Our trip to the happiest place on Earth
- henripoole-birrell
- Jan 3
- 12 min read
Disneyland Paris Retrospective: 29th December 2024 – 1st of January 2025
Note – all picture credits go to my sister, Polly ;)
What better place to celebrate the end of a fantastic year than Disneyland Paris?
The theme park (formerly known as 'Euro Disney') welcomes over 10,000 guests from around the world every day and features two parks (Disneyland Park, which opened in 1992, and Walt Disney Studios Park, which opened in 2002), as well as the Disney Village, which doesn't require an entry ticket. The resort also includes a variety of themed hotels, its train station and a golf course.
We stayed in The Davey Crockett Ranch, which is themed after... er, well... Davey Crockett, a former US representative and 'frontiersman'. So yes, this particular resort has that cowboy vibe, along with its family chalets, leisure centre, general store and buffet restaurant. We arrived too early to unload our bags in our chalet (after our total nine-hour car journey from Devon to the park, via the Eurotunnel) so we made for park with our Magic Passes (That being myself, my mum and her partner, and my three younger siblings)
Disneyland Paris is all razzle and dazzle this time of year, with boughs of holly and red bows decorating every window ledge and pillar. All the classic Disney characters (and cast members – not 'staff members') are darned in bells and sequins.
Everything is very French here – which it would be, being in France. This park is substantially more sophisticated and medievally inspired than its original American counterpart – Disney was required to make it so, otherwise, the French government would have forced them to scrap the project entirely. So they spent a few extra million to make the place look incredible. That is one of the truly astonishing things about Disneyland – you can be anywhere from age 3 to 99, and the park will remain timeless, as well as immersive and exciting and full of new things to look at. It's honestly incredible how many new things you can pick up on with every new visit. It's just as much about the experience as the attractions and shows and so on. Speaking of which, here's a breakdown of everything we did at Disneyland Paris.
DAY 1 – 29th of December
It's a Small World
I grew up hearing this tune on my Nanny's doorbell without having any idea that the song originated from this attraction. You are boarded on a tiny boat, which takes you through an immersive set with dozens of animatronic dolls singing and dancing in a variety of different languages. However, what's truly incredible about this ride is how all the musical elements are in sync. So your boat goes through miniature London and they're singing 'It's a small world after all' and then through miniature France and 'le monde est petit après tout' is perfectly aligned with the tune of Italy and Spain and so on. A word of warning: if you google this song, it will undoubtedly get stuck in your head. Do not blame me!
This was followed by a buffet tea at Plaza Gardens restaurant, which featured some very delicious French deserts (see a pic below!)
Afterwards, we stood on the edge of Main Street USA (a realistic and enchanting recreation of an American highstreet from the 1950s) and watched Mickey's Dazzling Christmas Parade while snow shot from canons overhead and illuminated floats passed on by, including Father Christmas on his sleigh, waving at children and greeting them in both English and French.
Pirates of the Caribbean Ride
As soon as the parade finished, we dashed over to Pirates of the Caribbean in Adventureland. This has to be one of my favourite rides in the park (we went on it twice during our visit!) This is a boat ride that takes you through a warm and very realistic reimagining of the Caribbean. It's all easy-sailing underneath palm trees and moonlit skies until you're suddenly going up-hill and realise that you'll soon plummet ten or fifteen feet in your little boat into the heart of the action. The most incredible feature of this ride (aside from its two almost unexpected drops!) is the highly realistic animatronics; for a moment, you have to stop and look at them carefully to work out that they are in fact not real people but robots! Very detailed robots calculating each other's moves in a sword fight and chasing each other in circles, and singing and dancing.
Peter Pan's Flight
This next ride involves you sitting in a sailing ship and flying over an illuminated miniature London with Peter Pan music playing in the background; followed by a swift but beautiful journey over a forest of black branches and twinkling lights. Despite that description, it's a smooth ride and very suitable for small children, but magical and immersive all the same.
Mad Hatter's Tea Cups
And what better way to cherry-top the first day at Disneyland Paris than to take a spin in one of the Mad Hatter's spinning tea cups? These are as dizzying as they sound – especially with five of us were crammed into one. Overhead is an ocean of brightly lit lanterns and a dazzling petal-shaped glass ceiling.
Oh – and let's not forget visiting the dragon in his keep beneath the castle! This is also the largest animatronic in Europe! Its claws tap the rock, its tail sways, its wings flap, its stomach breathes – and its eyes glow orange as it snaps at the onlookers.
DAY 2 – 30th of December
We're up nice and early in the park for 9 am. Note that this will be a long day ahead – we'll be in the park until 10 pm at night later this day to watch the fireworks and illuminations. And it's freezing cold – somewhere between 2 and 4 degrees. But we're in good spirits and teaming with excitement – because today is a Disney Day, as my youngest brother keeps repeating. After eating breakfast in our chalet, we head for the park.
And immediately we're welcomed by the mouse himself! Here's a pic of him and Minnie waving at us at the entrance!
Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast
Our first attraction of the day (and whilst the park is still fairly quiet with people still making their way in) is Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, a ride which involves you riding through a glow-in-the-dark space-themed set while trying to shoot your laser gun at special targets for points. This is situated in Discoveryland, a science-fiction-themed area inspired by the work of Jules Verne.
Following this, we went on Star Tours, a Star Wars-themed 4D cinema experience, where you need to wear 4D glasses whilst being strapped into an intergalactic touring vessel piloted by none other than C3PO! The seats rock back and forth while C3PO's awful piloting skills tour you through the universe. I think this has to be in my Top 5 easily.
Here's a picture I took of Wall-E and Eve in Discoveryland!
Next up, we ventured to Fantasyland to take a trip through Alice's Curious Labyrinth, a tangled hedge maze featuring characters from Lewis Carol's classic story. We then waited in line to meet the one and only Mickey Mouse, who I was fortunate enough to obtain a signature from in my twenty-year old autograph book (He also kissed it, which was nice...) Here's a picture of all of us meeting Mickey Mouse!
Top tip – Don't throw away old autograph books – these are great keepsakes and I have a great collection of character signatures from times that I've visited the park in the past, even though the pages are now starting to fall out!
Next up was a ride on Phantom Manor over in Frontierland, which sadly I don't have any pictures of, but was lots of fun nonetheless. This is the French version of the original Haunted House ride in the American Disneyland, though this one has a Wild West theme, where you're taken through the dark on a moving armchair while the ride tells the story of a bride who marries a skeleton who can reanimate the dead...? Something like that. The area surrounding the ride is intentionally run down and overgrown, and upon entering Phantom Manor, you stand in a chamber that sinks underground, the pictures on the walls elongating and becoming gradually more grim as you descend into this cobwebbed place. I imagine this ride would be even more thrilling at Halloween.
Perhaps the most terrifying part of this ride was when my mum's partner decided to reach out and grab my arm, making me think there were actual people employed to do this at the attraction itself! This ride did stop twice while we were on it, but Disney works magic with technical issues – "Playful spirits have interrupted our tour, we will continue shortly" – and there's something so unsettling anyway in waiting in near-pitch darkness for the ride to continue.
Following this, we had pictures taken with Chip and Dale – a much less terrifying experience – and then had lunch in Toad Hall (Vegan Fish and Chips – we hardly left England at all!)
In the afternoon, we went into the neighbouring park, Walt Disney Studios, and went on a variety of different rides.
The first was Spiderman's Web Adventure, an attraction which involves you sitting in a car (a sort of moving booth with window along one side) and, similar to Buzz Lightyear's Laser Blast, involved you having to shoot targets, but this time with your wrists – like Spiderman. This is one of the newer attractions in this park, in this Marvel-themed area called Avenger's Campus, and features some truly incredible technology where virtual webs shoot across the screen wherever you point your wrists. Brilliant! We went on this ride twice, and my mum enjoyed boasting about her 'high score' on both occasions.
Crush's Coaster
Now, this ride is NOT for the faint hearted. My sister visited Disneyland for her birthday the month before we went, and she could not stop laughing about her traumatic experience on Crush's Coaster. This is an indoor rollercoaster inspired by Crush (the turtle from Disney Pixar's Finding Nemo) and his epic journey along the East Australian Current, which – trust me – is wild! You sit yourself in a shell, which not only travels through the near-pitch darkness at top speed while the track spirals, but also rotates as you're going along. I had to close my eyes and clench my teeth several times while on this ride and am struggling to come to terms with how I didn't wet myself. That said, it's probably in my top five rides, unlike for mum – who looked thoroughly traumatised after stepping off that turtle shell, having just spun around and around in complete darkness while digging her fingernails into the arm of the total stranger seated next to her...
It's definitely one to ride again. As my sister said, 'it's okay the second time'... yeah, but maybe I'll wait until my next trip! What begins as a kid's coaster, ends as... well, NOT A KID'S COASTER!
(Meanwhile, my mum's partner took a trip on The Hollywood Tower of Terror, another thrill ride where you sit in an elevator than suddenly breaks and plummets just as it's making it's way up! Not for me, thank you very much!
The Ratatouille Ride
Ratatouille is one of my favourite films – and the ride is much less traumatising than Crush's Coaster! This is trackless dark ride, which means you sit in a car that basically moves freely around a set without a track – it's a bit like the car is sitting on top of one of those automated vacuum cleaners that knows where the walls and all the furniture is. Again, very clever technology. You take on the perspective of a rat being chased through a kitchen, which is just as immersive and entertaining as it sounds. We went on this ride three times, which must mean it was our favourite! At one point, you are positioned under a cooker and a heater comes on over your head; at another point, a wine bottle bursts open in front of you on the screen, water sprinkling down onto your head from somewhere above. Amazing!
But the day isn't over yet! Because next we went to Toy Story Playland and went on the Toy Soldier Parachute Drop – which doesn't involve jumping from a helicopter with a parachute, but plummeting so many stories to the ground (It's actually much more gentle than it sounds, trust me) We actually went on this ride twice. We then went on the Slinky Dog Spin ride, which is a fairly easy-going coaster that travels in a circle with a few bumps here and there, but was a chilled break from all the thrill-seeking of that afternoon...
We finished our time in this park on Cars Road Trip, which was originally the Studio Tram Tour when the park first opened. This a manually driven ride which takes you on a fairly easy-going trip through the woods until you reach Catastrophe Canyon, where the tram stops, the road shakes, things catch on fire, there's a simulation of an earthquake, a lorry slides down a hill toward you, and the whole set experiences a flash flood, soaking anyone who's unlucky enough to be sitting on the edge. Here's a pic of the action in the canyon before the flash flooding!
We had something to eat at our hotel before going back to the main park and waiting for the fireworks to begin. After a short trip around the Swiss Family Treehouse, with great views across the park (which is beautiful at night), we watched The Electrical Sky Parade, which is a colourful drone show that creates jaw-dropping pictures in the night sky above Sleeping Beauty's Castle, followed by the Disney Illuminations and fireworks!
Here are some pictures:
DAY 3 – 31st of December
We had a bit of a later start to the day, with breakfast at Annette's Diner at 11 am. This is an American-themed restaurant which sometimes features waiters and waitresses on roller skates!
Today's attractions included riding Alladin's Flying Carpets and the Cars Route Rally, where you sit in a two-seater car and get spun around and around with the feeling that you're about to crash into someone else at any moment.
Then we returned to Discoveryland and experienced the wonder of Mickey's Philarmagic, a 4D cinema experience where you put on a pair of 3D glasses and watch a animation of Donald Duck trying to retrieve Mickey's magic hat while the floor shudders and wind blows around the auditorium – another truly immersive experience. 10/10.
In the evening, we travelled back to Walt Disney Studio Park (It was extra cold by now, but because it was New Years Eve, the parks were open until the early hours of the morning and the studios park was especially quiet – which meant more ride time for us!) We once again went on the Ratatouille ride and the parachute drop, followed by Nutella Crepes and free hot chocolates! Happy New Year!
Over in the main Disneyland Park, at ten to midnight, four of us rode Big Thunder Mountain, where you ride on a runaway mine train as it rockets at forty-something miles per hour along a rickety track, through dark caves and over cold waters! This was an hour's wait, but really worth it. Nowhere near as disorienting as Crush's Coaster, but was very fast and featured some jolting turns that made your stomach flip and caused you to fly off the seat every now and then. You can't go to Disneyland without taking a trip on this runaway train! Just hold on tight – the ride doesn't waste any time!
We almost missed the New Year's fireworks after that! All was spectacular – though we didn't have the best view, especially after prioritising Big Thunder Mountain... but hey, the ride was worth it!
DAY 4 – 1st of January
After staying up late and thrill-seeking, and not getting into bed at our chalet until 1:30 am, we ended up waking up late and having breakfast at Annette's Diner at about 11:00 am again. Our final day included some repeat rides from the days before (including Ratatouille – yes, again! – and Spiderman Webb Adventure), as well as trying both the Pinocchio and Snow White rides in Fantasyland. By the way, I never truly realised how dark both of these stories were until I rode these short rides!
After exploring a submarine in Discoveryland (which is inspired by 20,000 leagues under the sea), we watched 'Together: A Pixar Adventure', in a theatre in the Walt Disney Studios Park. This short musical show was upbeat and very immersive, featuring a live orchestra, a variety of Pixar characters (including Toy Story, Up, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and Coco), and some truly astonishing physical effects, such as smoke stalking across the stage as the house from Up soars through the clouds, or bubbles erupting from the ceiling as we're taken under the ocean to the dancing coral reefs of Finding Nemo. Exceptional!
After all the fun in both parks, we made a quick stop around the gift shop where we bought some different bits and pieces without trying to break the bank!
And then it was tea at Davey Crockett – more mouth-watering food that we secretly wanted to bag up and take more home with us! And then it was the journey home. This was truly a magical trip to a magical place – somewhere I have not been in eleven years. My fourth time! Have you been to Disneyland? If so, I'd love to hear about your experience!
Thank you for reading, and thank you, Disney, for the wonder :)
Until next time ;)
Oh – and Happy New Year!
We are just back from Disneyland and we went through the same vibes…very magic, exectly as you described it, but a bit warmer…