France Day 1: Disney Studios

I got into France at 9:30am and met Angela in the airport. We took the RER to Torcy to drop our stuff off at our hotel. Unfortunately we apparently bought our ticket wrong out of the machine, and our ticket wouldn’t let us exit the station at Torcy. There wasn’t a place inside to buy tickets to correct this, so we climbed under the turnstile. We were lucky no one was there to say anything because that’s probably really bad, but we weren’t going to ride another hour back to the airport, especially since we were going to Disney that day.

It took us a little while to find our hotel even though it was 5 minutes from the metro station. The only directions they gave us were “100m from the station”. We were able to check in early, and it was nice to stay in a hotel rather than a hostel. It was a cheap hotel, but it was nice to have a private room and not have to worry about leaving your stuff there.

After that we went straight to Disney which is a 10 minute train ride from Torcy. The station at Disney was right in front of the gates, which was so convenient. We went to Disney Studios the first day since it was smaller and we didn’t get there until 12:30 and the parks close at 7:00. We had no idea how small the park actually was. You could walk across the entire park in about 5 minutes, and it only took us a couple hours to do everything. It helped that almost all of the rides were walk-ons. It was great because we were able to do everything in the limited time, plus all of the main things twice. They had a Fast Pass system there, but it was useless. It just took you to a point in the line to cut in. Since the lines were short to begin with, it got you nowhere.

It was really nice how American Disney was. When we got there we had hot dogs for lunch. Everything seemed so Disney-ish that you felt like you were in Florida even though it was colder. It was really nice to have a taste of home, and it’s cool that Disney has the same feel about it no matter where you are.

I think the best way to describe Disney Studios is to review the attractions in comparison to Disney World.

- Cinemagique: a cute movie show that represents our Great Movie Ride. The movie features Martin Short who gets pulled into the movie when he is talking loudly on a cell phone at the movies. He goes through all of the different genres and most of the classic movies. It was half in French and half in English. We were laughing out loud at Martin Short, but none of the French people got his jokes.
- Tower of Terror: very similar to ours. The inside lobby area is not very scary looking. The beginning part with the Twilight Zone is the same – the first time we were there is was dubbed in French with English subtitles. The second time it was the same English one with French subtitles. The ride was better because it was different. It drops at different times from ours which made it unexpected.
- Rock ‘n Rollercoaster: worse than ours. Same beginning in the studio but they cut out the story about getting stretch limos to rush us to the show, so there was no overall theme to the ride. The beginning blastoff was the same, but the ride was much worse than ours since it didn’t have the street theme.
- Animagique: a mixture between Philharmagic and The Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Like Mermaid because there are puppet people in black light. Like Philharmagic because Donald steals something from Mickey and enters into the world of Disney animated classics. It was good, but very strange. Most was in English but some random parts (like Under the Sea) were in French. The finale with the Animagique song was very memorable.
- Crush’s coaster: awesome. Hands down the best thing at Disney Studios, which is why it had a 35 minute wait while everything else was 5-10 minutes. A coaster where 2 people are facing the front and 2 the back on a turtle shell. The ride made you feel like you were swimming through the ocean. It was very cool – I’m hoping they make something like it for Disney World. It was the only thing that was really different from ours.
- Backlot tour: the same. They had the same exact Catastrophe Canyon where the same exact things happened. It displayed lots of things from Pearl Harbor, which was weird since its so old.
- Armageddon special effects: A special effects show with fire, smoke, etc. I think we used to have something like it, it seemed very familiar.
- Stitch Live!: The same thing as Turtle Talk with Crush except with Stitch. He interacts with the audience and talks to everyone. I still don’t understand how they get these to work. It was interesting because we went to the English show, but the people there had bizarre names, so Stitch was very confused.
- Art of Disney Animation: A movie featuring clips from Disney animated movies followed by Mushu from Mulan and the creators talking about how they made him. The show was in French, and you listened to the English version through headphones. The French was way too loud, so it was hard to concentrate on the English version. It was a really good show though. I was annoyed at the beginning when they dubbed Walt in French. I like Walt’s voice and didn’t want to hear a random French voice.

We left Disney Studios as it closed, and it was really nice that we were able to do everything in such a short time. It was a really great day, even though we were exhausted from only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before. We went back to Torcy to eat since everything was cheaper. We ate at Chicken Spot, which was good. Back at the hotel I was really excited to have a tv since I haven’t seen one in 3 months. I watched Secret Window in French, which was actually good since I knew what was happening anyway. We went to sleep early and woke up the next day early to go to Disneyland.