We checked out of our AirBnB at 8:30am, and for consistency sake, the host was late again. She must be on café time. No matter, our Uber driver was enjoying a croissant in the boulangerie, so we had time to spare.
First thing be question that needs to be answered – yes, Euro Disney is the same place as Disneyland Paris. I never realized the name had changed until we came here for the first time today. Wikipedia tells me that Disney dropped the “Euro” from the name in 1994 due to lagging sales and some branding issues.
“Michael Eisner noted, “As Americans, the word ‘Euro’ is believed to mean glamorous or exciting. For Europeans it turned out to be a term they associated with business, currency, and commerce. Renaming the park ‘Disneyland Paris’ was a way of identifying it with one of the most romantic and exciting cities in the world.”
Makes sense. While true, you do bleed euro while there, but probably best not to be quite so explicit about it.
We arrived at Disneyland just as the morning parade passed by. I half pushed for us to march on to a more exciting ride and am so glad no one listened to me. This was more of a Broadway production on wheels than a parade. There were enormous animatronic parade floats for each Disney movie, with street dancers in exotic costumes and music selected to get a party started. I was feeling silly when I reluctantly admitted that the parade made me cry – but then Ale confessed she cried too.
After the parade, #1BigSister and her dad were ready for excitement. First stop, Orbitron, which was probably the scariest ride available to even the smallest in our crew.
It was while waiting in the regular line at Orbitron we discovered a little something called Premier Access. I’ve always been a bit of a hater when it comes to paying to jump the line – feels like lines should be reasonable just given how much you pay to get into a place to start with – but Amir wanted to do it. Fortunately there’s an option for buying it one at a time for each ride (5€-17€/person depending on ride) vs the default which is 90€/person for the whole day.
We spent a little less than 5 hours at Disneyland as today is technically a travel day to our next French destination, Honfleur.
We stopped by the Moxy Hotel at Charles De Galle to pick up Amir’s mom, Julia. She flew over from the US yesterday to rendezvous with us before our drive to the countryside. Our AirBnB in Honfleur has plenty of extra room, so we invited our moms along. My mom wasn’t able to make it, but I’m sure will be envious of the amount of bread, butter and wine about to happen.
We picked Julia up with just a small hitch – we could only find the rear of the hotel, not the front, so it wasn’t the most glamorous arrival.
The drive to our house in Honfleur was 2.5 hours, plus a 20 minute stop a few kilometers out of town to grab some groceries.
One of my favorite parts of AirBnB rentals, especially ones with some acreage, is exploring the home and the grounds. Unfortunately by the time we arrived it was nearly 9pm, we still had to make and eat dinner, do baths, bedtime and unpack. So, no exploring yet on my part. That gives me something to look forward to with my morning coffee tomorrow.
~Steph
TeamLouka 