theDIBB - When You're the Best of Friends - Glowtini Girls do DLP Jan 2019

After a late night it was a slow start to the morning, and we’d arranged to meet Grant outside the Golden Forest Lounge around 9.30am for breakfast.

I got up, popped some music on, jumped in the shower and donned my next new Disney sweatshirt, today I would be channelling my favourite character, Mary Poppins….because of course, I am practically perfect in every way :spin:

Soon it was time to head for breakfast, and because we no longer had Anna in our party Grant was able to come into the Golden Forest Lounge as I had a spare person on my room. After eating our fill Mel and I headed back up to our rooms to grab coats and bags. Another new thing for me today was my ears! As some of you will know Cheshire Cat is my other favourite character and these ears were bought for me by the lovely Hornetgirl and Trekmickey (aka Lucy and Sean :d:) when they went to Florida last year.

I met up with Grant at the sofas outside the Sequoia Lodge shop and we waited for Mel to join us. Mel was down shortly after and as we headed out of the hotel we saw Goofy meeting, with hardly any queue, yup it was a no brainer!

Goofy loved my sweatshirt and was keen to point out that he was also practically perfect in every way :d:

As with the day before whilst we waited a few moments to meet with Goofy we remembered to pop onto Lineberty to book ourselves onto some meets in Studios. Not sure if I mentioned this before but you can only have one Lineberty reservation at a time…so top tip, if you have more than one person in your group you can all make reservations for different characters, so I booked the 3 of us to see Buzz Lightyear, Grant booked Mickey Mouse and Mel booked Spiderman (Grant hadn’t met him yet, and like Mel and I needed any persuading ;))

So with 3 meets lined up in Studios, we headed out of the hotel……at 11am! Now officially the latest I’ve left a Disney hotel :pgig:

I have to say, these lazy mornings are quite nice though, and there’s no queue for the character meets in the hotel! ;)

After a leisurely stroll around Lake Disney we mooched through the village and into Studios. No sooner had we arrived than our slot with Mickey came up as ready, so off we went to meet with the Main Mouse.

Mickey was a fantastic meet, even taking the time to check the photos on the photographer’s camera to make sure they were good enough!

As we said farewell to Mickey I checked my phone and saw that our meet for Buzz had come up, perfect timing as Mickey and Buzz are right next to each other.

Something that we noticed is that at the entrance to the Lineberty meets there is a Cast Member with an iPad who appears to be taking manual bookings, so presumably if you can’t get internet access, or can’t download/access the app there is another way to meet those characters which is good to know.

Once we’d met with Buzz we decided it was time for a ride…about time too! :d: The 3 of us headed over to Ratatouille, and seeing that the single rider line was just 5 mins decided to split. Ratatouille was fab as always.

On coming out of Ratatouille we saw that once again Remy was meeting….and once again, our slot for Spiderman came up, déjà vu anyone? Lol!

At least this time Mel and I knew where Spiderman was :pgig:
Spiderman was, once again, really good….if a little short :pgig:

As always Mel interacted brilliantly with Spiderman, she is totally a closet Marvel fan ;)

As we left Spiderman I reminded Mel that Chewbacca was meeting just around the corner, and on approaching we could see very little queue. Up until recently you didn’t need to use the Lineberty app for Chewbacca so you could just rock up. As we queued around 10 minutes the Imperial March (I think!) came past….basically a load of Stormtroopers and a guy with a loud hailer….it was good though!

Chewbacca was an epic meet! He gives the BEST hugs! Although I did come away with a bit of fluff in my eye :pgig:

Bearing in mind we’d only left the hotel at 11am, we packed in loads of meet and greets! Definitely time for a coffee stop next!

We found a table in Studio One and got ourselves a coffee and spent the next 30 minutes or so nattering away before deciding to do a couple more rides. Next up was Slinky Dog….now, I’ve only ridden this once before, with Gerard and it was hilarious! We didn’t realise just how fast it was and how much you got thrown to the sides….so with Mel and I banging on about what fun it was and how Grant was going to find it hysterical we walked straight on, with no wait, and Grant and I boarded together….

Ok, so they’ve totally tamed this ride! It didn’t go anywhere near as fast and was so short, it felt like it was over before it really got going :( Mel and I both agreed, which was good as I was starting to think I’d imagined how good it was before!

So with that being a little bit of a disappointment I figured I’d better man up and do Parachute Drop…..for some reason I can just about handle this ride, where-as Tower of Terror makes me feel physically ill….plus I knew I wasn’t going to have to do ToT with Anna now not with us ;)

We did single rider again as there was no wait and we split up into a parachute each, with Mel opposite me. Unfortunately Grant was behind me so neither Mel nor I could see him.

Before the ride started I warned the man next to me (who was with his son) that I would probably scream….he looked at me blankly, ok, clearly not English….

Obviously I did scream….quite a bit….but mostly I was in hysterics, as was Mel who was watching me! I’d totally do this ride again!

After that excitement it was time to leave Studios, having done pretty much everything there is to do, and we walked over to the Disneyland Park with the plan being to take Grant to see Philarmagic.

As we walked down Main Street Mel and I couldn’t resist a bit of shopping ;) We popped into Harringtons and I spotted the perfect tea towels, I knew I wanted to get some on this trip but hadn’t yet seen any I liked, these were perfect (photos taken at home)

I then spotted the character glasses, which (as Mel and Grant were keen to point out to me) were on offer if you bought 4 of them…..but I knew I didn’t need 4 glasses so stuck to my guns and just bought the one….Cheshire Cat obviously! This was to replace a gorgeous Cheshire Cat Aribbas Brothers glass that Anna had bought me for my birthday the year before last and had since been broken.

Purchases made and held at the shop to be sent back to the hotel we headed over the Philarmagic.

I really do love this, it’s the perfect addition to the park.

As we excited Philarmagic, to our left under the covered area we could see Chip n Dale and Pluto meeting, awesome! As we tried to make our way around to them the heavens opened….with hail!

After a couple of wrong turns trying to find our way to the characters, and trying not to get soaked, we finally made it….only to see Chip n Dale being escorted away and replaced by….Mickey Mouse. I think we may have been the only people to have ever been disappointed to see Mickey :pgig: this would be our 4th or 5th meet with him this trip! I love this photo of us with Pluto :spin:

More meets done we were all feeling pekish and definitely in need of warming up, the temperature had dropped sharply! The day before in Victoria’s I’d noticed the soup on the menu, and seen it walk by and thought it had looked nice so suggested this as a lunch option. We were not disappointed! If you like vegetable soup I can highly recommend it!

The weather was still looking decidedly dodgy so Mel and Grant decided to head back to the hotel to chill out for a bit. I hadn’t yet seen the parade and knowing that tomorrow was out last day knew this would be my last opportunity to do so….so I went solo in the park! Eek!

First of all I popped into the Christmas shop in the castle as I always buy a Christmas decoration on my January trips and knew exactly which one I wanted to get. I also wanted to buy the same decoration for Anna as I knew she’d planned to buy it too but obviously hadn’t had the chance, and also for my Mum who doesn’t have enough Disney decorations for my liking. Sadly I couldn’t see it anywhere so left the shop empty handed, ready to take up position for the parade.

Before I’d left home I’d promised my son that I’d film the whole parade for him….and I kept my promise! I had a great position standing with my back to Frontierland and could see the parade come around in front of the castle. As always the parade was fantastic, with some great interaction from the characters both on the ground and on the floats. I can safely say this my favourite Disneyland Paris parade out of all the ones I’ve experienced.

Once the parade had passed me I crossed over to Plaza Gardens and walked up Discovery Arcade, realising that in doing so I was going to catch the parade again where it exits Main Street! Just as I reached the top of the arcade the heavens once again opened and the parade appeared to speed up :pgig: I managed to find some shelter, but not before I put my hood up….which had a load of hail in it, that went straight down my back, lovely!

The dragon went some way to warming us up…

With the parade over I made my way to leave the park, but then remembered the other Christmas shop opposite Liberty Arcade, and there it was, the Christmas decoration I was after! With 3 in my hand I headed to the till but was held up making my purchases by a family who’d asked for a photopass photo to be printed out, unfortunately the photo that the Cast Member handed over was damaged so he had to print out another copy, which thankfully was ok. The Cast Member was very apologetic that I’d had to wait a while, but it was ok, I wasn’t in any hurry to be anywhere :spin:

This is the Xmas dec I bought, I can’t wait to hang it on the tree this year.

I dithered for a moment about staying in the park for Illuminations, it was about 5.30pm at this point and Illuminations was due to start at 6.30pm (I think) but the weather was still vile and I was cold and damp, and the lure of a change of clothes and a nice warm hotel was too good to ignore….Illuminations would just have to wait until my next visit.

I took a leisurely stroll through the village, rather relishing being on my own! As I walked around Lake Disney I stopped for a few photo’s, I think the sky above Panoramagique shows just how unpredictable the weather was being!

As I approached, Sequoia Lodge was looking gorgeous with lights in the trees and the moon rising above it.

Once back in my room I got changed into fresh, warm clothes and picked up a message from Mel to say she was in the Golden Forest Lounge, knowing it was coming to the end of afternoon tea in the lounge I headed straight down there for a nice up of tea and some treats. Afternoon tea in the lounge is a great Golden Forest perk!

Grant messaged to say he was on his way over to us and he joined us in the lounge around 7pm. Obviously it was cocktail time! It felt appropriate to choose a Red Glowtini, not a blue one as that didn’t feel right without Anna, but still ‘our’ drink :)

None of us felt like going back out in the cold (except Grant who had to go back to Santa Fe) so we ordered bar snacks, not something I’ve done in Sequoia Lodge before, they were really nice! And very good value for money. I had the grilled vegetable sandwich :tongue:

Full of yummy sandwiches and cocktail we popped into the Sequoia Lodge shop to pick up our shopping from earlier that day and retired to Mel’s room for the last bottle of Prosecco and more nattering, finally making it to bed around 12.30am!