Happy Birthday 30/55 - March 2022: Day 3

[Gill H]

<<Day 2

Today we woke around 7:30 as usual, and breakfast was the same as yesterday, apart from the apple juice machine not working! Fortunately someone came and fixed it very quickly. The staff are so good here, really.

By 9am we were out of the hotel and by 9:15 we were in the security queue. I wonder if anyone really does copy the picture and do a Saturday Night Fever pose?

Shortly afterwards we joined the throng waiting for Studios to open. There’s no equivalent of Salon Mickey in Studios, so we just had to wait with everyone else who didn’t have EMT this time.

And wouldn’t you know it, once they opened the turnstiles at 9:30 we got stuck behind a party who were all having turnstile problems.

After what seemed an age, we finally got through, and said a quick hello to the Partners statue before heading for Ratatouille.

We’re so used to doing Ratatouille during EMT as a walk-on, that it was a bit of a surprise to see a 25 minute wait. It wasn’t a problem though, and there are such a lot of fun things to spot in that queue.

The ride was fun as ever – probably my favourite thing in the Studios, at least prior to the Marvel land opening. Afterwards we walked through to Toy Story Playland and found that Slinky had a 15 minute wait, so we went for a spin. It always surprises me how fast this goes! It does throw you around a little. Here's a view from the queue.

Peter spotted a 5 minute wait for single riders on the Parachute Drop, so he went to do that while I sat on a bench and chatted to a couple from Wales!

Once Peter got out of Parachute Drop, we headed through to the Tower of Terror, but it was currently showing a 55 minute wait, so instead we went to a nearby food festival booth for a glass of ‘vin chaud’ or mulled wine to you and me. In contrast to the lovely warm weather of the last two days, today had started with quite a cold wind, and we were glad of something to warm us up.

[Gill H]

The queue was just opening for the next Frozen show, and since we hadn’t seen this version, we went to queue up at the side of the Animation building. It wasn’t a large area, and they closed the gate to the queue 40 minutes before the next show, so it would be a long wait. Fortunately there were some interesting character sketches on the wall.

After 10 minutes I checked the app and discovered that the show had no seating and we would be standing. That made our decision for us, and we decided to bail. I’m sure it was a good show, but my knees weren’t up to that much standing today.

Since Mickey and the Magician wasn’t running, and we didn’t fancy schlepping all the way over to the Tram Tour to see the World’s Biggest Lugnut (don’t ask…) we were slightly at a loss for things to do at this point. Crush had a massive queue as ever, and Peter didn’t fancy it today, nor did he feel like doing RC Racer. The next Stitch Live show in English wasn’t for at least an hour. So we ended up having another look at the wait time for Tower of Terror, and found it was now 25 minutes, which Peter said would be fine.

While Peter went to check in to the Hollywood Tower Hotel, I did a little filming and pics of the exterior.

Meanwhile Peter was taking some snaps of the queue area indoors.

After a few minutes I heard loud music and cheering, so went to see what was happening. I just managed to catch Lightning McQueen driving past, followed shortly afterwards by a few other vehicles from the Stars and Cars parade – notably Genie, Stitch and Bo Peep. It was a shame they couldn’t be joined by other characters, but at least they did a good job of livening up what was currently a rather dead area. No photos but you can see them in Peter's video.

[Gill H]

Next I went to a nearby food cart to get one of the new 30th anniversary snacks to share with Peter. I was tempted by an absolutely huge biscuit, but instead went for a madeleine.

Just as I was paying for it, I got a text from Peter to say he was in the ToT shop waiting to add his Photopass picture to the app. So I went through to meet up with him, and once we were out of the shop we walked back over to the food truck to find a table and share the madeleine. It was nice enough, though a little dry and certainly not as good as the freshly baked ones we got for breakfast in our hotel!

While at the food truck we noticed they did Mickey waffles too, so we got one to share. Well, you have to, don’t you? We dithered over whether to get the Nutella one or the icing sugar one, but in the end went for the sugar version, along with a couple of hot drinks.

While I was in the queue for this, Mr and Mrs Incredible came by on scooters, and did some posing for the crowd. Unfortunately the wind was getting quite gusty by now, and it blew away half our waffle before we could finish it!

We briefly considered doing the meet in the Cinemagique theatre. Earlier there had been meets with Marvel characters there, but the queue had been too long for us. The meet had now changed to Minnie (in her 30th anniversary Stella McCartney ‘pant suit’) but again, the queue was long and we decided not to bother.

Instead we decided to call it a day at the Studios. In its current state, and with the weather worsening, we really felt we’d done enough there for this trip. So out we went to the Village, passing by World of Disney on the way.

For lunch we decided to go to New York Style Sandwiches in the Village. This place is a recent discovery of ours, and offers more than you would think. Today it was the busiest we’ve ever seen it, but the queue was still quite short and we managed to get a table. Peter went for the pepperoni Mickey pizza. Check out the 30th anniversary box!

I had the smoked salmon sandwich on a Mickey shaped brioche. Again, nice box and unexpectedly big sandwich!

Both were really nice, and as usual we found this place a bit of an under-rated gem.

[Gill H]

After lunch we went back to the hotel for a couple of hours. We completed our passenger locator forms for the return journey, and did online check-in for our flights, before enjoying a restorative snooze on the comfy bed.

By the time we went back over to the Disneyland Park, it was raining. We made it into Town Square by about 4:15 just as the parade was about to start, and headed up Discovery Arcade and into Discoveryland.

We decided that this weather was ideal for Mickey’s Philharmagic, and for once there was a reasonable crowd there. The show had benefitted a great deal from its recent brush-up, and from the addition of the Coco segment, which was wonderful. Paris got this earlier than the US, for a change!

Peter went over to Hyperspace Mountain while I went to Videopolis to get some hot drinks from the vending machines, but they were switched off. Meanwhile Peter had changed his mind and decided not to ride it today, so instead we headed over to Fantasyland to try and do some of the rides we hadn’t yet done this trip. On the way we spotted a couple of people talking to a CM outside the Princess Pavilion, and although we knew there were no Princesses there at the moment, it was clear you could go inside and have a look. This is somewhere we have never been, as although I don’t mind a few character meets, I draw the line at waiting over an hour for them! So we decided to escape the rain and have a look inside.

The décor was very well done, with stained glass windows showing the various castles, and next to them were illuminated alcoves containing various symbols such as Snow White’s apple, Belle’s rose, Aurora’s crown, and the magic lamp – which I guess now belongs to Jasmine as much as Aladdin since they got married? Anyway, after a few more of these we reached the magic mirror, and then joined a short queue to the meet and greet areas, where people were allowed to pose for photos on the princess chair (I can’t really call it a throne, much too comfy!)

We were glad to have seen inside the pavilion, and although I’m never likely to spend much time in there again, it was worth a look while it was quiet.

Moving on through Fantasyland, we saw that Dumbo was showing as a 15 minute wait. This is one of those rides we only do when the queue is short, so we decided to go for it. Alas, as soon as we had joined the queue it went up to 35 minutes, and believe me, we felt every one of those minutes. I do enjoy Dumbo but not if you have to wait for it! Also the intermittent rain meant it wasn’t a pleasant experience, and the remaining hoardings at the back of the castle robbed us of our usual lovely view.

We had already decided not to do Peter Pan’s Flight, as we could see from the Dumbo queue that the wait time was 50 minutes and loads of people were getting soaked waiting outside. We toyed with the idea of doing Phantom Manor again, but by now we were extremely wet and tired, and just couldn’t face schlepping all the way up there again.

Instead we made our way through the castle and filmed the remaining mobile sculptures around the hub, before heading back down Discovery Arcade. Lots of people had the same idea, and it was more crowded in the arcade than I’ve ever seen it.

Once we got out to the station, we felt so tired and wet that we really didn’t fancy going anywhere to eat that evening. So, since there was now a branch of Pret a Manger in the station, we decided to get ourselves a room picnic! We each chose a sandwich, a packet of crisps, a cookie and a drink, and took them back to the room.

Once we’d dried off and got changed, we settled down to our room picnic while watching ‘Le Meilleur Patissiere’ aka Bake-Off, since it was pretty easy to follow without needing to understand much French. Following that we watched an episode of “Buffy Contre Les Vampires” which – well, you can probably guess what that was. And then, tired and happy, we fell into bed for our last night in the Ibis.

Join us tomorrow for our journey home and news of our future plans!

>>Day 4

INDEX

[P&S]

What a great day and get you going on Slinky! Although rubbish weather you managed a fair few rides and just love a room picnic

The food from New York Style Sandwiches looks scrummy and the boxes are so cute