Disneyland Paris - Day #2

Hi everyone. This is Kara - writing the post while Gayle is working on packing up as we are getting ready to transfer to London tomorrow. The packing is stymied a bit by the fact that most of our clothes are still wet from the laundry adventure today - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

We slept a bit later this morning since we didn't need to get to a park until 10 a.m. local time. We went to breakfast here in the hotel like normal - completely excited about our VIP Breakfast Pass, as we got to buzz right past the entire line and go right into breakfast. There is no variety at the breakfast here, but it is tasty enough and filling, and we make lunch out of it as well to pack into the park. Grab a bottle of water and you're good to go.

Our plan today was to take in the two or three things we wanted to see at Disney Studios park. We got there around 9:30 and were already well behind the many, many other people who arrived before us. We headed to our most anticipated stop which was Crush's Coaster - a wild, spinning, coaster like ride on the East Australian Current!! We'd both heard the ride was great. We got in the queue and waited for the park to open. As soon as the park opened they opened the queue area up for us to enter and the "wait time" sign immediately changed to 80 minutes. We checked our watches and headed on in. We got through the exterior queue and entered the building with what appeared just a short additional wait at approximately 45 minutes in. At that moment the ride shut down, and we started to have Buzz Lightyear flashbacks from yesterday. We were on the stair steps going up into the queue area, so we sat down and waited. The lights came back on - never a good sign in a Disney ride - but we kept waiting. We were gonna ride this ride!! After about 20 - 25 minutes the ride came back on. The announcement was in French but we figured it out from all the clapping that it must be good news.

We boarded the ride about 15 minutes later - so we now really had waited the 80 minutes. Gayle had been a bit nervous before the ride. She is commenting to me now, that she was filled with fear, and had her eyes closed. However, I gave her my advice that the goal of coasters like these is to let out all your pent up frustration, hostility, and anger in your screams and giddy joys of laughter as you go careening through the darkness. What do you know - she took my advice. She kept her eyes open and screamed and giggled! And, she just said I should tell you it is her most favorite Disney ride ever (and they better move it to Orlando - now)!

After such a great ride - and since the Sunday crowds were crazy - we decided that we had had enough of the Studio. Plus, we still had laundry to do.

So, back to our resort where we both packed up our backpacks with our dirty clothes and laundry supplies. We both laughed that other than the dorm our first year together at Ball State we had never done laundry together in a laundromat type of place - we always had washers and dryers in our apartments and both of us have had washers and dryers in our houses.

We went to the Hotel Santa Fe (motel 6/CSI crime scene hotel), bought our tokens at the gift shop to do laundry and then headed down to building 33 (right next to the Area 51 flying saucer). Yesterday when we had done our laundry reconnaissance, the laundry room had been open. However, the door was locked today. So, luckily there was a phone on the wall and we called housekeeping. They said they would send someone right over. Another phone call and about 15 more minutes later someone who spoke no English came over to unlock the door. He tried to explain to us what we finally decided was that if we both left the door would lock again, and we communicated to him that at least one of us would stay the entire time.

Gayle: Okay! I'm here. Even with my BFF, I can't give up total control and would hate to be misinterpretted! First, let's get one thing straight. In the two years I lived in DeHority at BSU, I never, ever did a load of laundry! In fact, other than one time at a condo in FL, I've never done laundry on vacation; what a waste of good time! As far as Crush's Coaster, that is THE BEST ride EVER! Alright, back to our story already in progress.

Kara: I packed my entired bag and she wrote that one paragraph. Oh well - on with the story. We finished the laundry, but a single dryer token bought only 20 minutes of heat so we only go the clothes warm - not really dry. We put the clothes back into our duffles - now folded and wet - and headed back to the bus stop. We took the bus back to the train station and then caught our bus back to our hotel. We got back the hotel and started unloading clothes out of our bag using the six hangers and every other surface in the room - including the handle that allows the window to open (which my shorts are still dangling from). We called housekeeping for more hangers and began to put the iron we'd ordered earlier in the week to work ironing some of the moisture out of our clothes.

When we arrived back at the hotel earlier Gayle had also made a reservation at the restaurant here in the hotel. We had done a bit of planning on meals prior to arrival and thought we'd be eating up at Val d'Europe where food was supposed to be less expensive. However, we found that food here at the park and resort really wasn't terribly expensive in comparison to food at Val d'Europe and even in comparison to food in the states. We took our time ironing and blowdrying our clothes and then headed down to dinner at Beaver Creek Tavern here in the hotel. The food was good, although nothing special. After dinner we went to the hotel gift shops to finally get stamps for all of the post cards. Gayle had gone just ahead of me and had bought her stamps ahead of me. She tried to warn me about the fact that these were stamps that you had to lick and you had to be careful not to choke. Unfortunately, the third stamp stuck to my tongue a bit more and there was a little bit of laughter as I recounted the "I was afraid I was going to choke on a stamp" a couple of times in the store.

I've also set a new record here at Disneyland Paris - I spent more at the parks/resort than Gayle. I am a HUGE Pluto fan! He's by far my favorite Disney character. The American parks seem to have something against Pluto, but here he is well featured in individual plush animals and other items. So, I loaded up. I need to be flying home with a kennel rather than a duffel bag for all these stuffed animals.

We're back in the room now and getting ready to head off to bed before we take our train to Lille and then board the EuroStar for a trip through the Chunnel to London tomorrow. We're headed off to Westminster Abbey and then have reservations for a sunset flight of the London Eye. No pictures today, but I'm sure there will be plenty tomorrow.

Gayle: A decent night's sleep has not been part of this trip, and I'm really starting to drag. Hopefully the air conditioning at our London hotel will be better? So tomorrow we change cities, countries, time zones, and currency. Oh boy, here we go again....