France June 2018.

[MattyH]

Recently visited France for a week with the Family, we spent two days at Disneyland Paris and one day at Parc Asterix. Will be using this topic to write up trip reports and my thoughts on the various parks.

Day One - DisneyLand Paris

First park on the trip was Disneyland Paris, open from 10am-11pm we decided to aim to be there for 10am. Before we even got into the park, the access road was down from two lanes to one lane for road works, and half the toll booths were closed meaning access was very slow. Once we had finished queuing and parked up it was time for the first ride, the Travelators. A great way of helping move people into and out of the park, however in a theme that was quickly becoming apparent, one of the travelators on the final section towards the park was closed for maintenance.

Once we had gone through security, we headed for Parc Disneyland, with our pre-booked tickets, entry was very smooth and easy, we headed down Main Street USA. I was very impressed with the level of theming here, taking in the magic of Disney, the old cars running down from the entrance and the music being played with the view of the castle was awesome. Something I didn't note originally but now I reflect is the lack of upselling, there were no teenagers with DSLR's offering us the opportunity to have our photo taken away from the castle or queues for fast track spilling out into the main pathway.

A quick look at the time boards and we headed for the ride with the shortest queue, It's a Small World, a ride which I love, the way it's put together is great and I do like the soundtrack, maybe I'm just a bit insane? Double batching of boats helped make this a 15 minute queue although the boats were constantly stacked at the end waiting to get back into the station.

Afterwards, we headed around to Discovery Land, passing the Mad Hatters Tea Cups (Closed for Refubrishment sadly), Star Tours was the next ride with a 40 minute queue time. The queue for this was fun with lots of props and theming around the queue. I enjoyed this ride, although does anyone know if they have different films for different theatres or are they all playing the same film/experience?

A quick look at HyperSpace Mountain revealed it was down and the rest of the queues in this area were getting bigger as a result. We decided to move across the park to look for something to eat, with most of the eateries having large queues or not being suitable, we noted a number of closed eateries, but eventually found Colonel Hathi's Pizza Outlet, the food here was very good, with the Pizza being about twice the size I had expected from a theme park food outlet.

After lunch, it was time for the first of the Coasters, Big Thunder Mountain, I was pretty excited by this one, although wasn't expecting it to go very fast. It had a 90 minute queue, with us taking the right hand queue split, this wasn't a very exciting queue, it had some themeing and Went somewhere, which is better than some queues I experienced on this trip, this was a great coaster, with some great effects.

A quick browse of the App showed that Indiana Jones was on a hour long queue so that was our next destination, not much to write about for this one, although I can see why it was turned backwards for a while.

Then on towards Hyperspace Mountain and joined the hour long queue for that. I enjoyed the way you could hear the ride hurtling around the dome but could never see it, just hear the terrified screams of riders as you queued. We were on train 3 for our ride, I loved this ride, it was one of the highlights of my trip.

Once we were off and photographs purchased we joined the queue for Cafe Hyperion, for Burgers, something I liked about the catering outfits we visited was the way there were set menus which included a Drink, Burger and chips as you'd usually expect but then they give you something extra like in this case a Yoda Cupcake, the food always seemed to be better than expected.

After food, it was on to Buzz Lightyears Lazer Blast, the queue seemed shorter than the advertised 50 minutes. Oh how wrong we were.. This was the worst managed fast past system I'd seen with the host holding the main queue while just allowing any fast pasts to go straight through, including a full school trip at one point! Once on the ride, it was really fun and I liked the way you were in control of the direction you were spinning so had complete control over what you saw, something I hadn't experienced before.

A walk around through the Castle, and exploring the upper layer of that afforded me a nice view:

Finally for today a second go on It's a Small World before deciding to head back to where we were staying for the week.

Will upload Day 2 of Disney over the next couple of days.

 

[AT86]

Thanks for the report! Any reason why you didn’t make use of fastpass at all? Sounds like it would have helped for those BTM and Indiana Jones queues.

 

[MattyH]

Money money money! It was already expensive enough to do Disney before splashing out on Fastpass, We had a good time and we don't use fastpass.

 

[Rob]

Money money money! It was already expensive enough to do Disney before splashing out on Fastpass, We had a good time and we don't use fastpass.

It's free.....!

 

[AT86]

Eek it’s free at Disney! Just pop your park ticket in the machine near the rides and you get a time slot to return later in the day. The numbers are restricted to keep the fastpass queue down. At least you know for next time (!).

It means you can do other rides or grab some food whilst waiting for your time slot to come up to help get more done .

 

[MattyH]

Free Fastpass? Madness! If we'd known! :O

 

[Rojo]

Great report Matt, looking forward to the rest.

A big d'oh! on fastpass but an easy mistake to make given how most charge. If you venture to the Asian parks make sure you look up the fastpass before heading out. It's almost essential at TDS.

Star tours has different films in sections. I don't know if it's random but I've seen the Naboo section loads and the endor speederbike section only the once. Perhaps someone more versed in Disney can explain.

Unless I missed it, what was your favourite area and attraction?

 

[DiogoJ42]

DEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

 

[RoyJess]

It's free.....!

Free virtual queuing as it should always be.

Note to Merlin who are supposedly be 2nd to Disney "It's about great customer experience, not about filling the pockets of the CEO and shareholders!!!!"

 

[MattyH]

Here we go then, time to go through Day 2.

Day 2 - Walt Disney Studios

Day 2 and we arrived at the park at a similar time to the previous day but the queue for the parking booths didn't seem to be as bad as the previous day. Parking in a similar place and another great ride on the Travelators. We arrived at the security entrance before heading towards the Studios park. I really enjoyed the entrance to this park, I wasn't expecting too much and Disney continued to impress me! The Q-times board put us off heading towards Ratatouille and Crush's Coaster. While we waited for some of the party to use the loos, I liked the way we could see TOTT open and then drop the guests.

Instead, our first ride was Armageddon, the queue time for this was about 30 minutes. I hadn't head anything about this ride, unlike the majority of rides in this park. This was a really good experience, The videos all having English subtitles helped a lot, and the grand finale with the special effects of the fire and explosions were awesome.

Next up was the studio tram tour, which had about a 50 minute wait to ride, as it appeared to only be running 2 trains, however as we queued another couple of trains were added onto the circuit, although the dispatches were slow at times. There were some nice posters on the queue line, but not much else to see here which let it down a bit. The ride itself was enjoyable, with myself being on the side closest to the water and fire effects this was great. I loved the ride commentary with Jeremy Irons, although it felt slightly disappointing when he wasn't there to be spotted at the end of the ride.

Our next move was to look at queue times and shows to see if there was anything we wished to see, and the Stunt Show looked interesting. We then caught the french version of the Stark Expo show in the production courtyard while taking on refreshments to cool back down.

Off to join the queue for the Stunt Show and taking our seats we settled down to enjoy the show. This show was great, the stunts were really good to watch and then to hear the explanations of how the stunts were done including the car built so the front is actually what looks like the back so the car looks like it's being reversed around the scene.

After this exhilarating show, a check of the queue times showed Ratatouille at a 60 minute wait, so we headed across to this area next. I was very impressed by the entire area here, this was extremely well themed, and once inside the building for the ride, the queue was moving well and I enjoyed the rooftops scene. The ride itself was awesome, the way the cars manage to all move about without hitting one another and the theming on the ride was great, although the heavy dependency on screens was a little annoying.

Exiting the ride past the restaurant and away through Toy-Story Land, heading out of the park for a while to go and locate a good spot to watch the parade in the main park, we stopped to have a ride on the Slinky Dog Zig Zag Spin, a quick 15 minute queue for this and we were on, Not as fun as Knights Quest at Legoland but a nice little ride, not sure I'd queue more than 15 minutes for this though.

Missing RC Racer and ToTT we headed for the other park to go and watch the parade, taking up a good position at the top of Main Street where we could see the parade floats come up the main street and then see them as they exited out of the guest area. These floats were really well done, although with it being very warm, Those in the costumes must have been melting.

Once the parade floats had finished, we headed back across to the studio park to finish off the one ride I had wanted to get done, Crush's Coaster. I was excited for this ride, and looking forwards to getting on, a 70 minute wait was advertised and going by how other queues had been moving I thought this would be similar, boy was I wrong. This is the second worst queue I have ever had the misfortune of queuing in (Only beaten by Zufari at Chessy on a busy day),

The queue line boards advertised a game.. That didn't work, so we were condemned to spend an hour in this god awful cattlepen with 2D signs and nothing of interest to see or hear. It just went on and on and on. Once we finally got into the building and the station this was very nicely done, but it in no way made up for the absolute abomination of a queue line. The ride itself was very good with the little section setting you up for the ride, I would put the coaster itself about on par with Dragons Fury.

This park was now closed and so we headed back to the main park to finish off our day, we headed to the au-chalet-de-la-marionnette for food, which was a nice place to enjoy our food and drink. While we were in the area, we headed for Peter Pans Flight, which still had an hours queue, this was a nice little dark ride, although when asking the internet if it counts as a cred or not I have received an overwhelming reaction that it is not a cred.

Another quick ride on Indiana Jones at a 10 minute wait, before decided to split our group with half going and finding a spot near the castle to watch the illuminations while I went with the other half to go and queue for BTM again, with the queue time now on a 50 minute wait. Went down the left hand side this time, which with no fast passes being allocated meant that we were a full train ahead of those who were in a similar position on the right hand side of the queue.

Back to the rest of the group and then a quick merch grab (Mug collection got a +1), before the illuminations started, these were spectacular. An absolutely amazing way to finish my time at Disneyland, the songs were great and they way they linked with the fireworks and the projection mapping on the castle really worked fantastically. Then we went and left the park and being directed up the side route to pass the shops and arboretum, a wonderful bit of hidden magic.

Our exit from the resort was relatively painless as I remember with the whole pay as you enter the car park meaning you're not delayed waiting to go through a barrier at the end of your day and the road leads straight out onto a motorway, something that I feel affects UK theme parks a lot.

Overall a great couple of days at the park, and I'd love a return visit but I have a lot of other European parks to get to as well! A day of rest followed these two days, well needed before a day at Park Asterix , the trip report for which will follow this at some point.

 

[MattyH]

Been a bit busy recently but here's the final trip report from Parc Asterix

We arrived at the Park at about 10am, the entrance being straight off the motorway and being able to see OzIris's lift hill from the motorway was nice and there was plenty of movement we were parked within about 5 minutes of leaving the motorway! From the number of cars arriving from the Paris direction, I feared it would be a busy day, similar to my last visit where the shortest queue for the small rides was 60 minutes...

The security area that's in every park nowadays was actually themed, and not just a temporary tent. something which set a tone for the day. Picking up maps of the park as we entered, something to note is that the maps must be printed Daily as they have the Weather forecast for the day ahead printed on them (High's of 29 degrees on our day.)

This statue of Asterix greets visitors as they enter the park.

Our first move was to go right at the first split, to our first ride. "Le Grande Splatch", A nice giant splash, this was a nice boat ride with enough fountains to make Mandy feel at home. One negative was the end splash which is a double drop which means the end splash isn't as big as you'd hope, given the name of the ride. We queued about 5 minutes for this, although there was a nasty hidden cattlepen which could be used on busy days.

Next, two of us joined the queue for the bobsleigh coaster "La Trace Du Hourra". Advertised at 20 minutes, although it was more like 45! This ride was a great way of demonstrating European throughputs with the ride running 5 Trains, which meant there were two on the lift hill most of time. The queue for this was nice, with it giving different views of the ride as well as no cattlepens! The ride itself was very good, I preferred it to Avalanche at BPB, Although there was a MCBR which took some of the momentum away, the ride quickly picked up again. I've ranked it at number 17 in my coaster rankings

Next up was les chaudrons, a nice little tea cups ride, which had a queue of about two people. Not much to say about this one. We quickly followed this one up by riding Les Nationale 7, a vintage car ride which had no queue. A nice ride and included a little dark section.

A quick check of OzIris queue showed it at a 75 minute wait, so the next coaster was SOS Numerobis, a small family coaster through the woods, we had to queue about 5 minutes for this.This one ranked at 61. By the time we'd been on this and walked across, the queue time for OzIris was down to 55 minutes, so we joined the back of the queue in the outdoors section, which provided some nice views of the ride. Not much to see outside of the pyramid, but once we were inside, the theming n the queue line was superb, with detail everywhere. It was so nice to see this and it made me think how poorly our UK Parks do in comparison. Onto the ride itself, running three trains to deal with the crowds, I don't think it's better than Nemesis, but the tunnel under the water was great and It comes in at 4 in my rankings. I also enjoyed the fact that it filmed an on ride video of you, although not sure if this is every seat or just some.

Our next ride was the Oxygenarium, basically Storm Surge at Thorpe Park but themed and built into a hill to make it look more permanent. A pleasant little ride, with a 15 minute queue. The queue included a random steep hill, and a view of a massive nose.

Next up was Les Chevaux du Roy, a small double deck carousel, which was walk on, the ride cars are nicely themed but that's about all there is to say about this ride.

As we headed over towards Goudrix, I caught a glimpse of La Transdemonium's entrance and convinced a few members of our party to go on. This was a very strange ghost train that felt like it should go faster at various points, was a nice break from the sun at least.

Another flat ride next as we did La Galere, a small pirate ship ride on the edge of the lake.

On to Goudrix, this was probably my least favourite of the big rides, half of the queue looked like it should be a normal path, the other half was just a straight line to the station. The station itself was themed to be a viking long boat, and the ride was running two trains which helped to keep the line moving. The ride itself was rough and because of the time of day we did it, every other turn seemed to throw us directly towards the sun, temporarily blinding us. Ranked at number 30.
Goudrix viewed from the opposite side of the lake

Next up was another water ride, this time the parks Rapids, the boats on these seated 9 and our group of 5 were placed into a boat with 4 others, these have netting between the back of the seats, presumably added after recent unfortunate events on other rapids. The ride itself took off at a gentle pace, and we soon came around to see the Pegasus ride and some innocent looking waves. However, these were no gentle waves, and as we hit one the waves came over the top of the netting and soaked us, then another came crashing in through the gap for exiting the boats, making us unacceptably wet.

Le Vol D'Icare was our next ride, a small Zierer coaster, which was surprising quick in places, we queued about 10 minutes for this one, the ride focuses on the flight of Icarus, with him flying higher and higher, before flying too close to the sun and dropping down, ranks at number 42.

Headed across to Tonnere de Zeus and joined the back of the queue only to find it had broken down, so we headed across to do the other coaster Pegasus, this had a 40 minute queue. I loved all the details and theming, the ride itself was very good, with the small launch out of the station and the drop down to the lift being fun. I loved the little drop through the Welcome to Parc Asterix Billboard by one of the car parks. This ride felt like something that would be very much at home in some UK Parks. Comes in at number 26 on my rankings, just above Th13teen.

Our final ride was Tonerre de Zeus which had by now reopened, We queued for about an hour for this, had a couple of queue jumpers (The only ones of the day!), Two trains in operation on this and the ride itself was very fun, with the drop into the tunnel being a highlight, this was the best coaster of the trip for me, ranking number 3 overall, behind Nemesis and Wild Mouse (RIP).

We finished our day by wandering back to the main gift shop to pick up some merch. There was no ride merch but this is to be expected when the park is themed around the comic book character.

Statue of Zeus

Discobelix - Didn't go on this as it always had a 55-60 minute queue and I'm not really a fan of these things.

Overall an awesome park, and the theming on the rides and queues was fantastic. Not sure I'd like to visit on a day when it's much busier than when we did. We passed by the exit for the park on the Saturday after dropping someone off at Charles De Gaulle at the queue to get in was causing congestion on the motorway!

Finished my trip to France with 11 new creds, boosting my total to 75 now. This European adventure has given me the want to go to more parks. Now I've seen what parks outside the UK can offer. Hope you have enjoyed reading it!