travel

No Rest For The Wicked

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February 8th, 2024

Woke up after 3 hours sleep, at around 3am. Ideal. Just what I wanted. No need to sleep a minute longer, body. Not like you’ve got a full day ahead of you or anything.

CVS was due to open at 6am, so being wide awake, the plan became get showered, dressed and head there to get the supplies we didn’t get the night before and then cross the street to Denny’s for breakfast.

The plan was executed successfully and we now had toiletries, full stomachs and the beginnings of an understanding of just how fucking expensive California is. Especially when it comes to food and factoring in a tip (I don’t necessarily agree with tipping culture, but when in Rome.. or America… Do as the silly American’s do).

Having finished up with breakfast, we made our way to the parks.

When booking accommodation for this trip, I watched a few Disney ‘influencer’ content, talking about where best to stay in the area, as well as reading individuals reviews of the hotels that maybe didn’t appear in those videos. There was a lot of talk about distance to the parks. That city buses were available, the certain hotels may provide shuttles, etc.

We walked.

From hotel to park security, it took us 19 minutes and 12 seconds and that was with having to stop at every crosswalk to wait for traffic to stop and let us cross. If we’d been able to time it slightly better, we could have got to the parks even quicker. This is the journey that people are getting on a bus for? – To be fair, there were a number of other people walking with us, so not everyone was taking shuttles, but still.

Due to still having to reserve parks at the time of our visit, I had selected Disneyland proper as our first park of the day (with Park Hopper kicking in at 11am), we headed through security and got our tickets scanned and photos taken and we were in. We headed down Main Street, being sure to comment on just how fucking small the castle is in Anaheim and… then I realised that we’d accidentally rope dropped or, were about to, at least.

I’ve never, I don’t think, rope dropped any of the parks and I hadn’t intended to do so today. But we were in the hub, surrounded by people amping themselves up to run (presumably) to Galaxy’s Edge for Rise of the Resistance and our plan? Pirates.

When the ‘rope dropped’, we headed to Pirates and, I guess not a lot of people head there first because it wasn’t open yet. Trying to decide where we could maybe go instead, we hung around for a moment and eventually they opened up, allowing us to be amongst the first to set sail that day. My main observation of Pirates in Disneyland is how rough it was, something I don’t remember from any of the other iterations – with every corner, the boat seemed to slam into the side, it also felt like the ride went through a lot of… nothing… at times, before the next scene would come along. Then the wait at the bottom and slow climb of the lift hill at the end felt a little anti-climactic. That’s not to say I hated it, but as someone who can happily ride the Paris version over and over again, it just felt lacking.

From Pirates, we doubled back on ourselves and ventured onto the Indiana Jones ride. The ride itself is pretty cool, but again, it felt extra rough and while the ride layout and system are essentially the same as Dinosaur in Animal Kingdom I, personally, prefer the theming of the Dino Institute. Partly, perhaps, because I have zero connection to Indiana Jones and because I love me a Dinosaur.

From Indiana Jones to Jungle Cruise. The cruise itself was fine, the seats were soaking wet – which I didn’t really understand, because you don’t get wet on the ride and it hadn’t been raining, but it is what it is, I guess. Jungle Cruise isn’t a ride I have a whole lot of connection to either, I’ve ridden it a few times in Magic Kingdom, once in Tokyo Disneyland (made better, or worse by the fact that the entire journey was in Japanese, I’m unsure).

We had talked, before we went, about not throwing money at the problem (the problem being queues), but after three rides, we caved and bought Genie+ and while getting that set up, Churros were bought.

First up on the Genie+ Lightning Lane was The Matterhorn – first time riding it, but I enjoyed it. It was bumpy, but it was enjoyable in a way that Space Mountain in Magic Kingdom (again, similar ride system), just isn’t. Also, I don’t know if there’s air conditioning in the mountain or if it was just a little chill in SoCal anyway, but the mountain being cold felt like a nice touch.

From The Matterhorn, we went to Small World, during which we encountered the first of many ‘friendly Americans in theme parks’ – it’s a somewhat uniquely American thing for people to just randomly start talking to you. In Paris, where I’ve been most, it just doesn’t happen really and the one time it did (for me) was in the queue for Crush’s Coaster one morning, but even then, the people that were talking to me were Americans. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with language barrier or perceived language barrier, whereas if you’re in America, the assumption (especially if you’re as white as I am), is that you’re going to be able to speak English.

With Genie+ there was some time to wait before we could get on anything else, so we booked for Space Mountain and then went to see some Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. I’ve visited the Hall of Presidents in Magic Kingdom and The American Adventure in Epcot, so I knew what to expect and Lincoln isn’t quite as bad as either of those, but American propaganda really does out-do itself at times. The animatronic is cool though, even if everything else is cringe inducing.

Space Mountain up next and the first example of Genie+’s downside.

Genie+ on the surface is a better system than Paris’ Premier Access set up. It feels a lot more polished, it’s one base price for the day, at Disneyland Resort, photo pass is included, etc. The downside? It’s cheap. So everyone ends up buying it. And if everyone buys it, it’s no longer all that fast, it’s just a second queue.

We waited for a while to get on Space Mountain, but it was a fun time (again, better than Magic Kingdom’s version, but not as good as Paris’). After Space, we ventured over to Toon Town for some lunch. I had the ‘Pepperoni Pizza flop over’, which is like an unsealed calzone, I guess. It was the greasiest thing I could have chosen, I think. But it was good!

The second example of where Genie+ falls short came next, when we headed over to California Adventure and booked our lightning lane for the Cars ride. Cars isn’t included in Genie+ and is, instead, an add-on. Making it even more similar to Premier Access in Paris. However, despite paying to ride, we still had to wait over 30mins to get on the ride, which, granted, wasn’t a huge wait time, but it’s still longer than you expect to wait when you’ve just paid $40 to get on.

In Paris, Premier Access is sufficiently cost prohibitive that only a small number of people actually use it. It means that the paid lines are never too long and the main lines are never crazy long, because they’re not having to filter through the paid guests as a priority. Here, they don’t seem to have worked that out yet.

Cars was cool, we didn’t win the race though. Unfortunately.

Next up – Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! – I’m extremely familiar with Tower of Terror, but had obviously never been on this re-skin of the ride, it was a lot of fun, but I don’t think I prefer it over the Twilight Zone – Tower of Terror feels like it utilises the drops as part of the actual storytelling, whereas in Guardians, although still fun, the drops feel like an add on.

Not being at all familiar with Disneyland Resort, the next ride – Soarin’ – proved difficult to find, but we got there in the end and by pure chance, ended up sat in the middle, of the middle. Lining us up perfectly so we had the Eiffel Tower (and all other tall structures) as straight as they’re meant to be and not curving to one side or the other.

Flight over, we queued entirely too long for the Little Mermaid, and then headed down to Pixar Pier where we grabbed one of their giant cookies each, got covered in melted chocolate (I did, at least) and then boarded the Incredicoaster (maybe not the wisest of orders to do that in, but whatever).

Incredicoaster was a lot of fun, and honestly a coaster of that size and intensity (not too much, but not too little) is probably what Disney parks as a whole are missing.

We decided to call it a day with that and walked back to the hotel. Feet very much aching. By the time we got back to the hotel for the night, my Fitbit told me I had done 31,536 steps and walked 13.43 miles. All on a recorded 2hrs 50m worth of sleep.

A successful day.

Aberdeen to Anaheim

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February 7th, 2024

Being winter, in Scotland, snow isn’t necessarily a given, but it’s not to be unexpected either. Forecast for the drive to the airport told us it was coming, so we left a little earlier than we might have otherwise. I had booked the parking to start from 8am and we arrived pretty much bang on – meaning, for the first time, the barrier raised without any issues, the little sign greeting me as I drove in. Off to a great start!

We got ourselves through security and had something to eat, before sitting and waiting for the flight. Other than a slight mishap with scanning our boarding passes, with the screen saying ‘Do Not Board’ (still not sure what happened there, the attendant waived us through), the flight down to Heathrow went without a hitch.

When we landed, we had to scan ourselves through to get to the main part of the terminal, I got through OK, but Connor was directed to a desk – presumably because he was in an exit row/next to the door. I waited for him at the top of the stairs and we wandered around the terminal before going to the Spoons to get some lunch.

From where we were sat, I could see a departures screen. Our flight had been delayed. Not ideal, but fine.

Once we were done eating, we sat down again to wait for our gate to show up. Only for our flight to be delayed again. And again. And again. In total, it was delayed for two hours.

When we eventually arrived at the gate, we were told that the plane we were due to be on had a fault and there had been a delay in getting another one. There was also speculation that the delay had been due to Prince Harry who was supposedly on the same flight (though if he was, we would have been at very different ends of the plane, so I have no idea).

The flight itself was fine. I didn’t sleep at all, occasionally I’d feel myself dropping off and then I’d hypnagogic jerk myself awake again.

When we landed in LAX (the first time I’d been in the airport since the Arizona incident), we made our way to the customs desk. It all felt a lot less hectic than it did the last time I was there. The past few times I’ve been in the US, mostly Florida airports, the customs people have glanced at my passport, maybe scanned my fingerprints and/or taken my picture and sent me on my way.

LAX guy decided to ask my whole life story.

“Why are you here?” – Oh, the theme parks, basically. Going to Disney and Universal.
“OK. Show me your tickets.” – At which point I had to dig through my emails to find the PDFs.
“Where are you staying?” – I told him.
“How much money do you have with you?” – I was honest in that I didn’t have any actual cash with me. But cards.
“How much money do you have on the cards?” – I told him.

I was able to answer all the questions he had, in a seemingly satisfactory way, but while answering, all I was thinking was that if the other guy was asking Connor the same questions, he’d have none of the answers (at least about where we were staying, unable to produce the park tickets, etc). I was finished before Connor, so I kind of hovered, in case he needed me to provide evidence (he didn’t).

We did it. We were officially in the USA. Now to get a 45min car ride to our hotel.

The LAX-It system was actually a lot more straight forward than I thought it would be. We followed the signs to the shuttle stop. Got the shuttle to the LAX-It area and ordered a Lyft from there – it was my first time using Lyft, as opposed to Uber. The basic set up being the same, but for whatever reason, Lyft was significantly cheaper.

I had forgotten how terrifying American roads can be. With the, at times, seemingly endless lanes and massive trucks, but we got to the hotel and didn’t die.

We got the hotel a little later than planned, and mostly just wanted to get to bed. I had thought about venturing to the CVS that was a couple blocks away, but we found a little shop area in reception that had everything we needed for that night and the next morning.

British Airways

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Please remind me never to book with British Airways ever again, if I can help it, thank you.

On the 8th of June, I booked return flights from Inverness to Los Angeles. The price had already gone up a little since I first started looking, but still a good deal for the journey.

Awesome.

Trip isn’t until February 2024, but glad to have the flights booked and not have to think about that aspect of things anymore.

18th of July rolls around, however and I get an email from British Airways letting me know that there has been a schedule change and the return flight from Heathrow to Inverness instead of taking off at 14:20, it will not take off at 09:35.

At first, I didn’t think too much about it. I’ve had a bunch of schedule changes happen, none of which really changed anything about the journey, beyond maybe a little extra time waiting in the airport, but the fact that the flight was now so much earlier got me curious. So I got my booking reference and logged in to the BA site. Sure enough, the new flight lands in Inverness at 11:20 but the flight from Los Angeles doesn’t even get to London until around noon. So it would be physically impossible for me to make the connection, as I’d still be somewhere over the Atlantic when the Inverness bound flight was taking off.

So I messaged BA on Facebook. The people I talked to, to give them their due, were friendly and helpful and got me booked on a later flight from Heathrow to Inverness, now scheduled to depart Heathrow at 19:15. An extremely long day of travel, given that we would have left Los Angeles at around 2am UK time, but a physically possible one that would result in us getting back to Inverness.

Cool. Can go back to not worrying about the flights again.

22nd of July, another email.

This time letting me know that the return flight hadn’t been rescheduled, but instead had been cancelled. But not to worry, they booked me on the next available flight. The morning flight. Which I physically cannot catch, due to being somewhere over the Atlantic. Ideal.

I headed back to Facebook to message BA again, to see what could be done. While typing up my message to them, I pulled up the booking reference again, to check the times (in order to give them an accurate account of how impossible this was going to be), only to find that it wasn’t just one flight that had been cancelled, but two! – Yet at this point, I’d only received email notice of one.

Shortly after, another email arrived.

So now both outbound and inbound Inverness/Heathrow flights are cancelled/rescheduled and both reschedules make it impossible to catch the original connecting flight.

I was able to re-book the outbound journey to a later time, with a flight leaving for Los Angeles later, and of course, arriving later. That first day was always going to be a travel day with nothing substantial planned, so arriving later isn’t a big deal.

But we’re back to square one with the return flight. The later flight is cancelled and I am unable to catch the morning one. I’ve message them again to see what can be done. I don’t particularly want to cancel the entire booking, because the cost of flights will have only gone up further, but I’d also like to get home, preferably at no extra cost (I’d be able to book an alternate flight from London to Inverness with easyJet relatively easily, but it would require 1. paying the cost of that flight and 2. switching airports).

So, in summary, I don’t want to have to deal with refunding/rebooking with another airline, but nor do I ever want to have to deal with BA ever again.

Thank you.

California Dreamin’

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Earlier this year, I was looking at Google Flights as I’m wont to do from time to time and I found that flights from Inverness (my closest airport) to Los Angeles were, while perhaps not ‘super cheap’, a lot cheaper than I expected them to be.

I’ve never been to Los Angeles (or California) before, bar a quick trip through LAX for a connecting flight and perhaps most importantly, I’ve never been to Disneyland. If I could figure out a way to keep it all relatively cheap, it’d be worth doing, right?

Having successfully turned Connor into a Disney Adult, I priced up a trip for two people to California/Los Angeles for a little over a week. Comprising of flights, hotels and park tickets for both Disney and Universal and in total it came out to just over £1000 each – though that’s with the addition of Tesco Clubcard hotel vouchers which brings the cost of one of the hotels (if used on only one) down to next to nothing, which is handy!

The hotel I chose for Disney, for pricing at least, nothing’s final. Was the Clarion Hotel Anaheim. It’s listed as one of Disney’s “Good Neighbor Hotels”, which sounds great, but seemingly means next to nothing, besides the fact that it’s relatively close by. To me, on the map, it looked to be within walking distance, but in the year of our lord, twenty-twenty-three, I wanted to see what it was like on the inside, from people that have actually been, so off to YouTube I went.

The first video I found was from The Disneyland Beat, their video was about ‘A Disneyland Hotel Guide’, they mostly mentioned the hotels across the street from Disneyland, with the hotel I was looking at mentioned toward the end, but being dismissed by them as ‘too far to walk’.

Too far?!

A rough path of the route from Disneyland street entrance to Hotel street entrance.

The next video I watched was from a small channel called Carson’s World, he and his family had actually stayed at the hotel I was looking at and in one of his videos, after taking transport to Disney from the hotel, he had to go back to the hotel to drop something off and opted to walk it. Timing himself, he was able to walk from Disney security, to the hotel, go to his room (which was up on one of the top floors), drop off what he needed to drop off, leave the hotel, realise he’d forgotten something, go back and get it and get back to Disney within 40 minutes, which without the forgetting of items, brings it to realistically, a 15 minute walk each way.

And yet, in his comments? – Someone saying that it would be too far to walk…

It got me curious. Both times Connor and I have been to Disneyland Paris, we have stayed at Hotel Cheyenne. One of the cheaper Disney owned Hotels on property. While there is a bus provided and we have used it, most of the time we opted to walk to the parks and back again at the end of the day. How far was that walk?

A rough path of the walk from the central plaza area of Disneyland Paris to Hotel Cheyenne

As you can see, the distance in Paris is actually longer than the distance in Anaheim. Not by a huge amount, but still. And yet, when in Paris, we didn’t give it a second thought to walking to the parks in the morning or back at night.

One argument that could be made is that in Paris, you’re in the Disney bubble. The walk is entirely within Disney property and as such, you’re going to feel safer there than you might in Anaheim where your walk is along a busy road in the middle of a city (even if Disneyland Resort is right next to you the whole time, it’s not technically Disney property).

But then I found this video from Chris Roode, who cycles from the hotel next door to the Clarion and follows the route presented above, and while there is a busy road you have to cross (via a crosswalk), the majority of the path is pretty nice and tree-lined. So it’s not like you’re walking down crack alley to get to your destination either.

The main conclusion of this ‘research’? – Americans are lazy as fuck.

And in my day-to-day life, I’m certainly in no position to judge anyone on their levels of laziness. But if the choice is waiting 10-15mins for a bus to show up to take me a half mile down the road, or walk that half mile? I’m walking it. Even after a day at Disney, with sore feet, I’d rather walk the extra distance instead of standing around waiting. The pain is less when moving!

CDG – AMS – ABZ

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Before going back to the room last night, I checked with reception to see what time we needed to be out of the room by – Noon. Cool.

With no real time (or desire) to venture far, we had decided we would stay as long as possible before checking out and so the morning consisted of slowly getting ready, showered, packed, etc.

Around 11:50am there was a knock at the door, it was house-keeping. I tried to tell her that we were just about to leave and I think she got what I was trying to say, but she only spoke French, so we may never know. She was waiting down the corridor when we did eventually leave though. I know hotels have tight turnarounds, but if check out time is noon and there’s a do not disturb on the door handle, maybe wait until noon to knock? No?

After leaving the hotel, we stopped at a little bakery across from the RER and grabbed a couple Pain au Chocolats for our (late) breakfast.

We then went back to Disney one last time to have a look around the shops at Disney village and get yet more food before our train to Charles De Gaulle.

The train back was mobbed, to the point where we stood awkwardly, with others next to the luggage rack/door the whole journey, once at the airport, we made our way through security and to our gate.

While sat at the gate (we had a while), Connor was talking about how much he wanted to go back to Disney. Long story short? While sat at the gate for our flight home, we made reservations for Disney hotel and booked return flights for January. Oops.

As with the way to Disney, the journey back meant another border control visit at Amsterdam. The queue moved a lot slower this time and the EU passengers border next to us was a lot more visible, meaning it hurt all the more watching people sail through as we waited. All the staff were really friendly and upbeat though (my experience of border control has mostly consisted of America, where they treat you as guilty from the moment you land til the moment you collect your luggage on the other side and get out of the airport).

Back in Aberdeen, we got back to the long-stay carpark and made our way to the exit. I had the ticket that the machine gave me when we arrived, with my reg number printed on it. I put it in the machine, fully expecting the barrier to raise and for us to drive out.

The barrier did not raise. Instead, it charged me £100.

I had already paid for the parking online, in advance. £61.99. We had purposefully chosen the further away car park, because we didn’t (or I didn’t) want to pay £100 for fucking parking. Yet here we were, behind a barrier, with a £100 toll to get out.

I paid it and we left. Annoyed.

Looking into it once I was home, I had made the mistake of pressing the button on the machine when we arrived for a ticket – it should have automatically spat out a ticket when it read the plate. It didn’t. Meaning that instead of using the pre-booked slot we had, we essentially started a new one.

I wrote to the parking people and laid out what happened. Admitting fault and asking there was anything they could do.

If anything, I expected them to maybe refund the £61.99. Since technically, that wasn’t used. But they wrote back asking for the card details used, saying they’d refund the full £100 paid at the gate (which is now back in the account).

Gustave’s Place

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Day Four and we’re out of Disney days. I had lay in bed, awake, for a long time – partly coming to terms with the message/call I’d received from my Uncle (and the series of ‘what ifs’ that had played out in my head), partly trying to figure out what we could actually do today, if we couldn’t get to the Eiffel Tower, etc.

We left the hotel room later than previous days and headed into Paris. I had thought to myself (and perhaps even said to Connor) that the level of busking/homeless/con-artists on this trip were dramatically reduced from previous trips. A pleasant thing. Even around Marne-la-Vallée you could usually find some people hanging around the station, hoping to prey on unsuspecting tourists, but this time? Nothing.

Nothing until today, that is. We swapped from the RER to Metro at Nation, aiming for Montparnasse station. Along the way, a homeless guy got on, with a… Unique aroma… and started asking around for money, before moving his way down the train, making sure to touch Connor as he went, and finding a seat. The rest of the journey was accompanied by his beautiful singing voice.

Exiting at Montparnasse, we grabbed some food from a supermarket nearby (in which Connor also took a shit in a toilet with no roof), before eating said lunch at the open plaza area in front of the station.

The plan from there was to go to the Eiffel Tower and see if we could get up without a having pre-booked a ticket. We walked from Montparnasse down to the Eiffel Tower. We’d already seen it yesterday, but since the last time I was in Paris (2015), they’ve built a large glass wall around the base of the tower. ‘Cause terrorism.

Arriving from the Champs de Mars side, we walked down the right of the tower to find a massive queue, that itself would have been over an hour long, at least, queuing to get into the area beneath the tower. A sign along that queue also seemed to indicate that you couldn’t get in without a ticket.

We sat down on the grass near where the queue was formed. I was feeling pretty defeated (and also sore, my feet were killing me). Connor insisted we have a look at the other side, to see if there was another entrance there. We went and there was. This time with a much shorter queue. Still no guarantee of getting up the tower, but we were at least allowed into the base area.

Once in, we found that there was a ticket booth for lift access (because was I fuck walking up the steps). It said that the queue time would be approximately an hour to get the tickets, but that was fine, so long as we were getting them. I’m sure that timeframe would have been accurate, too, had they not decided to just close up shop at some point while we queued.

Tickets in hand, we made our way to the lift, passing through security again with a sign letting you know that no knives were allowed. Given that we had to go through security to get to this point, how we were meant to have knives on us, I’m not sure… But also, why there was a bucket full of knives by this sign… I’m also not sure.

We went to the top. We viewed the views. We came back down.

In part, I think, due to the wall around the tower, causing bottlenecks in the pathways around it, the amount of people trying to sell you shit, the ‘string’ guys, etc seemed to be worse than I’d ever seen it before and for both of us, getting away from them all became the number one priority.

We sat near The Seine for a bit. I had thought about going over to Montmartre, seeing the Moulin Rouge and going up to the Sacré-Cœur, but I was sore, the chances of what we’d just escaped around the Eiffel Tower being just as bad over there and the fact that Connor didn’t really care about it, meant we made the decision to just head back to the hotel.

We stopped off at a little Chinese supermarket in Bussy, on the way. I was fully aware that it was a Chinese place, but I figured it’d have a snack/juice section the same as any other supermarket. While it had a few items though, it didn’t have nearly as much as I thought it might.

Back in the room, we dropped off the snacks we had and decided to head to Val d’Europe for food. There was a pizza place near to the RER station that looked alright (turns out it was pretty much in the RER station). Service was fine, pizza was decent. We hit up the supermarket across the street for more snacks (far too many snacks, given that we were checking out in a little over 12hrs and had to sleep in that time, too) and went back to the hotel to eat more and watch TV.

It was a much slower paced day, and perhaps slightly less disappointing than I’d imagined, given that we got up the tower. Still, Paris lacked the charm it’s had on every other visit for me. I don’t know if it was extra covid regulations still in place, just the amount of people going around in what was always going to be a busy time or what… Visiting at a quieter time might answer those questions, or just go on to show that it’s no longer a city I like being in. We’ll see.

Tomorrow: Home time!

Paris Syndrome

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Day three and the morning started off well. Dropped our bags with left luggage at the hotel and ventured into the parks, hitting up Crushes Coaster and Tower of Terror after a breakfast Mickey Waffle — not that there was anything breakfast-y about the waffle, other than the time of day.

I had been under the impression that the Disneyland Railroad was closed, no matter when I checked the app, it kept telling me it was, which made the fact that I kept seeing it going around the park particularly frustrating.

Doing some further research, I found that it was in fact open most of the day, closing at 5pm. So, being as the plan was to go into Paris for the day, I wanted to get a loop of railway done before we went. So, when we were done in Studios, we headed over to the main park with the sole purpose of getting railed. Unfortunately, while in the queue, the ride went down. We could have waited, but with no idea what was wrong with it or how long it’d be down for, we jumped the barrier and departed Disney, heading for Bussy-St-Georges and our new hotel.

Check-in at the new hotel went well, our room was ready, we could drop off our bags. Great. Got up to the room and found that the twin room I’d booked was arranged as a double, so back down to reception we went to ask for that to be rectified. Asked if we were going out, we were assured it’d be sorted by the time we got back (and it was).

We had talked before we left Scotland about what we wanted to do in Paris. I’d done pretty much everything before, so really it was reliant on what Connor might want to do. The only thing that we’d really both committed to was the Catacombs, which wasn’t going to be today. In my head, I figured we could do a sight-seeing tour today, take in the big things, and then do the Eiffel Tower, Catacombs, etc on Thursday. Maybe even squeeze something in on Friday morning, if needs-be.

The RER line from Bussy took us right to the Arc De Triomphe – I always enjoy venturing out from underground and being faced by a big famous landmark (my first impression of London proper was Big Ben at Westminster Tube) and having seen the big Arch, it was decided we’d go up it and that I’d try not to die.

It was this decision that lulled us (perhaps especially me) into a false sense of security. We queued up, we bought a ticket, we went up. We saw Paris from up high. We came down again.

You know? How tourist attractions generally work. Go, get ticket, experience thing, leave. Lovely.

Going with the theme of seeing everything, we walked from Archie boi down to The Louvre and it was here that things started to fall apart. We stopped for something to eat, in the food court area of the shopping centre attached to the museum, which took approximately 1000 years to arrive and once we were done, figured ‘We’re here, we may as well go in.’

April is a notoriously busy time in Paris any way, couple that with the fact that it was slap in the middle of the Easter holidays, I expected crowds, I expected things to be busy. While finishing up our food, I checked online to see how much tickets were going to be and if I could buy them online (save queuing in the museum itself).

As it turned out, I couldn’t buy them in the museum even if I wanted to, as all tickets were now to be pre-booked/time-stamped. Not to worry, just buy one online, right? – If not for today, tomorrow?

Wrong.

There were no tickets for the Louvre available until the following week.

Mona Lisa’s shite anyway.

Not wanting to be disappointed again, and doubling down somewhat on my ‘let’s at least see all the things’ mentality, from the Louvre, we went to Trocadero. Which, from past experience, gives great views across to the Eiffel Tower. At the moment though? Covered in construction walls, which block pretty much every vantage point.

Carrying on, we walked down toward the tower and jumped on the RER again, this time aiming for Notre Dam – this was one place I knew wouldn’t be as I’d known it before, given the fire damage and consequent repair work needed, so snapped a couple pictures and then crossed the river and started to look for something to eat.

While on the search, I checked my phone and saw I had a message from my Uncle and while I have nothing against the man, we’re not in regular communication. So, when I saw a missed call and a text from him asking – ‘Martin, can you give me a call when you can’, my heart sank.

Panic set in. Something had happened to my Mum. She was hurt… Or worse. How do I get back to the UK? I could rent a car and drive, that’d get me on my way the quickest, probably. There’d probably be flights, but could I afford it? Maybe train to London and a flight? Or drive from there? My bag was at the hotel still, but I could go via the hotel and get to the airport from Marne-la-Vallée. Was I ready to face whatever would be waiting for me when I did get back though?

All of this. All the panic. All in the approximately four minutes it took from reading the message to being on the phone with him.

Something serious had happened. Someone was ill and in a dangerous situation. That someone wasn’t my Mum… When he said the name of the person, a wave of relief swept over me, as I still tried to take in all the important information he was telling me.

The reason he had tried to call me (and messaged me) was that he’d already tried my Mum and couldn’t get a hold of her, so figured if I happened to be going out to her, I could just tell her in person. When I told him I was in Paris. He had had no idea.

After coming off the phone to him, we found an ice cream place and got a milkshake. My mind was still racing though. Everything was fine, but it was playing the ‘what if?’ game.

The day already hadn’t gone as planned or expected, we had a whole other day of Paris that we were meant to fill and if the Louvre was anything to go by, weren’t going to be able to do anything. My mood was now super low, due to the ‘what if?’ game my mind was now playing and I wasn’t having a good time.

Our Disney tickets ran out at park close, so we had one final night of Disney to enjoy. We got on the RER back to the hotel and then headed to the park, arriving just as the sun was setting. We rode rides. Ate waffles. Watched the drone show again.

Back at the hotel in Bussy, I started looking up options. Tickets for the Eiffel Tower weren’t available online, but there was possibility of buying on site. I started looking at Asterix Parc as a legitimate option, but although we could possibly have bought tickets at the gate, there was no guarantee and it’s pretty far out of the way for there not to be a guarantee of that.

Despite the lack of sleep in general this trip, I lay in bed, going over the what if scenario(s) in my head for a long time.

Not ideal.

Un monde qui s’illumine!

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After having been awake for well over a day and away from home for almost 24hrs, I went to sleep at around 2am France time, and preceded to wake uo/fall asleep every hour or so thereafter until giving up at around 7am.

With it being the park’s anniversary, they were opening earlier than usual (at 8:30) and I had considered going down for the opening myself (as Connor wasn’t keen on the idea), but when I saw the crowd gathered at 7:30, I chose not to.

We got to the park around 9ish and made our way in, in Disney village they were handing out 30th anniversary flags, and I had walked right past them, cause I knew I’d only end up carrying it around all day and I’d get annoyed with it. When we got to the park though, there were multiple people lined up, all but forcing people to take one.

Once under the station and into Town Square, the extent of what was going on became more apparent. As a celebration of guests (I guess?), the cast members were lining the street, clapping, dancing and singing along to Un monde qui s’illumine ! – the 30th anniversary anthem. The cast members stretched the length of Main Street and right around the hub.

It was a surreal experience, to say the least. The song has been stuck in both our heads since.

We grabbed a couple passes for Big Thunder, Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear – I had told Connor he’d probably enjoy Buzz, but that I wasn’t a huge fan, though I would ride it. One of the main reasons I don’t like it is because I’m just not that good at it… Then I went and beat him. Oops.

From there, we went over to Studios and rode Tower of Terror before grabbing some lukewarm food in Studio One. After that, we rode Crush’s Coaster for the first time this trip.

Throughout all the pass buying escapades, I’ve been using the same card. But for some reason today, transactions on that card, via the DLP app just failed. Not declined, just wouldn’t go through at all. I was able to link another card, but it was still annoying. I contacted the card company, but no help so far.

Back to the hotel after Crush and dropped off the flags, finally. We wanderdd around Val d’Europe shopping centre, still unsure why, to be honest. Then bought some suncream, to try and belatedly stop ourselves from burning? I’m not sure.

Back in the park tonight, rode a few more rides and then back to the hotel relatively early and lazed around.

Tomorrow: new hotel! And Paris!

Première Access

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At the time of writing this, it is currently 00:17 French time. I picked Connor up at around 2am UK time and haven’t slept since. Our flight from Aberdeen wasn’t until 06:05 and it only takes an hour and a half to get there (at most), yet we left at 2am. We got there so early that the bus running from the long stay car park to the terminal wasn’t even running for another half hour.

The flight to Amsterdam went alright, a slight snag in the already panicky transfer was that we hit passport control in Amsterdam, as opposed to Paris, something I wasn’t expecting to happen – but we made it to the gate with plenty time to spare and got through CDG without any hassle either, just a wee wait for the train to Marne-la-Valee.

Arriving at Disney, we ended up walking to our hotel and got ourselves checked in, dropping off our bags as the room wasn’t ready then headed to the park.

Connor had said before that he’d be paying for fast pass, as he didn’t want to wait in queues… And that’s just what he did. We spent (or he spent) a small fortune on ‘Premiere Access’. I don’t agree with paid fast pass, at least not on an individual basis… But the results? We walked on to and rode pretty much every ride we wanted to in one day.

First up, Big Thunder, then Space Mountain, Phantom Manor, Ratatouille, Tower of Terror. We then took a break, got into our room, etc. Then came back and did Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Tours. The only ride Id like to do but haven’t yet is Crush’s Coaster.

The park was crazy crowded, there’s no way we’d have got on half the rides we did if we were queuing normally.

After the rides came time for Disney’s new night-time show Disney D-light. A drone show above the castle. The show itself is short, but looks amazing. For a park that’s so often (wrongly, in my opinion) shat on for being second tier, etc. The drone show is better than any other park has in terms of that kind of night time show.

The crowds getting ready to watch were a fucking nightmare though. Huge groups sat on the ground, saving their space, unwilling to love for anything or anyone. Blocking pathways, etc.

Disney are as much to blame for allowing it to happen and not creating pathways for people wishing to leave, etc.

After D-light and illuminations, we came back to the hotel. Tired. Sore. Sweaty (maybe just me on that one).

Tomorrow, the plan (my plan at least) is to hit the park first thing, see what they’ve got going for the 30th.

thing.