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Published: November 3rd 2005
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Don't Worry...
If you ever lose your child at Disneyland, she'll probably be adopted and raised by a family of relatively tame lions. Today started similarly to yesterday. We arrived at the park early and stalked Mickey in front of the gate as he greeted arriving guests. Then we took silly pictures with Halloween decorations along Main Street. However, instead of heading to Fantasyland, we started our day in Discoveryland. When the gate opened, we joined the stampede and headed for Space Mountain. But we didn’t get into line, we opted instead to get fastpasses and then we went to the Orbitron. Orbitron is basically a rocketship version of Dumbo. Once again, Dad sat out to take pictures, and I got queasy from spinning around in circles at high altitudes. (However, to my credit, I can handle the spinning teacups, no problem.) We then decided to choose a place to meet up after each of us rode Space Mountain.
Disneyland Paris does allow parents of small children to do what they call “baby switch”, which means the family can wait together in line. Papa rides a thrill ride while mama holds baby; then they switch and mama rides while papa holds baby. We decided not to do a “baby switch” though, because Katherine wasn’t particularly fond of dark queuing areas.
Anyway, Katherine loves the
Hubba, Hubba!
Hands off, Ladies. He's mine! animal statues in videopolis, so it made sense for us to choose one of them to be our meet-up point. One problem though, when it was time for us to use our fastpasses, Space Mountain was malfunctioning. We walked around Discoveryland for a little while hoping that it would be repaired before our 9:30-10:00 time slot expired.
Nautilus was closed so we went to “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.” Katherine wore her 3-D glasses all the way through the pre-show, then decided to take them off just before the 3-D movie started. Luckily, she decided to put them back on when she saw everyone else wearing them. We watched the movie in French, although you can put special headphones on to hear the show in English. I think Katherine enjoyed the movie. Some of the effects were scary (like the snake), but she liked the giant puppy at the end.
After the show, our fastpasses had expired, so we decided to leave Discoveryland for a little while to try and meet Minnie Mouse. Success. Minnie was wearing a weird Halloween witch outfit instead of her traditional red dress with white polka-dots, but the pictures turned out cute.
At 11:00
it was time for us to get tickets to the Lion King show (back to Discoveryland). The show is free, but you have to wait in a long line to get them. I stood in line for our family and David and Katherine were free to interact with the animal statues again. The brochure says they hand tickets out at 11:00, but really it’s better to line up at 10:30, because the line is huge and you might not get tickets for the time you want if you wait until 11:00. I wanted 12:00 tickets, but I had to settle for 2:00. Unfortunately, that’s during Katherine’s naptime. I took the tickets anyway, on the chance she wouldn’t be tired. If you had waited in line for 30+ minutes, you probably would have taken the tickets, too.
I met up with David and Katherine again inside videopolis. It was lunch time, so David got us some food while I stepped outside to try and get new Space Mountain fastpasses (Doh! time slot 2:00-2:30, the same time as our show tickets!). We met up and found a table. If you eat at videopolis, you can get a table and see the
Meeting Minnie
Minnie's dressed up for Halloween. show without tickets. That’s what happened to us, we just happened to be eating when the 12:00 show began. Another family eating near us said that they had more fast passes than they needed for Space Mountain, and gave us 2 tickets for 1:05-1:35. Hmmmm….
After lunch and the show, David took Katherine back to the hotel for her nap, and I stayed behind to try and ride Space Mountain. The new plan was that I would ride with the 1:05-1:35 fastpass, then go back to the hotel and watch Katherine sleep, while David rode on with a 2:00-2:30 fastpass. I got to ride. (It was great. Not too wild like Dumbo and Orbitron.) But on my way back to the hotel I tried to stop and make dinner reservations which was a big mistake. I wasted 30 minutes at City Hall and didn’t get a reservation for anything. When I got back to the hotel, David and Katherine were outside walking towards me. It seemed that by the time they had gotten to the hotel, she was no longer sleepy. We decided to stay at the hotel, and David and Katherine went swimming. The Sequoia Lodge is a great hotel for swimming year-round, because they have a great indoor pool with a really fun waterslide. David didn’t go down the slide with Katherine, because he didn’t want her to go underwater during the landing, but adorable kids with British accents kept trying to convince him it was quite worth it. “Aren’t you going to take her on the slide?”
“No. She’s too little.”
“I can watch her while you go down, if you want… It’s quite good.”
Katherine had a great time in the pool with Papa. I was sitting on the sidelines watching, and she was constantly smiling and squealing with delight.
After swimming, Papa and Katherine got cleaned up and we went out to dinner at the Rainforest Café in Disney Village. We decided to go all out and we ordered the chocolate volcano dessert. I thought I was pretty good at eating large amounts of desserts, but the volcano definitely defeated us. It was huge! There was no way we could have finished it. The menu says that it’s a good dessert for 2 to share, but I think they really mean it’s a good dessert for 14 people to share.
We went back to Disneyland late and rode It’s a Small World again. David went to try and finally ride Space Mountain, and I stayed behind with Katherine re-riding It’s a Small World, and visiting Characters. David thought that we were having so much fun that he could ride Space Mountain again. Bad idea. The park was closing, and I was left alone with a toddler who was furious that she couldn’t ride the Teacups (closed) or Small World (closed) anymore. To top it all off, she was there when Cinderella left to go home for the evening. She just stood there crying hysterically reaching toward the “Cast Members Only Door,” even though Cinderella had very nicely explained that she had to go to bed and that she would see Katherine tomorrow. The park was starting to turn lights off, and I was asked (I think) in French to leave the area where I had planned on meeting my husband. Earlier, my husband had refused to take a park map with him (even though I had two) saying, “I can find my way around by looking at the large landmarks like the castle.” To top it off, Katherine had a really poopy diaper, but I was afraid to go change her, because the nearest restroom was near where they were herding people out toward Main Street, and I didn’t want to miss my husband. Luckily, I had a cell phone on me. Unluckily, I had dropped it while trying to carry a diaper bag, a shopping bag, a stroller, and a tantrum-throwing toddler, and the phone was malfunctioning. It kept saying to insert some kind of card, but I didn’t know what it meant, and as far as I could see (in the dark) I hadn’t lost any kind of electronic card when it dropped.
Needless to say, David was met with frustration when he finally arrived back in Fantasyland. Then we worked together to calm Katherine down, and we changed her diaper on a park bench. Not a fairytale ending, but hey, you win some, you lose some. And when Katherine’s grumpy because she hasn’t had her afternoon nap, odds are you’re gonna lose some. Oh well, in the words of Cinderella, “There’s always tomorrow.”
Okay, maybe those weren’t Cinderella’s actual words, but that’s what she meant. Lucky for Cinderella, this wasn’t our last day at the park, or I might have had to slap her for making empty promises to my daughter. Just kidding, I would never slap anyone, especially not Cinderella.
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