The following morning I woke up exhausted. I thought it may have just been the pace we were keeping catching up with me, but it was the beginning of some wretched virus that overtook me for the last few days of our trip and the following week at home. So I have far fewer photos from this point forward.

Anyway, on our uber ride to the train station, Brett got a notification that our train was not cancelled but being rerouted. Honestly, we couldn’t quite tell what was going on, so we knew we’d have to go talk to someone upon our arrival.

I’m not sure how aware anyone is of what was going on in Paris in March of this year, but we were traveling back to France on the same day Macron was set to sign the pension bill (raising their retirement age) into effect. We had been following the politics before traveling and while we were in Paris during the earlier part of our trip, but we had yet to feel the effects of it (aside from seeing some extra trash in the streets - though it wasn’t excessive over the course of those days we were there). But on this particular day, strikes were in full effect.

So when we arrived at the terminal, we went straight to a Eurostar desk. Turns out we were still on a direct path from London to Disneyland Paris; however, we would be traveling on a different train, which meant our seats would need to be reassigned. We felt incredibly lucky, as there was chaos around us with so many people missing trains altogether.

The ticket turnstile did not spit out our tickets, but an agent told us it wasn’t a big deal and verbally gave us our seat assignments while allowing us to take a picture of his iPad confirmation. We knew we were split up, but in pairs, so we didn’t think much more of it. When we boarded, Penelope and I were probably separated from the guys by 5-6 train cars.

Settled and ready to leave the station, a couple came up and told me we were in their seats. And we were. Unlike us, they had tickets to confirm their seat assignments and there were no open seats around us. It was unnerving not to have any sort of real confirmation. There were no agents around me so I called Brett, who found one nearer to him and they told him that there were some open seats nearer to him and that we could take those. So Penelope and I had to grab our luggage (yay for traveling light) and go find them. I was on pins and needles until the train left the station. I was so afraid someone else was going to show up claiming the seats we were sitting in.

All of this to say, it was a stressful morning, but at no point did I feel completely overwhelmed. And a lot of that was because we made the decision prior to our trip to set up BOTH of our phones for full international service (we also paid for the whole month instead of the exact days of our travel just in case we faced any sort of travel delays returning home). It was just one more base we covered that made a hiccup more manageable. And being aware of the political climate helped us make informed decisions. So, yanno, I believe it’s worth spending a little extra money for peace of mind.

So! Anyway… DISNEYLAND PARIS!

Train travel from London to DLP (and I’m sure Paris to DLP) is so easy. You are literally dropped off at the gates of Downtown Disney. We came up out of the terminal, went through Downtown Disney security (where we were basically standing at the entrances to both parks), and then rolled our luggage through Downtown Disney straight to our resort. So easy. If you find yourself planning a day trip to DLP by train, it’s incredibly easy to navigate.

A shock to no one… we had reservations at Hotel New York (the Art of Marvel). Well, we would’ve preferred the Disneyland Hotel right at the entrance to the park, but it was still under refurbishment.

Hotel New York was amazing. The Marvel-ness of it was everywhere, but it was really well done. It didn’t feel like it was for kids… and the art itself was really great. Unfortunately, I have zero photos of our room. I was shocked to realize this when we got home, but it should tell me something about my state of mind for the entirety of our time at Disneyland. I was feeling much worse than I was willing to admit even to myself.

After getting settled, we grabbed a very late lunch at the Earl of Sandwich in Downtown Disney, where we had our only communication breakdown of the entire trip. Over types of cheese. Hah! Honestly, it wasn’t that difficult to communicate, it’s just that it was really the only time we had to work for it at all.

From there, we couldn’t help ourselves… the lure of the castle was too strong. When planning for this trip, we figured we would spend this particular day getting settled at the resort and exploring Downtown Disney. Should’ve known ourselves better than that. Because of course we skipped right off to Disneyland the first chance we got!

This promenade area outside the hotel and entrance to the park was one of my favorite areas of the entire property. So much ambiance!

We grabbed our tickets and the next thing we knew, we were walking right down the middle of Main Street… Paris.

I was obsessed with their 30th “statues.” They had such an artistic vibe. First stop… the dragon under the castle. He was glorious.

Only to be outdone by the stained glass upstairs. I LOVED this castle. It felt like the perfect balance between Cinderella Castle in World and Sleeping Beauty in Land.

I also really loved that this area opened onto a view of Fantasyland.

One jarring thing… it’s very weird to be in a “cold” Disney park. Hah!

After oohing and ahhing over Sleeping Beauty’s European castle we made our way straight to Pirates of the Caribbean. One of our most anticipated attractions of the trip, due to it being different than our home park. In fact, that is what drove most of our decisions… we prioritized everything that we knew to be most unique.

And Pirates most definitely DID NOT disappoint. Far superior to Florida’s installation. We already know the west coast has a better version of Pirates, but I was not expecting to love this one so much.

We followed up pirates with Phantom Manor… another “wow” attraction that is definitely different than the one we have here. Both of these attractions blew us away, I think partly because they were novel to us, but also because they were truly rife with classic Disney details.

After Phantom Manor, we headed for another “new to us” attraction… Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. After trying to pump her up for her first inversion, we learned that Penelope wasn’t tall enough to ride. So the two of us wandered a bit, while Brett and Lucas rode it. Brett said it was just okay, not very long and not quite themed as much as he expected it to be.

We wandered around Main Street a bit more and meandered back to our hotel for our dining reservation. I have no photos of this, because I was feeling worse and worse as the day went on and not better. There was so much tension in my body from simply trying to ward off whatever was trying to take over.

Dinner was okay. We had reservations at the Manhattan Restaurant, which was beautiful, the chandelier in the middle designed to look like Asgard, but nothing truly spectacular. Honestly, the food at Disneyland Paris was really not very good anywhere. We had heard this a lot about the park, but I don’t think I was prepared for just how accurate a statement it was. There was subtle Marvel theming throughout and we had lovely service, the food just wasn’t great.

After what turned out to be a relatively long dinner, Brett took the kids to explore all the fun stuff in the hotel while I went back to our room to crash, with the hopes that I would wake up feeling better

Next… we rope drop the Walt Disney Studios park!

Shoebox Full of Memories: A Paris and London Trip Report - March 2023 (Day 6: Train to Disneyland Paris)