July 15, 2007 at 9:24 pm · Filed under Disney, Travel, Mediterranean Cruise
8 AM. We thought we would be escaping these early mornings once we were off the cruise, but apparently not. All guests staying in a Disney hotel are given a free continental breakfast every morning of their stay but, since every guest gets a free continental breakfast, the hotel restaurants are usually swamped in the mornings. In order to thin out the crowds, Disney offers Breakfast in Fantasyland, a program where people who are willing to get up a bit earlier can get into the park an hour early to eat their breakfast and then enjoy a mostly-open Fantasyland an hour before everyone else gets in. I, of course, opted to take advantage of this every day of our stay. I do a lot of things without thinking them through.
After luxuriating in the surprisingly nice shower, complete with unheard-of water pressure for a hotel, we managed to stumble out of the room. The day was, of course, overcast. Even though our stay here outside Paris was only four days long, they were so uniformly gloomy that I wonder if they just save themselves some time and call the sunny days “undercast “instead. The walkways were quiet and sparsely populated and as we walked past the hotels and through the still-closed Disney Village, we came to appreciate the omnipresent music back home in Walt Disney World. The silence only highlighted the fact that everything wasn’t operating yet, giving the whole thing the feel of some post-apocalyptic theme park. If there’s anything weirder than seeing the European version of America, it’s seeing it abandoned.
As we neared the parks and the scattered people began to converge on a single path, we saw the first big difference between the Disney parks back home and Disneyland Paris: maintenance was being performed in the daytime, in plain view of guests. Behind moveable metal gates that are usually used as impromptu bike racks because of the thin metal bars spaced widely apart were workers cementing loose tiles in the walkway. We gave them a free pass because it was still over an hour until the park opened to the general public (despite the fact that Breakfast in Fantasyland is available every morning so they certainly were aware of the schedule) but as the day progressed, we saw more and more maintenance workers in the middle of the parks, in barely cordoned off areas, applying paint or doing masonry. I give them credit for actually doing the maintenance, but the only effort to actually hide anything is when something is under construction. Perhaps they can’t get the overnight crews here like they can at the stateside parks, but they can at least invest in a couple plywood walls.
We approached the Disneyland Hotel, which is also the entrance to the Disneyland park. When we were booking the trip through DVC, the Disneyland Hotel was 23 points more per night (the equivalent of $230/night in crazy DVC math) than the Sequoia Lodge, so we went with the latter. I had known that the Disneyland Hotel was built right at the front of the park, but seeing it in person made me regret not spending the extra points to stay there: it really is right at the front of the park. You have to pass beneath it to get to the ticket booths and the entry gates. Just beyond it is the familiar train station entrance from the Stateside parks and I imagine that Disneyland Hotel guests either have their own separate entrance to the park or a stairway that dumps them out directly in front of the gates. Beyond its proximity to the park entrance, its architecture has a kind of fantastic charm that the Sequoia Lodge lacks (well, the Sequoia Lodge’s architecture lacks any kind of charm, it’s the theming outside the buildings that makes it enjoyable), although some might be turned off by the Pepto-Bismol pink its painted (Disney nerds have come to hate this color for entirely separate reasons). There’s a large courtyard with fountains, topiaries, and, surprisingly for a Disney Park, descending staircases that lead up to the entrance and the space is large enough that, at least at this early hour, separating from the crowd to get a photo is pretty easy. We took advantage of the photo opportunities, but we weren’t here to mill about, so we headed underneath the Disneyland Hotel and to the entry gates.
The instructions for attendees of Breakfast in Fantasyland were so sparse as to be non-existent. The tickets offered no instructions as to means of entry and our assigned meeting place was “Fantasyland”, so we just joined the large line at the gate, assuming these people were in the same boat as us. Our first clue should’ve been that the line was still a line, and not a giant mob pushing their way through the gates as we’d come to expect from European “queuing”, but since we didn’t catch on to that it was a while before we realized that the line wasn’t moving at all. These intrepid travelers were staying offsite and were lining up an hour early to get in. We never would have found this out had it not been for some English-speaking family who were loudly discussing the time they had made the same mistake as us, waiting in the regular line, instead of heading to the special entryway for Breakfast in Fantasyland attendees that they were making a beeline for. There’s no signage of any kind, nor instructions on the printed tickets, indicating that the entrance on the very end on the left-hand side, out from underneath the hotel itself, is the entryway for people going to Breakfast in Fantasyland. This confusion was not limited to ourselves, as several people who also understood the thankfully-loud English-speaking family joined us as we pushed our way through the back of the lines toward the proper entry gate. After flashing our tickets, we were walking underneath the train station and onto Main Street.
Main Street was a ghost town. Perhaps the demand for Breakfast in Fantasyland was so great, but probably because no one knew how to get in, we were part of only a handful of people milling about, with nary a castmember in sight. As a result, we got to take in the sights in a more clinical way than we would’ve been allowed if we had to dodge and weave through crowds. Everything in Disneyland Paris seemed to be painted a bit brighter than it would stateside which, if it’s actually true, is probably to allow the buildings to still “pop” against a dreary sky, which they did. All the buildings seemed to be shining in the sunlight despite the preponderance of clouds. As we wandered down the street, the first of the Main Street vehicles, the fire engine, drove past, bringing with it more life to the park. There was still nowhere near the number of people that we’d see later in the day, but as castmembers joined the tourists milling about, the place seemed to slowly awakening.
The castle lay at the end of the street, by far the most fantastic architecturally of all the parks we’ve been to, and I think it both benefits and suffers from it. It suffers because the multiple turrets reaching skyward are all so thin that forced perspective doesn’t work, so the illusion that this is an actual inhabitable castle, regardless of its fantastic construction, is lost. I think if a bird landed on parts of the highest turret we’d fear invasion from giant winged mutants. On the other hand, the castle is built into a hillside, and it is quite wide, filling up your peripheral vision as you approach it. The other castles seem to have been plopped down in the middle of a theme park, a self-contained structure within a set boundary, while this castle, with its sprawling construction and its large surrounding courtyard, gives the effect that it was here first (even if its design doesn’t feel quite right). In terms of looks, I still place Walt Disney World’s Cinderella Castle at the top of my list, but I really appreciate the details surrounding Disneyland Paris’ castle, and had it not been for the too-fanciful upper portion, it would easily be my favorite.
We had a nice multicultural moment: we were taking our picture in front of the castle, as was a Spanish couple and a German couple. After a few aborted attempts at taking our own pictures, we all realized we could help each other out and after some universal pointing as to what buttons to press, we all had taken each others’ pictures and were on our way through the castle and into Fantasyland.
Our first reaction: everything here is just…better. They saw the concepts put forth in the previously constructed parks and just plussed them: Disneyland’s Dumbo built around a small central fountain? Disneyland Paris’ Dumbo is built atop a large surrounding fountain. The walkways were spacious, but the intimacy of the place was kept intact with its surrounding fanciful structures and foliage. We were only taking in a first glimpse, though. Our early dinner the previous night had left us craving the “Breakfast” part more than the “in Fantasyland” part and we quickly surmised by the crowds entering the place that Au Chalet de la Marionette Restaurant was where we were to eat.
The Continental Breakfast was, well, continental. Lisa joined the obscenely long line for coffee while I went to look around. There were several tables: two on either side containing breads and cereals a central table containing cold meats. The organization was virtually non-existent beyond that description. For example, while the breads were at one table, the butter and jams were over with the meats, and only one of the two cereal tables had the milk. The plastic utensils were all in the center of meats table so that if you weren’t in the mood for some cold pimento loaf, you were left scratching your head as to where to get the spoon for your cereal. By the time I had gathered everything I’d cared to try (two rolls, a piece of untoasted bread, a croissant, and some chocolate breakfast cereal), Lisa was just finishing up on the coffee line and I was able to pass on my collected wisdom to her. We sat down at a table that was far too large for the two of us, yet the only one available, and came to an agreement that we’d be skipping this the following morning. Au Chalet de la Marionette Restaurant was charming, though, a reproduction of the Pinocchio Village Haus stateside (I just realized…Pinocchio is Italian…why is the Village Haus German?) complete with the paintings on the wall taking us through the story of Pinocchio.
We wandered out of the restaurant and out of Fantasyland entirely. We had assumed, since the details of Breakfast in Fantasyland were nonexistent outside of the title, that the entire park would be open in some capacity, and we were trying to make our way to Discoveryland, Disneyland Paris’ version of Tomorrowland. The entrance from the hub was cordoned off, though, so we made our way back into Fantasyland, thinking we could beat the system and enter through the back. We couldn’t, and the closest ride to our failed attempt was it’s a small world, so we went there.
Either the façade of the Disneyland Paris it’s a small world is on a different schedule than those stateside or the clock was off, because we waited several minutes past the quarter hour mark for the display to come alive to no avail. Our disappointment duly noted by no one, we made our way onto the line, past the colorful flags covered with greetings in all different languages and a child in that country’s native garb with something representation of that country behind him or her. America’s representation was a little cowboy, furthering the view of America as the Wild West from Disney Village and heightening my anticipation to see the first foreign interpretation of America it’s a small world-style. There were plenty of castmembers at the dock, but they were all gathered in a group at the far end, enjoying the last of their coffee and chatting amongst themselves, the last bit of respite they’d get before the workday truly began. We were left to seat ourselves, but honestly, we were the only people getting on the ride, and if two adults can’t get in a stationary vehicle by themselves, what hope is there for the world?
Their version of it’s a small world was the most highly stylized of any I’d been on. The sets were cartoony and trippy, charmingly so, but had I been on a bad trip it would’ve all appeared demonic. There were a lot more flat cutouts, but there was a lot more of everything in general, so that the cutouts only added to the already elaborate detail of the sets. There were fanciful interpretations of all the countries shown, including a flying Pegasus for Greece and a dancing Loch Ness Monster for Scotland, but my favorite was America. America can be summed up as follows: Cowboys, Indians, New York, and Hollywood. There was a farm thrown in the mix as if the concept of “flyover states” had physically manifested itself, and there was also, oddly, a lone football player and a lone cheerleader singing in a cutout of a stadium underneath a sign that just read “Rah!”. I know that the ride was designed by Americans in an effort to appeal to the European idea of what America is, so it makes some of the other choices even more weird: Hollywood’s signing dolls are Busby Berkeley-era showgirls and a star and starlet off the red carpet from the 40s. New York’s famous skyline, complete with Statue of Liberty, is accompanied by a yellow cab driving over…the Golden Gate Bridge? Overall, though, it was hands down the best version of it’s a small world we’d been to. They took the charming, stylized designs of Mary Blair and placed them in ultra-heightened, ultra-stylized setpieces, taking the whole concept to a new level of cuteness that only the most hardened heart could hate.
The exit for it’s a small world is the same as the entrance, outside, but instead of dumping you back out into Fantasyland, you have to go through a building advertising whatever sponsor the ride had. It wasn’t unpleasant at all: the interior was designed as a three-dimensional walkthrough of the world in the style of the ride, with Big Ben right up against the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal, and so on. The sponsor was a telecommunications company and every so often a window in a building would light up and a silhouette would be shown placing a phone call or using a computer and somewhere in another country, some other window would light up and another silhouette would answer. There were interactive kiosks scattered throughout this area, looking like two conjoined phone booths. We stepped into one: you’d choose your language and an avatar corresponding to your country of origin (cowboy or Indian for America, of course) and you’d be able to communicate with the person in the corresponding booth, with the technology translating to and from your native tongues so you could understand each other. The young kid in the booth connected to ours kept popping over to see our progress, eagerly awaiting to converse with us, but it eventually became apparent that the thing was out of order despite a lack of signage indicating it, and we were forced to leave the young boy disappointed, unable to communicate to him what was going on. It’s an ironic small world.
We decided to save the rest of Fantasyland for later, figuring that it would be busiest in the morning, just as it is stateside. We were able to get into Discoveryland now. Discoveryland is Disneyland Paris’ solution to the problem of Tomorrowland: the future is a hell of a lot closer than anybody thinks. While we stateside are left to cringe every time the girl in the final scene of Carousel of Progress shames her grandfather for not having a car phone, Disneyland Paris has sidestepped the tricky problem of trying to guess what parts of the future will stay futuristic and instead focused on the future as seen by visionaries in the past. More specifically, the future as seen by France’s own Jules Verne, inventor of the science-fiction genre. Discoveryland, therefore, is all gleaming metal, complete with bolts and welds, using the technology of the 19th century in fantastic ways to achieve the futuristic. There are, of course, giant metal rings surrounding pretty much every structure, for what evokes the future more than superfluous rings? There’s tons of what the imagineers call kinetics here: everything’s in motion, from the fountains to the vestigial Astro-Orbiter, which, now lacking a ride, has devolved into a buzzing, whirring sculpture evoking the motion of the planets. The centerpiece here is Space Mountain: Mission 2, our first destination. The original structure of the stateside Space Mountains remains the same: an inverted funnel with the support structures on the outside instead of the inside. Everything else has changed, though: the stark white is replaced with bronze and blue, the flat inner surface replaced with triangular panels evoking Spaceship Earth’s design, and the jagged spires atop the roof are now numerous antennae covered, naturally, with superfluous rings. Most impressive, though, is the giant cannon built along one side. This Space Mountain is a nod to Jules Verne’s De la Terre a la Lune, From the Earth to the Moon, in which members of an American gun club build a cannon large enough to shoot them in a capsule to the moon. That cannon, the Baltimore Gun Club’s Columbiad, is reproduced here. And it adds a great showpiece to an already impressive building. Every 30 seconds or so, the chamber of the gun opens up as the rollercoaster loads into it. The chamber then shuts as smoke billows forth from it. A few seconds later, accompanied by a loud boom, the rollercoaster shoots out of the cannon and, with a flash of light, seemingly into the sky. Walt Disney called the huge structures that drew you further into the park (think the castle at the end of Main Street) “weenies”, and Space Mountain: Mission 2 has got to be one of the finest ever built.
We entered the line, which winds around a lake in which the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s ship from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, is parked. It’s a walkthrough attraction, one we’d definitely be headed to, but along with the cannon launching riders to the moon, it makes an already great queue a lot more interesting. There was a half hour wait for the ride, something we didn’t mind, but we encountered our first problem with the setup of the park: the lines were wide paths instead of the narrow winding queues Stateside, and because of the awful approach to queuing that Europe seems to have, people feel free to pass you if you leave any available space to move. Families solve this problem by standing shoulder to shoulder, forming an impenetrable wall through which no opportunistic bastard may pass. Lisa and I are certainly wide enough to create a formidable obstacle, but on the wider parts of the line, impetuous youths and grumpy adults just navigated through the cracks, worming their way to the front of the line because apparently their time is worth far more than our own. The line, therefore, moved seemingly randomly, but really moved in accordance with how many people were let to cut the line. It was actually moving, but the people who had made their way forward were the ones benefiting while those who were queued up like polite idiots were left to wait twice as long as they should have. We, then, had plenty of time to soak in the atmosphere of the queue itself, which to say, we waited in the dark for quite a long time. We were able to encounter our first instance of Disneyland Paris’ method of dealing with the language barrier. Although the park is built in France, it’s meant to attract all of Europe and all the various tongues that accompany that tourism. French is given primacy and there’s never an attraction where French isn’t spoken, but other languages pop in at odd times and in odd ways. Overall, it’s actually quite diplomatic, but there’s still quite a few places where the choices seem, well, strange, most notably in the more narrative-heavy attractions over in the Disney Studios. That’s for tomorrow, though. Instead, here, the safety instruction video is given in both French, with English subtitles, and English, with French subtitles, all by the same woman. Every so often her video pops and fades…what is it about futuristic communication that we can’t get a decent video connection? Everyone’s either interrupted by static or gets odd jitters here and there. Anyway, the most entertaining thing about the video is the chipmunk-cheeked kid who is the subject of the safety procedures, who seems to be enjoying himself a bit too much to be healthy. The dark part of the queue ends where the normal line and the Fastpass line meet up, and you then shuffle into a room full of the Baltimore Gun Club’s elaborate designs for their space flight. The problem is that, after spending half an hour or more in the dark, you only see this elaborately themed room for a few minutes, since they only let you into it in small groups. The actual loading platform for Space Mountain is, oddly, outside, albeit under a roof. You empty back into the sunlight (or whatever sunlight has made it through the cloud cover) and get in line to board the vehicle. We loaded a couple rows from the back of the coaster and were on our way. The ride starts off as described above, except that you’re inside the cannon. It uses the same linear induction technology you might be familiar with from Rock n’ Roller Coaster: you go from 0 to 60 in no time flat. The inside is absolutely nothing like the track of the original Space Mountain with the exception that you’re still in the dark. There’s loops, corkscrews, and insanely banked turns that give for a completely different experience. There’s black-lit space effects everywhere, more impressive than the exciting black-lit highway signs of Rock ‘n Roller Coaster, coupled with a bunch of cool effects, including a hyperspeed tunnel that you fly through instead of slow down in. I won’t say that it’s better than our Space Mountain (although Lisa would) because it’s entirely different. I’d still say ours is scarier because of the silhouettes of the track that seem so close to your head you’re afraid to raise your hands above shoulder level. Still, we both loved the ride.
We had gotten Fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear’s Laser Blast before we rode Space Mountain and we headed over there next. We encountered something charmingly universal: people trying to scam the Fastpass attendant. An elderly mother with her 30-something year old son was trying to get over on the Disney employee manning the Fastpass entrance. The oldest trick in the book, pretending not to speak the language, is useless here since every Disney employee seems to speak every language imaginable, including Klingon, but people try nonetheless. After the attendant patiently explained in their native tongue what the Fastpasses were, how they were required for this entrance to the ride, and how they could obtain them, the next technique the old woman employed was ignorance, and she assured the attendant that they had procured these so-called Fastpasses already, and then proceeded to produce their park tickets. After another patient explanation and much grimacing on the part of the old woman, the family then stomped off defeated.
The queue for Buzz Lightyear is seemingly a lot longer than the Stateside parks, but that may be because it’s entirely indoors. It has a much more active Buzz Lightyear audioanimatronic and etch-a-sketch background, similar to Disneyland’s version, as opposed to the static Viewfinder from WDW. Other than that, the queue is pretty much identical, even down to the hidden Mickey on the map of the planets. The ride itself is also fairly identical, with the exception of a few welcome pluses: the guns aren’t bolted to the ride vehicle, they can be freely manipulated independent of the way the car is facing, and the ride mostly eschews flat cutouts for 3-D targets. The former allowed Lisa to greatly improve her normally abysmal score, although they still haven’t worked out the most problematic detail of the ride: having to figure out which of the dozens of tiny red dots is yours. Still, the extra details made this our favorite version of the ride, especially since Lisa didn’t suck as much as she usually does.
Lisa had to make her way to the lady’s room, so I took the opportunity to get in line for something I had been craving since the moment I saw it: Gaufres, waffles that they serve to you warm, covered in your choice of sugar, whipped cream, or chocolate syrup. I opted for Whipped Cream, because the guy serving them up was filling each hole in the waffle with the Whipped Cream, and who can resist that? I only got one to share for a reason I don’t quite understand and it took all my willpower not to devour the whole delicious treat before Lisa returned from the restroom. I did nibble my way down in my impatience, so that instead of 50/50, it was really 55/45. A couple of things I noticed during my Gaufre adventure: there seems to be a strong local contingent in Disneyland Paris. As I waited online, the kid working the stand was joking around with his friend, standing just outside the line, who was trying to scam a Gaufre for a song and dance, which wasn’t working out for him. Outside the Videopolis, where I anxiously wolfed down my Gaufre, were a bunch of kids who seemed to only be there to stand around and look vaguely thuggish, impressing no one. They didn’t seem to be waiting for anyone or anything in particular, it just seemed that in the sleepy town of Marne-la-Valee, the Videopolis in Disneyland Paris was where you went if you wanted to look like a thug. The Videopolis is home to both an eatery and the Legend of the Lion King show, making it apparent that even here where they’ve solved the problem of the future they still have non-future creep. Lisa found her way back to me and happily ate her 45% of the Gaufre, none the wiser about the missing 5%.
We decided that Star Tours, Honey I Shrunk the Audience and Autopia are all pretty tired rides back home, so we were skipping that portion of Discoveryland, and were making our final stop in Les Mysteries du Nautilus. If it weren’t for the Nautilus itself parked in the lake outside Space Mountain: Mission 2, you’d have no idea there was even a ride here. The entryway looks like a little merchandise kiosk at the exit of Space Mountain: Mission 2 because there’s no line to speak of, you just walk right in. It’s essentially the Swiss Family Treehouse indoors, with you walking down a long corridor into the Nautilus, where you weave through its many tight crew quarters and engine rooms, the stark decoration, the rusting bolts and the omnipresent gauges giving an authentic submarine feel, at least for people who have never been on an actual submarine. The showpiece of the attraction is the two huge portholes in the main chamber of the Nautilus where, every minute or so, the climactic confrontation with the giant squid occurs. It’s a really cool effect, one that I was unfortunately unable to capture on camera, but you can see it on this guy’s lengthy tour of the attraction on Youtube. There’s a cool effect in the same room that probably goes unnoticed by many because of the giant squid effect, but if you play Nemo’s organ (heh heh), there’s a mirror just above to look into and every so often Nemo’s face appears in the mirror.
We said our goodbyes to Discoveryland and made our way back out onto the hub to get to our next destination: Frontierland.
Frontierland is the showpiece of all of Disneyland Paris. It’s elaborately themed, with an intricate backstory linking all of its attractions together. Frontierland is the town of Thunder Mesa, an industrial mining town that once thrived but now has seen better days. In its heyday, it was drowned in riches from the Big Thunder Mountain Gold Mines, and its richest inhabitant was the man who laid claim to Big Thunder Mountain: Henry Ravenswood. Ravenswood was a cruel and callous man, disregarding the local Shoshoni Indian Tribe’s claim to the mountain as a sacred place in order to build his new mining company on it. His newfound riches enabled him to build Ravenswood Manor, a mansion atop a hill overlooking his empire. Here he collected all manners of things to show his enormous wealth, and it was here that he announced with his wife, Martha, that their 22 year old daughter, Mary Murphy Ravenswood, would marry a worthy local suitor named Frank Ballard. On the day of the wedding, Henry Ravenswood learned that Frank planned on taking his daughter out of Thunder Mesa and out of his control, so in a fit of rage, Henry killed Frank, hanging him from the rafters in the attic of the manor. Mary never knew what became of Frank, but she waited for him, refusing to take off her wedding dress, becoming a recluse, known only to come out to hold séances to find her missing fiancée. She died within the year. A short while after Mary’s death, disaster struck the Big Thunder Mountain Gold Mines: the vengeful spirits of the Shoshoni’s sacred burial ground brought the promised destruction, bringing every possible natural disaster upon the place simultaneously, continuing there to this day. Henry Ravenswood died, bankrupt and bitter, a short while later, and his restless spirit assumed the form of the Phantom, which battles with the spectral bride that haunts the manor to this day. Thunder Mesa remains as a shadow of its former self, but Big Thunder Mountain still calls to those enticed by its promises of untold riches. Those with more of a head on their shoulders can tour the town a little more safely, be it on the riverboats touring the Rivers of the West or in a visit to the Shoshoni tribe at the far end of town.
My inner Disney-nerd drooled at the thought of this elaborate backstory and what the land offered. We walked through the Fort, which apparently was once a walkthrough attraction but is now closed, and into Thunder Mesa. Big Thunder Mountain looms over the entire land, although it’s entirely separated from it by the Rivers of the West, taking the place of Tom Sawyer Island. The view would’ve been quite impressive if not for some weird, cheap cutouts of Totem Poles scattered throughout Frontierland that were hiding lighting rigs whose purpose I couldn’t figure out: there was no nighttime show at all here, except for Mickey’s Candelabration, which took place in front of the castle, and there was no nighttime parade, so I have no idea what these were for other than maybe as remnants of previous nighttime entertainment that now were just eyesores. Oh well.
We decided that Big Thunder Mountain’s prominence equated to long wait times, so we headed in that direction to get Fastpasses. We stopped at the Rustler Roundup Shootin’ Gallery where I dazzled Lisa and the people in attendance with the old Camera Flash trick. The shooting gallery here, as well as at Disneyland and Disney World, and at most other places, worked using lightguns: the guns shot a flash of light that, when aimed at the target that was sensitive to that flash of light, would trigger whatever crazy event was associated with that target. If you were to generate one huge flash of light as opposed to the tiny, focused flash from the guns, using, say, a camera flash, you could set off all the targets at once, and the place would go crazy. Lisa, and apparently everyone else standing around, was unaware of this, and I was looked upon as if I wielded some arcane power that demanded reverence. I, of course, did it again.
We were right: the wait for Big Thunder Mountain was 60 minutes and climbing, so I jumped on the Fastpass line. The Fastpass line, though, was a mob of people. There’s no dividers whatsoever to manage any kind of line, so it was basically a fight for dominance, and despite there only being 5 fastpass machines, the crowd was at least 8-10 people wide at its widest. I muscled my way toward the front, still politely waiting what I deemed the appropriate amount of time to be fair, since every fastpass machine was considered fair game no matter where you were standing on the line and it was every man for himself. The biggest holdup was a tour group operator who was monopolizing one of the machines, taking the time and patience of the lone Disney castmember manning the station.
Somehow I made it out alive, and we made our way back toward Phantom Manor. As we approached, we saw the Molly Brown riverboat making its way around the bend, so we made our way over to the Thunder Mesa Riverboat Landing. The Molly Brown is unique among Disney riverboats in that its paddlewheel is on the side as opposed to the back. It’s also pretty well maintained as far as the boats go. We made our way around Thunder Mesa and Big Thunder Mountain, passing many wildlife audioanimatronics, but by far the most noticed of all the animals was a group of real ones: a mother duck and her ducklings. It must’ve been the end of mating season, because mothers and their ducklings would weave in and out of the reeds lining the shoreline, drawing cheers of excitement from everyone who saw them. The coolest of the sites, besides the ducklings, though, was Big Thunder Mountain itself, which you saw from every angle possible. There’s a great effect toward the end of the riverboat’s run where the mine train plunges onto a dock that has pretty much collapsed from the giant earthquake that brought down the mining expedition. As the rollercoaster passes over it, the dock crumbles and water shoots high into the air as the train rolls on to safety.
The riverboat under out belt, we made our way to Phantom Manor. We encountered our second round of visible maintenance workers: in regular street clothes, behind one of those thin ropes they use to cordon off the streets during parades, painting the walls lining the path of the entrance to Phantom Manor. There wasn’t even an attempt to make it look neat: paint cans and bottles of water were scattered about, and one of the maintenance workers was loudly chattering away on his cellphone. The park closes at 6 pm, they couldn’t wait until then?
Phantom Manor, renamed from Haunted Mansion because Phantom Manor means the same thing in both English and French, is clearly a departure from the two Haunted Mansions found stateside. Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is impeccable on the outside, keeping with Walt’s wishes that his park remain to all appearances on the outside spic and span, and while Walt Disney World’s Mansion looks more like a Haunted House, it isn’t entirely devoid of a sterile feeling. Phantom Manor, however, is undoubtedly a haunted house. The outside portion of the Phantom Manor queue was impressively detailed: rotting and decrepit, with the landscape reclaiming the land, and yet with eerie details, like a tea service set out in an aged gazebo, giving the impression that someone had just left before you got there. I couldn’t help but think that this was what the disappointing outside portion Twilight Zone Tower of Terror queue in Walt Disney World should’ve been: not just abandoned, but occupied by something other than human. Lisa pointed out as we made our way onto the porch that one of the many filthy windows had “Help Me” hurriedly written into the dust with a finger. I noticed a smaller, but equally impressive detail: the oil lamps here are actual oil lamps, with real flames. It was entirely keeping with our experience of the park so far: take the original parks and just make the whole thing better.
Once we entered the ride, the beginning portions were much the same: you enter into a waiting room where the Ghost Host welcomes you before shuffling into one of two stretching rooms. The stretching rooms are, like the original in Disneyland, descending elevators. The portraits here initially show the young Mary Ravenswood out innocently enjoying herself. As you descend, the portraits stretch to reveal that what once seemed innocent reveals that she is always in deathly peril. The Ghost Host narrates the entire time (in French, but if you’ve seen the original, you know what he’s saying) and eventually the lights go out and lightning flashes, revealing the Phantom hanging Frank Ballard from the rafters in the attic. The lights come back on and we enter into the changing portrait gallery, where we see the (somewhat) sunny day that we left outside has now turned to a stormy night. Down this hallway is a large room with a grand staircase, the windows above it constantly shifting between light and dark. Here you load into your Doombuggies and begin your ride.
There’s an actual narrative here, not just the cobbled-together narrative we’ve garnered from original notes and word of mouth back home. The Phantom intends on keeping us here for all eternity with him while the Bride fights to keep us from his clutches and lead us to safety. A lot of the scenes are slightly reworked to fit in with this: the endless hallway with the floating candelabra now has the bride disappearing and reappearing while the candelabra remains and the grand ballroom scene is now the sight of the aborted wedding, eternally played out here, the Phantom watching over it all, laughing. It’s once you get past the ballroom that ride abandons everything you’re familiar with and becomes something entirely unique: at the entrance to the graveyard you’re met by the Phantom, who beckons you into an open grave. You descend through the earth, past skeletons clawing their way out of their coffins, and into Phantom Canyon, a twisted nightmare version of Thunder Mesa. The abandoned town is now “alive” with the ghosts of the town’s seedy past now populating it. There’s a lot of great gags here, all of which I don’t want to spoil, but by far my favorite is the Mayor welcoming you outside Town Hall, inviting you to be the 1000th ghost of the Phantom Manor. He tips his hat as he welcomes you, and his head comes with it, continuing his speech even as it leaves his shoulders toward your car. Phantom Canyon is incredibly detailed and unique in its presentation and, even though I had seen it in a documentary about the Haunted Mansion (nerd!), seeing it in person was well worth the trip. The bride waits at the end of Phantom Canyon and she leads you to safety and, just as you think you’re in the clear, you pass a line of mirrors only to see the Phantom clutching the top of your doom buggy, following you home.
We made our way out to Boot Hill, the graveyard at the exit of the ride. The graveyard here has a nice combination of language-dependant punny epithets and universally understood pictures on gravestones. The best of the picture gravestones is a line of headstones: a doe-eyed, innocent squirrel is first in the sequence, followed by the self-satisfied bobcat who ate it, followed by the coon-skinned hunter with the smoking rifle who shot the bobcat, and ending with a big ol’ bear, picking its teeth with a bone and wearing the same coonskin hat the hunter had on. The best of the written tombstones, and probably most risqué joke in any Disney park, is a pair of graves reading:
Jasper Jones
Loyal Manservant
Died 1866
“Kept the Master Happy”
Anna Jones
Faithful Chamber Maid
Died 1867
“Kept the Master Happier”
There’s ample space for picture-taking here, as well as an option to bypass it entirely for those not interested, making for a well-thought out exit to an incredible ride. Lisa instantly declared it her favorite version of the Haunted Mansion, not only for the ride itself, but also for the exterior which, finally, looked like a damn haunted house. I couldn’t argue, it really was the best I’d been on thus far.
It was time to take advantage of our Fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, so we made our way back there, passing the even-larger queue for people waiting to get Fastpasses. There was another holdup at the Fastpass entrance: another person trying to scam their way onto the shorter line. This time the woman had actually obtained a Fastpass, but she had just obtained the Fastpass moments before, and, ignoring the times clearly displayed on the ticket, pretended that this was a magic pass that instantly entitled her to immediate entrance. The attendant, patient as always, explained to the woman how Fastpass worked, all the while letting people with valid Fastpasses through (albeit at a slower pace, as they were enjoying the free show). The woman resorted to all manners of arm waving before finally skulking off. We gave the attendant the universal eye roll in the scammer’s direction, which she very much appreciated as she waved us through, not bothering to look at our (valid) return times in a nice little “Screw You” to the woman scammer.
Big Thunder Mountain’s queue back home is notoriously long regardless of whether or not you have a Fastpass, and I worried that there would be a lengthy tunnel to get you under the Rivers of the West and over to the mountain. I turns out that the ride boards on the Thunder Mesa side of the river and the train passes underwater in order to get to the island. The ride itself is much larger than its American counterparts and it’s longer and faster too. There’s additional special effects, including the aforementioned crumbling dock, and you combine these with an unparalleled view of Frontierland (since the ride is at the center of the land, not at the back) and you get easily the best version of Big Thunder Mountain. Sensing a pattern here?
The continental breakfast, even with the welcome addition of the delicious Gaufre, was nowhere near enough fuel to get us through the day, and we decided to get lunch before we took our leave of Thunder Mesa and Frontierland. Lisa had made an odd choice once again and stuck with it: she wanted to have lunch at the Silver Spur Steakhouse. We didn’t have reservations, but we waited only about 10 minutes before we were seated. The décor was dark and rustic, reminiscent of a saloon somewhere on the way to the Gold Rush. There was an open-air grill at the back of the restaurant, and flames surged every time another steak was thrown on the fire. The menu was patterned after an American steakhouse with a bit of Mexican flair thrown in for good measure. We started with an appetizer sampler that brought us a huge plate of nachos, wings and onion rings. Lisa ordered the Ribeye while I ordered the I-Bone, a cut of steak the menu said was “discovered” and made famous by Disney when the park opened in 1992, which, considering how long humanity has been butchering cows, brought to mind some horrid cow part previously thought indigestible, but I got it anyway. It was here where we learned that, at least in this part of Europe, there’s no such concept as “Medium Rare”. It’s either Rare or Medium, and Medium here means, essentially, Medium Rare, since the steaks we were served were (gloriously, I might add) just slightly above raw on the inside. We were, mostly due to the lake of seemingly-real cheese on our nachos, too full for dessert and made our way back out into the park.
On our way back to the hub we passed yet another group of maintenance workers, again in plain clothes, again cordoned off by the thin parade rope (at least this time there was a Wet Paint sign with Donald Duck on it) painting a wishing well. I would make a corny joke about how I wished they would paint when the park close, but I guess I just did.
Our next stop was Adventureland. The entryway to Disneyland Paris’ Adventureland is themed to an Arabian Bazaar with two huge flaming torches flanking either side (well, only one was working, but I got the idea). Directly to the right of the entryway was Le Passage Enchante d’Aladdin, a walkthrough with miniatures depicting the events of the original Aladdin movie. It was here that we met our busmates from the previous day, Jamie, Leo and Jack, for a second time that day. We had previously been killing some time waiting for our Fastpass time to come for Big Thunder and were reading the menu for a BBQ place by the Indian Reservation at the far end of Frontierland. We were leaning around a couple and their young son in order to read the menu until we realized that it was Jamie, Leo and Jack. I just forgot to tell that story before and I’m too lazy to try and fit it in above. As we waited patiently for the family dawdling for no apparent reason at the entry to Le Passage Enchante d’Aladdin to get out of the way so we could get a picture, Jamie, Leo and Jack, who were also waiting to take a picture, noticed it was us and we made our way through the attraction together. It was notable for its exceptionally detailed maquettes that captured moments from the movie perfectly. We all had the same idea for the next stop, Fastpasses for Indiana Jones et Le Temple du Peril, so we continued on together.
We got our Fastpasses and, since they had already finished their tour of Adventureland, we parted ways. We decided our next stop would be Pirates of the Caribbean, but there was some disagreement on how to get there. There’s no Tom Sawyer Island in Disneyland Paris, but there is Adventure Isle, which is essentially Tom Sawyer Island with walkways to it instead of a boatride. Lisa, for some reason, was vehemently opposed to going through it to get to Pirates, and it led to a standoff, where I entered the cave while Lisa stood at the entrance bridge, holding her ground. Eventually I relented, realizing that even if she came into the cave, we wouldn’t necessarily come out at the same exit, so I walked back to her and dragged her into Adventure Isle with the agreement that we would take the most direct route to Pirates and save the rest of the exploration for later (for reasons she could not explain). I ended up both getting my way and looking like a huge jerkoff, since there apparently was no direct route to Pirates through Adventure Isle, and we wound up exploring half the island before giving up and heading back over the very same entrance bridge that Lisa had set up camp at during the argument.
There were signs for Jack Sparrow everywhere leading up to the ride, but it seems his presence was limited to a live character outside the ride itself. Once inside the impressive (but cartoonish) fort, there was no more mention of him. The queue for Disneyland Paris’ Pirates seems a lot longer, but it is also much more elaborate, with numerous skeletons in various states of decay, all undergoing some form of torture. Whoever ran this fort obviously didn’t take kindly to Pirates. In fact, the entire setup of the ride plays out like a morality tale: the ruined remains of the previous failed attempts lead up to a city overrun by pirates, drunken louts intent only on raping, pillaging and plundering. The madness reaches a fever pitch when a pirate that’s particularly careless amongst some explosives takes everyone with him down to caverns where we see the remains of the pirates’ escapades. Ghastly skeletons sit atop hordes of treasure, each impaled with the sword of another greedy pirate who was just a bit more cunning. Although the Pirates rides have always benefited from their lack of narrative, this minimalist narrative gives it a coherence that, combined with several elaborate animatronics on par with the auctioneer elsewhere, including a set of fluidly moving fencers, makes this…shock of all shocks…my favorite version of Pirates.
There wasn’t much else for us to do in Adventureland, and our Fastpasses had not yet reached maturity, so we made our way back to the hub and headed back toward Main Street.
Lisa had wanted to save Fantasyland for last, but I really wanted to get to the castle in case the walkthrough closed earlier than the park, so our first stop was Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. When we finally made it out to Disneyland, the castle was closed to the public, so this was our first castle walkthrough. A bejeweled golden book sits in front of the staircase that leads upstairs where you can walk around the inside of the castle admiring the beautiful stained glass windows depicting the story of Sleeping Beauty. You can also step outside on the castle balcony for a very nice view of Fantasyland, but we were really there for only one thing: to see the Dragon. Down a set of stairs from that balcony, off to the side of the castle (there no signage indicating where you need to go to see it until you’re already there, you’re just left to figure out that the walkway alongside the castle and under the bridge is the correct way) is La Taniere du Dragon. Inside, in a dark and foggy cave, is the sleeping monster, a massive replica of Maleficent’s Dragon form, surrounded by the bones of its victims. Its stomach expands and contracts as it breathes, smoke pouring from its nostrils. Every so often it rouses, growling and snapping at the crowd surrounding it. It’s actually a lot more active and impressive than I thought it would be. Low expectations will serve you well.
Main Street was packed and it wasn’t even near park closing. You would think half the people just came to the park had come just to shop. I couldn’t stand the crowds, so I left Lisa alone to look for souvenirs while I explored the Arcades lining either side of Main Street. I had read about these, but had forgotten they were there, only finding them as I looked for an exit to shops. One side, the more interesting side, was a narrative about the gifting of the Statue of Liberty from France to America, from its conception, through its construction, to the present day. There were dioramas throughout the hall with photographs and placards explaining key points during the statue’s history. In the middle of the hall was a little entryway you could pass through into a darkened hall that looked out from a ship, its passengers discussing the new statue in the harbor. It was a neat little respite from the day of touring.
Disappointed by the lack of Disneyland Paris themed merchandise, we left Main Street empty-handed and returned to Adventureland to use our Indiana Jones Fastpasses before we ended the day in Fantasyland.
It was broken.
There was a small crowd gathered in front of the ride. The ride had stopped at the top of a hill and its passengers were being unloaded and brought down the staircases to exit. We normally would’ve just turned around and cut our losses, but the presence of the crowd didn’t seem to bother the attendant who was keeping everyone out of line: he wouldn’t just let us stand there, clogging up the area, if the ride wasn’t going to be working again soon, right? Well, the answer is that he would. He was quite jovial, but he didn’t seem to have any idea what was going on. The crowd had just grown bigger as we waited, and, since we were at the very front by the entrance to the Fastpass line, we would have to push our way out if we wanted to anywhere else. Waiting actually became enjoyable. No one in the crowd spoke the same language. It seemed as if all the French had gone on vacation elsewhere, and the majority of visitors were non-French speaking Spanish, Germans and Italians, with a few English and American sprinkled in for good measure. Since we couldn’t commiserate about our predicament, the crowd formed a universal language, groaning as the time passed, gasping and cheering when some progress seemed to be made on the ride, clapping as a makeshift chant to get the maintenance workers going. When the fifteen minute deadline we had given ourselves came and went, we weren’t bothered because standing around and waiting was actually kind of fun.
During this whole time, a group of children had snaked their way through the crowd and were standing just alongside the Fastpass entrance. This is important because I’m about to relate one of my not-so-proudest moments. About twenty-five minutes after we got to the ride the crowd had gone from sizeable to riot-waiting-to-happen. When the ride opened, the Fastpass attendant stepped aside, as if he were letting a bull loose at a rodeo, knowing what was to come. The entire crowd surged forward at once and everyone was forced into the tiny confines of the line. You either moved or were trampled. The children waiting alongside the line, tried to sneak in to the side of the line but found themselves swept up and separated by the swelling current of humanity. A prepubescent boy, no older than 11, looking very much like the kid from A Christmas Story, was being pressed between the rope and my stomach. I had nowhere to move but forward, as the entire population of France was pressing at my back, but I did my best to keep from killing the kid. The kid reached out in front of him, and in a thick Scottish accent reminiscent of a high-pitched Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, called out to his sister:
“I’m sorrah, I tried to stay wit’ ya’, but this big fat guy is crushin’ me!”.
I laughed (in retrospect, internally) and, forgetting the kid was a kid, said:
“I speak the language, dick.”
The kid looked up at me as if I had just murdered his mother. He was terrified. As soon as the line opened up he bolted away, running to rejoin his friends. I laughed and told Lisa what had happened, but immediately felt bad about scaring the crap out of the kid. He rejoined his friends, who had heard what I said and found it the funniest thing ever, and were torturing the kid. At least I gave them a story to tell back at school.
The ride sucked, by the way. It was a plain Wild Mouse-type coaster whose sole loop did not make up for the fact the most interesting part of the theming was the two giant torches out front. Unfortunately, I can’t even say it wasn’t worth the wait, because the wait was worth the wait. The wait wasn’t worth the ride, I guess.
My camera gave out at this point, which didn’t matter much, because our feet were about to as well. We made our way back into Fantasyland. In another nod to the universality of certain aspects of Disney, the wait for Peter Pan was approaching two hours. I don’t know what it is about the ride that’ll make people wait so long to get on it, but whatever it is, it’s not limited to America.
We rode on Les Voyages de Pinocchio and encountered our first foreign voice actor for a familiar character. Why is it that support characters are almost universally voiced by some whiny, high-pitched, nasally guy, no matter what the original character sounded like? Jiminy Cricket’s voice was so grating that you finally understood why Pinocchio never listened to him…hmmm, maybe that’s why. We always end up liking the sidekicks more than the main character back in the states, maybe they’re just trying to rectify that overseas by casting obnoxious voices for non-primary characters.
We rode Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which was nearly identical to the original version and thus fairly unremarkable. The most interesting part of the ride was the guy running the operations panel for the ride: he was training six workers, all women, and they were all pressed up against him to see the tiny control board, hanging on his every word. We were, naturally, left to board the ride by ourselves. I wouldn’t dare interrupt the man’s fantasy world.
We ventured into an attraction unique to Disneyland Paris: Alice’s Curious Labyrinth. It’s a hedge maze that was made less fun for two reasons: the wrong paths only let you wander down them for about a foot before you see they’re the wrong path, and Lisa decided to follow someone else through the maze, defeating the whole purpose. The maze itself was fairly enjoyable, opening up every so often to reveal an encounter with a character from the movie, the coolest of which was the Caucus race, which led you in circles past the racing characters, jumping fountains splashing alongside you as you pass. The maze dumps you out in front of a perfect photo opportunity: a giant floral recreation of the Cheshire Cat’s face, but unfortunately my camera had pretty much given up.
It was still more than a half hour before park closing, but the two remaining attractions I wanted to go on were closed: the train, bizarrely, stops running an hour and a half before park closing, and Le Pays des Contes de Fées, the Storybook Land Canal Boats, stop running two hours before park closing.
Not wanting to end the day in disappointment, I remembered a tiny little nerd detail I had heard about: In Pinocchio’s Village Haus in Walt Disney World, a construction error had placed an exit sign off center and, to correct the mistake, an Imagineer painted Figaro, Gepetto’s cat, trying to tug the exit sign into its proper place. Problem solved. Years later, when they built a copy of the restaurant in Disneyland Paris, Au Chalet de la Marionette, they made sure that particular exit sign was in the right place. They added a little Disney detail, though, and I was able to get my camera to snap one last picture of it when we found it in the restaurant: Figaro leaning up against the exit sign, winking, giving a thumbs up for a job well done.
We said our goodbyes to the park, knowing we would probably return the next day since the Disney Studios opens later and closes earlier than the Disneyland Park. We walked back to the Sequoia Lodge, a walk that seemed a thousand times longer than the walk we took in the morning. We discussed our thoughts on the park.
We both agreed that, in terms of atmosphere, in that you could just stand around and enjoy yourself, it rivaled Animal Kingdom, my favorite of all the Disney Parks (you heard me right). Every inch of Disneyland Paris was crafted with exquisite detail and everything was a marvel to look at. There were so many rides that were the best versions on offer that I can easily say that it’s the best of the Magic Kingdoms. Lisa clung to her nostalgia: Walt Disney World’s was all she knew growing up and she was sticking with her childhood favorite. She easily admitted though that several of her favorite Disney rides were now here, though. The positives far outweighed the negatives, but the negatives were noteworthy: the obscene lining procedures that seemed to be completely ignored in the design of the park and the behavior of the attendants. I also hate to be the guy harping about “show”, but watching a guy in jeans and a t-shirt paint the Antique Look on a well kind of ruins the magic. None of these, however, would prevent me from returning to the park again. In fact, the only thing keeping me from going back to this park, which I really did love, is the fact that there’s so much left in Europe that I’ve yet to see.
June 27, 2007 at 10:22 pm · Filed under Disney, Travel, Mediterranean Cruise
It was an extremely sleepy day. The sadness of the finality of the cruise was lessened partially by the fact we were continuing on to Disneyland Paris but mostly by the fact we never really woke up.
A final inspection of the room, a final shower (sans the liquid toiletries not provided by the ship, so chewing gum was a must) and we made our way down to Lumiere’s for our final breakfast at 7:45 in the morning.
Laura and Andy were late, as they had promised they would be the night before, so we spent some more time getting to know the people at the table to our left. We had talked to them intermittently throughout the trip, mostly sharing our love of gluttony and need for sleep. They were a couple from New Jersey with their 17 year old daughter. They had been on tons of cruises, including a Disney cruise 10 years prior, when their daughter was 7, which immediately caused me to subtract 10 from my age and then not feel so old. As you may have already noticed, I’m not good with names at all. My mother is the oldest of fourteen children and each of her brothers and sisters generally have at least three children, with a bunch having four (no one’s broken five, yet) so that I’ve got so many cousins we don’t bother learning their names until they start talking. As a result, I don’t remember anyone’s names until I’ve seen them and used their name at least a dozen times. Don’t feel bad if I mention you here and don’t remember your name, you obviously left an impression, it’s just that I’m an idiot. Anyway, the man next to us worked in Nyack, which isn’t too far from where we live and home to the Palisades Mall, which we frequent. It was surprising how many people lived or worked near us throughout this cruise, who knows how many times we’d seen them before we got on a boat in Europe together. The couple and their daughter were spending some more time in Barcelona before returning home. Almost everyone had some sort of continuation plan spawning from the idea “Well, we’re already here”, even if they frequent “here”. A couple in the elevator on the way down to breakfast were spending a few days in Spain before returning to Italy for another two weeks. I briefly considered the Hannibal Lecter-style skinning and taking their identity, but I didn’t have any sharp utensils and I really didn’t have the murder lust that early in the morning.
The dining room was alive, but nowhere near as alive as it had been during the cruise. It was full of people with matted hair, glasses where there had been contacts before, no makeup and their worst outfits. If anyone had walked into the room for the first time they would assume that we were refugees instead of vacationing. There was some life: Wilson, our server, and Melroy, our Assistant Server, were ready and raring to go. I asked if they got some good sleep and they laughed. Melroy had gone to bed at 3 the previous night only to check back in for work at 5:45. Wilson was able to get a luxurious 3 and a half hours in before working up the energy that I don’t have after 10 hours in bed. This was the life they led daily, not an aberration: four hours was lazy Sunday and five hours was unthinkable. The fact that they were able to do their jobs as well as they do, let alone be the liveliest guys in the room, dancing and singing their way through the shift, easily doubled their tips from us, and I’m sure most of the people who had the pleasure of their service. Both Wilson and Melroy would be working again if we were to cruise next year, and their presence made that idea more appealing.
We ordered…well, Wilson ordered for us: although we had been to breakfast in the dining room only once before, he had memorized both our orders and recited them for us before we could open our mouths. He’s damn good. He also was leaving the ship that day for a visit to his in-laws who live in Barcelona. It’s a welcome respite from ship food and a lucky coincidence for him, since he can mitigate the long and lonely cruise with bi-weekly visit to family.
Laura and Andy joined us, looking so exhausted that we seemed like speed freaks in comparison. They were in the same boat as us (sorry) with a flight to Paris 6 hours in the future with Disney kicking them out to the airport far too early. They were spending the remainder of their honeymoon in Paris proper, something that made Lisa insanely jealous, but I truly believe that we’re the kind of people who need an “in” to a place before we can enjoy it on our own and the small window allotted to us in Paris would leave us more disappointed than satisfied.
We wolfed down our breakfast, joking around with Wilson, Melroy, Laura, Andy and the people next to us for the final time. Well, maybe the final time, since we seem to keep running into Andy and Laura throughout Europe. We said our fond farewells and stumbled our way to the elevator, carry-ons in tow.
We picked up our bags in the Chip & Dale lot. We knew that insane excess baggage fees were in our future, so we stopped at UPS. It would be at least 280 euros to ship only one of the bags home, so that certainly wasn’t an option. In retrospect, it might’ve been a steal. More on that later.
The bus ride to the airport was uneventful. I much prefer the depressing Magical Express ride to Orlando airport as at least the depression is accompanied by a DVD. Lisa slept most of the way while I finished Miranda July’s new book and played Puzzle Quest, an insanely addictive DS game that combines the simplicity of Bejeweled with the micromanagement of an RPG to create a monster that I’ve had to force myself to put down on more than one occasion.
We got to the airport at 9:00 and dragged our bags to the line to check in for Easyjet. After a good half hour of waiting, we had our bags weighed for check-in. We knew we would have to pay excess baggage fees as we were allowed 20 kg per person which we had just barely exceeded with our two bags and now we had an additional 20 kg in gifts purchased for everyone back home. We were prepared to pay a token amount for Easyjet since their website said we would have to pay a reasonable additional baggage fee for excess. We were more concerned with Ryanair as it had an insane baggage limit of 15 kg each with an 8 euro per kilogram charge on top of that. Of course, since the odds were against us with one, the other decided to get in on the action: Easyjet’s restrictions changed at the airport and we were forced to pay 180 euros just to get our bags on the plane, probably more than we paid for the flight itself. Lesson learned: don’t fly the cheap airlines within Europe unless you’re backpacking. We’re not looking forward to Ryanair.
Security in the airport is at an absolute minimum. The security guard that was manning the entryway to the gates was more concerned with keeping the line moving than anything else. Lisa was trying to show him the boarding passes when he yelled for her to move. The actual security check is fairly standard, but the liquid restriction doesn’t seem to be rigorously enforced and they don’t check the shoes at all. The airport security all over Europe has been like this (except in Dublin, when I needed to get it over with quickly) and even in the US it took less time to get through security on my way to Europe than it does when I’m flying to Florida.
Time passes slowly when you’ve got 5 hours to kill at an airport. There are only so many Toblerones you can consider buying before you’re driven insane. The airport had designated WiFi areas which we took full advantage of for the hour or so before the laptop battery died. The rest of the time was filled with snacking (a Snickers bar for me, a sandwich for Lisa), people watching and Puzzle Quest playing. As our flight time got closer we finally got a Gate number and then we realized that we had no seat numbers. I sent Lisa up to check on this and the next time I looked up from my DS, she was at the front of a line stretching one end of the terminal to the other. It had been fortuitous timing on our part: despite a lack of announcement, boarding was about to begin.
The line for boarding was a standard line, something that I feel comfortable now calling an American Line in light of what was about to happen, people standing one behind the other, single file. This must have been a mere formality, for as soon as the boarding began, the entire line went to the front, forming a mob in front of the single attendant taking tickets. People not previously standing in line snaked into the crowd and everyone was pushing forward to board. An American family in front of us was shocked by what was going on but the father’s disgust led him to force his way to the front. The sheer force of his American determination somehow parted the mob of inconsiderate passengers and Lisa and I rode in their wake, among the first 10 or so people on the plane. We still had no idea what our seats were so we asked the bold American father if he had his seat numbers and they informed us that it was open seating. This helped explain the chaos we had just witnessed but honestly, what happened to common decency? I understand the desire to get a good seat but people were literally shoving children aside to get to the front. The American family said this is how Southwest Airlines does it in the states and I hate to be all ethnocentrist again but I can’t imagine the people behave the same.
We sat four rows from the front on the right side of the plane, me on the aisle, Lisa in the middle. A few minutes after we sat down, an elderly woman asked for the window seat and we gladly gave it to her: she couldn’t have weighed more than 90 pounds and so didn’t crush Lisa. She was quiet for the entire trip, which Lisa and I slept through in alternating shifts, not by any conscious decision, it’s just how it worked out. It was probably because the first time I fell asleep I started to drool to the shock and horror of Lisa, who promptly woke me up. I think she decided to remain vigilant for the rest of the 1 ½ hour flight. The rest of the passengers were wholly unremarkable with the exception of the woman on the aisle across and one row back. She spent the entire flight, and I’m not exaggerating when I say the entire flight, blowing her nose. Long, wet blows that were accompanied by visions of the superbug I would contract from her airborne snot globules, so I held my breath and imagined kicking open the airlock and throwing her out, leaving her to rethink flying while sick, or at least considering going to the bathroom where she couldn’t infect anyone else.
ORLY airport was nice, but we weren’t there to admire it, we were there to leave it. We gathered our luggage (everything, thankfully, in one piece, so far) and searched for the VEA shuttle to Disneyland Paris, which was, of course, not where the website said it would be. The transit map said it was out Door G, Quoi 2. Each successive door leaving the building had a letter assigned to it and we made our way to G, passing food that was calling out to us, because it was 4:32 and the bus was scheduled to arrive at 4:30. Quoi 2, thankfully, was labeled clearly once we got out, but the bus was nowhere to be seen. We accepted that it probably had left already, knowing that Disney’s legendary efficiency comes through only when we don’t want it to, and sat on the bench to wait.
The young family that had been sitting directly across from us on the plane came with their bags shortly after we sat down. They, too, had come from the cruise and they, too, were heading to Disneyland Paris. I delivered the bad news about the hour wait and they offered a glimmer of hope: they had seen what appeared to be the Disney bus at the corner in the distance, seemingly headed this way. Lo and behold, it was headed this way, and it pulled up to cheers from us and the only other family waiting for it. A squat little fat man with more hair on his stubbly face than on his head popped out of the bus to help us load our luggage underneath the bus. As soon as he had done so, he informed us in French with liberal gesturing that he would return in 20 minutes and we couldn’t get on the bus until then.
Over an hour later, he returned. In the time he was gone, we learned that the young family was Leo and Jamie with their son Jack. They were all from Chicago and had enjoyed the cruise as much as we did, their first Disney cruise ever, and were considering the Caribbean for the following year. We talked at length, comparing our various excursions and experiences, while Jack, with boundless energy, constantly tested the attention and restrictions of his parents. Despite the pleasant company, all of us were constantly checking our watches in disbelief over being abandoned. I theorized he must be napping in the bus, but he wasn’t in the driver’s seat, which is nice since that would’ve been all that more insulting since we couldn’t get on the bus. The time passed incredibly slowly, but when he showed up, we were just happy to be on our way and didn’t utter a single complaint, at least not to the driver. He had, of course, now put us square into rush hour, and so our journey took over an hour, with the industrialized zones on either side of the highway offering little to appreciate in the way of scenery, so that the most interesting moment of the journey was seeing a McDonald’s.
The entrance to the Disneyland Paris Resort area does nothing to get you excited. There’s a faded sign, clearly aged by time and weather, that is a bit smaller than the road signs, only on the right side of the bus, that would be easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. There wasn’t much in the way of pre-show, and suddenly we were at the first hotel, the Newport Bay Club, a hybrid Beach Club/Yacht Club that was big and boxy with just enough themeing to evoke the seaside resort it was aiming for. This seemed to be the norm here: our hotel, the Sequoia Lodge, a hybrid of the Wilderness Lodge and the Grand Californian, was big and boxy and themed just enough to evoke the National Park lodges it was aiming for. The interior of the lobby was more impressive than the outside, though, and I left Lisa to take (terrible) pictures of it while I checked in.
The people working at the front desk were multilingual, with at least French, Spanish and German spoken before I got up there and they spoke English. The long wait to get there, though, was long, but it was moved along by Mickey, who had come out to the lobby, seemingly unattended (a cast member came out from the shadows when it was time for Mickey to go), and dancing to the lobby music whenever he wasn’t entertaining a child. He was lively, far livelier than the people checking into the hotel, and when he was alone except for one little girl, he danced a waltz at length with her, making her day. The check-in process went smoothly: any fear of a language barrier was nonsense, the only fear you should have is of the shame that these people can speak most of your language while you struggle with just a few words of theirs.
We had booked through DVC and so our admission was included. Originally it seemed that the stay was a bit pricey point-wise but once I factored in the admission it was actually more than reasonable. The stay also included a continental breakfast every morning of the stay and I had opted for the breakfast in Fantasyland that would allow us to get into the park an hour early. I was handed two vouchers (we would be leaving too early the third morning to take advantage of the breakfast) that would get us into the park. Nothing really seems to be linked up here: in addition to the vouchers, I was given a room key, two park tickets, and two separate “Hotel easy-passes” that seemed identical but one proved that I was staying in a Disney hotel for Extra Magic Hours (which were only going on the night we checked in, when we didn’t plan on taking advantage of them) and the other allowed us to charge things to the room. Back in good ol’ Walt Disney World, all these are rolled into the room key, which, of course, I prefer.
We were in the Yellowstone Lodge, the first of six buildings off the lobby, in room 119. It was just through a covered bridge over a stream, complete with little waterfalls. This, combined with birdsongs that we’re unsure were actually real, gave the place the charming nature feel that we’d hoped for. The Yellowstone Lodge wasn’t so charming, though, with moldy doors that stuck when you tried to open them and a dark hallway with ugly wallpaper. The room lock was the card-reader type, but it was almost impossible to slip the card in properly, so that you feared snapping it in half as you tried to find the millimeter slit that was secreted away in the middle of the box.
The room itself was serviceable, but nothing special beyond its spaciousness (relative to the only other hotel room we’d stayed at in Europe, in Barcelona, where the small space was mitigated by its sharp decoration). There was a very nice bathroom with a tub and shower that seemed brand new, which was nice. I don’t remember if this was considered a “Moderate” resort (I think it was), but since Wilderness Lodge back home, its spiritual sister, is a Deluxe Resort, we were expecting more than the sparse decoration. I may sound down on the hotel as a whole, but I would actually stay here again (I’d like to try Disneyland Hotel next time, it really is built on top of the park) but with more realistic expectations about what we’d be getting.
There was no time to dawdle in the room: I had made reservations at King Ludwig’s Table, a German restaurant in Disney Village (their Downtown Disney) that Lisa had latched onto as a place she HAD to eat at when she was looking at some review sites in Barcelona airport. I had tried to convince her otherwise, especially after the clerk at the Front Desk told me that it wasn’t owned or operated by Disney, but she was steadfast in her resolve. My inability to read an analog watch (I don’t know why I wear them, especially the one I have now which has no numbers, leaving me to guess what time it is plus or minus an hour. Don’t ever ask me the time, I’ll stare at my watch for far too long, panicking, and then I’ll finally give you the first number that comes to my mind, regardless of its relation to what I’m seeing on my wrist) meant that we were rushing from our hotel room at 7:30 PM for a 9:00 PM reservation, thinking it was 8:30 PM. We made our way through the hotel lobby (we would later find on our own that it was quicker to avoid the hotel lobby altogether and just head down the path alongside the waterfall stream) to the Promenade du Loc, the walkway surrounding the main waterway surrounded by the Sequoia Lodge, the Newport Bay Club and Disney Village. There were shuttles that left the Sequoia Lodge every 12 minutes, but unless you’re able to get on the shuttle without waiting, it was actually quicker to walk, which we did.
The walk from the Hotel Lobby opens up to the Promenade du Loc after you pass several pine trees, which cover the grounds of the Sequoia Lodge. Directly in front of the hotel is what seems to be a dock, but it is unattended and seemingly unused, as no boats of any kind are in the water. There are vestiges of a time when watercraft may have been out on the lake: buoys with solar powered lights floated near bridges with ample headroom underneath. I wonder, though, what the purpose of the boats might have been, as the lake isn’t all that big and it doesn’t connect in any way to the parks. What is probably the former dock that accepted the boats near Disney Village currently holds a giant hot-air balloon celebrating the 15th anniversary of Disneyland Paris. The balloon is pretty well moored and is also unattended, though it looks as if they might fly it during busier times of year.
The walk is fairly quiet by the Sequoia Lodge, with only a few signposts directing you to the action lining the sides. Once you cross a bridge toward the Hotel New York, a hotel designed to resemble the New York skyline (which fails miserably), it becomes slightly more lively, with a concession stand selling ice cream and several concrete steps leading down to the lake (with no barrier at its edge, forcing tons of parents to chase their children, eager to join the many ducks lining the banks, down them). As you walk further, the place livens up a bit more, and the strangeness of the Disney Village becomes apparent.
Lisa said it reminded her of Six Flags, which I can understand. There’s a sense of cheap opportunism in the barely-themed attractions you’d expect to find at a State Fair than in anything Disney, although I guess there’s precedent in the fairly awful Midway at California Adventure and the equally bad (in parts) at Dinoland USA at Animal Kingdom. Nothing is free, which would make it more tolerable, so all you’re left with are overpriced children’s rides that look like they were rented for a birthday party of a spoiled child. There’s the ever-popular trampoline-and-bungee-cord thing, the kiddie go-karts complete with dingy-plastic dividers, and a tiny plastic mall carousel. Then you reach Disney Village.
Disney Village was our first introduction to the bizarre view of America that was pervade the entire Disneyland Paris property. The USA is made up of, in its entirety: New York and Hollywood, populated by Cabbies, Celebrities, Cowboys and Indians. I imagine it’s the same as imagining the streets of London filled with cockney urchins or Paris with lanky beret-wearing men with pencil-thin moustaches in black and white striped shirts, baguettes under their arm. I guess we come out pretty unscathed, but that might just be because I live in New York and get some recognition, despite my lack of cowboy boots.
The love of the Wild West is evident everywhere, with a Wild West dinner show, a country western saloon, and Billy Bob’s snacks and Tex-Mex buffet. Representing the New York side of the US is New York Style, proudly offering Pastrami and Corned Beef. The Hollywood side is represented by Planet Hollywood, which seems to have a stranglehold on Disney properties, despite its total lack of modernity. Its facade is covered in cutouts that probably seemed dated when it opened in 1992 especially with its not one, but two appearances of Wesley Snipes in his embarassing White Men Can’t Jump costume. There’s also a shoutout to the 1950s, our go-to decade for Americana, with Annette’s (a reference to Annette Funicello, I’m sure), a diner that Lisa tells me is their version of the 50s Primetime Café in MGM Studios. There are also, of course, shops mostly Disney merchandise but also outposts for Planet Hollywood, King Ludwig’s and the Wild West Saloon. There’s also a McDonald’s (which, like in America, you’d be shocked how many people run to as if it’s the first they’ve ever seen) and a Rainforest Café, but the less said about both, the better. There was some insane entertainment in the middle of it all, with a giant woman on stilts with fruit on her head slow-motion chasing three smaller men, two with smaller stilts and one with no stilts at all. Their actions were broad, as if they were mimes, but they spoke a lot in French. I’m not sure it made sense even to the people who understood the language.
A digression: a stunning amount of people, men and women alike, had the tiny mohawk (is it really a mohawk if you keep the rest of your non-mohawked hair?) with frosted tips that Sacha Baron Cohen has when playing his Bruno character. It’s insanely stupid-looking. It takes all the non-conformist rebellion of the mohawk, throws it out, and replaces it with “Look at my big, dumb, gay head”. Okay, now we may continue.
Our destination was King Ludwig’s Castle, contained in a stuccoed beige castle that didn’t do anything to assuage my fears about eating here. The menu was a thorough meat and potatoes affair, though, something I look for in my German food, and I didn’t feel like walking anymore, so we went in.
Lisa committed the mortifying faux pas of immediately speaking to the woman seating us in English without asking if she spoke it, or even greeting her. I had taken the reigns so far, mainly because her pronunciation of French was horrendous, but for some reason she felt comfortable enough to force herself on this person. Seemingly everyone here (in Disney, outside they still speak it but the vocabulary varies from person to person) speaks fluent English, so I can understand why, but I was still caught so offguard that when the woman looked at me I couldn’t respond, like a deer in the headlights, and only after a few seconds was able to spit out a proper greeting and a polite request for a table for two. We were seated and Lisa, who had noticed my horror but hadn’t put two and two together, asked me what was going on. I explained it to her as if it had happened the other way around, and how you probably wouldn’t be all that offended, but you’d certainly wonder how smart a person who talks to you in a non-native tongue right off the bat must be.
We greeted our waiter, asking him if he spoke English properly this time, which of course he did. We ordered an appetizer whose unpronounceable name and bizarre ingredients would never lead you to believe it was the flatbread pictured alongside it. I ordered the Choucroute Royale, a plate full of sausage on a mountain of sauerkraut that got my pick because along with the sausages was a slab of thick cut bacon, and bacon is good. Lisa ordered the Choucroute Wagner, which also had a ton of sausages but didn’t include any bacon, and so I passed it up. We took in the atmosphere: it was a two story dining room lined with tapestries knights doing knightly things and those little flags that knights ride into battle with which I know the name of and would blow you away with my refinement and intelligence if I remembered it and busted it out, but since I can’t, you’ll just have to take my word. It was nice, but not so nice that you didn’t consider the possibility it might be the Outback of German restaurants. The bathrooms were atrocious, cavernous affairs that managed to have only one or two actual toilets that produced a swampy floor. The garbage by the towels was overflowing, looking like the trash can of someone with a head cold. This held true of bathrooms throughout the resort: seemingly abandoned after an initial cleaning every morning.
Our flatbread was amazingly good, which was wholly unexpected since we chose it based solely on its weird name. It was delivered by a person other than our waiter, something not unheard of in the states, but this person was one of many that would serve us that night. In fact, we would never see the same person twice, making ordering more drinks impossible as we expected to see our waiter at least once more during the meal, but it was only when he appeared about twenty minutes after we had finished that I was able to flag him down from someone else’s table. The poor service (although, again, this would be our experience again the following day, so it might just be the norm) was more than made up for with the great food. The sausages were exactly what we were hoping for from a German restaurant, in great variety, all tasty. They were served alongside some miraculously tasty boiled (!) potatoes that complimented them wonderfully, moreso than the mountain of sauerkraut (that’s what it was called on the menu, a mountain, and it truly was) that the sausages were served on top of. We were filled to the brim by the end of it all and skipped dessert, just wanting to get back to the room to unpack what little we had to unpack and get to sleep.
Well, Lisa unpacked while I typed recaps and watched the Top 10 Disneyland Paris channel. Lisa absolutely hates these channels in Walt Disney World (Top 7 there) for their corniness and relentlessly cheerful hostesses, but I eat it up like candy. The Top 10 channel in Disneyland Paris is her worst nightmare: not only is the hostess relentlessly cheerful, there’s more than one, at least five that I’ve seen so far, each speaking a different language. There’s two channels, one rotating between French, English, German and, I think, Dutch, and the other rotating between Spanish…well, I’ve spent more time on the first channel so I don’t know what else is playing on the second one besides Spanish.
If you’re of the mindset that Disney is all innocence and eternal childhood, read no further. Seriously. You might even be creeped out if you don’t think like that and read it anyway. Go ahead, here’s your chance to click away.
Okay, so there’s a widespread consensus, couched in euphemism, double entendre, and sly phrasing, but widespread nonetheless, that the Top 10 channel girls are the best batch material in Disney. You’ll find debates in the forums and download sites about which girls are preferred for satisfying the baser needs, with most men preferring the previous Walt Disney World Top 7 girl to the current one for her, shall we say, larger assets. I prefer the current one, but I can see the appeal, as I lean that way generally, but there’s something about the new girl, perhaps how much “Pretzels und Beer!” annoys the hell out of Lisa.
Anyway, the Disneyland Paris Top 10 is a wonderland of women with its bevy of beauties, exotic in their foreign tongues. The hottest is the German one, who sounds perpetually furious at Disney because of her native tongue, and I annoyed Lisa by throwing out awful euphemisms like “I’d Cruise her Jungle”, “I’d take her to Fantasyland”, and “She can ride the Tower of Terror any day.” She wondered aloud why she ever married me and I told her it’s because I rocked her small world.
We went to sleep after that.
June 25, 2007 at 7:35 pm · Filed under Disney, Travel, Mediterranean Cruise
9:00 AM. I don’t know if this was planned on Disney’s part, but after peaking at La Spezia in Italy, the meeting times for excursions suddenly became reasonable. We even had time to eat a reasonable breakfast (with proteins!) before making our way down to Studio Sea. I’ve never been to Studio Sea of my own volition, but I’ve had almost half my excursions meet here, so much that I discovered the tables, inlaid with a design of a film canister with a movie title and director’s credit, are all inside jokes with founding castmember names on them. I’m guessing they’re all founding castmembers, actually, since I found our captain’s name on one of the tables.
It was time for another tender. On the port excursion presentations playing on TV that I had watched endlessly while I wrote, they had made a big deal about how Villefranche was the captain’s favorite port and that he’d pull right in so that he could enjoy the marvelous view. They weren’t lying. We were surrounded on all sides by hills and the town built into them (all our harbors are flat affairs back in the states…what entices you to get off a boat to climb a sheer cliffside?) that made for a view that was, well, marvelous. Brightly painted villas nestled into the rocky hill alongside terraced apartment buildings, each only six stories or less, with the most beautiful, vivid purple flowers cascading like ivy off every surface in between. We were the only large ship in the harbor, dwarfing the yachts and sailboats floating idle in the early morning light. We were not in the main port, the Port de la Darse, but the port of the old town, and the tiny little dock that our tender pulled alongside gave the entire place a unique feeling of quaintness that had been lost at a lot of the other, far more industrial ports.
We emptied out into a parking lot that was still active with commuters trying to navigate through the sea of lethargic tourists just standing in clumps wherever they saw fit. There were at least 5 tour guides waiting for us here, and the small space to maneuver meant a lot of milling about as people slipped between each other as the groups tried to sort out. There was a tent set up by Disney in the back of the lot, but its intended use as a meeting point was immediately discarded when huge throngs of people, deciding that 10 minutes off the boat they were already sick of the sun, gathered beneath it in no particular order. Everything sorted itself out eventually and we followed our guide, who said he would introduce himself once we were on the bus and out of this madness, led us away. We walked toward the citadel, the massive 16th century castle that runs alongside the port, and ducked our heads as we passed through an archway to walk uphill to the waiting buses. There were more buses here than seemed logically possible: the small winding path inside the citadel that served as the road in and out opened up to this parking area, but the face was so cramped it looked as if at least one of the buses had been constructed there on the spot because there was no other way it could’ve gotten there. I had faith in our driver, though, since if I had learned one thing about driving in Europe, it’s that no space is too small to fit a vehicle in.
Once we had situated ourselves on the bus, we were introduced to our tour guide, Frederic, pronounced as you’d pronounce Frederique stateside, a tall, thin, balding-but-making-it-work man whose lively demeanor made him seem far younger than he probably was. He introduced us to our driver, whose name I have since forgotten. The driver didn’t speak much English, so our tour was bilingual, English on the mic and French off when Frederic would explain what we were all laughing at. He was quite funny and seemed to take great pleasure in going “off-script”. He was quite happy when he found his running joke quite early in the day: the early morning was hot and it was only going to get hotter, so he promised not to tell anyone if we wanted to chuck the whole tour thing and just go to the beach. Throughout the day, as we got back on the bus increasingly exhausted and sweat-drenched, he would take a beat and then say “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the beach?”
The sliding puzzle of the parked buses was sorted out and we were on our way to our first stop, a panoramic view of Villefranche overlooking the Port de la Darse. I don’t know what it is about vacationing, but I can’t get enough of these stops. There’s tons of them along the lesser highways back home but I’ve never once stopped of my own accord to take pictures, but I snap a million of them when a bus lets me off at one. It was a wonderful view, the harbor in the foreground, enclosed by rocky outcroppings, a lighthouse perched at the end of a long and narrow wall extending out into the deep blue water. Nice lay along the shore in the distance, a huge concentration of buildings built right on the edge of the water, as if they were being forced into the sea by the overcrowding. As you got further away from the shore, buildings became more and more interspersed with trees, until you reached the mountains in the hazy distance.
After snapping my zillion pictures, I looked down at the graffiti that had been etched into the rock wall keeping us from falling over the cliff we were standing atop. Right in front of me, written in black:
LiiLOU ♥
LOVE YOU
FOR A LiiFETiiME*
I called Lisa over to see it and we shared our tender moment overlooking the French Riviera, thanking whoever loved Liilou for a liifetime for enshrining our names here, too.
We boarded the bus again and were off to Nice. It had become accepted that whichever side of a bus you sat on, the interesting things to see would be on the other side. We chose poorly in our seating arrangements and were able to see the bottom half of the war memorial and the sea-front side of the Promenade des Anglais. We would only tour the Promenade des Anglais on the bus and I don’t think we missed very much: it was a seaside town popular with the English upper class in the 19th century and has remained one of the main places that quite a few wealthy people and quite a few more people who like to pretend come to feel glamorous as they bask in the sunlight. In other words, something not really all that interesting to me or Lisa. There was a cute story about the Hotel Negresco, Nice’s most posh hotel and a historic landmark which is owned by a single little old lady. Its opulence apparently caught the eye of Bill Gates, who handed the old lady a blank check as his offer to buy the place. The old lady refused since she loved the place so much and she figured she didn’t have nearly enough time left on earth to spend the money anyway.
The bus parked alongside a beach, but it was not our destination: we were crossing the street, through an archway that smelled of urine, to enter the Cours Seleya. The Cours Seleya is, on most days, a flower and produce market where gardeners and farmers from miles around come to hock their wares, filling several blocks with heavenly smells and dazzling colors. On Monday, the day we were touring it, it becomes an antique market. This was genuinely depressing, but not because we were missing out on the cornucopia of yummy foodstuffs (although I guess that was a part of it), but because this was the final port and we were pretty much tapped out on funds. Antique in Europe makes the antiques to be found in America laughable: these were not the pots and pans our great grandmothers used, these were actual things from antiquity. The dust that had settled on half these things was older than the oldest offering you can generally find stateside. We followed Frederic through the marketplace, weaving our way through the stalls and blankets daring us to knock over their delicate offerings. He was giving us a quick tour before we had some free time to wander about. He made it clear that the tour was only optional, but that didn’t matter to most as they had already wandered off into the labyrinth of ancient wonders.
We ducked down and alleyway and were about to make our way past a non-descript building when Frederic stopped us to point it out. This was the Chapelle Sainte Rita and, despite a barely-decorative faux-columned entryway, could very well have been mistaken for a warehouse, if it was given any consideration at all. It was common for churches to have these nondescript facades at one time so that the impact of the interior decoration would have that much more force upon entering. Once Frederic led us through the doors, it was easy to see what they were trying to achieve: every inch of the interior was covered in gold and marble, with paintings and frescoes adorning the walls and the ceilings. It mirrored our experience at the Vatican: how did your average peasant, covered to the waist in cow manure, stand a chance against this? It was a bit excessive, actually, and Frederic noted that although it was Baroque, he considered it Rococo, which, if we were at a dinner party, would probably have gotten him laid.
We were left to our own devices from that point on, and Lisa and I wandered dejected through the antique market, depressed that we couldn’t afford anything we wanted, and even if we could, we probably wouldn’t be able to transport it home. I had my eyes on a collection of phones that were seemingly designed in the times before they had actually nailed down what a phone should look like. Lisa went even more impractical, coveting entire dining room sets that looked like they once held an official food-taster. We eventually broke away from the market and went into the tacky tourist shops that lined the Cours Seleya to buy some trinkets that we didn’t really want but at least could afford.
As our free time dwindled, Lisa decided she needed to use the restroom, so we stopped at a café and ordered an espresso. I sipped at it while she was away and the first sip, undoctored, was so strong that it forced my right eye shut in protest for a few seconds. I dropped in the sugar cubes that they’d served alongside it and found it quite palatable after that, so much so that Lisa returned to an empty cup. When she went up to order a second cup I told her to order Crepes au sucre as well, as staring at the menu while waiting for her I had worked up a craving for one. It was after we had ordered that we realized that free time was over in 5 minutes. We had already breached etiquette: Lisa had ordered the initial espresso at the bar since we were just running in and out, but now we had settled at a table and were circumventing the waiter with our second bar-order. Now we were running late on time and had to ask for the crepe and espresso to go! They were more than happy to oblige, but we over-tipped and left with our tails between our legs just in case.
As is always the case, when you rush, there’s no reason to rush. The bus had not arrived yet, and the group had gathered in the pee-smelling entrance to the Cours Seleya. There were artists lining the entryway now, and our milling about meant less foot traffic passing by their wares, so we were either going to throw a few coins their way or get a move on. We moved across the street where the view was much better anyway: a nude beach. Well, semi-nude, as it was more an opti
