I set an alarm for us bright and early the next day! We were up and out by 8:15, I found this easy… mum not so much!
We hopped on another busy coach from Vienna Dream Castle to Disney Bus Stop. Just for those considering offiste- there are 5 hotels that share a bus and it does take a little while and you usually have to stand! We decided to wait for a bus to Newport bay. It took about 10 mins to arrive- it was far less crowded than the Vienna bus.
When we pulled up to Newport bay we thought it looked beautiful, it was a cut above Vienna Dream castle. It was beautifully decorated with Christmas decs too! ( Vienna dream castle had one Christmas tree and that was it… other than that you wouldn’t know it was Christmas ).
We were told we had to go through an airport security style system, put our bags through scanners and ourselves through detectors. It didn’t take long and we didn’t mind as its better Safe than sorry in our opinion!
Once inside my mum checked us in, only one person is aloud to go in line for check in, this could just be at peak times? I grabbed us some free chocolate coins, look out for these if you stay they’re delicious. Our room wasn’t going to be ready until 3pm, which we expected, so we checked in our luggage and headed to the parks with our new magic passes, braving the cold & rainy weather!
We went to Disneyland park first and took in the beauty of main street in all its Christmas glory! There was classical Christmas songs playing and it had a great atmosphere. We headed to the Deli on main street for a small breakfast. I had a chocolate croissant, coffee and juice and mum had the same- but a muffin instead of a juice. They were fab, could’ve eaten a few more lol.
First up of the day was to head to space mountain to grab a fastpass for me- the ride was only open for the 1st December before shutting for maintenance for god knows how long! I got a return time of 11:40. - we got into the park for 10am so fast passes did go fairly fast within the first half hour! We decided our first ride of the trip would be Buzz Lightyear… this was by far our favourite ride. I scored better than mum… this wouldn’t be there first time lol.
We then headed to its a small world, the ride queue was half an hour, it was a good ride and we thought we had to do it for old times sake ( we aren’t new to Disney… its a small world is my dads least favourite song… I wonder why ). After the ride I headed back to Space mountain for my fastpass- mum gave this a miss, she doesn’t do big drops and upside down! I thought it was fantastic!
We then did pirates of the Caribbean ride and then we managed to catch the 13:20 Christmas parade- this was fantastic. Loved every second of it, we don’t usually do parades in America as we are all about rides, next time we go I will be watching them!
Then over to the studios park- Our first stop was at ratatouille to get fastpasses, we had a return time of 17:10 - we had never been on this ride before! After this we had some time to kill before our 14:30 reservation at Bistrot Chez Remy. We squeezed in the Backlot tram tour… we cut it very fine and made it to our reservation for 14:40- they didn’t seat us for about 10 mins anyway!
The Service was fairly terrible in the restaurant… we didn’t get seen to for about 20 mins and then our waiter was really un-friendly. He barley said a word, it didn’t seem like a language barrier either as he wasn’t talking to any of the tables around. It was nice to get inside and warm up though as it had been about -2 and raining all day! We both ordered the same: carrot soup, Steak chips & ratatouille and then a chocolate mouse. The food was pretty good. The steak was a little tough- I had the chefs sauce… it was ok, I wouldn’t have it again though! The dessert was huge but lovely- we didn’t finish these because they were so rich. Overall I thought It was nice but I wouldn’t go again- I certainly wouldn’t want to Pay OOP as it really was pretty expensive- Oh I forgot to mention we had booked with free half board !
Once we had finished dinner we went to the 16:25 showing of the Mickey’s Big Band Show. It was just fantastic. The Singers and dancers were 1st class and the appearance of the classic disney characters made it extra special and great for kids! Again- it was nice to sit inside a warm theatre for a while. We found with this show we didnt have to queue at all, unlike frozen that we experienced In the days to come.
We then returned to the Ratatouille ride for our fastpasses- we were pretty underwhelmed with this. It is aimed at kids really. Our main gripe with it was how short it was, I wouldn’t queue for this without fast passes, unless you have young children! After this we went back to Newport bay to get set up in our room as we thought it may be busy after the park closed ( we were right ).
We then headed back in to the cold and wet and went to the Disneyland Hotel. We wanted to visit Cafe Fantasia as we had read about the Glow-tinis. In the end I ordered a glass of wine but mum did have a red glowtini, very cool. We had another glass of wine each whilst we waited for the 9pm fireworks! The Disneyland Hotel is gorgeous, we both agreed we'd love to stay there at some point! We watched the fireworks, which were fantastic, and then realised it had been a really busy day and if we were to make extra magic time in the morning we needed to get some sleep!
After a quick, and very busy, stop in macdonalds we walked home to the hotel munching on chicken nuggets! We had a great first day, we took it fairly slow but got loads in!
Will be updating with Day 3 tomorrow!
