Eurodisney

We all got up reasonably early and after a quick breakfast and a lot of yelling and screaming we were in the car and on our way by 09:15. At 10:00 we had parked the car at EuroDisney and were heading towards the gates, which had just opened, with the hoards of other visitors.

A beautiful sunny day during the Easter holidays. Why were we surprised to find that we were not the only ones with the idea to go to Disney today?

Our first stop was the Star Tours ride, which is my favourite, where we grabbed a couple of Fast Passes to come back and go straight on. In the mean time we played Air Hockey (Alex and Jess against me) and strolled around a bit. Finally we got on the ride (Jess, Alex and I) and, of course, it had not changed. A few minutes later and we were back outside and heading off for Honey, I shrunk the audience. We only had to wait about 10 or 15 minutes and then all four of us were inside the theatre with our 3D glasses on and enjoying the show which we had already seen at least once before. Afterwards we strolled past Space Mountain 2, watching it shoot off every now and then, and decided we'd go for a Fast Pass in the afternoon. We strolled over to It's A Small World and, after a bit of strategic queue management, we were all on the ride in about 10 or 15 minutes. That was probably the longest we've ever queued up for It's A Small World before. Then off to Pirates of the Caribbean which is another of the rare rides that all 4 of us go on together. I believe the wait was about 45 minutes which was just starting to get long.

Afterwards we headed off to The Lucky Nugget for lunch. The "show" we paid 30 € each for was basically a 4-piece band and the classic Disney characters coming 'round to bother us while we ate (all you can eat buffet).

After lunch we headed off to Big Thunder Mountain to grab a Fast Pass. But they weren't doing Fast Passes any more. Instead there was a 75 minute wait. That's right... an hour and a quarter of queuing up through endlessly winding roped-off lanes. Alex, Jess and I enjoyed the ride. But it certainly wasn't worth that long a wait.

All four of us headed off to Phantom Manor where the wait was "only" about 20 minutes. It was bit of fun but nothing extraordinary.

We headed back to Discoveryland where Jessica and I were going on Space Mountain 2. As we approached we noticed that it wasn't running. We went to ask why and were informed that there were "technical difficulties" and the ride had been stopped for 15 minutes. They didn't know when it would be running again. As the queues were so long on each ride and we didn't know quite what to do next we headed over to the new Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast ride. The queue was 75 minutes! With nothing better to do all 4 of us got on the queue. As we wound through the endless lanes Jess and I watched Space Mountain 2 to see if it reopened. An hour and a half later we were in our Buzz Lightyear cars, with our laser pistols, and Space Mountain 2 still had not reopened. The ride was a lot of fun and we all compared our scores as we left. But we also all agreed it wasn't worth that long a wait. Then again few rides would be.

As we got out of Buzz Lightyear we noticed that Space Mountain 2 had opened again. Jessica and I ran for the queue where we spent the next 60 minutes with the suspense and fear building up as we heard each rocket shoot to the sky. Jessica is the first of her friends to try Space Mountain 2 so she didn't know what it would be like. We both knew it would be faster than Space Mountain 1 which we had gone on together years ago. While we were queuing up Desney and Alex went on rides in Fantasyland, but most of them were closing by now, and ended up at It's A Small World again. Jessican and I survived Space Mountain 2 and got off the ride a bit wobbly-legged and dazed. We ran for the toilets as we needed to go before we got on the queue but didn't want to risk it back then. We then headed over to It's a small world to find Desney and Alex. There were no queues whatsoever so we ran on and went on the ride ourselves once before meeting Alex and Desney afterwards.

It was 20:00 by this time. We had spent 10 hours at Disney and gone on a total of 8 rides. It was a completely ridiculous experience. I fear today will be our last trip to Eurodisney... at least until we come back with our grandchildren!

We got home, ordered pizza and kicked back to watch Be Cool on DVD.