First, the Chunnel Train. I had some sort of wacky idea that most of the three-hour journey would be underground, you know? I don’t know where I got that, probably “Mission: Impossible” or something. Anyway, I’m enjoying the ride and readin’ my book, and I hear the attendant on the P.A. say something (in a thick French accent) about “tunnel” and “20 minutes.” “Great!” I think. “We’ll be in the tunnel in 20 minutes!” It was getting dark outside, but I could still see the lights of the towns as we chugged past. “I’ll have to be sure to look up then so I can see when we enter!” So 20 minutes later, I look up and strain to see if we’re in it yet. I can still see lights, so I turn to Snookums and ask when he thinks we’ll be hitting it. He informs me that we’re already through. “WHAT?” “Didn’t your ears pop 10 minutes go?” “Yeah.” “That was it.” Seriously, it takes less than 20 minutes to traverse the English Channel underground, and I missed all of it. I’m an idiot.

Okay, so we got to Paris and met up with eMan’s girlfriend and his French friends. We all headed out to dinner at a fancy-schmancy French restaurant. Here we are (from the left): Cecile (eMan’s girlfriend’s sister), Snookums, me, eMan, and Anne (eMan’s girlfriend). Cecile’s boyfriend Kristen (yeah, that’s a boy’s name) was taking the picture. Check out that beer! It’s called “Le Giraffe”, and it’s a big pipe thing that holds over 2 liters of Kronenbourg (French beer). It has a little tap on the side so everybody can fill their own from it. SWEET.

We all slept at Cecile and Kristen’s little Parisian flat, and (since space was at a premium) Snookums and I wound up on the foldout sofa. eMan took this photo about two seconds after he snapped on the light and bellowed for us to get up. Ugh. For the record it seems French people are also morning people, while Americans and Australians definitely are NOT. (Which does have its benefits though, like when the French people go out and get fresh croissants for breakfast while everybody else is still trying to open their eyes.)

The train to EuroDisney from Paris is cheap and we arrived just over 30 minutes later. The train station is seriously 400 yards from the front gates of the Park, and it didn’t take us long to get in. (Well, after we hiked to our hotel and checked the bags… but you don’t need to hear the boring bits, do you?) Here’s our first glimpse of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, or “Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant” as the French call it.

Here’s a much better view of the Castle from the end of Main Street U.S.A. (Yes, they even have that here.) You could walk through it to get to Fantasyland, and the interior had some fancy Disney jewelry shops. Underneath the Castle was the Dragon’s Lair, where they had this animatronic dragon sleeping in a pool of water that would periodically wake up and freak out all the little kids. There’s actually an upstairs level of the Castle too, where you can see a series of tapestries and stained glass windows depicting the story of Sleeping Beauty. Very cool.

The usual collection of Disney characters were all around the park, and they didn’t look any different from the American ones. The only surprise came when eMan identified the two chipmunks in this picture as “Tic” and “Tac.” Yes, the French call Chip and Dale “Tic and Tac.” I wonder why? Do “chip” and “dale” mean something bad when pronounced with a French accent? No clue.

Ah, now THIS is what I came for. Space Mountain. At EuroDisney they don’t have “Tomorrowland,” so instead it’s called “Discoveryland.” You know how Tomorrowland at the U.S. parks looks like a kinda “dated” version of the future? France avoids that by focusing on a more classical and literary view of tomorrow. Space Mountain, for instance, is based on Jules Verne’s book “From the Earth to the Moon.” The concept is that you get fired out of that big cannon to the right (outside the dome!) and then zoom into space.

Here’s the loading area for the ride (filled with random French people), which is a LOT different from the American version. You still walk all around inside the dome when you’re in line, but you end up outside it. It looks sorta like a train station, and there are all these fake barrels of gunpowder lining the walls (that’s what fires you out of the cannon). Notice also that these aren’t the “one-person-per-row” trains like in America, but rather the usual “two-per-row” trains you get on most upside-down rides.

Once you’re loaded in the cannon, it shoots you UP the hill really fast and you immediately plunge into the dome. It’s the usual collection of black-lit moon rocks and space ships, with a 360-degree loop and a couple corkscrews. Here’s the money shot of me, eMan, and the others on the ride. (As Snookums is not known for his strength of stomach, he sat this one out.) I look excited, don’t I? It certainly seemed to be a lot faster and scarier than I remembered from the U.S. version.

Ah, Star Tours. Here’s me and the X-Wing by the entrance. I think it fits better in “Discoveryland” than it does in the random corner they’ve got it at DisneyWorld. The whole ride is basically the same, except that all the droids speak French. (I got seriously freaked by C-3PO’s voice.) The actual simulation part is a bit confusing, because the little droid “driving” your transport speaks French but all the actors onscreen still speak English. It’s pretty obvious they just used the same film as the U.S. one.

Actually one thing was BETTER about French Star Tours: when you exit the ride, you don’t get chucked right into the merchandise shop. Instead you come out in this cool Galatic Arcade, with all kinds of wacky futuristic games. There were cool kiosks that took pictures of you and allowed you to stretch your face, and others that analyzed your hand print. The best was this one that Snookums is on, which had a big video screen and about 10 of these little control stands. You had an onscreen ship that you controlled by shifting your weight on the swiveling platform beneath you. You got points for bashing the other drivers and lost points by hitting asteroids. It was cool.

Here’s eMan’s girlfriend Anne playing the game, with a bunch of competitors behind her. I’m sorry to report that none of us won at all. There was this one little fat French kid that kept winning because he’d just stand there and rock back and forth as fast as possible, crashing into everybody a zillion times. He sucked. We eventually left.

We decided to head straight to “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” next, in case we’d need to get a Fast Pass for later in the day. Here we are making a pit stop in Adventureland. (Fast Pass, in case you don’t know, is a kickass scheme on the popular rides where you get a pass with a one-hour window wherein you can just walk up to the front of the line without having to wait.)

In an effort to psyche himself up for the perilous ride ahead, Rodd was imitating a large snake monument near the “Indiana Jones” line. He’s so cute. He figured he’d be all right on this one, because although the cars go BACKWARDS, the guidebook didn’t list any loops or corkscrews.

The guidebook was a liar. On the back of the ride, hidden from view, is a BACKWARDS 360-degree loop. (It’s in that stone archway on the left.) I was almost scared myself. I’d never ridden a backwards roller coaster before. We screwed up our courage and got on it though. And it sucked! Well, it didn’t suck, but you can’t see much and therefore you never really build up any tension. The loop was cool, but steeply-banked backwards curves are hurl-inducing. I wasn’t a big fan.

Since Snookums was so brave in riding the coaster, I told him I’d buy him anything in the “Indiana Jones” merchandise shop. Unsurprisingly, he chose one of the zillions of cap guns they had. They were actually pretty cool (metal and real-looking), but none of the shops in the park actually sold the caps that went with them. We had a lot of fun with that gun… Here Snookums plugs eMan in the middle of the street. (You could see if better if the wind hadn’t blown a chunk of my hair into the frame.)

On to a more sedate attraction: the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. It’s exactly the same as the one at DisneyWorld, right down to the concrete trunk and plastic leaves. Here Anne checks out the complicated water wheel that Franz and Fritz built. (Damn, Fritz was The Man, wasn’t he?) It’s always funny to see how much stuff they salvaged off their ship too. I mean, an entire bookcase?

I think this was technically supposed to be the bridge from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” but luckily there weren’t any hungry crocodiles swimming beneath. *grin* Here me and Snookums hold up traffic so eMan can take a picture. It wasn’t easy, considering that most of the kids seemed to enjoy running from end to end and jumping up and down to try to make people trip.

The jumping and swaying finally got to Snookums, who grabbed on to the side for dear life. When we finally got off we decided to head to “Pirates of the Caribbean,” which we’d read was much better than the U.S. version. There was a slight delay as we all got lost in the maze of “Dead Man’s Cave,” but eventually we re-grouped at the attraction. The line was a bit long, but you got to wait admidst some pretty cool fake Caribbean jungle. We finally piled into a boat and took off.

The ride definitely WAS cooler than the DisneyWorld version, and it started with a massive ramp that your boat got hauled up. Then you floated through all the animatronic pirate scenes, occasionally plunging down a small hill between levels. At one point I commented to the others, “This reminds me of ‘Jurassic Park’ when Jeff Goldblum says to David Attenborough, ‘When Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down the pirates don’t EAT the TOURISTS.’” Of course, that’s the point where the ride broke down. Seriously. We got stuck for, like, 15 minutes.

When we finally got out of the ride, we found ourself in the Pirate Shop. It was very cool, and Snookums even bought me some pirate gear! Here’s eMan checking out a scary mask. (In case you can’t tell, the real Frenchman is the one on the right… Just kidding, eMan!)

Here’s me modeling my pirate wear. Don’t I look dangerous? We headed into Alice’s Curious Labyrinth, which was a big hedge maze that you wandered through. There were random spouts of water, a Caucus Race, and a giant animatronic Queen of Hearts that would pop up and yell at you every now and then.

In the center of the maze was the Queen of Hearts’s Castle, which you could climb. There’s eMan at the top, dangling over the edge like a crazy man. Rodd and I had a wicked impulse to climb it ourselves and shout quotes from the French guy in “Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail” (“I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!”), but we didn’t think they’d appreciate the humor.

While we waited for eMan to climb down, I fought my way through a passel of rugrats to get my pictures taken on the Queen of Hearts’s throne. Unfortunately it really was for kids, and therefore the seat was about six inches across. Seriously, it’s a deceptive piece of furniture. Ouch, my ass.

This is Sir Lancelot’s Carousel, and it really was a gorgeous ride. Unfortunately it was also the slowest one I’ve ever been on in my life, and you only got to go around about six times. Rodd and I had wanted horses on the outside (to at least have the illusion of going faster), but the little brats beat us to them and we had to settle for inside horses. Here’s eMan and Anne behind us.

Snookums couldn’t resist. Here he is with the gun (again) as a masked desperado, riding the slowest horse in the history of the world. You know, it’s a wonder some cast member didn’t get pissed at the way we were constantly waving that thing around. There’s no way you could wave a fake (and real-looking) gun around at DisneyWorld. I guess the French are just more lenient. Hell, they let everybody smoke and drink in the park, which they certainly don’t do at the U.S. version. Yep, other than the weather, EuroDisney certainly has a lot of advantages over its American counterpart.

Isn’t this pretty? The Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride was sorta on this platform above the water, and so the kids flying must’ve got a wonderful view looking down. (I didn’t ride it, having already accomplished that lifelong goal a year ago at DisneyWorld.) The only flaw was that the water had a pretty strong chlorine smell, but at least that meant that it was nice and clean! And the swans and ducks didn’t seem to mind.

At the end of our first day in the park we headed back to Main Street U.S.A. to get spots for the “Main Street Electrical Parade.” It was really pretty, but I’m pretty sure that all the floats were exact copies of the ones I saw at DisneyWorld. I liked this one of the mama swan with the three babies. We had fun trying to see the little men driving them beneath the mesh surfaces.

Here’s me, Snookums, and Anne over to the left, with the Main Street Train Station lit up behind us. (Drat those French people in their shiny, red, overexposure-causing anoraks!) We decided to the Disney Village, which is their nightlife and restaurant area. Somewhere, beer was calling our names.

The wall outside the Disney Planet Hollywood was covered with handprints and autographs, and Snookums couldn’t resist seeing how he compared with his idol, Clint Eastwood. They were an exact match! So the gun had to come out again… *grin* The siren call of beer was getting louder though, so we hurried into the nearest bar establishment.

That turned out to be “Billy Bob’s”, which we immediately re-christened to “Bob’s Country Bunker” after “The Blues Brothers.” Within half an hour of our arrival, the place was packed with French people in full country getups: boots, hats, ruffled skirts, you name it. The live band started up, and people actually began to line dance! I nearly fell out of my chair when the third song they played was “Islands in the Stream,” which HAS to be one of my favorite songs of all time.

We decided on dinner in the Rainforest Cafe and spent 20 minutes in the Gift Shop waiting for a table. eMan couldn’t resist these cuddly green frogs, while Snookums and I bought each other monkeys and beanie babies. Dinner was good, and afterwards we headed home to the hotel for much needed sleep.

Our hotel, Sequoia Lodge, was really nice. eMan again woke us up at the crack of dawn, and we headed down to the dining room for a big buffet breakfast. (I look like an absolute TROLL in this picture. In my defense, I’d been awake for all of 20 minutes, I hadn’t had any caffeine yet, and the chair was really cushy and I had to hunch forward to reach the table.)

This is our hotel from the outside. It was about a 15 minute walk from the park entrance, including the time it took to get around the big man-made lake that separated the two. On the far right side was a New England-y type hotel, and on the far left was a postmodern New York-y type hotel (complete with Rockefeller Center ice rink out front!). Ours was more “rustic Pacific Northwest,” but it was still very modern and very comfortable.

Here we are headed back to the park for a second day. It’s only 9 a.m., and not a lot of the families have made it out yet. Way behind us you can see our hotel across the lake. And oh yeah, baby, I’m wearing the Minnie Mouse ears!

The sun decided to come out for two seconds, so here’s my Snookums lookin’ fly in his shades. He once again abstained as the rest of us started our day with a heapin’ helpin’ of Space Mountain. I almost don’t blame him; I felt a little queasy after that big breakfast myself! (And according to Snookums, some guy two trains ahead of us arrived back at the station covered in his own hurl.)

You can’t go to DisneyLand and not see a show! Here we are at Mickey’s Winter Wonderland Extravaganza. This was seriously one of the weirdest parts of the trip. Unlike the rides and attractions, where they would either have signs in English or provide translation headphones, the show was totally bilingual. I mean that Mickey and Co. would seriously alternate between using French and English, sometimes in the same sentence! It worked fairly well and everybody could follow along, but there’s something jarring about hearing Goofy speak in French followed by Donald singing “Let it Snow” in English.

Since we were all still pretty tired from our first day, we decided to take it nice and easy. Here we are on the riverboat, enjoying a nice ride around “Thunder Mesa.” (Damn those ears look good! Unfortunately my hair’s blowing in Snookums’s face.)

Big Thunder Mountain was the only big ride left to ride, and boy was it a doozy. Unlike the U.S. version, it’s entirely contained on an island surrounded by water! You get on your train on the land side, and as soon as you leave the station you plunge into a dark tunnel that takes you UNDER the lagoon and out to the mountain. Here we are chugging up a hill. (Again, I look terrible, and again, Snookums looks cute. Damn photogenic Aussie.)

And this is eMan and Anne sitting in the seat ahead of us. Aren’t they cute? Anne doesn’t speak a lot of English, but eMan’s year in England has made him pretty much fluent and he functioned as the translater all day. (Oh, in case you’re wondering, Cecile and Kristen took the train back to Paris the first night.)

We headed back to the middle of the park to catch “Mickey’s ImagiNations Parade.” The Mouse himself kicked it off on this fantastical float. Each one had a different Disney character and represented a different part of the world. The North American float had Goofy wearing the Statue of Liberty’s crown, Mount Rushmore, several moose and bears and eagles, some Native Americans, the space shuttle, the “Hollywood” sign, and a slot machine. Yes, that’s how the rest of the world thinks of us. (“It’s a Small World” was even worse.)

Here’s Snookums trying unsuccessfully to pull Excalibur from the anvil on the stone. Aww, it’s okay Snookums. More impressive was the fact that he even GOT to the sword; a legion of little boys were camped out on it when we got there and refused to move. (Hey, wait a minute! I thought Excalibur was given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake? If that’s the case, what happened to the original sword? And why has EuroDisney mislabelled it?)

I think this is supposed to be Snow White’s wishing well, so here I am singing to my own reflection. Actually I’m just contemplating the massive lollipop Snookums got me. I worked on that thing for HOURS, and it never got any smaller! It was like an everlasting gobstopper or something!

Right before we headed out of the park for good, Snookums and I ducked into “Dapper Dan’s Old Time Barbershop” to get him a shave and a haircut. Unfortunately Michel, the little French guy running the shop, spoke very little English, so we decided to just go with the shave rather than risk some type of hair disaster. So here he is giving Snookums the whole treatment, from the hot towels to the straight-edge shave to the aftershave massage.

And that was it for Disney! We picked up our bags and headed back to the train, weighed down by all our souvenirs and stuffed animals. Instead of heading straight back to Cecile’s place though, we headed somewhere else…

It’s the Eiffel Tower! It really is a lot bigger than I expected, and I definitely think that going up to the top would be friggin’ scary. They’ve got it all lit up for the millennium, and every hour little sparkle lights go off and make it shimmer. I was also surprised at the fact that it really is right in the middle of everything; I had thought that it would’ve been further out away from the center of town. After we had seen enough, we headed to the rendezvous point to meet up with Cecile and Kristen for dinner.

eMan managed to find us a “Bretagne” Creperie for dinner. That’s the northern region of France and he and everybody else was from, and they do things a little differently from the rest of the country. We had wonderful crepes with ham and cheese in them, and then for dessert I had a crepe covered in hot pears and chocolate sauce. YUM. We washed it down with the traditional Bretange drink: cider. And that was it for Paris!

The next morning we left Cecile’s and headed for the train station, only to learn that we had missed our Eurostar train. Damn. (You mean these things run on time in Europe?) So we waited an hour for the next one and by noon we were pulling back into London. And since I slept the whole way home… I missed the damn tunnel again. *grin* Thanks for readin’!