getting more and more photos as we went. It was a beautifully sunny morning and was already quite hot, a real change from the last couple of days.



Next: why can’t they do this in other castles?