A Marvel-lous Time In Paris: September 2023 trip & food report

[YLL]

Looks like you had a delicious time!

[Lizzim]

Really not my kind of food but it all looks great. I keep thinking we should go to Paris properly at some point.

[Wordsworth]

Originally Posted by YLL

Looks like you had a delicious time!

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I loved the food so much, although I’m now judging all U.k prices against what I could get in Paris.

Originally Posted by Lizzim

Really not my kind of food but it all looks great. I keep thinking we should go to Paris properly at some point.

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I could have eaten only bread and cheese and still eaten well, it was great. I loved Paris and I honestly wasn’t sure if I would before I went, but I really liked the vibe of the city.

[Wordsworth]

Today, I did not have eggs with my breakfast.

But I did eat the chocolate eclair I’d bought the day before when I got back to the room.

DH ate his raspberry financier.

I’d done a tiny bit of research into how to get from Paris to DLP, because I was aware a lot of people on the Dibb favoured private transfers. We had decided, though, that we’d just get public transport - we could get a metro 3 stops and then switch to the RER A to Marne la Vallée. This would cost €5 each and take just over an hour, if we timed it right.

Before we checked out of the hotel, we walked to Maison Gaumer at the end of the road and bought 2 croissants, 2 pain au chocolat and 2 pain au raisin. We were taking these with us for an in-room Disney breakfast, as we hadn’t wanted to add a meal plan. This cost us €7.80.

The metro stop was a few minutes walk away and once I figured out how to change the language on the ticket machine to English (you had to roll the knob down, which took me a sec to understand!) buying the tickets was easy.

We had a little trouble getting through the entry barriers with the luggage but there was a gent in the ticket booth who helped us - we only had the one big suitcase but I think if we did it again, we’d spent the additional check in money and take two smaller ones for easier navigation. That said, this was the trickiest bit - stairs were a pest but the bag wasn’t that heavy.

We only had to wait a couple of minutes for the metro and the trip to Chatelet, where we would pick up the RER A, was smooth. We then followed the signs through the station and easily found the RER A platform. A train was due in a couple of minutes - ideal!

We were soon on board and on our way to Disneyland Paris.

When we exited at Marne la Vallée, we weren’t entirely sure where to go. There was a lot of hoardings up. We found our way to the bus stop for our hotel but the bus had just pulled out; as Google maps suggested it was only a few minutes walk to the hotel, we set off.

We arrived at the locked gates to the hotel car park - the man came out of the car booth and opened it for us when we showed our booking on my phone. We later realised that on foot, we should probably have cleared Disney security and gone via the village…ah well. This way was easy enough with the helpful staff!

It wasn’t quite 12pm yet so rooms weren’t ready; the suitcase would be taken for storage at the door. It was looking overcast so I decided to retrieve my raincoat first, we’d left them in the front section for easy access. DH decided he didn’t want his, as he wasn’t expecting it to actually rain. (Yes, this is foreshadowing.)

We then proceeded to check in and received our magic passes; we had decided we’d go to Disneyland for a look around. I hadn’t been sure what time we’d arrive so our only plans were a dinner booking at 6pm and the DL nighttime show.

I really liked the initial look of the hotel - it felt like a proper grown up hotel, with the kind of clean interior that I like. There was theming - 3 iron man (? - I’ll admit I’ve not seen most of the avengers films!) suits on display - but it wasn’t in your face at all. Tasteful!

At 12.33pm, we reached the motherland.

We immediately liked the characters displays scattered through the plaza. The way they moved was great.

We took some pics around the castle.

You can see the clouds in this pic - it was starting to spit with rain, so we headed inside the castle to do some of the walkthrough, then made our way to Discoveryland.

At which point it promptly started raining heavily!

I was ok because I had my raincoat, however DH was just in a shirt. I suggested we go back to the hotel, but he insisted he would be fine and we should carry on.

We decided to get in the queue for Buzz lightyear, which was showing 35 minutes - I decided this mostly because I mistakenly thought the queue was all undercover. Oops. I kept offering to leave, but DH refused and instead got soaked.

Obviously that’s why I let him win at Buzz.

Thankfully the rain had stopped when we exited the ride. DH was excited to learn from the gift shop that Lightning McQueen is called Flash in France - he called me across to show me.

We headed next to Hyperspace Mountain. DH asked me if it was basically Space Mountain and I said “…sure”. I might have got away with it if he hadn’t spotted a sign talking about the 360 loop as we made our way through the queue (it was basically a walk on). Even then, he didn’t quite believe there was going to be an actual loop until we actually rode it!

After this, we decided to head over to Frontierland and look for something to eat. The Last Chance cafe and lucky nugget saloon were both closed, though, and I was a bit disappointed by the snack carts at DLP - they didn’t seem to have the same variety as the other parks. I ended up getting some salted popcorn, and for once resisted buying the popcorn bucket!

I also dug out some spare euros from my purse so we could both have a shot at the shooting gallery - the gun sights seemed very off target though!

There wasn’t much of a queue for Phantom Manor, and I love the Haunted Mansion rides, so we decided the time was now.

I loved this ride. The addition of the bride and her storyline (which obviously I read all about and insisted on telling DH) made a good ride even better for me.

We had a wander round Fantasyland next but didn’t ride anything - the queues here were always relatively high. Once it passed 3pm, we decided to head back to the hotel and check into our room. DH was still a bit damp!

We were in room 2116, a garden view room. The door numbers being in Marvel style font was a nice detail.

This seemed to be the Thor floor, with artwork of Thor (and the Mighty Thor) in the corridors; DH asked if I’d arranged this, given he’s my favourite Avenger. (It’s Chris Hemsworth, come on.)

The decor of the room was in keeping with the vibe of the lobby decor, and for two adults travelling together as we were, I really liked it.

It felt sophisticated. Not overtly Disney, just a few touches here and there - there was an Ant Man themed painting on the wall.

In March, I’d originally booked the Steakhouse for dinner, as Manhattan wasn’t available; but I’d periodically checked and in April (so just over 4 months out) I’d been able to switch this to dinner in the Manhattan restaurant in the hotel for 6pm. We don’t generally do sit down meals at Disney parks, preferring to be able to eat flexibly, but I thought it might be nice for night 1.

Just before 6, we headed off to find the restaurant. It was on the other side of the hotel from our room. We were soon seated in the centre, and I was right under the impressive chandelier, which was cool.

I ordered a negroni to start. We also shared a bottle of rose wine with the meal.

We enjoyed the bread, a nice focaccia with olive oil for dipping (sorry, no pic! Every meal in France came with bread, which I approve of.)

Starters - I had burrata with tomatoes.

DH had the pasta and beans soup.

I chose chicken saltimbocca with fried polenta for my main.

This was nice, the chicken was moist. Fried polenta is never my favourite accompaniment but it was ok here.

DH had the veal chop and a side of potatoes (which we shared).

He thought it was a bit dry, he would have liked a sauce.

My options were actually on the set menu, which wasn’t deliberate, but when I’d ordered our waiter had pointed this out and asked if I wanted him to put them through as such so I could get a dessert for the set price. I’d agreed.

I really wanted the pistachio and cherry panna cotta but it wasn’t on the set menu. Dh ordered that instead:

I ordered the rum baba from the set menu as his choice, and we swapped.

Being at Disney this was obviously more expensive than our Paris meals, but I’ll need to check exactly how much it cost. We did enjoy it; I think it was a good choice for us.

We next spent some time checked out the artwork around the hotel, which DH really liked. They had a Jack Kirby exhibition and other artists on display.

I liked these ones a lot.

Note what’s different about Deadpool…

At about 8pm, we started to make our way over to Disneyland to get a spot for Disney D Light. It was the last month of the 30th anniversary celebration.

I loved Disney D Light - if we can’t have fireworks any more, I’ll take drones over projections any day.

I cried, which is always the mark of a top Disney parks nighttime show for me. I also thought the songs written for the 30th anniversary were great - some of my favourite parks songs ever.

I definitely cried at the 30 drones.

Because I don’t like heavily projection based shows, the show that followed wasn’t as good in my eyes, but I still enjoyed the firework aspects.

The park closed after the end of the show, so we joined the crowds making their way through the village back to the hotel.

It had been a nice introduction to DLP!

[janey85]

Thank you for posting! Good looks amazing - loving reading along! :-)

[Wordsworth]

Originally Posted by janey85

Thank you for posting! Good looks amazing - loving reading along! :-)

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Thanks for reading! Having a busy work week but will get next entry up soon.

[Wordsworth]

As we were staying on site we had an hour of extra magic time, which meant access to the parks from 8.30am. We had set an alarm for 7.30 but while I was up before it, DH was still snoring away. As I knew he’d been working hard and not really sleeping before our holiday, i actually cancelled the alarm and let him sleep more.

He was cross with me when he woke up just before 8am and realised this. He insisted we rush to get ready.

Breakfast was a quick croissant in the room. Squished from being carried, but tasty.

We still arrived at the park by 8.45, so we hadn’t lost too much time.

Our first ride was one of my all time favourites, if not the favourite.

It was so nice to see the original themeing after our California trip earlier in the year, and I liked the storyline here with the little girl. We also got an excellently deadpan staff member loading us on and off the ride, which really helped with the vibe. When he found out no-one in the group could speak French, he was very funny.

We then headed over to fake France and our first experience of the Remy ride. It was pretty much a walk on. I enjoyed it but DH was less enthused - he consistently gets motion sickness on 3D rides that move (he can’t really do Star Tours, or Spider-Man or Transformers at Universal) so spent most of the ride with the glasses off. I had fun reminding him it’s basically a kids ride.

We then wandered past Crush’s Coaster, but the line was 80 minutes, which is beyond what we’re prepared to wait. In any case, when DH saw the way the model car was spinning outside, he decided it wasn’t something he wanted to ride. I wasn’t going to wait the 60 mins for single rider right now either.

Instead, we headed off to do something more DH’s speed.

Cars road trip!

I hadn’t done any reading up on rides but when I saw the trams here, I said, “oh I hope we’re going to Catastrophe canyon!”.

I loved Catastrophe canyon on the backlot tour at MGM/Hollywood studios, so frankly getting to experience it again here made the ride worth it to me!

The Toy Story themed rides around the park aren’t really our thing, and while we enjoy the odd show, it’s not something we’ll plan a day around - the show we passed at this point was already full. Both Web Slingers and Tower of Terrors now had queues of over an hour.

Although we had a late lunch booked, I was getting a bit peckish, so we decided to look for something to eat. Nothing from any of the concession stands caught our eye, so we ended up at Restaurant en Coulisse for quick service.

We got menu 4 on the Black Widow menu. A “spy burger” (cheeseburger with crispy onions, pickles, lettuce, tomato and paprika sauce), fries and a cherry coke. I ate the burger as DH only wanted some of the fries and drink - he was still feeling a bit off after Remy.

It wasn’t the warmest burger I’ve ever had but it was fine, and the chips were crispy and fresh.

We decided the time had come to hop over to Disneyland, after taking a number of pics and selfies in the courtyard and checking out the shop there. I really liked the way DLP put a real focus on the rides in their merchandising - as a pin collector, I could pick up pins themed to my favourites, which is not always the case.

Once in Disneyland, we wandered around and found our way to Pirates of the Caribbean. The wait time had just switched from 30 to 40 on the app but we decided to get in line anyway and it was definitely more at the 30 end of things.

I was surprised to find the boat going up well before the end of a Pirates ride, and then surprised by two drops - this is why you have to go to all the parks, of course. Things aren’t always the same!

Our random strolling next took us to the Indiana Jones rollercoaster. I reminded DH it was in the style of the Disneysea ride, not the California ride - and another loop rollercoaster. He decided to ride it.

It was basically a walk on. It was also by far the shoogliest (tech term there) of the loop coasters - i found my ears really rattled into the over-the-shoulder harness with this one.

We then started making our way towards Main Street, via our favourite Buzz shooting game.

DH was again tickled that Lightning was called Flash here.

Back in April, I’d booked a 12pm lunch at Walt’s for our last morning at DLP, but after we’d arrived in Paris I’d thought we might want to get back to the city earlier, so decided to move it if possible - I didn’t want to cancel outright as I was intrigued to try to food here. I’d checked the app periodically while in Paris and had managed to change the booking to 2.30pm today.

We looked around the Main Street shops while waiting for 2.30pm to roll around. They had discounts on a lot of the “30” merchandise and I bought a Mickey hand soap for a bargain (I thought) price of €4.50.

We went into Walt’s at 2.30pm on the dot. Check in was slight chaos, as one exiting party had left their wallet in the dining room and then the woman in front was trying to get a walk in slot for 5 people, then it turned out there were actually 7 in the party because she hadn’t bothered including the (teenage, or almost) kids, who were sprawled on the staircase as there were no free seats…the young woman at the podium did get them a table but I’m not sure she was that pleased, and them then plugging in phones to charge round the room didn’t cheer her up.

Once checked in, we had about a 10 minute wait to be seated, and from then on it was smooth sailing.

Walt’s is a 3 course set menu, with a number of choices per course. Given you can drink alcohol in the park, it seemed a waste not to do that () so we also both added the wine pairing. You got to pick a glass of certain red or white varieties with each course.

Starters:

DH had sweet corn soup with creme fraiche, pastrami and smoked corn.

Chicken pot pie for me.

These were both on the disappointing side of the scale - quite bland and lukewarm. The pastry of my pie was also pretty tough and hard to slice.

The wines were nice though.

Mains were more successful.

DH had the Cajun-Spiced Arctic Char, serviced with Wild Rice with Corn and Coriander and Isigny Butter Sauce.

Chilli con carne for me.

The fish was cooked well, nice and flaky. The beef on top of the rice was well fired and a bit chewy but still tasty. I tipped the chilli out of its side pot onto the plate. We both enjoyed the main.

And again, the wines were nice.

Desserts were up last.

I ordered the 30th anniversary celebration cake, which is served under a dome.

When I ordered this our server said she assumed I’d be having the champagne as my wine choice for this course, and she was absolutely right.

The top strawberry layer was a little icy in the centre (the plate itself was cold so they’re obviously kept chilled) but it was a delicious dessert.

DH had the lemon meringue pie.

He loved this and from the bite I had, with good reason - nice sharp lemon with a contrasting sweetness from the other elements.

The accompanying champagne was also excellent, as you’d expect - very smooth and eminently drinkable!

This was a decent meal, let down a bit by the starters but definitely something I’m glad I experienced. It wouldn’t be a must do on a future trip but I wouldn’t avoid it either.

We left Walt’s at about 4pm, and made our way back to the hotel. I wanted to try drinks at the Skyline lounge, which opened at 5pm. Given how busy it had seemed every time we’d passed the day before, opening seemed the best time to get seated.

We chilled in our room for about 45 minutes - eating two of the macarons we’d brought from Paris - before heading downstairs just after 5pm.

It didn’t take long for the tables here to fill up.

Spider-Man, iron man and the avengers jet appear on the screens at various points, and it doesn’t take long for you to recognise the cycle of events. I think they could use some more variation!

My first drink was the Happy Birthday cocktail. Raspberry vodka, violet liqueur, blackcurrant syrup, apple juice, egg white and lime. It was most reminiscent of a French martini, although definitely distinct.

DH had a gin and tonic. These were served with packaged nuts.

I was kept entertained by a table next to us, who did something that (to me) seemed unfathomable - they ordered a glass of champagne and a martini, didn’t drink either of them, then left! The staff didn’t clear the table for ages, because the drinks were barely touched - they thought they’d just stepped out.

It was v odd to me - if you want to try somewhere but don’t like or want booze, why not just order a soft drink? My only thought is they wanted the celebration glass that came with the champagne, perhaps, but that doesn’t explain the martini.

Later on, we had a second drink. Influenced by the table next to us, I was craving a martini now. I had a Gibson martini, with pickled onion.

DH had another G&T.

We settled the bill here (€56) at about 7pm, as we wanted to head back towards Walt Disney Studios.

We arrived in time to see Lightning - sorry, Flash - McQueen drive across the forecourt, various people chasing after him for a photograph.

Tower of Terror was already closed in advance of the show later. Web Slingers was showing about a 45 minute wait and we decided we might as well get in line. They actually closed the line not that longer after we got in it - I was surprised through this trip by how early rides closed in the evening.

The posted ride time was pretty much spot on. I maintained my excellent California form on this ride and was again top performer in the car. Never in doubt!

We excited the ride at about 8.25pm and were directed back to the forecourt, where everyone was starting to gather for the 9pm show.

I quite enjoyed watching the way the skyline changed as darkness fell.

They kept making everyone stand up and move forward into a tighter group, which seemed unnecessary to me but there you go.

The Avengers-themed show started promptly at 9pm.

The MCU is more DH’s thing than mine so I didn’t find this the most moving of shows, but again, I thought the use of drones was very clever indeed.

And while I’m still not a massive fan of projections I thought it worked much better on a tall building like Tower of Terror than it does on the castle. Everyone can see them without jostling! What an earth shattering concept!

The Spider-Man segment was cool. As was Thor’s hammer - the way it moved in towards the tower, and the fireworks went off in sync with it “hitting”, was well done.

And a lot of people seem to like Groot. We saw lots of the mini ones on people’s shoulders throughout the trip.

We shuffled out of the park with everyone else after this, and when we got back to the hotel, the Skyline bar was just starting to fill up, so we decided to get another drink.

We were shown to what is without doubt the worst table in the place. Right by the kitchen entrance/exit, jammed under a screen next to a stage thingy with absolutely no view of anything but a pillar and the backside of the bar…rubbish.

Service was better, though - perhaps because they felt sorry for the losers at the crap table - so I soon had a cosmopolitan.

DH had a glass of white wine - he was foiled in his request for the advertised Chablis, though; they didn’t seem to have any on site.

He later had another, while I had a margarita.

The bill this time was €50. We were offered a third drink, but it was almost 11pm and we decided that if we wanted to make extra magic time in the morning, we should head upstairs to bed.

[OB1LukeLucas]

What a great trip. I loved your hotel in Paris with the little balcony in the roof. The food especially the meal in the Italian restaurant and cakes from the boulangerie looked delicious. I think your bills in all the Paris restaurants seemed excellent for the food and wine. DLP is definitely not Paris food standard but Walt’s did look nice.
I am disappointed you did not add to the Popcorn bucket collection 😊 I don’t remember there being many interesting snacks inside the parks but we visited years ago. The evening photos look great I have never seen a drone show before-other than the photos from St James Park before the Champions League match the other night 😆 The Disney D lights photos are fab although I think your photo of Tower of Terror the next evening is my favourite, the sky is great very atmospheric.
Your hotel looks nice, the cocktails in the skyline bar looked good I could just drink a French martini, strange about the couple who ordered the drinks then left them!